Reduction and Emergence
An International Workshop

Reduction and Emergence

12-15 november 2003

Ecole Normale Supérieure
45 rue d’Ulm
75007 Paris

Presentation
References
Programme
Call for commentaries
Contact
Selected downloadable papers

John Bickle Rom Harré Andreas Huetteman Jaegwon Kim Robert Kirk Michel Morange

Ulises Moulines Alexander Rueger Kenneth Schaffner Ana Soto Achim Stephan William Wimsatt

Presentation

Science – both the research activity and the theories conceived to account for the results of observations and experiments - comes in many disciplines which seem to study extremely different objects with very different methods. Physics does not seem to have the same objects of study nor to proceed in the same way as chemistry, biology, geology, or psychology.
Does this division in disciplines and subdisciplines merely reflect a pragmatic division of labour in the research about natural entities, rather like the division of people undergoing a medical examination, according to the first letter of their name, A-K in the first room, I-Z in the second ? Or does it reflect a profound difference between “realms”, whose objects have fundamentally different properties, so that one science couldn’t possibly study the properties of the objects studied by any other science ? Are the processes of gene replication and transcription studied in molecular biology fundamentally different from the properties studied by physics ? Are the processes of learning and of the formation of memory studied in psychology fundamentally different from processes studied in cellular and molecular biology ? If those theories can be “reduced” to one another, there is no fundamental and in principle unbridgeable gap between their objects; if they cannot, there is.
Theory reduction, or simply reduction, shows theories with different domains to be closely related. We will be concerned above all with so-called “micro-reduction”, which characterizes a type of theories relating the properties of complex objects to the properties of their parts, and their interactions. This form of reduction – also called “inter-level” reduction - must be distinguished from “intralevel” reduction in which an old theory is reduced to a new theory dealing with the same properties of the same objects. E.g., Special Theory of Relativity is said to “reduce” classical mechanics, in the sense of constituting an empirically more adequate theory of which the old theory can be considered to be an approximation (on this distinction between two forms of reduction, see Nickles 1973). The exact form of micro-reduction has been subject to much discussion.
However, independently of the search for a philosophical account of the logical form of reduction, its requirements, and its philosophical significance, the search for reductions has a clear aim: if it could be shown that all scientific theories can be reduced to some unique fundamental theory, in particular to physics, this would allow to show that, not only do the different sciences study the same objects, in the sense that the objects of the “higher level” sciences are made up exclusively of parts which are the objects of “lower level” sciences, but that the whole of science is one coherent enterprise. Accomplished reductions, however one may conceive them in detail, provide explanations of the laws and properties of the reduced theory, in terms of the laws and properties of the reducing theory. The reduction of the thermodynamics of gases to statistical mechanics allows to explain why the pressure of a gas raises proportionally to temperature, if the volume is held constant. The reduction of vision to neurophysiology allows to explain many psychological phenomena, e.g. why a grey surface looks greenish against a red background, whereas the same grey surface looks reddish against a green background (the phenomenon of simultaneous colour contrast), or the phenomenon of the so-called Hermann grid: when one looks at a grid of white lines of a certain width, on a black background, grey spots appear at the intersections of the white stripes outside the centre of gaze. The debate about qualia in recent philosophy of mind is about whether such reductions can, in principle, explain all features of psychological phenomena or whether the “way it feels from the inside”, the subjective quality of sensory experience is in principle without the reach of reductive explanation.
Recent discussions about reduction start from Nagel’s (1961) account according to which reduction is the deduction of the laws of a higher-level theory TR to the laws of a lower level theory TB, with the help of “bridge principles”. Bridge principles are conditional (or bi-conditional) statements linking the predicates of TB to those of TR. Much efforts have been deployed to clarify the significance of such bridge principles, linking e.g. temperature to mean kinetic energy. Nagel remained neutral between interpreting them as empirical generalisations or as “meaning postulates”, i.e. conventional stipulations. Causey (1977) has argued that reduction leads to understanding only if the bridge principles are understood as expressing identities.
It is controversial whether the replacement of a theory by another, where the former is abandoned as false, can be considered to be a case of reduction. Often the elimination of the entities to which the abandoned theory referred, is on the contrary held to be incompatible with reduction, for reduction rather provides additional grounds in believing in the existence of the entities to which the reduced theory refers. The replacement of the phlogiston theory of combustion by the theory of oxidation is a paradigmatic case of the former type: phlogiston is not reduced but eliminated. By contrast, the discovery of the reduction of the temperature of gases to the mean molecular energy of its molecules justifies our belief in the existence of temperature. One early account of reduction that covers both cases is Kemeny and Oppenheim’s (1956): TB reduces TR if all observable predictions derivable from TR can also be derived from TB. Its refusal (inspired by verificationism) to speak about direct relations between the theoretical entities referred to by TR and TB, makes it unsatisfactory as a general account of reduction; however, it may remain useful to account for “eliminations”, which do away with the earlier theory, but keep and explain the data that theory was conceived to account for.

