ISCE  Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence

Call for Papers

Because Modes of Explanation is a discussion conference, the actual presentations of attendee's work will occur on-line and only a five minute or less synopsis will precede the discussion session during which the work is discussed.

Initial submittals can take the form of extended abstracts, powerpoints, or full papers.  Final submittals are asked to be videos of the presentation BUT if that is not possible for you then we will ask for BOTH a powerpoint AND a full paper.

The challenge to prospective attendees is to prepare a presentation which can evoke meaningful discussion amongst the attendees.  One's presentation could, for example, focus on:
1) how we go about explaining and the limitations/strengths of our approach,
2) what kinds of explanations "work" and which kinds "fail"
3) the context dependency of explanatory form
4) the differences in use between "good enough explanation" and "truth claims"
5) the need for/use of mechanisms and “narratives” as a meaning of “explaining” (making understandable in a coherent way) some aspect of complexity or of a real in life complex system
6) how a reliance on sameness or of category as a simplifying reduction was inadequate to the situation being examined    or
7) how modes of explanation vary by discipline.

The link below goes to the attendee submission site

In Honor of Max Boisot

The Information Space, or I-Space was developed by the late Max Boisot as a conceptual framework relating the degree of structure of knowledge (i.e. its level of codification and abstraction) to its diffusibility as that knowledge develops.  Boisot developed this work through a series of five books. The I-Space was one of the first representations of Social Complexity Theory and made its mark on many of the ISCE Faculty and Fellows.  The Max Boisot Memorial Lecture at the conference will look at how explantory choices travel through the I-space in honor of Max.

In Honor of Paul Cilliers

Paul Cilliers' Complexity and Postmodernism was a wake-up call to those who believed that quantitative methods would suffice to explain the workings of complex systems.  Cilliers who was taken from us rather unexpectedly in July of 2011 at the young age of 55, devoted much of his intellectual effort to combatting the idea that simple models and context-devoid categories were adequate representations of underlying complexity.  To Cilliers the inadequate representations which such models and categories entailed evokes issues of ethics, identity, and potential self-delusion.  The Paul Cilliers Memorial Ledcture at the conference will focus on identity in honor of Paul.