Abstract
In this article I address the issue of the ontological conditions of possibility for a naturalistic notion of emergence, trying to determine its fundamental differences from the atomist, vitalist, preformationist and potentialist alternatives. I will argue that a naturalistic notion of ontological emergence can only succeed if we explicitly refuse the atomistic fundamental ontological postulate that asserts that every entity is endowed with a set of absolutely intrinsic properties, being qualitatively immutable through its extrinsic relations. Furthermore, it will be shown that, ironically enough, this metaphysical assumption is implicitly shared by all the above mentioned alternatives to Emergentism. The current article concludes that the notion of organization by itself is not enough, and that ontological emergence can only be justified by assuming a relational ontological perspective that, in opposition both to atomism and holism, defends that the existence-conditions, the identity and the causal behavior of any emergent systemic property can only be conceived, and explained, as constructed by and through specific networks of qualitatively transformative relational processes that occur between the system’s components and between the system and its environment. Additionally, I try to explain how one can make sense of the idea that an emergent phenomenon is both dependent on, and autonomous from, its emergence base.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
When Hüttemann includes “general laws of interaction” as necessary ingredients of a micro-reduction he has in mind what C. D. Broad called ‘laws of composition’. These laws contain two kinds of information: “an information on how systems or components combine if there are no interactions present, and on the other hand, information on the effects these interactions will have on the combined systems” (Hüttemann 2004: 34). In this context, interactions can be equated in terms of modes of composition because when Hüttemann invokes Broad’s reference to interactions, he refers to a passage where Broad is considering only the interactions that are accounted by the framework of the ‘Ideal Pure Mechanism’ (Broad 1925: 44–45), according to which all the admissible interactions are the ones that merely change quantitatively the previously existing intrinsic properties of the relata, such as position, velocity or acceleration.
As William Guthrie has said, “reality [is], and must be, a unity in the strictest sense and (...) any change in it [is] impossible” (Guthrie 1965: 4–5).
In order to meet the Parmenidean metaphysics, “Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and the Atomists saw in [their] use of mixture and separation a mechanism for explaining the features of the phenomenal world without destroying or otherwise changing the basic entities of their theories” (Curd 2002: 142). The epiphenomenal nature of the non-fundamental entities and properties is taken so seriously that they could not even be said to come-to-be and to pass away. The apparent alteration, generation or corruption of some composed system is nothing but the association and dissociation of its ultimate immutable component parts or the change in their mode of combinatorial arrangements. See Vernant (1985: 373–402), and Kirk and Raven (1964: 405).
By intrinsic properties, I mean the properties that an entity has of itself, despite its relations with other entities in its environment—that is, the possession of those properties depends entirely upon what an entity is like in itself—and relational properties are properties that an entity has and acquires solely due to its extrinsic relations with other entities. See Lewis (1983) and Francescotti (1999).
For a Whiteheadian defense of panpsychism, in terms of a ‘pan-experientialist physicalism’, see Griffin (1998).
In the same vein, (see Broad 1925: 61).
According to McLaughlin (1992), British emergentism lost its positive reputation with the (allegedly successful) quantum mechanical reduction of chemistry. However, emergentism and related themes made their reappearance between the Worlds Wars, particularly in embryology, and through organicist approaches in developmental biology (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000), as well amongst some neuroscientists (like Roger Sperry), after the 1960s. Finally, according to Kim, the main reason why “emergentism failed to become a visible part of the Problematik of the mainstream philosophy of science”, is that “philosophy of science during much of the middle half of this century, from the 1930s to the ’60s—at least, in the analytic tradition—was shaped by the positivist and hyper-empiricist view of science that dominated the Anglo-American philosophy at the time.” (Kim 1999: 3–4).
[Emergence involves] a new quality (...) distinctive of the higher-complex. (...) To adopt the ancient distinction of form and matter, the kind of existence from which the new quality emerges is the ‘matter’ which assumes a certain complexity of configuration and to this pattern or universal corresponds to the new emergent quality. (Alexander 1979: 45 and 47).
This is the fifth characteristic feature of emergent properties, according to Humphreys (1997a).
Mario Bunge proposes the same type of definition of emergence: “[t]o say that \(P\) is an emergent property of systems of kind \(K\) is short for ‘\(P\) is a global [or collective or non-distributive] property of a system of kind \(K\), none of whose components or precursors possesses \(P\)’ (...), and “[e]very new level is constituted by combinations of lower-level things.” (Bunge 2003: 14–15).
