Emergentisms, Ancient and Modern

Abstract

Jaegwon Kim has argued (Kim 2006a) that the two key issues for emergentism are to give a positive characterization of the emergence relation and to explain the possibility of downward causation. This paper proposes an account of emergence which provides new answers to these two key issues. It is argued that an appropriate emergence relation is characterized by a notion of 'transformation', and that the real key issue for emergentism is located elsewhere than the places Kim identifies. The paper builds on Victor Caston's important work on ancient philosophy of mind (Caston 1997, 2001), but appeals to sources he has not considered.

Integrated-structure emergence and its mechanistic explanation

“…In this sense, an integrated system, in virtue of its macro-relational structure, can be taken as the real instantiator of some of its properties, and the real causal agent regarding the causal powers of interaction associated to such properties 16 . 16 In this sense, I diverge from the transformational account proposed by Ganeri (2011), since in Ganeri's view, emergent properties are instantiated by the transformed parts in their blending state, not by the system: "the elements themselves acquire new causal powers when they are in a certain state, namely the state of jointly composing a body, powers that they did not have beforehand when they were in other combinations with other elements. This is different from the view that the body as a whole has powers which none of its parts have individually.…”

Flat Emergence

“…Ganeri's () transformation emergence is an immediate illustration of the truth of (i). Nothing in flat emergentism indeed prevents flat emergents from serving as bases for higher‐level, synchronic emergents.…”

“…Although flat emergence is definable in any no-level ontology, it is important to stress that (i) flat emergence is consistent with ontologies made of levels, (ii) in such ontologies, flat emergence can occur at any level, and, more importantly, (iii) flat emergentism can actually explain why some situations appear to involve holism when in fact they do not. Ganeri's (2011) transformation emergence is an immediate illustration of the truth of (i). Nothing in flat emergentism indeed prevents flat emergents from serving as bases for higher-level, synchronic emergents.…”

“…326-327). 12 To the best of my knowledge, there exist at least three other recent accounts that share some elements of flat emergence, namely Ganeri's (2011) 'transformation emergence', Santos' (2015) 'relational-transformative emergence', as well as Anjum and Mumford's (2017) 'causaltransformative emergence'. However, I do not discuss them at length here, for all these approaches buy into the synchronic/hierarchical perspective to some degree.…”

A new look at emergence. Or when after is different

“…And it is epistemological in a weak sense, as it is compatible with in-principle -and actually even with practical -predictability or etiological explainability of the emergents from knowledge of their basis. 12 On this basis, one can consider [te] as a reification or an ontologization of Rueger's emergence, where qualitative novelty between successive behaviors of a given system is not to be restricted to a mere descriptive feature, but has rather to do with genuine additions to the system's ontology. More precisely, instead of merely considering that, upon emergence, the phase space portrait of a system can be modified in a discontinuous way, [te] requires that whole areas of the system's phase space, which were prohibited according to the natural laws governing the pre-emergence state, become accessible to the system upon emergence.…”