scholarly journals What’s Wrong With the Assemblage Theory?

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 131-164
Keyword(s):  
Structural Realism ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Dynamic Systems Theory ◽  
Ontological Dependence ◽  
Conceptual Foundation ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Mathematical Structures ◽  
Internal Relations ◽  
Philosophical Ontology ◽  
Scientific Ontology

The paper examines Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory in order to show that two of its key concepts - flat ontology and the idea of emergence - are incompatible with each other. The philosophical context of assemblage theory is outlined with a brief consideration of different interpretations of Deleuze’s ideas and an examination of DeLanda’s reconstruction of Deleuze’s ontology, which served as the conceptual foundation for assemblage theory. The author then exposes key flaws in this reconstruction, in particular the conversion of the scientific ontology of dynamic systems theory into a univocal philosophical ontology and metaphysics of assemblages. When coupled with the universalization of relations of exteriority, this leads to numerous conceptual deficiencies ranging from infinite reductionist regress and mereological atomism to overlooking the relations of necessity between assemblages. The lack of such a relation is a key to evaluating assemblage theory. DeLanda interprets the concept of emergence as a product of exclusively exterior relations while ignoring interior (internal) relations. Consequently, he refuses to regard assemblages as ontologically dependent on each other. The existence of interior relations between parts of assemblages suggests that causal interactions between those parts precede assemblages with emergent properties not only, or not merely, as a matter of logic or chronology. They precede assemblages transcendentally as conditions of their possibility. This presupposes that there is ontological dependence between an assemblage and its elements, and this dependence itself presupposes a hierarchical structure in the world such that, for an assemblage to exist as a whole, its parts must also exist. This structure is incompatible with the main tenet of assemblage theory, which is the concept of flat ontology. In closing, the implications of the epistemological problems in assemblage theory are discussed, and a position that follows logically from solving these problems is considered. This position is the ontic structural realism of James Ladyman and Don Ross, and its main thrust is that mathematical structures are all that really exists.

scholarly journals Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1178-1204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna L Hoffman ◽  
Thomas P Novak
Keyword(s):  
Internet Of Things ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Consumer Experience ◽  
Smart Objects ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Object Experience ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

Abstract The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, the traditional, human-centric conceptualization of consumer experience as consumers’ internal subjective responses to branded objects may not be sufficient to conceptualize consumer experience in the IoT. Smart objects possess their own unique capacities and their own kinds of experiences in interaction with the consumer and each other. A conceptual framework based on assemblage theory and object-oriented ontology details how consumer experience and object experience emerge in the IoT. This conceptualization is anchored in the context of consumer-object assemblages, and defines consumer experience by its emergent properties, capacities, and agentic and communal roles expressed in interaction. Four specific consumer experience assemblages emerge: enabling experiences, comprising agentic self-extension and communal self-expansion, and constraining experiences, comprising agentic self-restriction and communal self-reduction. A parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience argues that it can be accessed by consumers through object-oriented anthropomorphism, a nonhuman-centric approach to evaluating the expressive roles objects play in interaction. Directions for future research are derived, and consumer researchers are invited to join a dialogue about the important themes underlying our framework.

scholarly journals Subatomic Particles, Epistemic Stances, and Kantian Antinomies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Henschen
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Ontic Structural Realism ◽  
Subatomic Particles ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Town ◽  
Epistemic Stances ◽  
Empirical Realism ◽  
Scientific Ontology

AbstractIn Scientific Ontology, Chakravartty diagnoses a “dramatic conflict” between empiricism and metaphysics and aims to overcome that conflict by opting for a modern-day variant of Pyrrhonism, i.e. by appreciating the equal strength (isostheneia) of the arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, and by achieving tranquility (ataraxia) by suspending judgment or remaining speechless in the face of that isostheneia. In this paper, I want to argue that instead of remaining speechless in the face of the isostheneia of the arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, we should adopt a position that remains underrated in Chakravartty’s analysis: a position that amounts to a modern-day variant of the Kantian combination of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, and that like the original Kantian combination, is capable of solving many instances of the dramatic conflict between empiricism and metaphysics and, in particular, a conflict that is the talk of the town in philosophy of science these days—the conflict between ontic-structural realism and Lewisian metaphysics.

The Benacerraf Problem as a Challenge for Ontic Structural Realism†

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-59
Author(s):  
Majid Davoody Beni
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Ontic Structural Realism ◽  
Mathematical Structures ◽  
Scientific Representations

ABSTRACT Benacerraf has presented two problems for the philosophy of mathematics. These are the problem of identification and the problem of representation. This paper aims to reconstruct the latter problem and to unpack its undermining bearing on the version of Ontic Structural Realism that frames scientific representations in terms of abstract structures. I argue that the dichotomy between mathematical structures and physical ones cannot be used to address the Benacerraf problem but strengthens it. I conclude by arguing that versions of OSR that do not rely on mathematical frameworks for representational purposes need not be vulnerable to Benacerraf’s second problem.

scholarly journals An ESR Framework for the Study of Consciousness

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Diana Stanciu
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Mathematical Structures ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Epistemic Structural Realism ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Integrated Information Theory