Popper (1957/1963), Feyerabend (1962) and Kuhn (1962) have argued against Nagel that his model does not take into account the dynamical character of scientific reductions: rather than the discovery of an “external” relation between two theories remaining untouched by this discovery, reductions typically lead to modifications of the theories involved. For example, the reduction to Newtonian mechanics of Galileo’s law of free fall according to which the distance of fall is gt2/2, does not leave Galileo’s law as it stands. In fact, according to the Newtonian reducing theory, the distance is greater than the distance indicated by Galileos’s law, because the acceleration of the falling body is not uniform as in Galileo’s theory, but increases as the body approaches the centre of the Earth. It may nevertheless be considered as a reduction because Galileo’s law can be seen to be an approximation to the “new law of free fall” that can be derived from Newton’s theory. In order to take into account this important fact, Schaffner (1967; 1993), Hooker (1981), Churchland (1986) and Bickle (1998) have developed variants of a “general reduction paradigm” (Schaffner) which allows to take into account the modification of both reduced and reducing theory in the course of the elaboration of the reduction. More generally, these authors have been led to a conception of the co-evolution of reduced and reducing theories according to which, by virtue of reduction, formerly separate theories become inextricably intermingled into a new “interfield theory” (Darden and Maull 1977), which makes essential use of concepts and methods of both ancestor theories.
In these models, reduction and elimination appear as characterising different parts of a continuum, ordered by the amount of modification introduced into the reduced theory: to the extent that the reduction overthrows fundamental principles of the reduced theory, a given case will lie near the elimination end of the spectrum, or on the contrary, to the extent that the reduction leads only to minor modifications in the reduced theory, it will lie near the end of “conservative reduction”.
Some authors (Suppes 1967, Balzer, Moulines and Sneed 1987, Bickle 1998) have proposed to draw a rather different lesson from the observation that the requirements on reduction set by Nagel’s model are rarely if ever met. Their “semantic approach” conceives of reduction as a relation between the models of the reduced and reducing theory. According to this model-theoretic approach, a theory TR is reduced to a theory TB if for every model of TR, it is possible to construct an isomorphic model of TB. It remains controversial whether this approach is essentially equivalent to the more syntactical conceptions of reduction sketched above, or whether it allows to solve, or rather dissolve, puzzles about the ontological relation between the entities referred to by the reduced and reducing theories.
In the philosophy of mind, the main focus of reduction is often taken to be properties rather than whole theories. The task of analyzing the reduction relation is then understood as the task of clarifying the relation between mental properties, such as feeling a sharp pain in a tooth, or seeing a vertical white line on black background on the wall one is facing, to certain underlying material properties, in particular to the activation of nervous pathways and (sets of) individual neurons in the brain. Three important conceptions of this relations are:
1) The mental properties are identical with the underlying neural properties.
2) The relation between mental and their underlying neurophysiological is conceived as that between a determinable property and one of its determinates, in a way analogous to the relation between red and a particular shade of scarlet (Yablo 1992).
3) Mental “properties” are just second-order concepts expressing functional roles which are “filled” by first-order physiological properties: Building on the functionalist conception of mental properties (Armstrong 1968), Kim (1998) has recently proposed a model of “functional reduction”, according to which reduction takes two steps: the first step of “functionalization” results in the analysis of a given concept which shows it to be a second-order or functional concept: temperature is “that magnitude of an object that increases […] when the object is in contact with another with a higher degree of it” (Kim 1998, p. 25); to be a gene is to be a causal mechanism that leads to the transmission of heritable characteristics from parents to offspring. The second step, which completes reduction, consists in the discovery of the particular causal mechanism that fulfils the function specified by the concept to be reduced. Kim’s theory is a variant of eliminativism: Kim’s account implies that there really are no higher-order properties; it shows that reduction is a relation between concepts, not properties, of different logical orders.
A similar approach has been advocated by Chalmers (1996) and Jackson (1998), who argue that “conceptual analysis” allows, together with a hypothetical complete knowledge of microscopic facts and laws, the a priori construction of reductive explanations of all other facts, in particular facts corresponding to common sense propositions such as “water covers much of this planet” or “there are many living beings” (Chalmers and Jackson 2001, p. 317). Perspectival facts (expressed by propositions with indexical expressions) and qualitative facts are excluded from this thesis of the in principle possibility of a priori reduction.

