The View from Above: Structure, Emergence, and Causation

Sessions from Conference held on January 11th-12th 2018, MBI Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Organizers: Matteo Grasso, Anna Marmodoro, Warren Finegold. It’s a common accepted assumption that reality includes the chemical, biological, and psychological, but are they anything over and above the physical? Or can they all be reduced somehow to the physical? Reductionism has been challenged by various forms of emergentism, which many philosophers still see as unsatisfactory. One alternative way to think about this issue, which has recently come to the fore in the metaphysical debates, is along the lines of Aristotle’s Hylomorphism, a view that takes structure and organization to play a pivotal metaphysical role. The aim of this conference is to discuss the assumptions of Hylomorphism, and how it bears on reductionism in relation to special sciences (such as chemistry and biology) and in the philosophy of mind