Emergentism

In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts (or not) with reductionism. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their interaction, while it is itself different from them. Emergent properties are not identical with, reducible to, or deducible from the other properties. The different ways in which this independence requirement can be satisfied lead to variant types of emergence.'On the one hand, many scientists and philosophers regard emergence as having only a pseudo-scientific status. On the other hand, new developments in physics, biology, psychology, and crossdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science, artificial life, and the study of non-linear dynamical systems have focused strongly on the high level 'collective behaviour' of complex systems, which is often said to be truly emergent, and the term is increasingly used to characterize such systems.'Put in abstract terms the emergent theory asserts that there are certain wholes, composed (say)of constituents A, B, and C in a relation R to each other; that all wholes composed ofconstituents of the same kind as A, B, and C in relations of the same kind as R have certaincharacteristic properties; that A, B, and C are capable of occurring in other kinds of complexwhere the relation is not of the same kind as R; and that the characteristic properties of thewhole R(A, B, C) cannot, even in theory, be deduced from the most complete knowledge ofthe properties of A, B, and C in isolation or in other wholes which are not of the form R(A, B,C). In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts (or not) with reductionism. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their interaction, while it is itself different from them. Emergent properties are not identical with, reducible to, or deducible from the other properties. The different ways in which this independence requirement can be satisfied lead to variant types of emergence. All varieties of emergentism strive to be compatible with physicalism, the theory that the universe is composed exclusively of physical entities, and in particular with the evidence relating changes in the brain with changes in mental functioning. Many forms of emergentism, including proponents of complex adaptive systems, do not hold a material but rather a relational or processural view of the universe. Furthermore, they view mind–body dualism as a conceptual error insofar as mind and body are merely different types of relationships. As a theory of mind (which it is not always), emergentism differs from idealism, eliminative materialism, identity theories, neutral monism, panpsychism, and substance dualism, whilst being closely associated with property dualism. It is generally not obvious whether an emergent theory of mind embraces mental causation or must be considered epiphenomenal. Some varieties of emergentism are not specifically concerned with the mind–body problem, and instead suggest a hierarchical or layered view of the whole of nature, with the layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity with each requiring its own special science. Typically physics (mathematical physics, particle physics, and classical physics) is basic, with chemistry built on top of it, then biology, psychology, and social sciences. Reductionists respond that the arrangement of the sciences is a matter of convenience, and that chemistry is derivable from physics (and so forth) in principle, an argument which gained force after the establishment of a quantum-mechanical basis for chemistry. Other varieties see mind or consciousness as specifically and anomalously requiring emergentist explanation, and therefore constitute a family of positions in the philosophy of mind. Douglas Hofstadter summarises this view as 'the soul is more than the sum of its parts'. A number of philosophers have offered the argument that qualia constitute the hard problem of consciousness, and resist reductive explanation in a way that all other phenomena do not. In contrast, reductionists generally see the task of accounting for the possibly atypical properties of mind and of living things as a matter of showing that, contrary to appearances, such properties are indeed fully accountable in terms of the properties of the basic constituents of nature and therefore in no way genuinely atypical. Intermediate positions are possible: for instance, some emergentists hold that emergence is neither universal nor restricted to consciousness, but applies to (for instance) living creatures, or self-organising systems, or complex systems. Some philosophers hold that emergent properties causally interact with more fundamental levels, an idea known as downward causation. Others maintain that higher-order properties simply supervene over lower levels without direct causal interaction. All the cases so far discussed have been synchronic, i.e. the emergent property exists simultaneously with its basis.Yet another variation operates diachronically. Emergentists of this type believe that genuinely novel properties can come into being, without being accountable in terms of the preceding history of the universe. (Contrast with indeterminism where it is only the arrangement or configuration of matter that is unaccountable). These evolution-inspired theories often have a theological aspect, as in the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. An undergraduate thesis was written in 2015 developing an emergentist conception of truth, inspired by Mario Bunge. It was an honors thesis advised by Dr. David Blitz, whose doctoral thesis advisor was Mario Bunge. The idea was developed after analyzing the Correspondence Theory of Truth, the Coherence Theory of Truth, and the ideas of Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper, Russell, and Bunge. Trying to resolve problems with all these approaches, the emergent theory of truth effectively maintains that while there may or may not be absolute truth in the universe, it may never be known or realized. Rather, truth is an emergent property of sets of facts. As our comprehension grows and we gather evermore precise and numerous facts, we can synthesize an evermore precise picture of what is true. The entirety of existence constitutes a dynamical state-space where facts are propositions that correspond to a collection of points within this state-space, and with more and more of these facts an interpretation of the truth of a matter emerges. 'Since truth is an emergent property of a coherent set of facts and the set of facts is the dynamical system, truth is an emergent property of a coherent set of facts of a dynamical system.' The original problem the prompted development of emergentist truth was the problem of types of facts. If a true proposition is a fact, then a false proposition is a fiction. If the 'world is the totality of facts' and false propositions exist, then these fictions must in some way exist as facts. This problem begins to mathematize the truth values of propositions and relates facts and fictions to the Form of the proposition. By definition of a Form, the Form is the truth of the matter. When propositions (regardless of their truth value) are related to a common Form then the more propositions there are describing that Form, then the more accurate the depiction of the Form, i.e. truth. Consequently, the truth emerges from a set of facts and fictions (which are simply facts in a different form). In this framework, a 'false proposition is a subsistent proposition that describes some platonic Form and has the syntax of the negation of a fact. Respectively then, a true proposition is an existent proposition that describes some platonic Form and has the syntax of a fact.'