This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

Naturalism in philosophy has a long and distinguished heritage. This is no less true in epistemology than it is in other areas of philosophy. At the same time, epistemology in the English speaking world in the first half of die twentieth century was dominated by an approach quite hostile to naturalism. Now, at the close of the twentieth century, naturalism is resurgent.

"There are books—few and far between—which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity."—Yaakov Garb, _San Francisco Chronicle_.

This volume introduces readers to emergence theory, outlines the major arguments in its defence, and summarizes the most powerful objections against it. It provides the clearest explication yet of this exciting new theory of science, which challenges the reductionist approach by proposing the continuous emergence of novel phenomena.

The last ten years have seen an increasing interest, within cognitive science, in issues concerning the physical body, the local environment, and the complex interplay between neural systems and the wider world in which they function. --œPhysically embodied, environmentally embedded--� approaches thus loom large on the contemporary cognitive scientific scene. Yet many unanswered questions remain, and the shape of a genuinely embodied, embedded science of the mind is still unclear. I begin by sketching a few examples of the approach, and (...) then raise a variety of critical questions concerning its nature and scope. A distinction is drawn between two kinds of appeal to embodiment: 'simple' cases, in which bodily and environmental properties merely constrain accounts that retain the focus on inner organization and processing, and more radical appeals, in which attention to bodily and environmental features is meant to transform both the subject matter and the theoretical framework of cognitive science. (shrink)

“Ontological emergence” of inherent high-level properties with causal powers is witnessed nowhere. A non-substantialist conception of emergence works much better. It allows downward causation, provided our concept of causality is transformed accordingly.

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 (...) sense of transcendental epistemology. This neo-Kantian approach defuses several paradoxes associated with the concept of downward causation, and enables one to make good sense of it independently of any prejudice about the existence (or inexistence) of a hierarchy of levels of being. (shrink)

Vaste réflexion sur le savoir, à caractère pluridisciplinaire et transdisciplinaire. L'auteur est un maître à penser qui emprunte à la sociologie, à la philosophie et à la biologie; il a recours aux notions de systèmes, d'organisation et de cybernétique.

A study of the human drive to create order and reason notes the parallel beliefs of the ancient Anasazi people, the Tewa Native Americans, the Penitentes, and the scientists of the Santa Fe Institute.

Nous demandons légitimement à la pensée qu'elle dissipe les brouillards et les obscurités, qu'elle mette de l'ordre et de la clarté dans le réel. Le mot de la complexité, lui, ne peut qu'exprimer notre embarras, notre confusion, notre incapacité de définir de façon simple, de nommer de façon claire, de mettre de l'ordre dans nos idées. Sa définition première ne peut fournir aucune élucidation : est complexe ce qui ne peut se résumer en un maître mot, ce qui ne peut (...) se ramener à une loi, ce qui ne peut se réduire à une idée simple. La complexité est un mot problème et non un mot solution. Edgar Morin nous propose ici une introduction à la pensée complexe. Si la complexité est non pas la clé du monde, mais le défi à affronter, la pensée complexe, est non pas ce qui évite ou supprime le défi, mais ce qui aide à le relever, et parfois même à le surmonter. (shrink)

"The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter." -- James Clerk Maxwell.

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan ...