Workshop: “Emergence, Causality, and Complexity”

Organizers: Erica Onnis, Ana María Guzmán, Alexander Schubert

Abstract:

According to many authors involved in the debate about emergence, ontological emergent phenomena can be characterised as partially dependent on a more fundamental base and causally novel in instantiating new causal properties able to make them autonomous. Moreover, emergence is often recognised as a relevant feature in complex systems, namely those systems composed of several parts mutually influencing each other and producing unexpected and sometimes highly organised behaviours. The significance of the relationship between emergence, causal efficacy, and complexity is clear. However, how to conceive more precisely this connection and the notions at play is far from straightforward.

From a historical point of view, it was especially one type of complex object that sparked the debates continuing nowadays, the organism. After the advent of biology as a science the question of whether the complexity of biological phenomena introduce some kind of non-linear causality shaped the search for a middle position in between mechanism and vitalism in, for example, post-Kantian idealism and subsequently British Emergentism which gave the middle position its contemporary name. Debates about constraints and their causal relevance in biology proof that such historical considerations are still of interest today.

The international workshop Emergence, Causality and Complexity aims to bring together contemporary and historically inspired philosophical perspectives on the nature of emergent phenomena, their causal dimension, and their role in shaping our view of complexity.

Please find the program of the workshop here.

If you would like to attend, please write a short email to events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.