scholarly journals Hierarchy, causation and explanation: ubiquity, locality and pluralism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan C. Love
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Causal Responsibility ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
Hierarchical Representations

The ubiquity of top-down causal explanations within and across the sciences is prima facie evidence for the existence of top-down causation. Much debate has been focused on whether top-down causation is coherent or in conflict with reductionism. Less attention has been given to the question of whether these representations of hierarchical relations pick out a single, common hierarchy. A negative answer to this question undermines a commonplace view that the world is divided into stratified ‘levels’ of organization and suggests that attributions of causal responsibility in different hierarchical representations may not have a meaningful basis for comparison. Representations used in top-down and bottom-up explanations are primarily ‘local’ and tied to distinct domains of science, illustrated here by protein structure and folding. This locality suggests that no single metaphysical account of hierarchy for causal relations to obtain within emerges from the epistemology of scientific explanation. Instead, a pluralist perspective is recommended—many different kinds of top-down causation (explanation) can exist alongside many different kinds of bottom-up causation (explanation). Pluralism makes plausible why different senses of top-down causation can be coherent and not in conflict with reductionism, thereby illustrating a productive interface between philosophical analysis and scientific inquiry.

scholarly journals Bottom-up and Top-down: Bidirectional Additive Net for Edge Detection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lianli Gao ◽  
Zhilong Zhou ◽  
Heng Tao Shen ◽  
Jingkuan Song
Keyword(s):  
Edge Detection ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
New Records ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Image Edge Detection ◽  
Universal Network ◽  
Image Edge ◽  
Hierarchical Representations

Image edge detection is considered as a cornerstone task in computer vision. Due to the nature of hierarchical representations learned in CNN, it is intuitive to design side networks utilizing the richer convolutional features to improve the edge detection. However, there is no consensus way to integrate the hierarchical information. In this paper, we propose an effective and end-to-end framework, named Bidirectional Additive Net (BAN), for image edge detection. In the proposed framework, we focus on two main problems: 1) how to design a universal network for incorporating hierarchical information sufficiently; and 2) how to achieve effective information flow between different stages and gradually improve the edge map stage by stage. To tackle these problems, we design a consecutive bottom-up and top-down architecture, where a bottom-up branch can gradually remove detailed or sharp boundaries to enable accurate edge detection and a top-down branch offers a chance of error-correcting by revisiting the low-level features that contain rich textual and spatial information. And attended additive module (AAM) is designed to cumulatively refine edges by selecting pivotal features in each stage. Experimental results show that our proposed methods can improve the edge detection performance to new records and achieve state-of-the-art results on two public benchmarks: BSDS500 and NYUDv2.

“Top-Down” or “Bottom-Up”

1998 ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Francisco Flores
Keyword(s):  
Physical Theory ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Principle Theory

Wesley Salmon has suggested that the two leading views of scientific explanation, the “bottom-up” view and the “top-down” view, describe distinct types of explanation. In this paper, I focus on theoretical explanations in physics, i.e., explanations of physical laws. Using explanations of E=mc2, I argue that the distinction between bottom-up explanations (BUEs) and top-down explanations (BUEs) is best understood as a manifestation of a deeper distinction, found originally in Newton’s work, between two levels of theory. I use Einstein’s distinction between ‘principle’ and ‘constructive’ theories to argue that only lower level theories, i.e., ‘constructive’ theories, can yield BUEs. These explanations, furthermore, depend on higher level laws that receive only TDEs from a ‘principle’ theory. Thus, I conclude that Salmon’s challenge to characterize the relationship between the two types of explanation can be met only by recognizing the close relationship between types of theoretical explanation and the structure of physical theory.

Psychology and Culture: Top Down Versus Bottom Up?

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cole
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

Optimalisasi Ekonomi Syariah Untuk Peningkatan Kesejahteraan Masyarakat Dalam Pengentasan Kemiskinan Mewujudkan Goodgovernance

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Sadari Sadari ◽  
Nurhidayat Nurhidayat ◽  
Rafiqah Rafiqah
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

Humanisme religius telah mengantarkan pada era kesadaran bahwa peradaban manusia harus memiliki dua arus yang saling menunjang. Selama ini arus balik dalam bidang ekonomi hanya menonjolkan arus balik vertikal atas kebawah (model top down) yang didominasi oleh sistem ekonomi kapitalis dan sosialis, sedangkan di sisi lain mengesampingkan arus balik vertikal dari bawah ke atas (model bottom up) yang didominasi oleh sistem ekonomi syariah, sehingga dampaknya adalah adanya kesenjangan ekonomi yang sangat tajam. Paper ini mewujudkan peran penting, yakni menghubungkan dua arus tersebut secara timbal-balik, yakni mempertemukan arus pertama dengan arus balik kedua, sehingga akan menghasilkan dampak yang positif, progresif, kreatif dan produktif, kemudian pada akhirnya akan dapat meng-optomal-kan ekonomi syariah untuk menciptakan goodgovernance, post goodgovernance secara berkelanjutan, tentunya dengan bantuan peran media kontemporer yang kian update. Ekonomi syariah juga merupakan pilar dan nilai dasar, dari sikap keyakinan dan sikap rasionalitas untuk sanggup menciptakan terwujudnya pemberdayaan dan kesejahteraan sekaligus pengentasan kemiskinan dalam masyarakat di Indonesia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document