Andreas Huttemann

What's Wrong With Microphysicalism?

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

'Microphysicalism', the view that whole objects behave the way they do in virtue of the behaviour of their constituent parts, is an influential contemporary view with a long philosophical and scientific heritage. In What's Wrong With Microphysicalism? Andreas Hüttemann offers a fresh challenge to this view. Hüttemann agrees with the microphysicalists that we can explain compound systems by explaining their parts, but claims that this does not entail a fundamentalism that gives hegemony to the micro-level. At most, it shows that there is a relationship of determination between parts and wholes, but there is no justification for taking this relationship to be asymmetrical rather than one of mutual dependence. Hüttemann argues that if this is the case, then microphysicalists have no right to claim that the micro-level is the ultimate agent: neither the parts nor the whole have 'ontological priority'. Hüttemann advocates a pragmatic pluralism, allowing for different ways to describe nature. What's Wrong With Microphysicalism? is a convincing and original contribution to central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and metaphysics.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Routledge
• Seitenzahl: 152
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Februar 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 8mm
• Gewicht: 243g
• ISBN-13: 9781138873841
• ISBN-10: 1138873845
• Artikelnr.: 42833585

Autorenporträt

Andreas Hüttemann is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bielefeld, Germany.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction 1. Microphysicalism 1. The multi-layered conception of reality
2. Microphysicalism 3. The significance of microphysicalism 4. Analysis of
the argument for microphysicalism 2. Laws of nature 1. Explanation,
manifestation and instantiation 2. Laws and dispositions 3. Continuously
manifestable dispositions 4. What is explained by the assumption of CMDs?
5. Conclusion 3. Micro-explanation 1. Distinctions 2. Micro-explanation (1)
and the explanation of bridge-laws 3. Micro-explanation (3): C.D. Broad on
the relation of parts and wholes 4. Micro-explanation (3) at work 5.
Micro-explanation (2) and micro-explanation (4): explaining the states of
compound systems 6. Micro-explanation and emergence 7. Failure of
micro-explanation (1): emergence in the sense of Kim 8. Failure of
micro-explanation (3): emergence in the sense of Broad 9. The case of
quantum-entanglement 10. A diagnosis 11. Other modes of explanation 12.
Concluding remarks 4. What is the Issue? 1. The issue 2. Non-issue 1:
functionalism 3. Non-issue 2: the explanatory gap 5. Micro-determination
1. Explanation 2. Determination 3. A note on the pragmatics of explanation
4. Underdetermination 5. Hegemony 6. Micro-explanation and
micro-determination 7. Objections and replies 8. Conclusion 6.
Micro-government and the laws of the special sciences 1. Autonomy 2.
Micro-government 3. On the instantiation of micro-laws 4. The failure of
supervenience 5. The relativity of instantiation 6. The special laws of
many particle physics 7. Conclusion Apendix 7. Micro-causation 1. Three
models of micro-dependent causation 2. Causation 3. Micro-causation 4.
Conclusion 8. Microphysicalism, physicalism and pluralism 1. Definitions of
physicalism 2. Microphysicalism and identity-physicalism 3. Ontological
unity and pragmatic pluralism Bibliography