There is a research programme in linguistics that is founded on describing language as an emergent phenomenon. This paper clarifies how the core concept of emergence is deployed in this emergentist programme. We show that if one adopts the weak understandings of the concept of language emergence, the emergentist programme is not fundamentally different from the other non-emergentist research programmes in linguistics. On the other hand, if one adopts the stronger understandings of emergence then the programme would have a unique (...) character, but at the cost of some corollaries (philosophical, but not only) which the emergentist linguists would seemingly want to avoid. We show that if the emergentists accept those corollaries, the resulting hypothetical emergentist programme would be totally different from the emergentist programme in its present shape. We conclude that the emergentist programme, as it stands, should be either abandoned or reshaped in both theory and methodology. (shrink)

Diachronic emergence has recently been characterised as transformation. This aims to capture the thought that the entities that emerge are radically new or different. Transformation is hence closely linked with a central (but rarely raised) challenge for all emergentists: how to account for the identity and individuation of entities involved in emergence. With this challenge in view, I develop and probe four interpretations of transformation: addition, replacement, fusion, and transubstantiation. Of those, transubstantiation provides the most plausible response to the challenge (...) about identity. Accordingly, diachronic emergence is a transformative process whereby an individual passes from one primary kind to another. (shrink)

The notion of a physiological individuals has been developed and applied in the philosophy of biology to understand symbiosis, an understanding of which is key to theorising about the major transition in evolution from multi-organismality to multi-cellularity. The paper begins by asking what such symbiotic individuals can help to reveal about a possible transition in the evolution of cognition. Such a transition marks the movement from cooperating individual biological cognizers to a functionally integrated cognizing unit. Somewhere along the way, did (...) such cognizing units simultaneously have cognizers as parts? Expanding upon the multiscale integration view of the Free Energy Principle, this paper develops an account of reciprocal integration, demonstrating how some coupled biological cognizing systems, when certain constraints are met, can result in a cognizing unit that is in ways greater than the sum of its cognizing parts. Symbiosis between V. Fischeri bacteria and the bobtail squid is used to provide an illustration this account. A novel manner of conceptualizing biological cognizers as gradient is then suggested. Lastly it is argued that the reason why the notion of ontologically nested cognizers may be unintuitive stems from the fact that our folk-psychology notion of what a cognizer is has been deeply influenced by our folk-biological manner of understanding biological individuals as units of reproduction. (shrink)

Various claims regarding intertheoretic reduction, weak and strong notions of emergence, and explanatory fictions have been made in the context of first-order thermodynamic phase transitions. By appealing to John Norton’s recent distinction between approximation and idealization, I argue that the case study of anyons and fractional statistics, which has received little attention in the philosophy of science literature, is more hospitable to such claims. In doing so, I also identify three novel roles that explanatory fictions fulfill in science. Furthermore, I (...) scrutinize the claim that anyons, as they are ostensibly manifested in the fractional quantum Hall effect, are emergent entities and urge caution. Consequently, it is suggested that a particular notion of strong emergence signals the need for the development of novel physical–mathematical research programs. (shrink)

The main contention of this article is that current approaches to ontological emergence are not comprehensive, in that they share a common bias that make them blind to some conceptual space available to emergence. In this article, I devise an alternative perspective on ontological emergence called ‘flat emergence’, which is free of such a bias. The motivation is twofold: not only does flat emergence constitute another viable way to fulfill the initial emergentist promise, but it also allows for making sense (...) of some emergence ascriptions that traditional accounts are unable to accommodate. (shrink)

This paper proposes an integrated-structure notion of interlevel emergence, from a dynamic relational ontological perspective. First, I will argue that only the individualist essentialism of atomistic metaphysics can block the possibility of interlevel emergence. Then I will show that we can make sense of emergence by recognizing the formation of structures of transformative and interdependent causal relations in the generation and development of a particular class of mereological complexes called integrated systems. Finally, I shall argue that even though the emergent (...) structural attributes of such systems are not micro-determined nor micro-reducible, they can still be accounted for by an interlevel integrative neo-mechanistic form of explanation. (shrink)

One of the foundational problems of biochemistry concerns the conceptualisation of the relationship between the composition, structure and function of macromolecules like proteins. Part of the recent philosophical literature displays a reductionist bias, that is, the endorsement of a form of microstructuralism mirroring an out-dated biochemical conceptualisation. We shall argue that such microstructuralist approaches are ultimately committed to a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism whereby the macrostructure and function of proteins is accounted for solely in terms of the intrinsic properties and (...) potentialities of the components of the primary structure as if they were self-contained or essentially immutable entities. We shall instead suggest that a conceptualisation of the relationship between proteins’ composition, structure and function consistent with contemporary biochemical practice should account also for the causal role of the cellular, organismal and environmental relations in protein development. The analysis of the folding process we propose suggests that microstructure-laden reductionist approaches are ontologically indefensible. Rather than a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism, our analysis ultimately supports a relational-construction-based view of protein development and potentialities formation, which requires an indispensable analysis of the dynamical interplay between the micro-level of the parts and the macro-level of the relational structures of their systems. (shrink)

The Mapuche people are a native group from the extreme south of Latin America. Their culture is based on the interconnectedness between the cohabitants of the environment, including human and non-human categories of life. The closest concept to consciousness for them would be Mapuche rakizuamor Mapuche thinking, which is defined as a particular kind of reflexivity or state of awareness of the interdependence of people with natural and spiritual entities. This understanding of the human condition represents a relational ontology, which (...) cannot be translated to the predominating individualistic approach. Although the mind–body distinction is not a central point within Mapuche culture, these dimensions can be explored through crucial processes of the life cycle such as socialization, illness, and death. Contributions from cultural psychology and Indigenous psychology are taken into account regarding the challenge to address the interplay between culture and the human psyche more appropriately. (shrink)

