Entities And Functionality - Outline

Entities and Functionality: Outline Energy-based entity: any instance of emergence. Static and dynamic emergence. Dissipative structures. Hurricanes Social, economic, and biological entities Evolution is fitness for an environment (not macho), but that means ability to access energy Petty reductionism and supervenience is not useful. Minimal dynamic entities Theseus’ ship. Functionality: the reductionist blind spot The scientific agenda: digging down. Applying reductionism to “naturally occurring” Turing Machines. Functionality means interaction with an environment. Environment stuff from Weinberg and Fodor. TM as prototypical model of interaction with an environment. Functionality is an extension of the notion of force. Fundamental particles have functionality. Functionality is force at higher levels of abstraction. The Pauli exclusion principle limits interaction with an environment. Functionality allows/helps dynamic entities to persist. Autonomy Thermodynamic computing. Stigmergy Entities and the sciences

Ideas are downward entailing. Manufactured entities often have functions. A house has a number of bedrooms. Increasing complexity increasing efficiency, and historical contingency Evolutionary environments.