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| Emergence (philosophy) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Emergence (philosophy) |
| Field | Philosophy |
| Notable | Aristotle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, George Henry Lewes, C. D. Broad, G. H. Mead, Karl Popper, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, Jaegwon Kim, John Searle, Hilary Putnam, Nancy Cartwright, Philip Anderson, Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Ryle, Daniel Dennett |
Emergence (philosophy) is the attribution of novel, robust, or unpredictable properties, behaviors, or structures to systems that are not present in their individual components, discussed across Ancient Greece, Enlightenment, Victorian Era, 20th century and contemporary philosophy. It intersects debates among metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and systems theory, engaging thinkers associated with Aristotelianism, Cartesianism, Logical Positivism, Analytic Philosophy, and Continental Philosophy.
Philosophical accounts classify emergence into forms such as ontological emergence and epistemic emergence, often linked to distinctions drawn by C. D. Broad, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, and Hilary Putnam. Authors like Philip Anderson, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Nagel, and David Chalmers discuss "novelty" relative to laws attributed by Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr. Taxonomies include weak emergence as described in computational accounts by Stephen Wolfram, John Conway, Alan Turing, and Henk Barendregt, and strong emergence defended by figures such as C. D. Broad and later by David Chalmers, Jaegwon Kim (critical), and Peter Clarke. Related distinctions invoke multiple realizability championed by Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor, and supervenience frameworks advanced by Donald Davidson, David Lewis, and Jaegwon Kim.
Roots appear in Aristotle's organic teleology and in early modern reactions involving Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and René Descartes; debates continue through John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer in the Victorian Era and into analytic treatments by G. H. Mead, C. D. Broad, and Bertrand Russell. The 20th century brought engagements from Logical Positivism figures such as Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr via quantum phenomena, and from Karl Popper and Gilbert Ryle on the status of mental properties. Mid- to late-20th century work by Philip Anderson, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Nagel, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, and Hilary Putnam reframed emergence relative to developments in statistical mechanics associated with Ludwig Boltzmann, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and James Clerk Maxwell, and to computational paradigms inaugurated by Alan Turing and John von Neumann.
Ontologists such as David Lewis, D. M. Armstrong, Jaegwon Kim, and C. D. Broad debate whether emergent properties are irreducible additions to the ontology posited by Isaac Newton-style reductionists like Ernst Mach and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Epistemologists drawing on Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend analyze how novel explanations arise in scientific revolutions and whether emergence reflects epistemic limits as argued by Nancy Cartwright and Philip Kitcher. Questions about causal efficacy engage John Searle, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, Jaegwon Kim, and Tim Maudlin in dialogues about downward causation, causal closure defended by Jaegwon Kim and challenges from Thomas Nagel and Peter van Inwagen. Debates over supervenience involve Donald Davidson, David Lewis, Hilary Putnam, and critics like Jerry Fodor.
Emergence is often situated within hierarchies studied by André-Marie Ampère-influenced physicalism, by Ludwig von Bertalanffy's systems thinking, and by John von Neumann's complexity theory; proponents such as Philip Anderson argue "more is different" against reductionists like Ernest Nagel and Wilfrid Sellars. Cross-disciplinary frameworks reference work in molecular biology tied to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin; in condensed matter physics by Lev Landau and Philip Anderson; in neuroscience by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Eric Kandel, and Colin Blakemore; and in ecology influenced by Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold. Reductionist programs associated with Ernest Nagel and Carl Hempel contrast with holism from Jan Smuts and Ludwig von Bertalanffy, while computational emergence links to Stephen Wolfram, Conway, and John Holland.
Weak emergence, modeled by computational simulation in the work of Stephen Wolfram, John Conway, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and H. P. Yockey, treats macro-properties as derivable in principle from micro-laws as in statistical mechanics with figures like Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Strong emergence, defended in variants by C. D. Broad, David Chalmers, and critics discussed by Jaegwon Kim and John Searle, posits genuinely novel causal powers not reducible to microphysics, paralleling arguments in philosophy of mind by Thomas Nagel and Colin McGinn. Debates invoke thought experiments from Frank Jackson and Ned Block and appeal to empirical phenomena examined by Philip Anderson, Nancy Cartwright, and Simon Baron-Cohen.
Emergence informs research in condensed matter physics influenced by Philip Anderson and Lev Landau, in complex systems per John H. Holland and Murray Gell-Mann, in evolutionary biology following Charles Darwin and Theodosius Dobzhansky, in neuroscience connected to Eric Kandel and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and in cognitive science shaped by Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, and Patricia Churchland. It underpins models in economics referenced by Kenneth Arrow, John Maynard Keynes, and Herbert Simon (bounded rationality), and informs approaches in artificial intelligence from Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yoshua Bengio. Philosophical implications engage David Lewis, Hilary Putnam, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and Imre Lakatos in examining theory change, explanation, and prediction.
Critics such as Jaegwon Kim, Paul Churchland, Jerry Fodor, and Ernest Nagel challenge claims of irreducibility, advocating supervenience, reductionism, or eliminativism advanced by Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland. Alternative frameworks include multiple realizability defended by Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor, mechanistic explanation promoted by Peter Machamer, Ladyman & Ross-style ontic structural realism engaging James Ladyman and David Ross, and interventionist causation by James Woodward. Philosophers of science including Nancy Cartwright and Philip Kitcher offer pluralist and pragmatic responses, while formal critiques draw on results from statistical mechanics by Ludwig Boltzmann and computational complexity theory associated with Alan Turing and Stephen Cook.