“La vie ne peut être le résultat de l’organisation; imaginez les trois molécules, A, B, C; si elles sont sans vie dans la combinaison A, B, C, pourquoi commenceraient-elles à vivre dans la combinaison B, C, A, ou C, A, B? Cela ne se conçoit pas. Il n’en est pas de la vie comme du mouvement; c’est autre chose: ce qui a vie a mouvement; mais ce qui se meut ne vit pas pour cela. (...) La vie est une qualité essentielle et primitive dans l’être vivant; il ne l’acquiert point; il ne la perd point. Il faut distinguer une vie inerte et une vie active. Elles sont entre elles comme la force vive et la force morte; ôtez l’obstacle et la force morte deviendra force vive; ôtez l’obstacle et la vie inerte deviendra vie active.” (Diderot 1975: 47–48).
“(...) selon moi, la sensibilité est une propriété universelle de la matière; propriété inerte dans les corps bruts, comme le mouvement dans les corps pesants arrêtés par un obstacle; propriété rendu active dans les mêmes corps par leur assimilation avec une substance animal vivante.” (Diderot 1957: 141).
Excerpt cit in Caston (1997: 355–357). Strangely enough, Kim (2006b: 189) also quotes this passage from Galenus, but unfortunately he misses the fundamental idea of Galen’s hypothesis of a qualitative transformation of the component parts as the causal mechanism that can explain the process of systemic emergence.
In fact, Darwin attributed some “intelligence” to worms “in their manner of plugging up their burrows”, referring to their “mental powers” (Darwin 1882).
According to Mark Bedau, “[w]eak emergence refers to the aggregate global behavior of certain systems. The system’s global behavior derives just from the operation of micro-level processes, but the micro-level interactions are interwoven in such a complicated network, that the global behavior has no simple explanation. (...) weak emergent phenomena are ontologically dependent on and reducible to micro phenomena; their existence consists of nothing more that the coordinated existence of certain micro phenomena (...) [The state of a macro-entity] consists simply in the aggregation of the states of all its component micro entities and their spatial relations.” (Bedau 2002: 11–12 and 14).
Lewontin (1983), Oyama (2000) and Gray (1992) use the notions of ‘construction’ and ‘constructivism’ to characterize their own perspectives regarding biological development and evolution, according to the new developmental systems theory. As Lewontin says in the ‘Foreword’ to the second edition of Oyama’s book, ‘constructivist interactionism’ is the view that “in the production of an organism one cannot regard the internal and the external, genes and environment, as alternative causes”, denying “the claim of the ontologically independent status of the causes as causes, aside from their interaction in the effects produced”; indeed, “they become causes only at their nexus, and they cannot exist as causes except in their simultaneous action” (Oyama 2000: xiv–xv). According to the constructionist, developmental systems perspective, traits are not transmitted to offspring, but are instead made or reconstructed in development. Likewise, evolution is not a matter of organisms or populations being molded by their environments, but of organism-environment systems reciprocally changing over time. Therefore, “the life cycle of an organism is developmentally constructed, not programmed or preformed. It comes into being through interactions between the organism and its surroundings as well as interactions within the organism.” (Oyama et al. 2001: 4). See also Gray (1992).
Furthermore, unless abstraction is involved, no relatum exists without being related to something else, and no relation instantiates without relating some relata. Accordingly, I don’t subscribe to the ontological structural realism in either its eliminative or moderate versions. See Chakravartty (2003).
As Sunny Auyang observed, “[w]hen we say a system’s emergent character differs not only quantitatively but qualitatively from the character of its constituents, quantitative has a more general meaning than that regarding amount or size. (...) An individual has various characters, the summary of which is called the individual’s state. The general concept of a character can be analyzed into two elements, a type and a value. Blue and red are values of the character type color; big and bigger, values of size. Other characters are temperature, weight, and annual income; their values \(-\)25 \(^{\circ }\)C, 250 Kg, and $25,000—are the definite predicates attributed to individuals, and their types are represented in the units: degrees Celsius, kilogram, and dollar.” (Auyang 1999: 177 and 49).
