Abstract
In this paper, we advocate the idea that an adequate explanation of biological systems requires appealing to organizational closure as an emergent causal regime. We first develop a theoretical justification of emergence in terms of relatedness, by arguing that configurations, because of the relatedness among their constituents, possess ontologically irreducible properties, providing them with distinctive causal powers. We then focus on those emergent causal powers exerted as constraints, and we claim that biological systems crucially differ from other natural systems in that they realize a closure of constraints, i.e. a second-order emergent regime of causation such that the constituents, each of them acting as a constraint, realize a mutual dependence among them, and are collectively able to self-maintain. Lastly, we claim that closure can be justifiably taken as an emergent regime of causation, without admitting that it inherently involves whole-parts causation, which would require to commit to stronger ontological and epistemological assumptions.
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Notes
See also Weber and Varela (2002) for a discussion of the Kantian rooting of this scientific tradition.
It is worth noting that this meaning of ‘closure’ has nothing to do with Kim’s one, which is at work in his argument about the “causal closure of the physical domain”. According to the latter, as Kim explains, “any physical event that has a cause at time t has a physical cause at t. This is the assumption that if we trace the causal ancestry of a physical event, we need never go outside the physical domain”(Kim 1993: 280).
We take here the notion of “inclusivity of levels” as analogous to Kim’s “Causal Inheritance Principle” (Kim 1993, p. 326), according to which if a property M is realized when its physical realization bases P is instantiated, the causal powers of M are identical with the causal powers of P. By the choice of “inclusivity of levels” we want to emphasize the idea that in the natural world all causes are physical or are the result of the interaction between physical entities: no special causes (vitalist, spiritual, etc., that are not physically instantiated) are introduced at different levels, e.g. at the biological and the mental ones. It should be noted that Kim’s argument also requires the Causal Closure Principle as a premise, in the sense that the ultimate reduction of an emergent property to its fundamental realization base is possible only if the basal level is causally closed (Kim 2003). Yet, we maintain that the validity of the inclusivity of levels does not necessarily require appealing to causal closure: emergent causal powers can be reduced to basal powers even though the latter are not shown or supposed to be closed. Consequently, the argument we develop in this paper does not depend on the Causal Closure Principle.
For Kim's purposes, the exclusion argument is originally targeted at mental causation and is not supposed to imply causal drainage. As a matter of fact, Kim himself has vehemently tried to avoid causal drain drainage as the ultimate consequence of the argument of this argument in favour of reduction. In addition, on the basis of a commitment to the Standard Model and its bottom level of fundamental physical particles, he rejects the arguments based on the possibility of the absence of a rock-bottom level of reality. For a detailed discussion of these issues see, for example Block’s criticism of Kim’s reduction argument (Block 2003) and Kim’s reply (Kim 2003).
The idea of a basic level with self-sufficient basic entities has been deeply questioned in microphysics, the very domain reductionist approaches appeal to as fundamental, where relational and heuristic accounts have taken place (Bitbol 2007).
The distinction has however been formulated, for instance by Silberstein and McGeever (1999), according to which epistemological emergence concerns models or formalisms, while ontological emergence involves irreducible causal capacities. Here, we follow this conventional distinction.
Van Gulick (2001) refers to resultant and emergent properties as “specific value emergent” and “modest kind emergent” properties, respectively.
Crutchfield, for instance, distinguished two different definitions and classes of models of emergence according to two different limitations in our capability “in principle” to describe emergent phenomena: nonpredictability and nondeducibility (Crutchfield 1994).
The debate between a relational and an atomistic interpretation of the supervenience and emergence base has a long history that dates back to the first formulations of the notion of emergence in the British Emergentism. In Alexander’s framework, for example, space and time, the lower level on which the whole natural world emerge, are relational concepts, not definable separately (Alexander 1920). The opposition between atomistic and relational approaches is particularly evident in Lloyd Morgan’s work. In contrast to the billiard balls model of extrinsic interactions, he presents the idea of relatedness based on inherent relations, that contributes to specify the properties of the terms involved in the relation (Lloyd Morgan 1923, p. 19). It is also worth noting that according to some authors, Kim’s reference to relations is still made in a fundamentally atomistic framework, and does not imply a clear commitment to relational mereological supervenience, which implies the idea that relations “do not simply influence the parts, but supersede or subsume their independent existence in an irreducibly relational structure” (Thompson 2007, p. 428).
The interpretation of relational mereological supervenience in terms of constitution is consistent, we argue, with the position developed by Craver and Bechtel (2007) within their mechanistic framework. As they suggest, the relations between constituents located at different levels in a mechanism are better understood as constitutive relations (pp. 554–555). See Sect. 7 below for a detailed discussion.
For simplicity, we will only refer, from now on, to ‘configurational properties S 1 , …, S n ’ (equivalent to ‘property M’), and to ‘whole W’ (equivalent to ‘supervenience base B’).
It is important to emphasise that configurational properties must be actually realised, and not just “dispositional”. As a consequence, a configuration C is functionally irreducible, in this account, also to those entities that would possess the “potential disposition” to actualise these properties.