Emergence characterises a certain type of relation of higher level properties of complex objects with respect to properties of their parts. The regular geometric pattern of a crystal can be said to emerge during the process of crystallisation: unordered atoms or molecules form a whole with a property possessed by none of its parts alone. Life, with its characteristic properties of self-replication and adaptation to the environment, can be said to emerge, once a certain number of very specific molecules is assembled in a particular way. That novelty is a necessary condition for emergence, is more or less the only uncontroversial feature of the concept: a property of a whole is emergent only if none of its parts possesses that property. However, much controversy concerns the question whether one can find a general sufficient condition that captures the intuition that nature is organised in levels: from subatomic particles to thinking humans, there is not only a difference in size; some assemblages of parts into wholes seem to give rise to a qualitative discontinuity: when atoms are assembled to a molecules, when molecules are assembled to a living cell, when cells are assembled to form a human body, the newly assembled whole acquires qualitatively, and not only quantitatively new properties. Such properties are said to be emergent with respect to the properties of the parts.
For some time, emergence was associated with the impossibility of prediction and deductive explanation of emergent properties, on the basis of the properties of the parts and the laws governing them (Broad 1925). Emergence was taken to be the notion complementary to reduction: emergent properties were conceived as properties that cannot be reduced, even principle, to properties described by lower-level theories. Today, this conception has fallen in discredit, because, with the possible exception of the qualitative character of human sensory experience (Jackson 1986, Levine 1993, Chalmers 1996, Kim 1998, p. 101/2), there seems to be no good reason left to think that there are such properties. The concept of emergence as complementary to reduction survives only as an epistemic concept, which makes emergence relative to epochs and theories (McLaughlin 1993): yesterday the representation, by an animal, of its own position with respect to its nest and its prey, was emergent because no neurophysiological reduction of such a representation had been found; however, it is not emergent any more today, for (at least partial) reductions of such representations, in certain animals, to patterns of activation of neurons in certain parts of the cortex, have now been proposed.
Some new approaches to emergence conceive it as compatible with reduction. Wimsatt (1986) has proposed to consider emergence as the property complementary to aggregativity, which comes in different forms and can be understood through various criteria. Emergent properties violate at least one condition for aggregativity: for example, a property of a whole that is not invariant with respect to decomposition and reaggregation of its parts, is emergent on this account.
According to another approach, emergent phenomena are phenomena that resist efforts for prediction or deductive explanation by explicit calculation. In particular, the properties of chaotic systems come out as emergent because they cannot be predicted from the properties and laws of the component parts alone (Newman 1996, Bedau 1997). Humphreys (1996; 1997) has argued that the process of “fusion” of systems into a unique quantum mechanical system gives rise to emergent properties. Emergent properties are new properties of the system, which come into being together with the system, thereby destroying the properties of the parts that have been fused. Nevertheless, they can be reduced, because quantum mechanics allows to explain and predict the properties of the wholes on the basis of the properties of the parts. According to Rueger (2000), emergent properties of dynamical systems are supervenient properties which fail to be “structurally stable” or “robust” with respect to small variations in the properties of their parts. The trajectory of a system in phase space may change its topological properties upon a very slight change in the properties of its parts, for example upon a change in the strength of the damping of an oscillator. Such a change gives ride to a (diachronically) emergent property.

The aim of the conference is to evaluate such recent proposals for understanding reduction and emergence, and for understanding the unity and disunity of science with the help of these concepts. One issue is the question whether reduction and emergence can be accounted for within a unique general theory, or whether they take different forms at different levels. One objective is to evaluate existing models for their general or only local applicability, with the help of cases of reductions in different sciences, physics, biology, and psychology. Some models may turn out to have wider or narrower applicability than their proponents have initially intended. In particular, it is an open question whether J. Kim's (1998) model of functional reduction is a general model that is also applicable to interlevel reductions, or whether it fits only the particular case of the reduction of functional concepts. Similarly, it is controversial whether Jackson and Chalmers' "cosmic hermeneutics" bears on the traditional problem of analyzing the relation between microscopic and macroscopic facts. Indeed, they seem to presuppose that this problem has already been solved. Their account of conceptual analysis covers the part of the relation between microscopic facts and macroscopic common sense facts, which is then still left: the focus of their theory is the analysis of functional common sense concepts in categorical terms; it seeks to answer questions of the sort: by virtue of the common sense concept water, what kinds of stuff (macroscopically conceived) would we, on the basis of having this concept, take to be water?

References

Armstrong, David (1968), A Materialist Theory of Mind, revised edition, London, Blackwell, 1993.
Balzer, Wolfgang, C. U. Moulines et J. Sneed (1987), An Architectonic for Science, Dordrecht, Reidel.
Bedau, Mark A. (1997), Weak Emergence, Philosophical Perspectives 11: Mind, Causation, and World, p. 375-399.
Bickle, John (1998), Psychoneural Reduction. Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press.
Broad, C.D. (1925), The Mind and its Place in Nature, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Causey Robert L. (1977), Unity of Science, Dordrecht, Reidel.
Chalmers, David (1996), The Conscious Mind, New York, Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, David and Frank Jackson (2001), Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation, Philosophical Review 110, p. 315-360.
Churchland, Patricia S. (1986), Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press; trad. sous la dir. de Maryse Siksou : Neurophilosophie : l'esprit-cerveau, Paris, P.U.F., 1999.
Darden, Lindley and Nancy Maull (1977), Interfield Theories, Philosophy of Science 44 (1977), p. 43-64.
Feyerabend, Paul K. (1962), Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism, in: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science III, H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Minneapolis, U of Minnesota Press, p. 28-97.
Hooker, C.A. (1981), Towards a General Theory of Reduction, Dialogue 20, p. 38-59, 201-236, 496-529.
Humphreys, Paul (1996), Aspects of Emergence, Philosophical Topics 24, p. 53-70.
Humphreys, Paul (1997), How Properties Emerge, Philosophy of Science 64, p. 1-17.
Jackson, Frank (1986), What Mary Didn’t Know, Journal of Philosophy 83, p. 291-5.
Jackson, Frank (1998), From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Kemeny, John G. et Paul Oppenheim (1956), On Reduction, Phil. Studies 7, p. 6-19.
Kim, Jaegwon (1998), Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press.
McLaughlin Brian (1992), The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism, in Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr et Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Emergence or Reduction ? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism, Berlin/New York, de Gruyter.
Kuhn, Thomas (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press; trad. fr par L. Meyer : La structure des révolutions scientifiques, Paris, Flammarion, 1983.
Levine, Joseph (1993), On Leaving Out What It’s Like, in M. Davies et G. Humphreys (eds.), Consciousness, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 121-136.
Nagel, Ernest (1961), The Structure of Science, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Newman, David V. (1996), Emergence and Strange Attractors, Phil. of Science 63, p. 245-261.
Nickles, Thomas (1973), Two Concepts of Intertheoretic Reduction, J. of Phil. 70, p. 181-201.
Popper Karl R. (1957), The Aim of Science, Ratio 1, p. 24-35; repr. In K.P., Objective Knowledge, Oxford University Press, 1963/1972, chap. 5; trad. Fr. Par Jean-Jacques Rosat, La connaissance objective, Aubier, Paris, 1991.
Rueger, Alexander (2000), Robust Supervenience and Emergence, Phil. of Science 67, p. 466-489.
Schaffner, Kenneth (1967), Approaches to Reduction, Phil. of Science 34, p. 137-147.
Schaffner, Kenneth (1993), Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine, Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Suppes, Frederick (1967), What is a Scientific Theory?, in S. Morgenbesser (ed.), Philosophy and Science Today, New York, Basic Books, p. 55-67.
Yablo, Stephen (1992), Mental Causation, Philosophical Review 101, p. 245-80.
Wimsatt, William (1986), Forms of Aggregativity, in: A. Donagan, A.N. Perovich, Jr., and M.V. Wedin (eds.), Human Nature and Natural Knowledge, (=Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 89), Dordrecht, Reidel, p. 259-291.

