New graduate seminar offered here at Duke Spring 2012 (only) by Visiting Faculty Carrie Figdor.
Duke Phil 291S.01: Metaphysics of Complex Systems. Thursday 7:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m.
Prof. Carrie Figdor
Interest in the nature and explanation of complex systems – e.g., organisms, weather patterns, corporations, traffic jams – has burgeoned in recent years. In complexity studies, complex systems are those whose components interact in nonproportional (nonlinear) ways. Such systems are a scientifically and practically important subclass of wholes, whose existence qua wholes, relations to their parts, and emergent properties have been topics of intense metaphysical debate since forever. This seminar will examine the metaphysics of complex systems from both perspectives; since complexity theorists focus on dynamic interactions and metaphysicians on objects, this approach is akin to locking Heraclitus (seconded by Aristotle) and Democritus in a room and seeing what happens. Thus, from an ecumenical perspective our topic covers both complex continuants (e.g., objects) and complex continuants (e.g., processes) although we will also examine whether this distinction is tenable. Inter alia, we’ll consider:
-When are we ontologically committed to wholes, and how do we determine to which sort (continuant or occurrent) they belong? (E.g., are there genes, and if so are they objects or processes?)
-How do we distinguish complexes from their environments, and real from gerrymandered components? How important ontologically are precise boundaries? (What are the identity and individuation conditions of traffic jams? What counts as part of a cognitive system? Do pains have parts?)
-How are continuants and occurrents related? (Are ions and diffusion both parts of chemical neurotransmission, or are cross-category wholes ontological monsters?)
-How are complexes and their components related? Is either fundamental? Is one reducible to the other?
Readings will be available on our course website or on reserve. We’ll look at work by Simons, Van Inwagen, Wimsatt, Schaffer, Bechtel and Richardson, Bickard, Kim and, frankly, anyone I’ve found in metaphysics, philosophy of mind or philosophy of science who might help illuminate these issues in general or in specific cases.
Recommended texts: The Philosophy of Complex Systems (Cliff Hooker, ed., Amsterdam: North Holland/Elsevier, 2011); Parts: A Study in Ontology (Peter M. Simons, Oxford and New York: Oxford U. Press, 2003), and Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research, 2nd Ed. (B. Bechtel and R. Richardson, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010). The last two are quite affordable; the first is not.
