A Summary Outline of
¡§AGGREGATIVITY: REDUCTIVE HEURISTICS FOR FINDING EMERGENCE¡¨ by Dr. William Wimsatt
Thesis Statement:
(This is what I understand the article to be stating in one sentence):
The whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it is in knowing the parts and the relationship between the parts, that the whole is better understood.
I. Prolegomena:
A. Important Terms to Know:
1. Aggregativity: To come together, or bring different things together, into total, mass, or whole; sum-total, forming a total. Wimsatt defines aggregativity this way, ¡§the non-emergence of a system property relative to properties of its parts¡¨ or ¡§the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts¡¨ (372).
2. Amplification Ratio: Is the increase in the magnitude of a signal produced by an amplifier (Encarta).
3. Compositional Sciences: Combining simply objects into one object (e.g., chemistry is a composition science that examines the makeup of a particular portion of a substance; computer science combines types and subroutines into more complex ones; geology examines the crystal structure of a substance).
4. Connectionist modeling: an approach found in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science that considers ¡§mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnect networks of simple units¡¨ that utilize neural network models [Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy].
5. Decomposition: reduction of or breaking down of a property into pieces or constituent parts.
6. Deduction: The process of deriving statements (conclusion) that follow necessarily from an initial set of statements [Philosophy of Science, 776].
7. Emergence: The act or process of coming out, appearing, or coming about. Philosophically, emergence may be stated this way. It is a system that exhibits emergent properties when those properties are more than the... [continues]
¡§AGGREGATIVITY: REDUCTIVE HEURISTICS FOR FINDING EMERGENCE¡¨ by Dr. William Wimsatt
Thesis Statement:
(This is what I understand the article to be stating in one sentence):
The whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it is in knowing the parts and the relationship between the parts, that the whole is better understood.
I. Prolegomena:
A. Important Terms to Know:
1. Aggregativity: To come together, or bring different things together, into total, mass, or whole; sum-total, forming a total. Wimsatt defines aggregativity this way, ¡§the non-emergence of a system property relative to properties of its parts¡¨ or ¡§the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts¡¨ (372).
2. Amplification Ratio: Is the increase in the magnitude of a signal produced by an amplifier (Encarta).
3. Compositional Sciences: Combining simply objects into one object (e.g., chemistry is a composition science that examines the makeup of a particular portion of a substance; computer science combines types and subroutines into more complex ones; geology examines the crystal structure of a substance).
4. Connectionist modeling: an approach found in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science that considers ¡§mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnect networks of simple units¡¨ that utilize neural network models [Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy].
5. Decomposition: reduction of or breaking down of a property into pieces or constituent parts.
6. Deduction: The process of deriving statements (conclusion) that follow necessarily from an initial set of statements [Philosophy of Science, 776].
7. Emergence: The act or process of coming out, appearing, or coming about. Philosophically, emergence may be stated this way. It is a system that exhibits emergent properties when those properties are more than the... [continues]
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