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Distinguishing Between Inter-domain and Intra-domain Emergence

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Abstract

Currently, there are almost as many conceptions of emergence as authors who address the issue. Most literature on the matter focuses either on discussing, evaluating and comparing particular contributions or accounts of emergence, or on assessing a particular case study. Our aim in this paper is rather different. We here set out to introduce a distinction that has not been sufficiently taken into account in previous discussions on this topic: the distinction between inter-domain emergence—a relation between items belonging to different ontic domains—and intra-domain emergence—a relation between items belonging to a same ontic domain. Our final purpose is not to assume and defend a definite stance on emergence, but to stress the relevance of such distinction when attempting to argue for or against emergence, in the first place. We will also address the connections between emergence so distinguished and more general philosophical perspectives, suggesting where would reductionists and pluralists stand with respect to intra- and inter-domain emergence.

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Notes

  1. For a different view, see Wimsatt (2000) and Mitchell (2012), where the compatibility between ontological reduction and emergence is argued for, but at the cost of turning to a more methodological sense of reduction and at the cost of making ‘emergence’ collapse with what some British emergentists would regard as ‘resultant’.

  2. We take that the authors meant “nucleic acids”.

  3. Some have recently argued that supervenience is a symmetric relation (see for example McLaughlin and Bennett 2018). However, the way in which this is shown (by appealing to trivial cases or perfect correlation cases) misses an important point regarding the role of this notion in specific philosophical problems, namely, that it was developed to account for classical and paradigmatic cases of asymmetric relations: mental properties supervening on physical properties, and moral properties supervening on natural properties, but not the other way around. It is in accordance with the spirit of the original cases of supervenience that we take this relation to be asymmetric.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CONICET/Institute of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Olimpia Lombardi & María J. Ferreira Ruiz

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    María J. Ferreira Ruiz

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  1. Olimpia Lombardi
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  2. María J. Ferreira Ruiz
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Correspondence to María J. Ferreira Ruiz.

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Lombardi, O., Ferreira Ruiz, M.J. Distinguishing Between Inter-domain and Intra-domain Emergence. Found Sci 24, 133–151 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-018-9554-2

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