Incomplete Nature, radically reformulating the concept of emergence

By recasting emergence theory in dynamical terms and focusing on the role of constraint in explaining ascending levels of causal relationships, this talk will argue that such basic scientific challenges as explaining the origins of life, the nature of information, and the dynamics of mental function need to be rethought. Though relying heavily on complex systems approaches, I will argue that various approaches to biological and neurological processes that depend on models of self-organizing dynamics are fundamentally incomplete, and that a higher order emergent dynamical approach is necessary, which I call teleodynamics.

Speaker: Terrence Deacon