No abstract

A framework for representing a specific kind of emergent property instance is given. A solution to a generalized version of the exclusion argument is then provided and it is shown that upwards and downwards causation is unproblematical for that kind of emergence. One real example of this kind of emergence is briefly described and the suggestion made that emergence may be more common than current opinions allow.

No abstract

The need for epistemic security is best satisfied by a scientific rather than a traditional empiricism. The emphasis on human observations can be transcended by the dilution argument and the overlap argument, but scientific empiricism requires that we know how instruments work, a position argued with reference to Galileo and Hacking. The three instrumental criteria of accuracy, precision, and resolution are examined. Instruments detect properties and it is argued that objects are clusters of properties.

A different way of thinking about how the sciences are organized is suggested by the use of cross-disciplinary computational methods as the organizing unit of science, here called computational templates. The structure of computational models is articulated using the concepts of construction assumptions and correction sets. The existence of these features indicates that certain conventionalist views are incorrect, in particular it suggests that computational models come with an interpretation that cannot be removed as well as a prior justification. A form of selective realism is described which denies that one can simply read the ontological commitments from the theory itself.