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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
The Basic Dualism In The World, Martin Zwick
The Basic Dualism In The World, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Graham Harman writes that the “basic dualism in the world lies…between things in their intimate reality and things as confronted by other things.” This paper supports Harman’s assertion from a systems theoretic perspective and illustrates it with some examples, including conceptions about truth, ethics, value, and intelligence. But dualism implies irreconcilable difference; what Harman points to is better expressed as a dyad, where the two components not only imply one another but are related, and where this spatial dyad is usefully augmented with a temporal dimension, expressed in a third component or an additional orthogonal dyad.
Speculative Realism And Systems Metaphysics, Martin Zwick
Speculative Realism And Systems Metaphysics, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Recent developments in Continental philosophy have included emergence of a school of “speculative realism” which rejects the human-centered orientation that has long dominated Continental thought, but also opposes naïve realism or positivism. Proponents of speculative realism differ on several issues, but most agree on the need for an object-oriented ontology. Speculative realists who draw upon Marxist thought identify realism with materialism, while others accord equal reality to objects that are non-material, even fictional. Several thinkers retain a focus on difference, a well-established theme in Continental thought. This paper looks at speculative realism from the perspective of the metaphysics of systems …
Freedom As A Natural Phenomenon, Martin Zwick
Freedom As A Natural Phenomenon, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
"Freedom" is a phenomenon in the natural world. This phenomenon - and indirectly the question of free will - is explored using a variety of systems-theoretic ideas. It is argued that freedom can emerge only in systems that are partially detennined and partially random, and that freedom is a matter of degree. The paper considers types of freedom and their conditions of possibility in simple living systems and in complex living systems that have modeling (cognitive) subsystems. In simple living systems, types of freedom include independence from fixed materiality, internal rather than external detennination, activeness that is unblocked and holistic, …
Mind And Life: Is The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature False?, Martin Zwick
Mind And Life: Is The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature False?, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
A partial review of Thomas Nagel's book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist NeoDarwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False is used to articulate some systems-theoretic ideas about the challenge of understanding subjective experience. The article accepts Nagel' s view that reductionist materialism fails as an approach to this challenge, but argues that seeking an explanation of mind based on emergence is more plausible than one based on panpsychism, which Nagel favors. However, the article proposes something similar to Nagel's neutral monism by positing a hierarchy of information processes that span the domains of matter, life, and mind. As …
Systems Theory And The Metaphysics Of Composition, Martin Zwick
Systems Theory And The Metaphysics Of Composition, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Ideas from systems theory - recursive unity and emergent attributes - are applied to the metaphysical and meta-metaphysical debates about the ontological status of composites. These ideas suggest the rejection of both extremes of universalism and nihilism, favoring instead the intermediate position that some composites exist in a nontrivial sense - those having unity and emergent novelty - while others do not. Systems theory is egalitarian: it posits that what exist are systems, equal in their ontological status. Some systems are fundamental, but what exists is not merely the fundamental, and the fundamental is not merely the foundational. The status …
Complexity Theory & Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street, Martin Zwick
Complexity Theory & Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs …
Complexity Theory & Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street [Presentation], Martin Zwick
Complexity Theory & Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street [Presentation], Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs …
Freedom As A Natural Phenomenon, Martin Zwick
Freedom As A Natural Phenomenon, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
This phenomenon of "freedom" in the natural world - and indirectly the question of free will - is explored using systems-theoretic concepts that link the idea of freedom to ideas about autonomy and agency. The focus is on living systems in general, and on living systems that have cognitive subsystems more specifically. After touching on the relevance to freedom of determinism vs. randomness, the paper examines four types of freedom: (i) independence from fixed materiality, (ii) activeness that is unblocked and wholistic, (iii) internal rather than external determination, and (iv) regulation by an informational subsystem. These types of freedom are …
A Conversation On Theodicy, Martin Zwick
A Conversation On Theodicy, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
The following is a dialog, published in The Global Spiral, January 9, 2008, about the idea of a systems-theoretic 'secular theodicy,' discussed in the author's "Towards an Ontology of Problems," "Understanding lmperfection," and (exemplified in a preliminary way in) "Incompleteness, Negation, and Hazard: On the Precariousness of Systems." The dialog was inspired by Susan Neiman's Evil in Modem Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2002.
Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge From Science To Religion, Martin Zwick
Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge From Science To Religion, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
'Systems theory' is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These 'systems' theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are …
Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge From Science To Religion [Presentation], Martin Zwick
Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge From Science To Religion [Presentation], Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
'Systems theory' is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These 'systems' theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are …
Understanding Imperfection, Martin Zwick
Understanding Imperfection, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Because of their inherent abstraction, systems ideas are not themselves sufficient for gaining scientific knowledge or solving practical problems, but they can be a source of insights into the universality of imperfection, insights which can contribute to a new scientific world view. Systems theory offers a metaphysics, or more precisely an ontology, of imperfection. Through it, we can heed Spinoza's injunction, “Not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.”
Information, Constraint, And Meaning, Martin Zwick
Information, Constraint, And Meaning, Martin Zwick
Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Despite the familiar and correct disclaimer that information theory (Shannon and Weaver, 1949) does not concern the semantic level of communication, the technical definition of information nonetheless bears directly and importantly on the subject of meaning. Meaning, at least in one sense of the word, is the recognition of constraint and is based on isomorphism of structure. Constraint reduces information yet information is also the very substrate of meaning. Meaning is thus the union of the informative and the intelligible (Moles, 1958), the reconciliation of this dialectical opposition being achievable in several different ways.
"A Philosophy For Complexity", Charles West Churchman
"A Philosophy For Complexity", Charles West Churchman
Special Collections: Oregon Public Speakers
No abstract provided.