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Emergent Causation

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Abstract

Downward causation is commonly held to create problems for ontologically emergent properties. In this paper I describe two novel examples of ontologically emergent properties and show how they avoid two main problems of downward causation, the causal exclusion problem and the causal closure problem. One example involves an object whose colour does not logically supervene on the colours of its atomic parts. The other example is inspired by quantum entanglement cases but avoids controversies regarding quantum mechanics. These examples show that the causal exclusion problem can be avoided, in one case by showing how it is possible to interact with an object without interacting with its atomic parts. I accept that emergence cannot be reconciled with causal closure, but argue that violations of causal closure do not entail violations of the base-level laws. Only the latter would conflict with empirical science.

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Notes

  1. For details see the papers collected in Clayton and Davies (2006) and in Bedau and Humphreys (2008).

  2. The emphasis on synchronic supervenience is relevant because some defenders of emergence argue that the problems of downward causation can be avoided by theories that appeal to diachronic supervenience or other, non-supervening relations (see for example Humphreys 1997; O’Connor 2000a, b; O’Connor and Wong 2005). I am not challenging these claims; but I think synchronic emergence is a more interesting phenomenon in relation to the metaphysics of the whole-part relation.

  3. I describe Zeno objects in more detail in Prosser (2009). Here I give a reformulated argument for their properties.

  4. For arguments in favour of the view that actual colours are reflectances, as well as a survey of the alternatives, see Byrne and Hilbert (2003).

  5. See Prosser (2009), however, for discussion of Zeno objects composed from atoms with topologically open surfaces, or with non-atomic parts (or even parts made of infinitely divisible ‘gunk’) in place of the atoms.

  6. The emergent properties of Zeno objects are distant relatives of the cases of asymptotic ‘emergence’ described by Batterman (2001); but very distant because, as Batterman notes, his cases have nothing to do with the whole-part relation and require a modified notion of ‘emergence’ to reflect this, whereas the cases described above depend crucially on features of the whole-part relation (specifically the fact that a Zeno object has no outermost atomic part, allowing light to reflect from the object without reflecting from any atomic part. The emergence is not explained by the fact that the Zeno object has a topologically open surface; no colour property would emerge from an atom with an open surface).

  7. Some authors have suggested that entangled quantum mechanical systems do possess emergent ‘holistic’ properties; however I take no view on this here. For details and further references see Schaffer (2007, 2010). Paul Humphreys (1997) argues that certain entangled quantum mechanical systems exemplify his ‘fusion’ account of emergence, but this is very different to the kind of emergence discussed here. David Chalmers (2006) suggests that interpretations of quantum mechanics according to which the wave function ‘collapses’ may involve a kind of downward causation of the kind relevant to emergence, but again this is unrelated to the ‘entanglement’ property discussed here.

  8. One might add that it is hard to make sense of a property with no associated causal powers (indeed Shoemaker (1980) argues that properties are to be identified with causal powers, though we shall not need this assumption). But, as Kim (1999, 2006a, b) points out, instantiations of emergent properties cannot have effects only at the emergent level because this would come into conflict with the nomological supervenience of the caused instantiations of emergent properties on the base level.

  9. Timothy O’Connor (1994, 2000a) has made similar claims about the relevance of principles of theory choice in relation to competing base-level and emergence descriptions.

  10. Just to avert a possible terminological confusion: one frequently sees the causal closure of the physical world defined in a corresponding way. But if we were to equate the physical with the base level in the actual world, and if quantum entanglement is an emergent property, then we should have to say that entanglement is not a physical property. But this sounds odd, given that quantum entanglement is part of a theory that belongs to what we normally call ‘physics’. To help avoid confusion I shall tend to refer to the base level rather than the physical in this section.

  11. To give just one possible example: Current physics says that the time at which an unstable atomic nucleus decays is purely a matter of probability. But perhaps a multiplicity of atomic nuclei could become ‘entangled’ such that they will decay simultaneously, without thereby affecting the probability that any individual nucleus will decay during a given interval of time.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ralf Bader, Derek Ball, Katherine Hawley, David Landsberg and other members of the St Andrews metaphysics reading group for very helpful discussions on a draft of this paper. Thanks also to Serazer Pekerman for help with Fig. 1.

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Correspondence to Simon Prosser.

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Prosser, S. Emergent Causation. Philos Stud 159, 21–39 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9685-y

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