Our World Isn't Organized into Levels https://philpapers.org/rec/POTOWI?ref=mail
> In my view, our adherence to the levels concept in the face of the systematic > problems > plaguing it amounts to a failure to recognize structure we’re imposing on the > world, to instead > mistake this as structure we are reading off the world. Attachment to the > concept of levels of > organization has, I think, contributed to underestimation of the complexity > and variability > of our world, including the significance of causal interaction across scales. > This has also > inhibited our ability to see limitations to our heuristic and to imagine > other contrasting > heuristics, heuristics that may bear more in common with what our world turns > out to > actually be like. Let’s at least entertain the possibility that the > invocation of levels can > mislead scientific and philosophical investigations more than it informs > them. I suggest that > the onus is on advocates of levels of organization to demonstrate the > well-foundedness and > usefulness of this concept. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
