Hi all, Nick's message gives me an excuse to introduce myself. I've just joined your mailing list. I know some of you already. (Hi Steve, Own, Nick.) And I look forward to meeting the rest of the people on this list.
About my interests, here's a link to my paper, "The reductionist blind spot<http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/images/c/ce/The_reductionist_blind_spot.pdf>," which I gave at this summer's Philosophy and Computing conference. -- Russ Abbott _____________________________________________ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles o Check out my blog at http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 12:50 AM, Nicholas Thompson < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > John Kennison wrote -- > > "Does reductionism mean a belief that the best strategy is always to > analyze complex things in terms of simpler components (with, I presume, a > small number of irreducible parts)? Or is it a belief that everything in > nature is nothing more than a sum of simple components?" > > To which nthompson, The Brigadier of Blather, replied -- > > Or a third view, in which reductionism is just a form of "nothing buttery", > as in "mind is 'nothing but' the firings of neurons. On this view, "up" > reductionism becomes a possibility, as in "mind is nothing but the sum of > the cultural forces focussed on a human individual." > > I guess the thread common to all these usages is a resistance to the idea > that levels of organization have their own phenomena and deserve their own > explanatory entities. > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > > ... > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
