EMERGENCE in PHILOSOPHY of MIND

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EMERGENCE in PHILOSOPHY of MIND

• Achim Stephan,
• Institute of Cognitive Science
• University of Osnabrück

2
Candidates for emergence

• Novelty
• Unexpectedness
• Unpredictability
• Irreducibility
• Unintended or unprogrammed arising
• Capacities not explicitly programmed

3
The Heyday of Emergentism

• What has generally been perceived as the heyday
  of emergentism comprises mainly the first half
  of the 1920s.
• In quick succession, these years saw the
  publication of the main works of British and
  American Emergentism

4
Samuel Alexander (1859-1938)

• Gifford Lectures 1916-18
• Space, Time, and Deity. Two Volumes. London
  Macmillan, 1920.

5
Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936)

• Gifford Lectures 1922
• Emergent Evolution. London William Norgate,
  1923.
• Life, Mind, and Spirit .London William
  Norgate, 1926.

6
C.D. Broad (1887-1971)

• Tarner Lectures 1923
• The Mind and its Place in Nature. London
  Routledge, 1925
• http//www.ditext.com/broad/mpn/mpn.html

7
Roy Wood Sellars (1880-1971)

• Evolutionary Naturalism. La Salle Open Court,
  1922.
• The Principles and Problems of Philosophy.New
  York MacMillan, 1926.

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The Fate of Emergentism?

• ... the Emergentists left the dry land of the a
  priori to brave the sea of empirical fortune.
  They set off in a certain direction, and for
  awhile winds of evidence were in their sails but
  the winds gradually diminished, and eventually
  ceased altogether to blow their way. Without
  these winds in its sails, the British Emergentist
  movement has come to an almost complete halt.
  (Brian McLaughlin)

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Relativistic Emergentism

• The occurrence of a characteristic W in an
  object w is emergent relative to a theory T, a
  part relation Pt, and a class G of attributes if
  that occurrence cannot be deduced by means of T
  from a characterization of the Pt-Parts of w with
  respect to all the attributes in G. ... A
  characteristic W is emergent relatively to T, Pt,
  and G if its occurrence in any object is emergent
  in the sense just indicated.
• (Hempel Oppenheim 1948 1965, 263)

10
The Revival of Emergentism

• In the heyday of positivism and reductionism,
  emergentism used to be ridiculed as an example of
  unsavory pseudo-scientific doctrines, not quite
  as disreputable as, say neo-vitalism, with its
  entelechies or elan vital, but almost as
  mysterious and incoherent. With the decline of
  positivism and the demise of unified science,
  however, emergentism has been showing strong
  signs of revival ...
• (Jaegwon Kim)

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The need for strong emergence in the philosophy
of mind

• Can mental properties such as the having of
  intentional or phenomenal states be reductively
  explained by reference to some physical/neuronal
  base?
• ? Synchronic emergentism

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Varieties of Emergentism

• Three theories among the different varieties of
  emergentism deserve particular attention
• (strong) synchronic emergentism,
• diachronic (structure) emergentism, and
• weak emergentism.

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Varieties of emergentism
Weak emergentism
Diachronic emergentism
Synchronic emergentism
14
Varieties of Emergentism

• Weak emergentism specifies the minimal criteria
  for emergent properties. Its three basic features
  
• the thesis of physical monism,
• the thesis of systemic (or collective)
  properties, and
• the thesis of synchronic determination
• are perfectly compatible with current
  reductionist approaches.

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Varieties of Emergentism

• The more ambitious theories of emergence have
  their common base in weak emergentism, and can be
  developed by adding further theses.
• Diachronic emergentism acknowledges such aspects
  as novelty and unpredictability.
• Synchronic emergentism refers to the feature of
  irreducibility.

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Weak Emergentism

• The first thesis of current theories of emergence
  concerns the nature of systems that have emergent
  properties.
• According to it, all possible candidates for
  emergent properties such as, e.g., being alive,
  hearing a D-minor accord, or feeling anger, are
  instantiated only by material systems with a
  sufficiently complex microstructure.

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Physical monism

• Entities existing or coming into being in the
  universe consist solely of physical constituents.
• Properties, dispositions, behaviors, or
  structures classified as emergent are
  instantiated by systems consisting exclusively of
  physical entities.

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Weak Emergentism

• The thesis of physical monism denies that there
  are any supernatural components such as an
  entelechy or a res cogitans responsible for a
  systems having emergent properties.
• Particularly, this means that living or cognizing
  systems whether artificial or natural consist
  of the same basic parts as lifeless objects of
  nature.