Programme - printable version

Call for commentaries

After each talk, there will be one or two prepared commentaries. The commentator will receive the paper two or three weeks before the conference. Anyone interested in commenting on one of the talks given at the conference should contact the organisers, at the address indicated below, joining a list of her publications in the relevant domain and/or a brief statement explaining her motivation and competence.

Max Kistler
Institut Jean Nicod
1 bis av Lowendal
75007 Paris
France
Tel. ++33153593280
Fax. ++33153593299

Email: kistler AT ehess.fr

Selected publications of the invited speakers

John Bickle

BOOKS
Philosophy and Neuroscience A Ruthlessly Reductive Account. In press, forthcoming Summer 2003 from Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

ARTICLES, BOOK CHAPTERS, AND ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
Psychoneural Reduction: The New Wave. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books,
1998

“Localization, methodological coordination and reduction” (co-author: Anthony Landreth). Forthcoming 2004 in International Journal of Computational Cognition.

“Phenomenology induced by cortical microstimulation” (co-author: Ralph Ellis). Forthcoming 2003 in D.W. Smith and A. Thomasson (eds.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind.

“Empirical evidence for a narrative concept of self.” In press, forthcoming Summer 2003 in G. Fireman, T. McVay, and O. Flanagan (eds.), Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press: 195-208.

“Bridging the cognitive-cellular neuroscience gap empirically: A study combining physiology, modeling, and fMRI” (co-authors: M. Avison, V. Schmithorst, S. Holland, and A. Landreth). Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 15/2 (2003): 161-175.

“Philosophy of mind and the neurosciences.” In T. Warfield and S. Stich (eds.), Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind. New York: Blackwell, 2002: 322-351

'Concepts structured through reduction: A structuralist resource illuminates the consolidation-long term potentiation (LTP) link.' Synthese 130, January 2002, 123-133.

“Cellular mechanisms of sequential processing in frontal cortex revealed by a methodology combining neurocomputational modeling and fMRI.” Proceedings of the First World Congress on Neuroinformatics (2001). Technical University Vienna: 517-528.

“Precis of Psychoneural Reduction.” Grazer Philosophische Studien 61 (2001): 247-253. (Part of a book symposium with Angswar Beckerman, J. Christopher Maloney, and Achim Stephens.)

“New wave metascience: Replies to Beckerman, Maloney, and Stephens.” Grazer Philosophische Studien 61 (2001): 285-293. (Part of a book symposium with Angswar Beckerman, J. Christopher Maloney, and Achim Stephens.)

“Understanding neural complexity: A role for reduction.” Minds and Machines 11 (2001): 467-481.

'Intertheoretic reduction in philosophy of mind.' A Field Guide to Philosophy of Mind (Societa Italiana Filosofia Analitica) http://www.uniroma3.it/kant/field/

'Multiple Realizability.' Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. (New York: Macmillan, 2002, 115-121)

“The effect of motivation on the stream of consciousness: Generalizing from a neurocomputational model of cingulo-frontal circuits controlling saccadic eye movements” (co-authors: Marica Bernstein and Samantha Stiehl). In R. Ellis and N. Newton (eds.), The Cauldron of Consciousness. New York: John Benjamins, 2000: 135-162.

“Vector subtraction implemented neurally: A neurocomputational model of some cognitive and conscious processes” (co-authors: Cindy Worley and Marica Bernstein). Consciousness and Cognition 9 (2000): 117-144.

“Philosophy of neuroscience” (co-author: Peter Mandik). In E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neuroscience/.

“A functional hypothesis for LGN-V1-TRN connectivities suggested by computer simulation” (co-authors: Marica Bernstein, Matt Heatley, Cindy Worley and Samantha Stiehl). Journal of Computational Neuroscience 6/3, 1999, 251-261.
(http://www.kluweronline.com/oasis.htm/2

List of recent publications on reduction

Rom Harré

BOOK
Cognitive Science: A Philosophical Introduction, Sage, 2002.

ARTICLES
'The rediscovery of the human mind’ Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2, 129 - 128.

'Nagels’ Challenge and the Mind-Body Problem’ Philosophy, 74 , 249 - 271.

