Context changes everything : how constraints create coherence / Alicia Juarrero.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Juarrero, Alicia, author.

Series:

The MIT Press

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Complexity (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (326 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2023

Summary:

From the influential author of Dynamics in Action , how the concepts of constraints provide a way to rethink relationships, opening the way to intentional, meaningful causation . Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrero challenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects as well, and they enable the emergence of coherence. In Context Changes Everything , Juarrero shows that coherence is induced by enabling constraints, not forceful causes, and that the resulting coherence is then maintained by constitutive constraints. Constitutive constraints, in turn, become governing constraints that regulate and modulate the way coherent entities behave. Using the tools of complexity science, she offers a rigorously scientific understanding of identity, hierarchy, and top-down causation, and in so doing, presents a new way of thinking about the natural world. Juarrero argues that personal identity, which has been thought to be conferred through internal traits (essential natures), is grounded in dynamic interdependencies that keep coherent structures whole. This challenges our ideas of identity, as well as the notion that stability means inflexible rigidity. On the contrary, stable entities are brittle and cannot persist. Complexity science, says Juarrero, can shape how we meet the world, how what emerges from our interactions finds coherence, and how humans can shape identities that are robust and resilient. This framework has significant implications for sociology, economics, political theory, business, and knowledge management, as well as psychology, religion, and theology. It points to a more expansive and synthetic philosophy about who we are and about the coherence of living and nonliving things alike.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

I

1. What Went Wrong? The Backstory

Types, Kinds, and Essences

Primary and Secondary (Accidental) Properties

Interactions and Relations

Efficient Causality

Mereology

Physical Causal Closure and Overdetermination

2. The Path Forward

II

3. Constraints: An Introduction

What Are Constraints?

Spatial and Temporal Constraints

4. Context-Independent Constraints

Containers of Gas and Landscape Design

Vague and Ambiguous Constraints

Limited Message Variety

5. Why Context Matters-An Interlude

Science 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 Are All about Context Dependence

The Indirect Effects of Context

6. Context-Dependent Constraints

Enabling and Constitutive/Governing Constraints

Temporal Constraints

Cardinality and Indexicality, Ordinality and Placement

Top-Down (Governing) Context-Dependent Constraints

Coordination Dynamics Satisfy Second Law

7. Catalysts, Loops, and Closure

Catalysts and Feedback Loops

Closure of Processes (Catalytic Closure)

Autocatalytic Closure

Constraint Closure

Statistical and Semantic Closure

Semantic Attractors

8. An Abundance of Constraints

Repetition

Replication

Reproduction

Unity of Type in Species, Demes, and Memes

Density, Isolation, and Buffers

Isolation

Buffers and Other Shields

Motility and Migration-The Relaxation of Constraints

Templates, Frameworks, Scaffolds, and Affordances

Scaffolding

Types of Scaffolds

9. Persistence-Delaying the Second Law

Persistence and Thermodynamics

The Principle of Persistence

Selection by Persistence

10. Sedimentation and Entrenchment

Sedimentation, Memory, Records, and Registers

Entrenchment

Varieties of Entrenchment

Generative Entrenchment.

Generative Entrenchment of Validated Constraints

11. Many-to-One Transitions, Effective and Analog Control

Tagging Emergent Properties

Analog Control

Analog Control and Energy Management

Multiply Realizable Domains Are Analog Spaces

12. Of Holons, Holarchy, Heterarchy, and Hierarchy

Koestler's Holons and Holarchies

Levels of Organization

Mereology Revisited

Extensional and Intensional Definitions

Control Hierarchy

III

13. The Backstory, Today

Functionalism

Chinese Room Objection

Principle of Supervenience

Multiple Realizability

The 4E Approach Today

14. Multiple Realization and Supervenience: A Philosophical Case Study about Constraints

Shapiro and Gillett on Multiple Realizability

Lange-Because without Cause

Principles and Laws

15. Empirical Research on Delayed Response: Neuroscience Case Studies about Constraints

Mark Churchland's Team

Preparatory and Perimotor Neural Activity

A Further Study

16. Concluding Remarks

References

Index.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

0-262-37478-1

0-262-37477-3

OCLC:

1353637933