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Downward Causation

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  • Michael Baumgartner (2009). Interventionist Causal Exclusion and Non-Reductive Physicalism. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23:161-178.
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  • Mark A. Bedau (2002). Downward Causation and the Autonomy of Weak Emergence. Principia 6 (1):5-50.
    Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.
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  • Robert C. Bishop (2005). Downward Causation in Fluid Convection. Synthese 160 (2).
    Recent developments in nonlinear dynamics have found wide application in many areas of science from physics to neuroscience. Nonlinear phenomena such as feedback loops, inter-level relations, wholes constraining and modifying the behavior of their parts, and memory effects are interesting candidates for emergence and downward causation. Rayleigh–Bénard convection is an example of a nonlinear system that, I suggest, yields important insights for metaphysics and philosophy of science. In this paper I propose convection as a model for downward causation in classical (...)
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  • Michel Bitbol (forthcoming). Downward Causation Without Foundations. Synthese.
    Emergence is interpreted in a non-dualist framework of thought. No metaphysical distinction between the higher and basic levels of organization is supposed, but only a duality of modes of access. Moreover, these modes of access are not construed as mere ways of revealing intrinsic patterns of organization: They are supposed to be constitutive of them, in Kant’s sense. The emergent levels of organization, and the inter-level causations as well, are therefore neither illusory nor ontologically real: They are objective in the (...)
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  • Richard Campbell & Mark H. Bickhard, Physicalism, Emergence, and Downward Causation.
    Physicalism, in one form or another, has been one of the dominant positions in metaphysics in the latter part of the 20th century. But what, precisely, does that position entail? That has been much debated. Rudolph Carnaps’s early attempt to show how every sentence of psychology could be translated into sentences formulated in physical language is now generally agreed to have been unsuccessful.
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  • Justin A. Capes (2010). Can 'Downward Causation' Save Free Will? Philosophia 38 (1).
    Recently, Trenton Merricks has defended a libertarian view of human freedom. He claims that human persons have downward causal control of their constituent parts, and that downward causal control of this sort is sufficient for free will. In this paper I examine Merricks’s defense of free will, and argue that it is unsuccessful. I show that having downward causal control is not sufficient for for free will. In an Appendix I also argue that Merricks’s defense of free will, together with (...)
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  • Paul Sheldon Davies (2006). The Physics of Downward Causation. In Philip Clayton & Paul Sheldon Davies (eds.), The Re-Emergence of Emergence. Oxford University Press.
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  • Claus Emmeche, Simo Koppe & Frederick Stjernfelt (2000). Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation. In P.B. Andersen, Claus Emmeche, N.O. Finnemann & P.V. Christiansen (eds.), Downward Causation. Aarhus, Denmark: University of Aarhus Press.
    The idea of a higher level phenomenon having a downward causal influence on a lower level process or entity has taken a variety of forms. In order to discuss the relation between emergence and downward causation, the specific variety of the thesis of downward causation (DC) must be identified. Based on some ontological theses about inter-level relations, types of causation and the possibility of reduction, three versions of DC are distinguished. Of these, the `Strong' form of DC is held to (...)
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  • John Gibbons (2006). Mental Causation Without Downward Causation. Philosophical Review 115 (1):79-103.
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  • Max Kistler, Mechanisms and Downward Causation.
    To explain phenomenon R by showing how mechanism M yields output R each time it is triggered by circumstances C, is to give a causal explanation of R. This paper analyses what mechanistic analysis can contribute to our understanding of causation in general and of downward causation in particular. It is first shown, against Glennan (1996), that the concept of causation cannot be reduced to that of mechanism. Second it is suggested to correct Craver and Bechtel’s (2006) claim that the (...)
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  • Cynthia Macdonald (2006). 'The Metaphysics of Mental Causation'. The Journal of Philosophy 103:539-576.
    A debate has been raging in the philosophy of mind for at least the past two decades. It concerns whether the mental can make a causal difference to the world. Suppose that I am reading the newspaper and it is getting dark. I switch on the light, and continue with my reading. One explanation of why my switching on of the light occurred is that a desiring with a particular content (that I continue reading), a noticing with a particular content (...)
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  • Theo C. Meyering (2000). Physicalism and Downward Causation in Psychology and the Special Sciences. Inquiry 43 (2):181-202.
    Physicalism ? or roughly the view that the stuff that physics talks about is all the stuff there is ? has had a popular press in philosophical circles during the twentieth century. And yet, at the same time, it has become quite fashionable lately to believe that the mind matters in this world after all and that psychology is an autonomous science irreducible to physics. However, if (true, downward) mental causation implies non-reducibility and Physicalism implies the converse, it is hard (...)
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  • Panu Raatikainen, Causation, Exclusion, and the Special Sciences.
    The issue of downward causation (and mental causation in particular), and the exclusion problem is discussed by taking into account some recent advances in the philosophy of science. The problem is viewed from the perspective of the new interventionist theory of causation developed by Woodward. It is argued that from this viewpoint, a higher-level (e.g., mental) state can sometimes truly be causally relevant, and moreover, that the underlying physical state which realizes it may fail to be such.
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  • William S. Robinson (2005). Zooming in on Downward Causation. Biology and Philosophy 20 (1):117-136.
    . An attempt is made to identify a concept of ‘downward causation’ that will fit the claims of some recent writers and apply to interesting cases in biology and cognitive theory, but not to trivial cases. After noting some difficulties in achieving this task, it is proposed that in interesting cases commonly used to illustrate ‘downward causation’, (a) regularities hold between multiply realizable properties and (b) the explanation of the parallel regularity at the level of the realizing properties is non-trivial. (...)
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  • Teed Rockwell, A Defense of Emergent Downward Causation.
    At least one of my professors told me that in order to write a good philosophy paper, one should always try to defend as little territory as possible. The danger of this advice is that although it may make one's points defensible, it may also make them not worth defending. In order to avoid both of these extremes, I am going to defend a relatively modest claim, which appears to be necessary but not sufficient for another more ambitious claim, which (...)
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  • A. M. Soto, C. Sonnenschein & P. A. Miquel (2008). On Physicalism and Downward Causation in Developmental and Cancer Biology. Acta Biotheoretica 56 (4).
    The dominant position in Philosophy of Science contends that downward causation is an illusion. Instead, we argue that downward causation doesn’t introduce vicious circles either in physics or in biology. We also question the metaphysical claim that “physical facts fix all the facts.” Downward causation does not imply any contradiction if we reject the assumption of the completeness and the causal closure of the physical world that this assertion contains. We provide an argument for rejecting this assumption. Furthermore, this allows (...)
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  • Achim Stephan (2002). Emergentism, Irreducibility, and Downward Causation. Grazer Philosophische Studien 65 (1):77-93.
    Several theories of emergence will be distinguished. In particular, these are synchronic, diachronic, and weak versions of emergence. While the weaker theories are compatible with property reductionism, synchronic emergentism and strong versions of diachronic emergentism are not. Synchronice mergentism is of particular interest for the discussion of downward causation. For such a theory, a system's property is taken to be emergent if it is irreducible, i.e., if it is not reductively explainable. Furthermore, we have to distinguish two different types of (...)
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