I will argue that, in an interdisciplinary study of consciousness, epistemic structural realism (ESR) can offer a feasible philosophical background for the study of consciousness and its associated neurophysiological phenomena in neuroscience and cognitive science while also taking into account the mathematical structures involved in this type of research. Applying the ESR principles also to the study of the neurophysiological phenomena associated with free will (or rather conscious free choice) and with various alterations of consciousness (AOCs) generated by various pathologies such as epilepsy would add explanatory value to the matter. This interdisciplinary approach would be in tune with Quine’s well known idea that philosophy is not simple conceptual analysis but is continuous with science and actually represents an abstract branch of the empirical research. The ESR could thus resonate with scientific models of consciousness such as the global neuronal workspace model (inspired by the global workspace theory—GWT) and the integrated information theory (IIT) model. While structural realism has already been employed in physics or biology, its application as a meta-theory contextualising and relating various scientific findings on consciousness is new indeed. Out of the two variants: ontic structural realism (OSR) and epistemic structural realism (ESR), the latter can be considered more suitable for the study of consciousness and its associated neurophysiological phenomena because it removes the pressure of the still unanswered ‘What is consciousness?’ ontological question and allows us to concentrate instead on the ‘What can we know about consciousness?’ epistemological question.

scholarly journals When the Part Mirrors the Whole: Interactions Beyond “Simple Location”

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Gomez-Marin ◽  
Juan Arnau
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Metaphysics Of Science ◽  
System Components ◽  
Internal Relations ◽  
Internal Properties

Reductionism relies on expectations that it is possible to make sense of the whole by studying its parts, whereas emergentism considers that program to be unattainable, partly due to the existence of emergent properties. The emergentist holistic stance is particularly relevant in biology and cognitive neuroscience, where interactions amongst system components and environment are key. Here we consider Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy as providing important insights to metaphysics of science in general, and to the reductionism vs. emergentism debate in particular. An appraisal of Whitehead's perspective reveals a difficulty shared by both approaches, referred to him as “simple location”: the commitment to the idea that the nature of things is exhausted by their intrinsic or internal properties, and does not take into account relations or dynamic interactions denoting “togetherness.” In a word, that things are simply where they are. Whitehead criticizes this externalist ontological perspective in which each interacting element exists, and can be thought, without essential reference to other elements. The aim of this work is to uncover such a stance, particularly in the context of dynamical systems, and to show its shortcomings. We propose an alternative relational approach based on Whitehead's notion of “internal relations,” which we explicate and illustrate with several examples. Our work aims to criticize the notion of simple location, even in the framework of emergentist accounts, so as to contribute to a “relational turn” that will conceive “inter-identities” as “intra-identities” in which interactants are not enduring substances, but internally related processes. In sum, we argue that the notion of internal relations has a strong theoretical power to overcome some fundamental difficulties in the study of life and mind.

Systems, levels, and structural theory: Waltz’s theory isnota systemic theory (and why that matters for International Relations today)

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 904-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Analytic Model ◽  
Systemic Theory ◽  
System A ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Systemic Understanding

Most in International Relations today, whatever their view of structural realism, would agree with Robert Jervis that Waltz’s theory is “the most truly systemic of our theories of international politics.” I argue that it is, in fact, the antithesis. Waltz, despite his systemic starting point, produced an analytic theory. Waltz’s redefinition of a system as “composed of a structure and of interacting units” replaced the “systemic” understanding of a system as parts of particular types related in particular ways to make a whole with emergent properties with an analytic model of characterless units interacting with one another and with a reified structure. Waltz, I argue, was led to this stunning reversal by his application of: a levels and units frame; a reified conception of structure; a mistaken exclusion of the attributes of units that make them parts of the system; a vision of systems as derivative constraints on otherwise more or less autonomous units; and certain peculiar ideas about the nature of theory. In the final section, I argue that “relationalism” today is not merely reviving, but extending, “systemic” approaches in International Relations and is now poised to make the sort of transformative contribution that Waltz promised but did not deliver.

Ontological Progress in Science

1995 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Burian ◽  
J.D. Trout
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Ontology ◽  
Scientific Ontology

In the grand tradition, philosophical ontology was considered logically and epistemologically prior to scientific ontology. Like many contemporary philosophers of science, we consider this to be a mistake. There is two-way traffic between philosophical and scientific ontologies; the more we learn about what there actually is, the more we learn about what can be and what must be, and vice versa. But that is not the present topic; here we focus on the ontology or ontologies of science, not traditional philosophical ontologies or the traffic between scientific and philosophical ontologies.

scholarly journals L-concave derived internal relations and L-convex derived enclosed relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
X.Y. Wu ◽  
E.Q. Li
Keyword(s):  
Convex Space ◽  
Mathematical Structures ◽  
Internal Relation ◽  
Algebraic Properties ◽  
Internal Relations

Abstract Derived operator plays an important role in describing algebraic properties of many mathematical structures such as topology, matroid, convergence and convex space. In this paper, we present the notions of L-concave derived internal relation space and L-convex derived enclosed relation space by which we characterize L-concave space and L-convex space. Based on this, we further introduce some other structures such as L-concave derived hull space and L-convex derived hull space. We find that these spaces are isomorphic to L-concave space and L-convex space.

Improving Feeding Outcomes in the NICU: Moving From Volume-Driven to Infant-Driven Feeding

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 68-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Shaker
Keyword(s):  
Intensive Care Unit ◽  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Neonatal Intensive Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Dynamic Systems Theory ◽  
Feeding Problems ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Extremely Preterm ◽  
Extremely Preterm Infants

Current research on feeding outcomes after discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) suggests a need to critically look at the early underpinnings of persistent feeding problems in extremely preterm infants. Concepts of dynamic systems theory and sensitive care-giving are used to describe the specialized needs of this fragile population related to the emergence of safe and successful feeding and swallowing. Focusing on the infant as a co-regulatory partner and embracing a framework of an infant-driven, versus volume-driven, feeding approach are highlighted as best supporting the preterm infant's developmental strivings and long-term well-being.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document