#88 - Alicia Juarrero - Why Context Changes Everything

Alicia Juarrero is President and co-founder of VectorAnalytica, Inc., and Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Miami. She is the author of Dynamics in Action (MIT Press) and recently, Context Changes Everything: How constraints create coherence (2023). Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia challenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects as well, and they enable the emergence of coherence.

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Summary:

In this conversation, we discusses 'Context Changes Everything' and the dismissal of context in philosophy. She highlights the role of context in intentions, behavior, identities, and more. Juattero explains how the reductionist worldview and the focus on bottom-up causality have led to the neglect of top-down causality and the inability to understand coherent wholes. She explores the importance of understanding wholes as emergent properties and the need to rethink ontology and epistemology. The conversation also touches on topics like artificial intelligence, evolvability, and the limitations of the mechanistic metaphor for the mind.

Full podcast 👇

https://youtu.be/a14Q1-q-NP8

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction and Framing

03:05 The Dismissal of Context in Philosophy

08:47 The Neglect of Top-Down Causality

15:00 Rethinking Ontology and Epistemology

21:01 The Limitations of Artificial Intelligence

22:59 The Failure of the Mechanistic Metaphor for the Mind

35:05 Imagination and Coordination

41:42 Ethics and Constraints

49:06 The Interface between Principle and Practice

54:07 The Attentional Infrastructure

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