Scientific Explanation, Causality, and Agency: A Free Energy Account

by Majid D. Beni

Overview

This book draws on advances in computational neuroscience and theoretical biology to provide a clear and accessible agentive account of the nature of causality and scientific explanations.

Instead of attempting to establish the elements of scientific explanation, such as causality, in a reality unadulterated by a human perspective, this book relies on scientific facts about cognition to describe the structure of agency from a distinctly human perspective. The book draws on the Free Energy Principle to reinforce the agency theory of causality and extend it to an account of explanation as well. This principle not only provides a theoretical account of how self-organising systems engage with the causal structure of the environment, but it also offers a viable notion of agency and is compatible with the projectivist aspects of the agency theory.

Scientific Explanation, Causality, and Agency will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, epistemology, computational neuroscience, and theoretical biology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040093160
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/12/2024
Series:	Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Science
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	202
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Majid D. Beni is a philosopher of science and cognitive science. He is affiliated with METU/ODTU Ankara. He is the author of Cognitive Structural Realism and Structuring the Self, and has published numerous papers in journals such as Synthese, Minds and Machines, and Theoria.

Table of Contents

1. A Humanistic Perspective on Causality and Explanation 2. The Free Energy Principle 3. Rolling Stones, Simple and Sophisticated 4. Deconstructing Modalities 5. The Agency Theory of Explanation 6. Proportionality's Path 7. Neither a Physicalist nor a Non-Physicalist Be 8. Distributed Agency and the Puzzle of Individuation