'The maintenance of self-esteem: Lessons from the culture of Alzherimer’s sufferers’ with S.Sabat, H. Fath & F. Moghaddam Culture and Psychology 5:1, 5 - 31

'Varieties of theorizing and the project of psychology’ Theory and Psychology 10 (2000), 57 - 62

'Grammar and the brain’ In D. Fee (ed.) Pathology and the Postmodern London: Sage, pp. 231 - 247, with S. Sabat.

'Defending science from all of its enemies and some of its friends’ Dialectica 54/1 (2000), 1 - 17.

'Narrative: problems and promises of a new Paradigm'. In J. Brockmeier and D. Carbaugh, (eds.) .... with J. Brockmeier.

'Social construction and consciousness’. In M. Velmans (ed) Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000, pp. 233 - 254.

'Causal mechanisms and social practices. What can social sciences contribute to social practice? Social Sciences for Knowledge and Decision Making Paris: OECD, 2001, 35 - 54.

'Tasks, tools and the boundaries of the discursive’ Culture and Psychology 7(2) (2001) 145 – 149. Cognitive Science: A Philosophical Introduction, Sage, 2002.

Melody as Emergent Property of Sounds, (with Phillip Tacka)

Andreas Huetteman

Chapter 3 :'Micro-explanation'
[This chapter appears in "What's Wrong With Microphysicalism?" by Andreas
Huettemann, which will be published by Routledge in January 2004 (ISBN
0415327946)]

Jaegwon Kim

Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press, 1998, chapters 2, 4.

'Making Sense of Emergence', Philosophical Studies 95 (1999): 3-36.

'The Layered Model: Metaphysical Considerations', Philosophical Explorations 5 (2002): 2-20.

Robert Kirk

'Zombies v. Materialists', Aristotelian Society Proceedings, Supp. Vol. 48 (1974b), 135-52

'Physicalism, Identity and Strict Implication', Ratio 24 (1982b), pp. 131-41

'Physicalism Lives', Ratio 9 (1996a) , 85-9.

Strict Implication, Supervenience, and Physicalism, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996b) , 244-56.

How Physicalists Can Avoid Reductionism, Synthese 108 (1996c), 157-170.

Nonreductive Physicalism and Strict Implication, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79(2001): 545-553.

Raw Feeling: a philosophical account of the essence of consciousness, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994 (Paperback 1996.)

Michel Morange

A History of Molecular Biology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Mass., 1998.

The misunderstood gene, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 2001.

The Developmental Gene Concept, History and Limits dans The concept of the
gene in Development and Evolution: Historical and Epistemological
perspectives, P. Beurton, R. Falk and H.-J. Rheinberger eds., Cambridge
University Press, New York, 2000, 193-215.

The relations between genetics and epigenetics: a historical point of
v iew dans From Epigenesis to epigenetics, Linda Van Speybroeck, Gertrudis
Van de Vijver and Dani De Waele eds., Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, vol. 981, 2002, 50-60.

'Limits of reductionism' in Promises and limits of reductionism in the
biochemical sciences, M. van Regenmortel and D.L. Hull eds., John Wiley and
Sons, Chichester, 2001.

'Gene Function' Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences 323, 1147-1153 (2000).

'The Transformation of Molecular Biology on Contact with Higher Organism, 1960-1980: from a Molecular Description to a Molecular Explanation', Hist. Phil. Life Sci. 19, 369-393 (1997).

'A Successful form of Reductionism', The Biochemist 23, 37-39 (2001).

Ulises Moulines
 
W. Balzer/ C.U. Moulines/ J.D. Sneed: An Architectonic for Science. Kluwer (Reidel), Dordrecht, 1987 (especially Chaps. VI - VIII).
 
'Intertheoretic Approximation: The Kepler-Newton Case'. Synthese 45 (1980), 387-412.
 
'A General Frame for Intertheoretic Approximation'. In: A. Hartkämper/ H.J. Schmidt (eds.), Structure and Approximation in Physical Theories. Plenum, New York, 1981, 123-146.
 
“Ontological Reduction in the Natural Sciences'. In: W. Balzer/ D.A. Pearce/ H.J. Schmidt  (eds.), Reduction in Science. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1984, 51-70.
 
'Towards a Typology of Intertheoretical Relations'. In: J. Echeverria et al. (eds.), The Space of Mathematics. De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 1992, 17-40.  
 
'Wer bestimmt, was es gibt? Zum Verhältnis zwischen Ontologie und Wissenschaftstheorie'.  Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 48/2 (1994), 175-191.
 
'Structuralism: The Basic Ideas'. In: W. Balzer/ C.U. Moulines (eds.), Structuralist Theory of  Science. DeGruyter, Berlin/ New York, 1996, 1-13.
 
' The Concept of Universe from a Metatheoretical Point of View '. In: A. Ibarra/ Th. Mormann (eds.), Representations of Scientific Rationality. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 61. Rodopi, Amsterdam/ Atlanta, 1997. 43-53.
 
'Is There Genuinely Scientific Progress?'. In: A. Jonkisz/ L. Koj (eds.), On Comparing and Evaluating  Scientific Theories. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities,  Rodopi, Amsterdam/ Atlanta, 2000, 173-197.
 
'Ontologie, Réduction et Unité des Sciences'. Philosophie 68 (2000), 3-15.
 
' Ontology, Reduction, and the Unity of Science'. In: Tian Yu Cao (ed.); The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, volume 10. Philosopphy Documentation Center, Bowling Green, 2001, 19-27. 
 