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Weak Emergentism

• While the first thesis places emergent properties
  and structures within the framework of a
  physicalistic naturalism, the second thesis the
  thesis of systemic properties delimits the type
  of properties that are possible candidates for
  emergents.
• It is based on the idea that the general
  properties of a complex system fall onto two
  classes
• those that some of the systems parts also have,
  and those that none of the systems parts has.

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Weak Emergentism

• Examples of the first class are properties such
  as being extended and having a velocity.
• Examples of properties of the second class are
  flying, reproducing, breathing, or having a
  sensation of an itch.
• These properties are called systemic or
  collective properties.

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Systemic properties

• Emergent properties are systemic (or collective)
  properties.
• A property of a system is systemic if and only if
  the system possesses it but no part of the system
  possesses it.

22
Weak Emergentism

• While the first thesis restricts the type of
  parts out of which systems having emergent
  properties may be built, and
• while the second thesis characterizes in more
  detail the type of properties that might be
  emergent,
• the third thesis specifies the type of
  relationship that holds between a systems
  microstructure and its emergent properties as a
  relationship of synchronic determination

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Synchronic Determination

• A systems properties and its dispositions (to
  behave in a certain way) depend nomologically on
  its microstructure.
• There can be no difference in a systems systemic
  properties without some difference in the
  properties of its parts or in the arrangement of
  its parts.

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Weak Emergentism

• Anyone who denies the thesis of synchronic
  determination has either to admit properties of a
  system that are not bound to the properties and
  arrangement of its parts, or to suppose that some
  other factors, in this case non-natural factors,
  are responsible for the different dispositions of
  systems that are identical in their
  microstructure.
• Both seem implausible.

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Problems of weak emergentism

• Weak emergentism does cut nature at one of its
  joints.
• Nevertheless it is not very interesting to
  classify some specific property as weakly
  emergent.
• There exist just too many weakly emergent
  properties.

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Weak Diachronic Emergentism

• Weak emergentism
• Novelty
• In the context of both evolutionary processes and
  the development of new artifacts, adding the
  thesis of novelty can enrich weak emergentism.
• It makes available a diachronic perspective.

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Novelty

• In the course of evolution exemplifications of
  genuine novelties occur again and again.
• Existing building blocks develop new
  configurations new structures are formed that
  constitute new entities with new properties and
  behaviors.

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Weak Diachronic Emergentism

• The thesis of novelty does not by itself turn a
  weak theory of emergence into a strong one, since
  reductive physicalism remains compatible with
  such a variant of emergentism, which we might
  call weak diachronic emergentism.
• Only the addition of the thesis of
  unpredictability, in principle, will lead to
  stronger forms of diachronic emergentism that
  might be relevant for cognitive science.

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The need for strong emergence in the philosophy
of mind

• Can mental properties such as the having of
  intentional or phenomenal states be reductively
  explained by reference to some physical/neuronal
  base?
• ? Synchronic emergentism

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Synchronic Emergentism

• Weak emergentism
• Irreducibility
• A systemic property is irreducible (and thus
  synchronically emergent) if it cannot be
  explained reductively.

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Synopsis
Weak emergentism
Weak diachronic emergentism
novelty
irreducibility
Synchronic emergentism
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Reductive Explanation

• A reductive explanation is successful if the
  following conditions are met
• The property to be reduced must be functionally
  construable or reconstruable
• It must be shown that the specified role is
  filled by the systems parts and their mutual
  interactions
• The behavior of the systems parts must follow
  from the behavior they show in isolation or in
  simpler systems than the system in question

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Kims Priming procedure

• To reduce a property M to a domain of base
  properties we must first prime M for reduction
  by construing, or reconstruing, it relationally
  or extrinsically.
• This turns M into a relational/extrinsic
  property.
• (Kim 1998, p. 98).

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Levines two stages

• Stage 1 involves the (relatively? quasi?) a
  priori process of working the concept of the
  property to be reduced into shape for reduction
  by identifying the causal role for which we are
  seeking the underlying mechanisms.
• Stage 2 involves the empirical work of
  discovering just what those underlying mechanisms
  are.
• (Levine 1993, p. 132).

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Reduction Task 1

• Given that system S has macro-property P. Provide
  a reductive explanation for P!
• (Refer to the microstructure MS(S), the simple
  laws and the interaction laws that hold true for
  the components Ci of S and show that S must have
  P. Make use of adequate conceptual preparations.)

