Barandiaran, Xabier (2026) Emergence and Autonomous Agency. [Preprint]
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Abstract
The primary aim of emergentism is to find a balance between the undeniable material foundation of our reality and the complex characteristics displayed by biological and psychological phenomena. Emergentism disputes dualism by negating the need for separate substances or distinct domains of reality. Moreover, it contradicts reductionism by denying that all properties can be derived from lower or more fundamental levels of explanation. And against a proliferating pluralism, it preserves the coherence of a unified science by acknowledging systematic relations across levels that are accessible to scientific scrutiny. One of the greatest challenges to a scientific understanding of the world is agency as a manifestation of autonomous organized systems. Explaining agency (from the origins of life to the appearance of state intelligent agencies) involves explanatory resources unlike those of classical physicalist vocabulary: instead of events we speak of actions, instead of laws we talk or norms, instead of equilibria we talk of goals, instead of forces we talk of intentions. The most basic type of agent can be traced back to the recurrent interactions that a protocell establishes with its environment in order to stay alive. This minimal organization, that of basic autonomous systems, is used to illustrate the central features of organizational emergence and the distinctive form of causality that we attribute to agents. This way, in a world that is so often poorly understood as a mere collection of events, we can make room for a scientific understanding of the emergence goal-directedness, reasons, and, ultimately, human agency.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Agency, Emergence, Agent-causation, Organization, Basic Autonomy, Sensorimotor Autonomy, Origins of Life, Intentional Action | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Complex Systems General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Reductionism/Holism |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Xabier E. Barandiaran | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 17 Apr 2026 13:10 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 17 Apr 2026 13:10 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 29157 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Complex Systems General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Reductionism/Holism |
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| Date: | 1 January 2026 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/29157 |
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