This is basically the relational perspective explicitly defended by Jean Piaget since the 40s of the twentieth century. Piaget’s relational perspective also explicitly refers to the constructive and transformative power of interactions, as it is easily understandable given his characterization of the very notion of structure as “a system of transformations” (Piaget 1971: 8–9 and 97–99), and given his view that “the idea of structure as a system of transformations becomes continuous with that of construction as continual formation.” (Piaget 1971: 34). In his time, Piaget criticized classical emergentism because he identified it with a kind of mysterious holism: “The whole which this sort of critic of atomism posits at the outset is viewed as the outcome of some sort of emergence, vaguely conceived as a law of nature and not further analyzed” (Piaget 1971: 8). Indeed, in this approach, the modes of formations and the modes of operations of the so-called emergent wholes are “left unspecified”. In the last analysis, Piaget considers classical emergentism an inconsequential theory, because “to note the existence of wholes at different levels and to remark that at a given moment the higher ‘emerges’ from the lower is to locate a problem, not to solve it” (Piaget 1971: 46). The same kind of criticism to classical emergentism can be found, more recently, in Bechtel and Richardson (2010: 94–95).
As Kim observes, “it is useful to think of mereological supervenience and microdeterminism as constituting the metaphysical basis of the method of micro-reduction and micro-explanation. By this I mean that the metaphysical doctrine rationalizes our micro-reductive proclivities by legitimizing micro-reduction as a paradigm of scientific understanding and helping to explain why the micro-reductive method works as well it does.” (Kim 1993: 102).
For example, As Evelyn Fox Keller has said, “the properties of a cell, for example, are at least partly determined by transcription of DNA but, in turn, cellular properties also determine which sequences are to be transcribed, in which combinations, and in what order. Indeed, the very definition of what (if anything) a gene is depends on the properties of the cell in which the DNA is embedded” (Keller 2010: 30). See also Powell and Dupré (2009).
See the notion of ‘dynamic autonomy’ as characterized by Wimsatt (2007: 216–221).
References
Alexander, S. (1979) [1920]. Space, time, and deity (Vol. 2). Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.
Auyang, S. (1999). Foundations of complex-system theories—In economics, evolutionary biology, and statistical physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bechtel, W., & Richardson, R. (2010). Discovering complexity: Decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books, New Edition.
Bedau, M. (1997). Weak emergence. In J. Tomberlin (Ed.), Philosophical perspectives: Mind, causation, and world (Vol. 1, pp. 375–399). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Bedau, M. (2002). Downward causation and the autonomy of weak emergence. Principia: Revista Internacional de Epistemologica, 6, 5–50.
Bohm, D. (1984). Causality and chance in modern physics (1957). London: Routledge.
Broad, C. D. (1925). Mind and its place in nature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company Inc.
Bunge, M. (2003). Emergence and convergence: Qualitative novelty and the unity of knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Caston, V. (1997). Epiphenomenalisms, ancient and modern. Philosophical Review, 106, 355–357.
Chakravartty, A. (2003). The structuralist conception of objects. Philosophy of Science, 70, 867–878.
Curd, P. (2002). The metaphysics of physics: Mixture and separation in Empedocles and Anaxagoras. In V. Caston & D. Graham (Eds.), Presocratic philosophy: Essays in honour of Alexander Mourelatos (pp. 139–158). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Darwin, C. (1882). The formation of vegetable mold through the action of worms (6th ed.). London: John Murray.
Diderot, D. (1975). Œuvres complètes. Dieckmann–Proust–Varloot. Paris: Hermann, t. VIII.
Diderot, D. (1957). In G. Roth (Ed.), Correspondance de Diderot (Vol. V). Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Francescotti, R. (1999). How to define intrinsic properties. Noûs, 33, 590–609.
Garson, J. (2006). Emergence. In S. Sarkar & J. Pfeifer (Eds.), The philosophy of science—An encyclopedia (pp. 230–235). New York: Routledge.
Gilbert, S. F., & Sarkar, S. (2000). Embracing complexity: Organicism for the twenty-first century. Developmental Dynamics, 219, 1–9.
Gould, S. J. (1999). The human difference. New York Times, July 02, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/02/opinion/the-human-difference.html
Graham, D. W. (1999). Empedocles and Anaxagora: Responses to parmenides, Chapter 8. In A. A. Long (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to early greek philosophy (pp. 159–180). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gray, R. D. (1992). Death of the gene: Developmental systems strike back. In P. Griffiths (Ed.), Trees of life: Essays in philosophy of biology (pp. 165–209). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Griffin, D. (1998). Unsnarling the world knot: Consciousness, freedom and the mind-body problem. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Guthrie, W. K. C. (1965). A history of Greek philosophy: The presocratic tradition from parmenides to democritus (Vol. II). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Humphreys, P. (1997a). Emergence, not supervenience. Philosophy of Science, 64, S337–S345.
Humphreys, P. (1997b). How properties emerge. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1–17.
