What is causation? How do, how can, and how should we think about causation? This talk examines causation as perceived and conceived of within the materialist, computational, and information-theoretic framework of contemporary complexity science. While Aristotle's efficient cause in particular has traditionally dominated the sciences (except for perhaps biology, where formal and final causes have seen some amount of contentious traction), complexity science and its acolytes have retrieved the legitimacy of a secular version of teleology, and convincingly argued the essential role of downward causation
in determining the possible. We treat these developments, remarking specifically on the causal properties of constraints and boundary conditions, and a recent physical formalization of emergence. Complex causality
may be characterized within this framework as omnidirectional and omniscalar (both spatially and temporally).
Coming soon.
Coming soon.