Alexander Rueger

'Robust Supervenience and Emergence.' Philosophy of Science 67 (2000),
466-489

'Physical Emergence, Diachronic and Synchronic.'  Synthese 124 (2000),
297-322

'Explanations at Multiple Levels.'  Minds and Machines 11 (2001), 503-520

'Reduction, Autonomy and Causal Exclusion Among Physical Properties.' 
Synthese (forthcoming 2003).

Kenneth Schaffner

'Antireductionism and Molecular Biology', Science, 157, (1967), pp. 644-647.

'Approaches to Reduction', Philosophy of Science, 34, (1967), pp. 137-47.

'The Watson-Crick Model and Reductionism', British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science, 20, (1969), pp. 235-248.

'Theories and Explanation in Biology', Journal of the History of Biology, 2,
(1969), pp. 19-33.

'Chemical Systems and Chemical Evolution: The Philosophy of Molecular
Biology', American Scientist, 57, (1969), pp. 410-420

'Logic of Discovery and Justification in Regulatory Genetics', Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science, 4, (1973), pp. 397-433.

'The Peripherality of Reductionism in the Development of Molecular
Genetics', Journal of the History of Biology, 7, (1974), pp. 111-139.

'Theory Structure in the Biomedical Sciences', Journal of Medicine and
Philosophy, 5, (1980), pp. 57-95.

'Molecular Genetics, Reductionism, and Disease Concepts in Psychiatry',
(with H. W. Harris, as first author) Journal of Medicine and Philosophy,
1991, 17(2):127-153.

Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993.

'Psychiatry and Molecular Biology: Reductionistic Approaches to
Schizophrenia' in J. Sadler et al. (eds.) Philosophical Perspectives on
Psychiatric Diagnostic Classification, Johns Hopkins University Press
(1994). Pp. 279-294.

'Neuroethics: Reductionism, Emergence, and Decision Making Capacities', in Neuroethics: Mapping the Field: Conference proceedings, Steven Marcus (ed.)
New York: The Dana Press, 2002 .Pp. 27-33.

'Reductionism, Complexity, and Molecular Medicine:Genetic Chips and the "Globalization" of the Genome' in Promises & Limits of Reductionism in the
Biomedical Sciences. M. Regenmortel and D. Hull (eds.), London: John Wylie,
2002: 323-351

'Genes, Behavior, and Developmental Emergentism: One Process, Indivisible?' and
'Model Organisms and Behavioral Genetics: A Rejoinder',Philosophy of Science 65 (June, 1998): 209-252; 276-288.

'Behavior at the Organismal and Molecular Levels: The Case of C. elegans' Philosophy of Science 67(2000): PSA-1998, Vol. 2 Proceedings, pp.S273-S288.

'Genetic Explanations of Behavior: Of Worms, Flies, and Men' in Genetics
And Criminal Behavior: Methods, Meanings, And Morals. D. W. Wasserman and R. Wachbroit (eds.) New York, Cambridge University Press, 2001: 79-116.

'Nature and Nurture', Current Opinion in Psychiatry 14 (Sept, 2001):
486-490

'Extrapolation from Animal Models: Social Life, Sex, and Super Models', in
Theory and Method in the Neurosciences (Pitt-Konstanz Colloquium 5, P. K. Machamer, R. Grush, and P. McLaughlin (eds.) Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2001. Pp. 200-230.

Ana Soto

'Somatic Mutation Theory of Carcinogenesis: Why It Should Be Dropped and Replaced' with Carlos Sonnenschein, Molecular Carcinogenesis 29:205-211 (2000)

'The enormous complexity of cancer' - Chap8 - part 1 , with C. Sonnenschein, In Soto and Sonnenschein The society of Cells: Cancer and Control Cell Proliferation (1999) Springer Verlag.

'The enormous complexity of cancer' - Chap8 - part 2 , with C. Sonnenschein, In Soto and Sonnenschein The society of Cells: Cancer and Control Cell Proliferation (1999) Springer Verlag.

'Facts and Fantasies in Carcinogenesis' - Chap9 - part 1 , with C. Sonnenschein, In Soto and Sonnenschein The society of Cells: Cancer and Control Cell Proliferation (1999) Springer Verlag.

'Facts and Fantasies in Carcinogenesis' - Chap9 - part 2 , with C. Sonnenschein, In Soto and Sonnenschein The society of Cells: Cancer and Control Cell Proliferation (1999) Springer Verlag.

Achim Stephan

BOOK
Emergenz. Von der Unvorhersagbarkeit zur Selbstorganisation. (Theorie &
Analyse / Theory & Analysis, Band 2). Dresden, München: Dresden University
Press, 1999.

ARTICLES
Emergence A Systematic View on its Historical Facets. In: A. Beckermann,
H. Flohr, J. Kim (eds.) Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of
Nonreductive Physicalism. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1992, 25-48.

Der Mythos der reduzierbar emergenten Eigenschaften. Conceptus 68/69,
1992/93, 191-200.

C. D. Broads a priori-Argument für die Emergenz phänomenaler Qualitäten.
In: H. Lenk, H. Poser (Hg.) Neue Realitäten Herausforderungen der
Philosophie, Sektionsbeiträge I zum XVI. Deutschen Kongreß für Philosophie,
Berlin, 1993, 176-83.

Wie unplausibel ist der nichtreduktive Materialismus? In: H. Pape (Hg.),
Kreativität und Logik. Frankfurt: stw 1110, 1994, 308-39.

John Stuart Mills doppelte Vaterschaft für den Britischen Emergentismus,
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 78/3, 1996, 277-308.

