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| emergentism | |
|---|---|
| Title | Emergentism |
| Discipline | Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Mind; Complex Systems |
| Notable figures | John Stuart Mill, C. D. Broad, Aristotle, G. H. Lewes, David Chalmers, Henri Bergson, William James, Paul Oppenheim, Hempel, Philip Anderson, Gerald Edelman, Stuart Kauffman, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Noam Chomsky, Douglas Hofstadter, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, Daniel Dennett, Nancy Cartwright, Tim Maudlin, Jaegwon Kim, Jerry Fodor, Erwin Schrödinger, Norbert Wiener, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Karl Popper, Immanuel Kant |
emergentism
Emergentism is a position in the philosophy of science and philosophy of mind that holds complex properties, patterns, or behaviors arise from configurations of simpler elements yet are not straightforwardly reducible to those elements. It is invoked across Aristotle's teleological writings, John Stuart Mill's conceptions of chemistry and life, and contemporary debates involving figures such as David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, and Philip Anderson. Emergentist claims span scientific disciplines from condensed matter physics to cognitive neuroscience and from evolutionary biology to systems ecology.
Emergentist accounts distinguish between "micro" entities and "macro" properties: collections of atoms or molecules form phases and materials with properties like superconductivity or viscosity, which emergentists treat as novel relative to constituent particles. Prominent terminological contrasts include "strong" vs "weak" emergence, where strong emergence—as discussed by C. D. Broad and revived by Tim Maudlin and David Chalmers—posits genuinely new causal powers, whereas weak emergence—as in work by Philip Anderson, Stuart Kauffman, and Murray Gell-Mann—is compatibilist with mechanistic explanation and computational derivation. Related distinctions invoke downward causation debated by Jaegwon Kim and Nancy Cartwright and multiple realizability highlighted by Jerry Fodor and Hilary Putnam.
Emergent ideas trace to ancient natural philosophy in Aristotle's discussions of substance and form and reappear in G. H. Lewes's 19th-century formulations contrasting "resultant" and "emergent" phenomena. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw contributions from William James, Henri Bergson, and critics such as Erwin Schrödinger engaging with organismal unity. In the mid-20th century, debates among John Stuart Mill's heirs, C. D. Broad, and analytic philosophers like Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos situated emergentist problems within scientific explanation. Late 20th-century syntheses involved physicists and complexity scientists including Philip Anderson, Ilya Prigogine, Norbert Wiener, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy, while cognitive theorists such as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, and Noam Chomsky brought emergentist questions into neuroscience and linguistics.
Variants of emergentism include: - Weak emergence: defended in computational and statistical contexts by Stuart Kauffman, Murray Gell-Mann, and Stephen Wolfram-style cellular automaton approaches that emphasize simulation and algorithmic unpredictability. - Strong emergence: defended by philosophers like C. D. Broad and invoked in arguments by David Chalmers about consciousness as non-reducible. - Constitutive emergence: where macro-properties are constituted by micro-arrangements discussed by Tim Maudlin and Jaegwon Kim. - Dynamical emergence: associated with non-equilibrium thermodynamics in the work of Ilya Prigogine and H. H. Pattee. - Supervenience-based accounts: elaborated by analytic philosophers including Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim using supervenience relations to constrain reduction.
Emergentist frameworks inform explanations across domains. In condensed matter physics, phenomena such as superconductivity and the fractional quantum Hall effect are cited by Philip Anderson and Murray Gell-Mann as emergent. In developmental biology and evo-devo research, morphogenesis and pattern formation are treated using models from Alan Turing's reaction–diffusion work and systems biology approaches allied with Francis Crick and Santiago Ramón y Cajal's neuroscientific findings. In cognitive neuroscience, large-scale network dynamics and consciousness debates involve proponents like Gerald Edelman, David Chalmers, and Christof Koch. In ecology and Earth systems science, emergent properties of ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles are central to modeling by researchers connected to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis and resilience theory developed by C. S. Holling. Agent-based modeling traditions draw on Robert Axelrod and Joshua Epstein to illustrate economic and social emergence.
Emergentism impacts issues in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. The "hard problem" of consciousness as framed by David Chalmers motivates strong emergentist readings, while reductive physicalists such as Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland argue for mechanistic accounts. Debates over downward causation and mental causation engage Jaegwon Kim's exclusion argument and responses from Nancy Cartwright and Tim Maudlin. Epistemological implications concern explanation, prediction, and the role of multiple realizability discussed by Jerry Fodor and Hilary Putnam.
Critics argue emergentism risks unexplained ontological excess or epiphenomenalism; Jaegwon Kim and Tim Maudlin press reductionist constraints, while Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland promote eliminativist or reductive strategies. Alternatives include mechanistic explanation championed by Peter Machamer, Ladyman and Ross's ontic structural realism, and reduction via renormalization group methods by Kenneth Wilson. Computationalism and connectionism represented by David Rumelhart and Geoffrey Hinton offer alternative accounts for cognitive phenomena often labeled emergent.
Methodologies associated with emergentist research span multi-scale modeling, agent-based simulation, dynamical systems theory, statistical mechanics, and network science. Tools include cellular automata inspired by John Conway's work, Monte Carlo methods used in statistical physics, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics from Ilya Prigogine. Interdisciplinary projects frequently involve collaborations across institutions such as Santa Fe Institute, MIT, Cambridge University, and Princeton University to combine empirical data, computational experiments, and formal analysis. Robust debates persist over criteria for claiming emergence, empirical tests, and the role of explanation in science and philosophy.