“The emergence of special sciences in a physical world”
Orly Shenker, Director, Sidney M. Edelstein Centre for History and Philosophy of Science Technology and Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Thursday, September 10, 2015, 18:00-20:00, Department of History and Philosophy of Science (University of Athens), room G. Goudarouli.
Speaker’s abstract:
Special sciences, such as biology, psychology, and economics, describe various regularities holding at a high macroscopic level. One of the central questions concerning these macroscopic regularities is how they are related to the laws of physics governing the underlying microscopic physical reality.
According to the currently dominant view (often called non reductive physicalism) the special sciences are autonomous and their kinds do not reduce to physical kinds, despite the fact that the world is ultimately physical at each individual state of affairs. In this talk I will explain how macroscopic regularities emerge from the underlying microscopic structure, where emergence is understood in a physicalist reductionist way.
This explanation will remove the famous mystery associated with non reductive physicalism, namely, the idea of multiple realization of the special sciences kinds (e.g. biological kinds and economical kinds) by physical kinds. The argument will thus support type physicalism and weaken non reductive physicalism, including its popular version of functionalism.
This talk is part of the research seminar of the programme: THALIS-UoA , Aspects and Prospects of Realism in the Philosophy of Science and Mathematics.
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Caminho se abrindo na comunidade científica sobre a cientificidade da teoria do Design Inteligente e outras teorias???
