Flat Emergence

Sartenaer, Olivier

doi:10.1111/papq.12233

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Following (Santos 2015a), a relation is said to be transformative, if and only if it explicitly changes its relata (a) either in terms of the instantiation of some new qualitative-structural property, with the correlative acquisition of its associated new causal power(s) of interaction, or (b) in terms of the manifestation of some already possessed causal power, since the qualitative-structural property that grounds such capacity was already instantiated. 6 In this sense, my relational-transformative account of emergence differs from the transformational account that has been proposed by Humphreys (2016), Guay and Sartenaer (2016) and Sartenaer (2018), given their essentially 'flat' ('same-level' or 'inter-domain') perspective. Furthermore, such flat accounts do not consider the occurrence of relations or interactions as a necessary generating source of transformational processes of emergence.…”

Section: Dynamic Relational Ontologymentioning

confidence: 87%

Integrated-structure emergence and its mechanistic explanation

Santos

2020

Synthese

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This paper proposes an integrated-structure notion of interlevel (part-whole) emergence, from a dynamic relational ontological perspective. First, I will argue that only the individualist essentialism of atomistic metaphysics can block the possibility of interlevel emergence. Then I will show that we can make sense of emergence by recognizing the formation of structures of transformative and interdependent causal relations in the generation and development of a particular class of mereological complexes called integrated systems. Finally, I shall argue that even though the emergent structural attributes of such systems are not micro-determined nor microreducible, they can still be accounted for by an interlevel integrative neo-mechanistic form of explanation.

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Section: Dynamic Relational Ontologymentioning

confidence: 87%

Integrated-structure emergence and its mechanistic explanation

Santos

2020

Synthese

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“…Last, we point out several sub-notions of emergence (see [18,19,20,21] for more details). All of them enter our discussion about time as an emergent notion.…”

Section: Emergence and Its Many Kindsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The complex timeless emergence of time in quantum gravity

Oriti¹

2021

Preprint

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We present the arguments suggesting that time is emergent in quantum gravity and discuss extensively, but without any technical detail, the many aspects that can be involved in such emergence. We refer to both the physical issues that need to be tackled, by quantum gravity formalisms, to realize concretely this emergent picture of time, and the conceptual challenges that have to be addressed in parallel to achieve a proper understanding of it.of phenomena and depending on the control paramaters. Due to the symmetric nature of the relation, speaking of emergence in this case can be seen as an abuse of language. However, on the one hand, this use of the term is found regularly in the physics literature (and very often in the philosophical one too); on the other hand, our definition of emergence, given above following Butterfield et al did not include any asymmetry condition, thus we have no reason at this stage to exclude tis case from consideration. We point out that no reduction is involved by this third kind of emergence, per se, even if in all examples we can think of there is an underlying reduction relation, not between the two sides of this "emergence relation of the third kind", but between each of them and a third set of phenomena, common to both.Looking at the concrete physical situations in which these three kinds of emergence are identified, they are often labeled as synchronic emergence, for the first two kinds, and diachronic emergence, for the third. This is because the third is often associated to physical processes taking place in time, while the first two do not refer to temporal change at all. As we will discuss, this terminology is problematic, first of all because at the theoretical level, also the third kind of emergence can be defined in a way that makes no reference to temporal evolution, but also, and most importantly for our present purposes, any implicit or explicit reference to time would obviously mess up the application of these concepts to the case of time itself and for the understanding of its own emergent nature.All these kinds of emergence should be considered in the case of spacetime in quantum gravity, and time in particular, as we do in the following. Our discussion should be seen in the context of a growing body of work on spacetime emergence in quantum gravity in the philosophy literature [22,23,24,25,26,27,28], in addition of course to the quantum gravity literature. Making things concrete: an example of emergent behaviourThe above discussion is certainly overly sketchy and abstract. Therefore, let us give a concrete illustration of the various notions of emergence, using an example that is as uncontroversial as it can get, at least from the point of view of the usual physics parlance 3 . Consider the physical system identified as water molecules 4 . They are well described in the mathematical language of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, with a Schroedinger evolution equation for their quantum states, an Hamiltonian encoding the relevant forces between them and, in case, ...

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“…For flat emergence, E and B are different states of the same system, interpreted at the same level, but different times, and E and B are supposed to be described by different models of the same theory. A characteristic account of flat (diachronic) emergence appears in Guay & Sartenaer (2016) and Sartenaer (2018). On this account, the Dependence condition holds that E is the product of a spatiotemporally continuous process going from B, and/or E is caused by B.…”

Section: Flat Emergence Of Spacetimementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here ( §5), I provide an account of emergence that is capable of accommodating cases of spacetime emergent from a 'prior' non-spatiotemporal 3 state. This account of emergence is an example of 'diachronic' or flat emergence, inspired by the work of Guay & Sartenaer (2016); Sartenaer (2018), but which is much weaker and more general than their account of 'transformational emergence'. The proposed account of flat emergence is analogous to the hierarchical conception of emergence that I advocate in the case of QG.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

As below, so before: ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ conceptions of spacetime emergence

Crowther

2020

Synthese

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Typically, a less fundamental theory, or structure, emerging from a more fundamental one is an example of synchronic emergence. A model (and the physical state it describes) emerging from a prior model (state) upon which it nevertheless depends is an example of diachronic emergence. The case of spacetime emergent from quantum gravity and quantum cosmology challenges these two conceptions of emergence. Here, I propose two more-general conceptions of emergence, analogous to the synchronic and diachronic ones, but which are potentially applicable to the case of emergent spacetime: an inter-level, hierarchical conception, and an intra-level, 'flat' conception. I then explore whether, and how, these ideas may be applicable in the case of several putative examples of relativistic spacetime emergent from the non-spatiotemporal structures described by different approaches to quantum gravity, and of spacetime emergent from a non-spatiotemporal 'big bang' state according to different examples of quantum cosmology. Contents

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Flat Emergence

Cited by 18 publications

References 29 publications

Integrated-structure emergence and its mechanistic explanation

Integrated-structure emergence and its mechanistic explanation

The complex timeless emergence of time in quantum gravity

As below, so before: ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ conceptions of spacetime emergence

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