Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ontology, matter and emergence

  • Published:
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

“Ontological emergence” of inherent high-level properties with causal powers is witnessed nowhere. A non-substantialist conception of emergence works much better. It allows downward causation, provided our concept of causality is transformed accordingly.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. This problem of “radical situatedness” is discussed and developed in a recent paper of mine. Bitbol (2002)

  2. In these matters, it is crucial “(...) to be clear about whether we are investigating a limitation of scientific description or something about actual physical processes in the world” (Deacon, 2003).

  3. Of course, this strategy of interpretation hides a crucial dialectic between third-person and first-person accounts: from behavior to intention, and then back again (by means of the usual strategy of projection) to intentional behavior. This issue of first-person standpoint will be briefly evoked in the conclusion.

  4. I thank David Rudrauf (LENA, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris) for formulating this sound reductionist objection.

References

  • Bickhard, M., & Campbell, D. T. (2000). Emergence. In P. B. Andersen, C. Emmerche, N. O. Finnemann, & P. V. Christiansen (Eds.) Downward causation. Denmark: Aarhus University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bitbol, M. (1996). Schrödinger’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bitbol, M. (2002). Science as if situation mattered. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Science, 1, 181–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cao, T. Y., & Schweber, S. S. (1993). The conceptual foundations and the philosophical aspects of renormalization theory. Synthese, 97, 33–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castellani, E. (2002). Reductionism, emergence, and effective field theories. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 33, 251–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deacon, T. W. (2003). The hierarchic logic of emergence: untangling the interdependence of evolution and self-organization. In B. Weber, & D. Depew (Eds.) Evolution and learning: The Baldwin effect reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan, O. (1998). Conscious inessentialism and the epiphenomenalist suspicion. In N. Block, O. Flanagan, & G. Guzeldere (Eds.) The nature of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, A. (Ed.) (2001). The emergence of consciousness. Exeter: Imprint Academic.

  • Garfield, J. (1995). The fundamental wisdom of the middle way (Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kronz, F. M., & Tiehen, J. T. (2002). Emergence and quantum mechanics. Philosophy of Science, 69, 324–347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minkel, J. R. (2002). The top-down universe. New Scientist, 175, 28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, C.L. (1923). Emergent evolution. London: Williams and Norgate, IV, §20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, F. (1956). Wille zur Macht. Kröners Taschenausgabe, Alfred Kröner, XVI §483.

  • Omnès, R. (1999). Understanding quantum mechanics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schrödinger, E. (1935). The present situation of quantum mechanics. In J. A. Wheeler, & W. H. Zurek (Eds.) English translation in section I.11 of quantum theory and measurement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silberstein, M., & McGeever, J. (1999). The search for ontological emergence. The philosophical Quarterly, 49, 182–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Teller, P. (1995). An interpretive introduction to quantum field theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L. (1974). On certainty 248. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de Recherches en Epistémologie Appliquée, (CREA/Ecole Polytechnique), 1, rue Descartes, 75005, Paris, France

    Michel Bitbol

Authors
  1. Michel Bitbol
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michel Bitbol.

Additional information

A former version of this paper was intended as part of my contribution to the Mind & Life meeting in Dharamsala (India) in October 2002 (in fact, only a small fraction of it was presented there). I thank all the participants, especially U. Goodenough, S. Chu, and P.L. Luisi for their cogent discussion. Very special thanks are due to His Holiness the Dalai-Lama, who provided both his intellectual insight and a quality which is seldom met in other conferences: a sense of unity of purpose and “embodiment” of knowledge, beyond the differences in standpoint.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bitbol, M. Ontology, matter and emergence. Phenom Cogn Sci 6, 293–307 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9041-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9041-z

Key words

Search

Navigation