Downward causation exercised by emergent properties of wholes upon their lower-level constituents’ properties has been accused of conceptual and metaphysical incoherence. Only upward causation is usually peacefully accepted. The aim of this paper is to criticize and refuse the traditional hierarchical-vertical way of conceiving both types of causation, although preserving their deepest ontological significance, as well as the widespread acceptance of the traditional atomistic-combinatorial view of the entities and the relations that constitute the so-called ‘emergence base’. Assuming those two perspectives (...) with no reserves, we are condemned to confine our debate to the question of whether reified wholes can have the power to downwardly change or influence their lower-level parts, a question which seems profoundly misleading to me. I therefore propose an alternative relational ontological view, assuming a straightforward horizontal and intra-level way of representing those putative cases of cross-level causation. I finally confront two recent replies to Kim’s well-known objections to DC—Craver and Bechtel and Kistler :595–609, 2009)—, emphasizing their global positive approaches, as well as the reasons why their accounts still seem insufficient to me. I conclude arguing that both Kim’s principle of the causal closure of the physical domain and its allegation of an overdetermination in cases of DC can be surpassed by the new relational ontological perspective presented here. (shrink)

I shall explore in this article the metaphysical possibility of powers’ strongly emerging from relations. After having provided a definition of emergent powers that is also based on the distinction between the possession and the activation of a power, I shall introduce different sorts of Relations that Ground Emergence, both external and internal. Later on, I shall discuss some examples of powers that are grounded on their instantiation. Finally, I shall examine the consequences of accepting such relations within a physicalistic (...) ontology and I shall defend them against two objections based on the notion of bruteness. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the discussion on methodological decolonisation in business ethics research by illustrating how local epistemologies can shape methodology. Historically, business ethics research has been dominated by Western methodologies, which have been argued to be restrictive and limit contextually relevant theorising in non-Western contexts. Over the past decade, scholarship has called for more diversity in research methods and epistemologies. This paper regards arguments founded along neatly divided universalist versus contextualised methodologies as a false dilemma. Instead, we explore how (...) _ubuntu_, a sub-Saharan African epistemology, can contribute as a complementary epistemology and methodology to interpretivism when conducting business ethics research in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper discusses four aspects—research agenda, access, power relations, and context-sensitive methods—that highlight practical ways in which _ubuntu_ epistemology, with its communitarian and relational underpinnings, can enhance business ethics research. We illustrate that methodological decolonisation can be achieved by fusing relevant elements of local epistemologies and methodologies and conventional methodologies to generate context-relevant research approaches. (shrink)

This paper examines some possibilities for the laws of nature changing over time. This is done within the context of recent literature on transformational emergence. Transformational emergence is a diachronic account of emergence that does not require the invariance of fundamental objects, properties, and laws. The requirement that no new laws are introduced after the first instance of the universe seems to indicate that all the laws of the universe are present from the outset. By using a dispositional approach to (...) fundamental properties, this restriction can be avoided. An argument appealing to quantitative laws of nature is then used to show that such laws are not, contrary to dispositional essentialism, metaphysically necessary. Further arguments are given to support the possibility of change of laws across time rather than across worlds and why the identity conditions for properties are different in the two cases. The paper is framed by an analysis of John Stuart Mill’s reasons for imposing the invariance requirement on fundamental laws. (shrink)

The turn of the twenty-first century was a period of intensified research on the description of the world as a complex structure built of dynamical systems occurring at different levels of reality. Such systems can be described as bundles of processes. Therefore, the most empirically adequate ontology turns out to be processualism. In this paper, I describe a contemporary version of processual philosophy, which I refer to as processual emergentism. Within the proposed position, the classical formulations of processualism and emergentism (...) are revisited. Both elements complement each other – emergence describes constant, radical novelty as the basic feature of nature, while processualism employs the category of a process, which replaces the classically understood substance.The approach to emergence developed here is ontological and diachronic. I discuss classic determinants of emergence and propose a discussion on the category of supervenience, which in the light of the adopted assumptions turns out to be insufficient to describe the relationship of the dependence of the emergent on its base. Finally, processualism is reconciled with moderate structuralism and strong emergentism. (shrink)

While ontic structural realism (OSR) has been a central topic in contemporary philosophy of science, the relation between OSR and the concept of emergence has received little attention. We will argue that OSR is fully compatible with emergentism. The denial of ontological emergence requires additional assumptions that, strictly speaking, go beyond OSR. We call these _physicalist closure assumptions._ We will explain these assumptions and show that they are independent of the central commitments of OSR and inconsistent with its core goals. (...) Recognizing the compatibility of OSR and ontological emergence may contribute to the solution of ontological puzzles in physics while offering new ways to achieve the goals that advocates of OSR set for their view. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Emergence is a notorious philosophical term of art. A variety of theorists have appropriated it for their purposes ever since George Henry Lewes gave it a philosophical sense in his 1875 Problems of Life and Mind. We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each (...) of the quoted terms is slippery in its own right, and their specifications yield the varied notions of emergence that we discuss below. There has been renewed interest in emergence within discussions of the behavior of complex systems and debates over the reconcilability of mental causation, intentionality, or consciousness with physicalism. (shrink)