Related papers: Complexity and Philosophy
Free will is fundamental to morality, intuition of self, and normal functioning of the society. However, science does not provide a clear logical foundation for this idea. This paper considers the fundamental scientific argument against…
Determinism is (roughly) the thesis that the past determines the future. But efforts to define it precisely have exposed deep methodological disagreements. Standard possible-worlds formulations of determinism presuppose an "agreement"…
Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…
I discuss several aspects of information theory and its relationship to physics and neuroscience. The unifying thread of this somewhat chaotic essay is the concept of Kolmogorov or algorithmic complexity (Kolmogorov Complexity, for short).…
Complex spatiotemporal patterns in nature significantly challenge reductionism-based modern science. The lack of a paradigm beyond reductionism hinders our understanding of the emergence of complexity. The diversity of countless patterns…
This paper argues that explainability is only one facet of a broader ideal that shapes our expectations towards artificial intelligence (AI). Fundamentally, the issue is to what extent AI exhibits systematicity--not merely in being…
We will argue that a phenomenological analysis of consciousness, similar to that of Husserl, shows that the effects of phenomenal qualities shape our perception of the world. It also shows the way the physical and mathematical sciences…
It has been shown at other occasions that recent results of modern physics can be used to shed some more light onto the foundations of the world, provided the actual task of philosophy is being re-interpreted in terms of a theory which is…
Contemporary perspectivism is viewed as a framework of scientific inquiry concerning the origin, generation and systematization of scientific knowledge of nature by focusing on the conditions under which such knowledge may arise in…
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down". Can Darwinian random mutations and selection…
In the last 175 years, the physical understanding of nature has seen a revolutionary change. Until about 1850, Newton's theory and the mechanical world view derived from it provided the dominant view of the physical world, later…
This article aims at applying the approaches peculiar to analytic philosophy to the question about representation of the concept of time as a symbol which can reflect the bases of the modern natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.…
Any real interaction process produces many incompatible system versions, or realisations, giving rise to omnipresent dynamic randomness and universally defined complexity (arXiv:physics/9806002). Since quantum behaviour dynamically emerges…
Free will is an old philosophical enigma that has been recently revived by neuropsychology. We restrict ourselves to the problem that determinism seems to allow only an illusion of freedom but random decissions do not contain any freedom…
The paper "Is Complexity an Illusion?" (Bennett, 2024) provides a formalism for complexity, learning, inference, and generalization, and introduces a formal definition for a "policy". This reply shows that correct policies do not exist for…
The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
Emergence (macro-level effects from micro-level causes) is at the heart of the conflict between reductionism and functionalism. How can there be autonomous higher level laws of nature (the functionalist claim) if everything can be reduced…
In this chapter the complex systems are discussed in the context of economic and business policy and decision making. It will be showed and motivated that social systems are typically chaotic, non-linear and/or non-equilibrium and therefore…
There is a persistent confusion about determinism and predictability. In spite of the opinions of some eminent philosophers (e.g., Popper), it is possible to understand that the two concepts are completely unrelated. In few words we can say…