Beliefs, mind and society

Abstract

The article approaches the attempts at theoretical reduction of the mental and the social and mantains that the reductionist projects are based on ontological and epistemological presuppositions that relate to an atomist vision of the world that grounds untenable humean conceptions of causality and explanation. As opposed to these projects, the principles of the theory of autopoeitic systems are expounded. This theory supposes a vision in which complexity produces emergent irreducible levels that require different conceptions of causuality and explanation.