Armchair Arguments Against Emergentism. Erkenntnis 46/3, 1997, 305-314.

Varieties of Emergence in Artificial and Natural Systems. Zeitschrift für
Naturforschung 53c (A Journal of Biosciences), 1998, 639-656.

Johann Christian Reils rationelle Naturlehre ein frühes Zeugnis
emergentistischen Denkens? Philosophia naturalis 36/2, 1999, 295-306.

Varieties of Emergentism. Evolution and Cognition 5, 1999, 49-59. [A
shorter version of (1998)]

Eine kurze Einführung in die Vielfalt und Geschichte emergentistischen
Denkens. In: T. Wägenbaur (Hg.) Blinde Emergenz? Interdisziplinäre Beiträge
zu Fragen kultureller Evolution. Heidelberg: Synchron Publishers, 2000, 33-49.

Naturalisierung, Reduktion und reduktive Erklärung. Facta Philosophica 2,
2000, 237-248.

Emergenz in kognitionsfähigen Systemen. In: M. Pauen, G. Roth (Hrsg.)
Neurowissenschaften und Philosophie. Paderborn, München: Fink/UTB, 2001,
123-154.

Emergence, Irreducibility, and Downward Causation. Grazer Philosophische
Studien 65 (Special Topic: Mental Causation, Multiple Realization, and
Emergence), 2002, 77-93.

Emergence. In: L. Nadel (ed.) Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Vol. 1.
London: Macmillan, 2002, 1108-1115.

Emergentism, Irreducibility, and Downward Causation, Grazer
philosophische Studien 65 (2002), p. 77-93.

* Emergence and its Place in Nature: A Case Study of biochemical networks,
forthcoming, with F.C. Boogerd, F.J. Bruggeman, R.C. Richardson, H. Westerhoff.

William Wimsatt

BOOK:
Wimsatt, W. C., (fall, 2004) Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited
Beings: piecewise approximations to reality 450 pp. of essays and
introductions. Harvard University Press, forthcoming. (contains roughly
45% new materials). Papers below which are included in this volume are
marked with °.

PAPERS:
On reduction and reductionism per se:
(I have never been sympathetic to the formal or D-N model of reduction,
which I think is a philosopher's creation which is not met for any real
cases in science (outside of mathematics). And if that's so, I would argue
that it is not very interesting (again, outside of mathematics.) I've been
more interested in discovering what scientists who would call themselves
reductionist are committed to. Not that I would always embrace it. I would
describe myself as a non-eliminativist reductionist materialist, or more
recently as an "articulatory reductionist" who accepts higher level
ontologies as well as lower-level ones, who accepts causal efficacy of
processes acting at different levels of organization, and who uses
reductionistic problem solving methods at all levels. (This adoption of a
profligate ontology can be justified by using robustness as a criterion for
reality, see "robustness, 1981a, and "ontology" 1994). Many of the themes
in papers in the first 3 sections are covered in the introduction to part
II of 2004, which is included in the electronic files sent.
On some people's criteria, I would not be a reductionist but some
species of holist (a reductionistic one?). But I don't find myself
agreeing with the detailed positions of any of those who would call
themselves anti-reductionist, and I have always thought that my commitment
to discovering the methodologies characteristic of reductionistic
problem-solving makes me closer to the reductionist camp)

° [1974] Complexity and Organization, in K. F. Schaffner and R. S.
Cohen, eds., PSA-1972 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume
20), Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 67-86.
[figures: 1. Near Complete Decomposeability - 2. Descriptive semplicity and complexity]

[1976a] Reductionism, Levels of Organization and the Mind-Body Problem,
in G. Globus, I. Savodnik, and G. Maxwell, eds., Consciousness and the
Brain, New York: Plenum, pp. 199-267.

° [1976b] Reductive Explanation: A Functional Account, in A. C.
Michalos, C. A. Hooker, G. Pearce, and R. S. Cohen, eds., PSA-1974 (Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume 30) Dordrecht: Reidel, pp.
671-710.

[1979] Reduction and Reductionism, invited review article in P. D.
Asquith and H. Kyburg, Jr., eds., Current Research in Philosophy of
Science, East Lansing, Michigan: The Philosophy of Science Association, pp.
352-377.

° [1994a] "The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels, Perspectives and
Causal Thickets", Canadian Journal of Philosophy supplementary volume #20,
ed. Robert Ware and Mohan Matthen, pp. 207-274.
[figures: 1. Complex Orderings - 2. Levels of Organization]

On reductionistic research strategies:
(I've always found it puzzling that so-called "methodological
reductionists" claim that they pursue reductionism as a methodological
position, but never spend any time talking about HOW they would do so. In
other words, for all that has been done to develop this position, it should
perhaps be called "WANNABE REDUCTIONISM", since its advocates seem to have
no knowledge of or interest in finding out how they would go about doing
so. My work on reductionistic problem-solving heuristics is an attempt to
describe methodologies of constructing theory, models, explanations, and
experimental designs which are characteristically reductionist, and thus to
flesh out what it would be to be a methodological reductionist.)

[1980b] Reductionistic research strategies and their biases in the
units of selection controversy. in T. Nickles. ed. Scientific
Discovery-vol.II: Case Studies. Dordrecht: Reidel. pp. 213-259.

° [1985a] Heuristics and the Study of Human Behavior, in D. W. Fiske
and R. Shweder, eds., Metatheory in Social Science: Pluralisms and
Subjectivities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 293-314.
2004 "piecewise" book: Appendices A, B, C.

