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Does Emergence Also Belong to the Scientific Image? Elements of an Alternative Theoretical Framework Towards an Objective Notion of Emergence

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Epistemology, Knowledge and the Impact of Interaction

Part of the book series: Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science ((LEUS,volume 38))

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Abstract

Emergence is a word that plays a central role in the natural or manifest image of the world, within which we organize our ordinary knowledge. Even though some interpretations of the “scientific image” leave no place for emergence, sciences increasingly made use of this word. But many philosophical arguments have been made against the consistence or validity of this concept. This chapter presents a computational view of emergence, alternative to the usual combinatorial view common among philosophers, that is formulated in terms of parts and wholes. It shows that computational emergence can be characterized in terms of causation, and that a subclass of computationally emergent processes displays many of the connotations of the scientific use of the term. After having so captured a concept of emergence, I turn to the question of applying the concept and testing whether some instantiations exist.

This work has been funded by the Project ‘Explabio’, ANR # 13-BSH3-0007.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is a question left open here – it’s enough to point that, following Kim, many philosophical approaches of emergence concern the emergence of properties, even if physicists like Laughlin (2005) talk of the emergence of laws. I argued (Huneman 2008b) that one should first of all speak of emergent processes instead of emergence of properties, these ones being emergent only in a derivative way.

  2. 2.

    See Roe 1981 on the entanglement of spontaneous generation idea with controversies over generation.

  3. 3.

    Idea that any physical fact or event has a cause which is also physical – notwithstanding what other facts or causes may exist. This postulate is supposed to be inherent to modern science.

  4. 4.

    See Atay and Jost 2004, 18.

  5. 5.

    Also Bechtel and Richardson 1992.

  6. 6.

    See also Bar Yam (2004).

  7. 7.

    Humphreys (1997) is the first systematic investigations of epistemological problems raised by the generalized use of simulations in the science. Huneman (2011; 2014) tackled this problem in the framework of evolutionary explanations.

  8. 8.

    Demonstration in Huneman 2008b.

  9. 9.

    Langton 1989. On this loop see Salzberg et al. 2003; Sayama 1998.

  10. 10.

    For emergence in ABM according to my criteria, see R. Wilson 2010.

  11. 11.

    A more precise description of levels of counterfactual dependency, defining modes of regularity and prediction, is done in Huneman (2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Philippe Huneman

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  1. Instituto de Filosofia, University of Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile

    Juan Redmond

  2. University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

    Olga Pombo Martins

  3. Department of Logic and Philosophy, University of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain

    Ángel Nepomuceno Fernández

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Huneman, P. (2016). Does Emergence Also Belong to the Scientific Image? Elements of an Alternative Theoretical Framework Towards an Objective Notion of Emergence. In: Redmond, J., Pombo Martins, O., Nepomuceno Fernández, Á. (eds) Epistemology, Knowledge and the Impact of Interaction. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26506-3_22

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