It is worth noting that the relation between the emergent properties and its emergence base can be interpreted both synchronically and diachronically. Being based on novelty, in fact, the irreducibility to any entity that does not belong to an actual configuration is in principle compatible with both the dimensions of emergence. See also footnote 21 below.
Or, at least, systems being ‘at the edge’ of the biological domain. We do not discuss this issue here, since it does not interfere with the central point.
It is of course conceivable that a description of constraints might possibly be given in terms of thermodynamics, specifically as entities not being affected by the thermodynamic flow. However, in this case, constraints (and then closure) would not be reduced to a different causal regime, but simply redescribed in different terms.
This allows distinguishing, moreover, a closure of constraints from a cycle of processes or reactions as, for instance, the water cycle. In the case of cycles, the entities and processes involved in the cycle (e.g. clouds, rain, spring, river, sea, clouds …) do not act as constraints on each other, and the system can be adequately described by appealing to a set of external boundary conditions (ground, sun …) acting on a single causal regime of thermodynamic changes (see also Mossio and Moreno 2010).
In this framework, functions are interpreted in an organizational sense: a trait is functional if and only if it exerts a constraint that is subject to closure and, consequently, contributes to the maintenance of the organization while being maintained by that very organization. As extensively discussed in Mossio et al. (2009) the organizational account of functions integrates in a unified framework both etiological and causal-systemic theories of function.
According to Lloyd Morgan, “[…] when some new kind of relatedness is supervenient (say at the level of life), the way in which the physical events which are involved run their course is different in virtue of its presence-different from what it would have been if life had been absent. […]. I shall say that this new manner in which lower events happen—this touch of novelty in evolutionary advance depends on the new kind of relatedness” (Lloyd Morgan 1923, p. 16). According to Stephan (1992) Lloyd Morgan’s passage could admit different interpretations, such as that of a logical claim about supervenience. On the contrary, McLaughlin asserts: “In Morgan one finds the notion of downward causation clearly and forcefully articulated” (McLaughlin 1992, p. 68).
Campbell defines downward causation as follows: “all processes at the lower level of a hierarchy are restrained by and act in conformity to the laws of the higher level” (1974, p. 180).
In the philosophical literature, nested causation comes in two variants, synchronic and diachronic (Kim 2010, pp. 34–36). On the one hand, synchronic nested causation refers to the situation in which upward and downward causation would occur simultaneously. In more technical terms, a supervenient property M acts causally on its supervenience base S 1 , …, S n at the same time that the supervenience base generates M. On the other hand, diachronic (or diagonal) nested causation refers to the situation in which M acts on its own supervenience base S 1 , …, S n , causing its modification, but only at a subsequent time with respect to the upward determination. In this paper, however, we assume that the distinction is irrelevant, since we question the very idea of the causal influence of M on S 1 , …, S n , be it synchronic or diachronic.
A satisfactory analysis of downward causation, then, requires a careful distinction between two ideas. One is the idea that a configuration is made up by a set of constituents, which have causal interactions between them. Explaining why a given molecule of water is rotating in a given manner at a given moment requires an appeal to its causal interactions with other constituents. And the reason why a set of constituents may exert a causal influence on other constituents is, of course, that all of them belong to the same system. The other idea, in contrast, is that the ‘whole system’, including any specific constituent, would have a causal role on that very constituent.
The physical processes on which the network exerts (constraining) causal powers can, in some cases, become members of the network itself, when they enter into configurations which act as constraints. Nonetheless, the network would exert causal powers on them as long as they are part of its surroundings, and it would cease acting causally on them as soon as they would start playing the role of constraints.
In the case of the wheel, for instance, one may say that if we describe a given molecule as a constituent of a wheel, we are already including in the description all constitutive and relational properties, which make it a constituent (‘being in such and such position’, ‘having such and such interactions and links with neighbouring molecules’ …), and which determine its behaviour under specific conditions. For instance, a force (i.e. gravity) applied to a part will generate a chain of causal interactions among the constituents which, because of their individual configurational properties, will behave in a specific way. We will then call the collective pattern the ‘rolling movement of the wheel’. Each molecule of the wheel will move in a specific way because its configurational properties force it to do so, and a complete description of the configurational properties of the individual constituent will suffice to explain why it behaves as it does. The fact that the constituents collectively constitute a wheel, whose macroscopic behaviour can be described as a rolling movement, does not add anything to the explanation of the individual behaviour. There are indeed causal interactions here, but not inter-level causation.
See Bich (2012) for an epistemological discussion of the relationship between emergence and downward causation.
It should be noted, however, that the issue is currently being explored by several biologists and theoreticians. For instance, a relevant proposal in this direction has recently been developed by Soto, Sonnenschein and Miquel (Soto et al. 2008).
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Jon Umerez and Agustin Vicente for very valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. This work was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación, Spain (‘Juan de la Cierva’ program to LB); Research Projects of the Spanish Government (FFU2009-12895-CO2-02 to AM and FFI2011-25665 to AM and LB); Research Projects of the Basque Government (IT 505-10 and IT 590-13 to AM and LB).
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Mossio, M., Bich, L. & Moreno, A. Emergence, Closure and Inter-level Causation in Biological Systems. Erkenn 78 (Suppl 2), 153–178 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9507-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9507-7