On aggregativity and emergence:
(I would argue that many of the negative opinions about reduction unfairly
tar it with claims of "nothing-but-ism" more fairly laid at the steps of
aggregativity.)

[1985b] Forms of aggregativity. in A. Donagan. N. Perovich. and M.
Wedin. eds. Human Nature and Natural Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel. pp. 259-293

[1997b "Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence", in
L. Darden, ed., PSA-1996, v. 2 [Philosophy of Science, Supp Vol. #2,
1997], pp. S372-S384.

[2000] Emergence as Non-Aggregativity and the Biases of
Reductionism(s), Foundations of Science, 5: 269-297.

° [2002], Emergence as Non-Aggregativity and the Biases of
Reductionism(s) [70% longer, with 3 developed scientific
examples], forthcoming in "Piecewise", 2004.

Detailed case studies of multi-level mechanism
(reductionistic in some camps?):

On units of selection controversy.

1980b above and

[1981b] Units of selection and the structure of the multi-level genome.
in P. D. Asquith and R. N. Giere. eds. PSA-1980, volume 2. Lansing.
Michigan: The Philosophy of Science Association. pp. 122-183.

On a too strong claim (reductioinistic) that non-equilibrium thermodynamics was the key to evolution.

[1971a] "Self-Organization, Selection, and Dissipative
Structures" (comments on a paper by Aharon Katchalsky), Zygon, 6: 269-274.
(AAAS symposium)

On the development of classical genetics
("Reductionistic" explanation of Mendelism?)

° [1987] False Models as means to Truer Theories, in M. Nitecki, and A.
Hoffman, eds., Neutral Models in Biology, London: Oxford University Press,
pp. 23-55.

[1992] Golden Generalities and Co-opted Anomalies: Haldane vs. Muller
and the Drosophila group on the Theory and Practice of Linkage Mapping, in
S. Sarkar, ed., The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics,
Dordrecht: Martinus-Nijhoff. pp. 107-166.

An account of 'function' consistent with thouroughgoing mechanistic
materialism:

[1972] Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements,
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 3: 1-80.

[2002 "Functional Organization, Functional Inference, and Functional
Analogy", substantially revised and expanded version of 1997a for a
collection on Function edited by Robert Cummins, Andre Ariew, and Mark
Perlman, Oxford. pp. 174-221. (This is described by the editors as an
etiological analysis, but isn't, though easily mistaken for one.)

(Other themes intersecting reductionism)

On modeling:
BOOK:
Wimsatt, W. C., and J. C. Schank, 1993; Modelling--A Primer (or: the crafty
art of making, exploring, extending, transforming, tweaking, bending,
disassembling, questioning, and breaking models). 230 page text and lab
manual to accompany BioQUEST software (by Schank and Wimsatt, below) to
teach model building and its critical analysis, showing that we can use
false models to build better ones. (Includes original material on
model-building, visualization and the analysis of chaotic behavior, and its
use to study the organization of computations through computational and
display errors). Academic Press (on CD-ROM). BioQUEST library of
strategic simulations.

SOFTWARE:
Schank, J. C., and W. C. Wimsatt, 1993; ModelBuilding 2.0,
Simulation software to run on the Macintosh family for teaching model
building and its critical analysis. Part of the BioQUEST library of
Strategic Simulations. (2 programs, compiled to 147K and 121 K)

PAPERS:
[1980a] Randomness and perceived-randomness in evolutionary biology.
Synthese. 43: 287-329.

("Reductionistic research Strategies", 1980b, above)

[1981a] Robustness. reliability and overdetermination. in M. Brewer
and B. Collins. eds. Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass. pp. 124-163.

("False Models", (1987) above)

[1991] Taming the DimensionsVisualizations in Science, in M.
Forbes, L. Wessels, and A. Fine, eds, PSA-1990, volume 2; East Lansing:
The Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 111-135.

[1994b] "Lewontin's evidence (that there isn't any!)", commentary on
Richard Lewontin's "Facts and the Factitious in the Natural Sciences", in
J. Chandler, A., Davidson, and H. Haroutunian, eds., Questions of Evidence,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press pp.492-503.

[2002a "False Models as means to Truer Theories: Blending Inheritance
in Biological vs. Cultural Evolution", Philosophy of Science 69 (3): S12-S24.

[2002c], with J. C. Schank, "Generative Entrenchment, Modularity and
Evolvability: When Genic Selection meets the Whole Organism", forthcoming
in Modularity in Evolution and Development, University of Chicago Press,
ed. G Schlosser and G. Wagner, early 2004. [52 pp. ms + 7 figures].

Against supervenience and for "sufficient parameters" and "dynamical autonomy":
(see Robustness 1981a immediately above, and "Ontology" 1994 in first section)

On reductionism applied to the mind-body problem:
1974, 1976a above

On functional localization fallacies:
1974, 2002 (Emergence), 2002 (Function), 2004 (Appendix C).

Against eliminative reduction:
1976a, 1976b, 1994, 2004- introduction to part II.

[2002b] "Evolution, Entrenchment, and Innateness", in a volume edited
by Terrance Brown and others, Proceedings of the 1999 Piaget Society
Meetings, Lawrence Erlbaum and Assoc. 2002. pp. 53-81.

Appendices: 20 reductionistic heuristics

Contact

For any information, please contact Max Kistler.