Indeterminate Compositional Emergence

Topoi

One recently popular way to characterise strong emergence is to say that emergent entities possess novel causal powers. However, there is little agreement concerning the nature of powers. One controversy involves whether powers are single-or multi-track; that is, whether each power has only one manifestation type, or whether a single power can be directed towards a number of distinct manifestations. Another concerns how powers operate: whether a lone power manifests when triggered by the presence of a suitable stimulus, or whether powers operate mutually such that several powers must 'work together' to bring about a particular manifestation. This paper examines how these distinctions-which can be cross-combined to frame four distinct accounts of the nature of powers-bear on the debate between emergentists and reductionists.

2018

The main purpose of this monograph is to respond to the reiterated criticisms that some reductionist philosophers, especially Jaegwon Kim and David Papineau, have developed of the non-reductive physicalist explanation of the causal power or relevance of the higher level or special sciences’ properties; properties of sciences as chemistry, biology and, especially, psychology. I argue that most of contemporary analytic philosophy is mistaken in assuming a physicalist proposal on the basis of the metaphysical supervenience theory of the higher level properties on their microphysical bases, the theory that we call microphysicalism, because this proposal has not only deep empirical but conceptual problems. Because the most accepted version of non-reductive physicalism – the current functionalist proposal – is committed to microphysicalism, Kim and the reductionists are right in their conceptual criticisms of the inability to account for the reality and irreducibility of the causal powers of the higher level properties within this physicalist framework. But they are wrong in claiming that the failure of the current functionalist proposal implies a general failure of any non-reductive physicalism. Emergentism is articulated as a type macrophysicalist theory because it considers that the special properties are metaphysically dependent on but not metaphysically determined by and, therefore, not reducible to their microphysical bases. This proposal claims that higher level causation is articulated combining the under-determination of the lower level causal processes, along with the instantiation of higher level causal properties and laws that constrain and select from the different and under-determined causal alternatives that the properties and laws that govern the lower processes leave open. As a final and general conclusion we can say that macrophysicalism or emergentism is not only a coherent and well suited conceptual proposal about the causal functioning of the different levels of composition and organization of our physical world, but that as far as we know it can be its most plausible empirical articulation.

Emergence in Mind, 2010

… science and us: philosophy and complexity …, 2007

Topoi, 2020

I shall introduce at the beginning of the paper a characterization of strong ontological emergence. According to it, roughly, something strongly emerges from some other thing(s) iff the former depends in some respect on the latter and it some independent of it in some other respect. Afterwards, I shall present my own formulation of strong emergence, which is based on the distinction between the mere possession and the activation of a causal power. Causal powers are the entities to be primarily taken as emergent. Emergent causal powers depend for their possession on their emergence bases, but they are also independent of the latter (and on further relevantly similar entities) for their activation. This claim will be defended within some more general assumptions about the metaphysics of powers. Finally, I shall compare the power-based formulation of emergence with other formulations. I shall try to demonstrate that the power-based formulation is (all other things being equal) metaphysically less controversial than the other formulations. For the power-based formulation (unlike the other formulations) does not need to defend the additional thesis that the emergents can depend in some relevant respect on their bases and be independent of the latter in some other relevant respect. Indeed, the distinction between the mere possession and the activation of a power (and the possibility of having the former without the latter) is inscribed in the nature of powers themselves.

Several theories of emergence will be distinguished. In particular, these are synchronic, diachronic, and weak versions of emergence. While the weaker theories are compatible with property reductionism, synchronic emergentism and strong versions of diachronic emergentism are not. Synchronic emergentism is of particular interest for the discussion of downward causation. For such a theory, a system's property is taken to be emergent if it is irreducible, i.e., if it is not reductively explainable. Furthermore, we have to distinguish two different types of irreducibility with quite different consequences: If, on the one hand, a system's property is irreducible because of the irreducibility of the system's parts' behavior on which the property supervenes, we seem to have a case of "downward causation". This kind of downward causation does not violate the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain. If, on the other hand, a systemic property is irreducible because it is not exhaustively analyzable in terms of its causal role, downward causation is not implied. Rather, it is dubitable how unanalyzable properties might play any causal role at all. Thus, epiphenomenalism seems to be implied. The failure to keep apart the two kinds of irreducibility has muddled recent debate about the emergence of properties considerably.

cs.calstatela.edu

The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science, 2010

The attempt to explain the mind-body problem has led to the postulation of varying theories aimed at resolving the problem of interaction between physical and mental properties. One such theory which seeks to offer a solution is strong emergentism. In this paper I present arguments which seek to defend the position of the strong emergentist from a common sense position.

Nonreductive physicalism (NRP) is the metaphysical thesis that claims that all the entities of our world constitute an ontological and causal network that is fundamentally physical and, however, cannot be reduced to nor fully explained by the laws, properties, and concepts that the basic physical science can discover and articulate. My purpose in this paper is to analyze the proposal of NRP and to argue that this philosophical approach should be understood in terms of macrophysicalism, that is, emergentism. My claim is that this version of physicalism is a philosophical theory that allows us to understand the coherence and irreducibility of the different scientific approaches, from microphysics and chemistry to psychology and sociology, trying to explain the various levels of organization of our empirical world. In the first part I analyze the standard (that is, the functionalist) formulation of NRP, which claims that although the higher level facts metaphysically supervene on the facts of the lower levels, ultimately on the microphysical facts, they cannot be reduced to the latter because of their multiple realizability. I explain the kind of criticisms that in recent years this perspective has received about its capability to account for the causal irreducibility of the higher level properties, a problem which arises from the assumption of the metaphysical supervenience of the macro-properties on their microphysical realizers or conditions; an assumption that is plausibly an empirically false claim. Then, I introduce emergentism or macrophysicalism as a nonreductive physicalist proposal which claims that the higher level properties cannot be reduced to their lower level bases because although they are metaphysically dependent on the latter, are not determined by these. Finally, I explain the downward causal influence that on this view the higher level properties should have on the lower causal processes.