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Reduction Task 2

• Given a system S with microstructure MS(S).
• Discuss whether or not S has macro-property P!
  If so, show this by a reductive explanation!
• (Refer to the microstructure MS(S), the simple
  laws and the interaction laws that hold true for
  the components Ci of S and show that S must have
  P. Make use of adequate conceptual preparations.)

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Synchronic emergentism

• A systemic property is irreducible if (either)
• It is not functionally construable or
  reconstruable
• It cannot be shown that the interactions between
  the systems parts fill the systemic propertys
  construed (or reconstrued) functional role
• The behavior of the systems components, over
  which the systemic property supervenes, does not
  follow from the components behavior in isolation
  or in simpler configurations

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Synchronic emergentism

• In present-day terminology, the thesis of
  irreducibility specifies exactly the same
  conditions for synchronic emergence as implicitly
  contained in Broads distinction between
  mechanistic and emergent theories.
• In a classical passage in his book The Mind and
  its Place in Nature, Broad says

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• 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 of constituents of the
  same kind as A, B, and C in relations of the same
  kind as R have certain characteristic properties
  
• that A, B, and C are capable of occurring in
  other kinds of complex where the relation is not
  the same kind as R and
• that the characteristic properties of the whole
  R(A,B,C) cannot, even in theory, be deduced from
  the most complete knowledge of the properties of
  A, B, and C in isolation or in other wholes which
  are not of the form R(A,B,C).

The mechanistic theory rejects the last clause of
this assertion (1925, 61).
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• 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

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• that all wholes composed of constituents of the
  same kind as A, B, and C in relations of the same
  kind as R have certain characteristic properties

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• that A, B, and C are capable of occurring in
  other kinds of complex where the relation is not
  the same kind as R and

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• that the characteristic properties of the whole
  R(A,B,C) cannot, even in theory, be deduced from
  the most complete knowledge of the properties of
  A, B, and C in isolation or in other wholes which
  are not of the form R(A,B,C).
  (Broad, 1925)

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Emergence in the philosophy of mind

• If you are interested in reductively explaining
  mental phenomena then you better provide all you
  can get as a possible reduction base, e.g.,
• the complete physical system
• its parts
• their arrangement and interactions, plus
• relevant features of the environment

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The Problem of Phenomenal Qualities

1. The problem of phenomenal qualities is the
   problem of whether or not phenomenal qualities
   can be reductively explained.
2. Reductive explanations of phenomenal qualities
   afford conceptual reconstruction via their causal
   role.
3. Phenomenal qualities resist their preparation for
   reduction (there are no reconstructions via their
   causal role).

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Reasons for Resistance

• What seems to be responsible for the explanatory
  gap, then, is the fact that our concepts of
  qualitative character do not represent, at least
  in terms of their psychological contents, causal
  roles. Thus, to the extent that there is an
  element in our concept of qualitative character
  that is not captured by features of its causal
  role, to that extent it will escape the
  explanatory net of a physicalistic reduction.
  (Levine 1993, 134).

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Broads early resistance

• If the emergent theory of chemical compounds be
  true, a mathematical archangel, gifted with the
  further power of perceiving the microscopic
  structure of atoms as easily as we can perceive
  hay-stacks, could no more predict the behaviour
  of silver or of chlorine or the properties of
  silver-chloride without having observed samples
  of those substances than we can at present.
• Would there be any theoretical limit to the
  deduction of the properties of chemical elements
  and compounds if a mechanistic theory of
  chemistry were true? Yes. (Broad 1925, 71)

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Broads early resistance

• Take any ordinary statement, such as we find in
  chemistry books e.g.,
• Nitrogen and Hydrogen combine when an electric
  discharge is passed through a mixture of the two.
  The resulting compound contains three atoms of
  Hydrogen to one of Nitrogen it is a gas readily
  soluble in water, and possessed of a pungent and
  characteristic smell.
• If the mechanistic theory be true the archangel
  could deduce from his knowledge of the
  microscopic structure of atoms all these facts
  but the last. (ib.)

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Broads early resistance

• The utmost that he could predict on this subject
  would be that certain changes would take place in
  the mucous membrane, the olfactory nerves and so
  on.
• But he could not possibly know that these changes
  would be accompanied by the appearance of a smell
  in general or the peculiar smell of ammonia in
  particular, unless someone told him so or he had
  smelled it for himself. (ib.)