Humphreys, P. (2006). Emergence. In D. Borchert (Ed.), The encyclopedia of philosophy (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 190–194). New York: Macmillan.
Hüttemann, A. (2004). What’s wrong with microphysicalism?. London-New York: Routledge.
Hüttemann, A. (2005). Explanation, emergence, and quantum entanglement. Philosophy of Science, 72, 114–127.
Hüttemann, A., & Papineau, D. (2005). Physicalism decomposed. Analysis, 65, 33–39.
Keller, F. K. (2010). It is possible to reduce biological explanations in chemistry and/or physics. In F. J. Ayala & R. Arp (Eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology (pp. 19–31). Hodboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kim, J. (1993). Supervenience and mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kim, J. (1998). Mind in a physical world. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36.
Kim, J. (2006a). Emergence: Core ideas and issues. Synthese, 151, 547–559.
Kim, J. (2006b). Being realist about emergence. In P. Clayton & P. Davies (Eds.), The re-emergence of emergence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kirk, G. S., & Raven, J. E. (1964). The presocratic philosophers. A critical history with a selection of texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, D. (1983). Extrinsic properties. Philosophical Studies, 44, 197–200.
Lewis, D. (1986). Philosophical papers (Vol. II). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1994). Humean supervenience debugged. Mind, 103, 473–490.
Lewontin, R. (1983). The organism as the subject and object of evolution. Scientia, 118, 65–82.
Mill, J. S. (1868) [1843]. A system of logic. Ratiocinative and inductive (7a ed., Vol. I). London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer.
McLaughlin, B. (1992). The rise and fall of British emergentism. In A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, & J. Kim (Eds.), Emergence of reduction? Prospects for nonreductive physicalism (pp. 49–93). New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Morgan, L. (1923). Emergent evolution (The Gifford lectures delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the year of 1922). London: Williams and Norgate.
Oyama, S. (2000). The ontogeny of information: Developmental systems and evolution (2th ed., revised and expanded). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Oyama, S., Griffiths, P., & Gray, R. (2001). Introduction: What is developmental systems theory? In S. Oyama, P. Griffiths, & R. Gray (Eds.), Cycles of contingency: Developmental systems and evolution (pp. 1–11). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Piaget, J. (1971). Structuralism (translated and edited by Chaninah Maschler). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Powell, A., & Dupré, J. (2009). From molecules to systems: The importance of looking both ways. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 40, 54–64.
Robert, J. S. (2004). Embryology, epigenetics and evolution—Thinking development seriously. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Santos, G. (2013). Philosophy and complexity. Foundations of Science, 18(4), 681–686.
Santos, G. (2014). Upward and downward causation from a relational-horizontal ontological perspective. Axiomathes. doi:10.1007/s10516-014-9251-x
Shoemaker, S. (2002). Kim on emergence. Philosophical Studies, 108, 53–63.
Strawson, G. (2006). Realistic monism: Why physicalism entails panpsychism. In A. Freeman (Ed.), Consciousness and its place in nature: Does physicalism entail panpsychism? (pp. 3–31). Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Teller, P. (1986). Relational holism and quantum mechanics. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 37, 71–81.
Vernant, J.-P. (1985). Du mythe à la raison: la formation de la pensée positive dans la Grèce archaïque [1957]. In J.-P. Vernant (Ed.), Mythe et Pensée chez les Grecs (pp. 373–402). Paris: François Maspero.
Wallace, A. R. (1870). Contributions to the theory of natural selection: A series of essays. London: Macmillan and Co.
Wallace, A. R. (1889). Darwinism, an exposition of the theory of natural selection, with some of its implications. London: Macmillan and Co.
Wardy, R. B. B. (1988). Eleatic pluralism. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 70(2), 125–146.
Wimsatt, W. (2006). Aggregate, composed, and evolved systems: Reductionistic heuristics as means to more holistic theories. Biology & Philosophy, 21, 667–702.
Wimsatt, W. (2007). Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: Piecewise approximations to reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Acknowledgments
I thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my manuscript and their insightful and constructive comments and suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Postdoctoral Researcher at the CFCUL (Centre for the Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon). Work developed under the FCT Project ‘What is a Physical Theory?’ coordinated by Rui N. Moreira (PTDC/FIL-FCI/104587/2008). This work is endorsed by the FCT postdoctoral research fellowship ‘SFRH/BPD/65748/2009’.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Santos, G.C. Ontological Emergence: How is That Possible? Towards a New Relational Ontology. Found Sci 20, 429–446 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9419-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9419-x