%0 Journal Article
%T Reasons vs. Causes: Emergence as experienced by the human agent
%A Paul J. Jorion
%J Structure and Dynamics : e-Journal of Anthropological and Related Sciences
%D 2007
%I University of California
%X Because they are in constant interaction with each other, human beings are often agents within emergent collective processes. Although they are then acting as particles in a field-type phenomenon, their awareness of what they are part of entails that they hold views about why they¡¯re acting the way they do, these, they call ¡°reasons.¡± Should physicists dismiss such ¡°reasons¡± as being illusory causes of events? ¡°Reasons¡± are actually important explanatory factors of emergent phenomena involving human beings. Awakening and then responding to a catastrophic process will often signal a bifurcation in the physical emergent process. Coordinated behavior can interrupt a positive feedback by generating a counteracting negative feedback. ¡°Natural¡± laws were called after ¡°legal¡± laws; in return, compliance to legal laws by human agents allows their behavior to appear organized, as if by a ¡°natural¡± law. ¡°Following a rule¡± conflates the logic of ¡°causes¡± with that of ¡°reasons¡± as it connects in phase space the ¡°cause¡± at the origin (efficient cause) and the ¡°reason¡± (final cause), the goal that is a representation of the end.
%K Cause
%K reason
%K emergence
%K rule
%K law
%K feedback
%U http://repositories.cdlib.org/imbs/socdyn/sdeas/vol2/iss1/art1/