CPS 13/05

[Thomas Graham]

Hi all,

This week the CPS reading group will be reading chapter 9 of William Wimsatt's book "Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality". You can find the chapter attached to this email, the abstract below, and the zoom link and meeting info below that.

As always, we will meet on Wednesday, in room 6.71, from 10:30 to 11:30. 

Cheers,

Tom

Excerpt in lieu of abstract:

In his now classic paper, "The Architecture of Complexity," Herbert Simon observed that "In the face of complexity, an in-principle reductionist may be at the same time a pragmatic holist" (Simon, 1962, p. 86). Writers in philosophy and in the sciences then and now could agree on this statement but draw quite different lessons from it. When he wrote this, pragmatic difficulties were commonly things to be admitted and then shrugged off as inessential distractions from the way to the in principle conclusions. Now, even among those who would have agreed with the in principle conclusions of the last generation's reductionists, more and more people are beginning to feel that perhaps their ready assumption that the pragmatic issues were not interesting or important must be reinspected. This chapter suggest for the concept of complexity how an in principle reductionist can come to understand his or her behavior as a pragmatic holist.

Zoom link:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://anu.zoom.us/j/82595801661?pwd=abASKA1huY1LWb7kwXcWVELJa5n3sJ.1

Meeting ID: 825 9580 1661
Password: 036715

[Thomas Graham]

Hi all,

Just a reminder this is on tomorrow. 

Cheers,

Tom