Dynamics in action: intentional behavior as a complex system

Abstract

This article is a truncation and summary edited by Alicia Juarrero and Michael Lissack, adapted from Juarrero’s book of the same title (MIT Press, 1999). Note: As it is a truncation, you may wish to read this article twice. THE PROBLEM When dealing with hierarchical systems that are selfreferential and display inter-level effects, the notion of causality must be reconceptualized in terms other than that of the billiard ball, collision conception that is the legacy of mechanism. Understanding all cause as collision like, and the explanatory ideal as deduction from deterministic laws, are part of a trend that has characterized the history of philosophy for over 2,000 years: the progressive elimination of time and context from metaphysics and epistemology. Aristotle had insisted that formal deduction from universal premises is the logic of reasoning proper to science. Noting that human behavior is temporally and contextually embedded, Aristotle made it the central