Abstract
In this chapter, conceptions of order in neuroscience and psychology are compared and assessed from the perspective of a philosophy of creation order with its strong view on laws as necessitating principles, or conditions. Three questions guide the discussion: (1) Does it make a difference for the sciences of the person to maintain a strong notion of law? (2) Can the apparent tension between the creation order view and evolutionary accounts of lawfulness and order be diminished by employing the concept of emergence? (3) Can the concept of emergence be made compatible with a strong concept of law? I explore whether, and if so, to what extent, Herman Dooyeweerd’s reformational philosophy—representative of the creation order approach—can accommodate evolutionary accounts of lawfulness. After a critical analysis of the emergence approaches of Philip Clayton and Evan Thompson, I conclude that the term emergence is used ambiguously, referring both to some sort of causal activity and to more abstract principles of self-organization. With respect to the three guiding questions, it is concluded that (1) a strong notion of law (or lawfulness) can play an important role in the struggle against reductionism in the sciences of the mind and the brain; (2) accommodation between the creation order view and evolutionary accounts is possible to a certain extent and the concept of emergence might play a role in this accommodation; (3) emergence should in that case be interpreted as a boundary concept.
The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70881-2_16
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Notes
- 1.
The term subject-side refers to reality as “being sub-jected (Latin: sub iactare) to the law” and not to the epistemological subject or ego.
- 2.
Not everyone in the tradition of reformational philosophy has been very happy with this solution. Van Riessen , for instance, gave up the entire transcendental framework and opted for a connection between the philosophical intuition of lawfulness and the biblical notion of wisdom and its relatedness to order .
- 3.
This point has been made time and again by Danie Strauss and other reformational philosophers.
- 4.
- 5.
There have even been speculations that Dooyeweerd never fully developed his anthropology because of the difficulties he encountered in his thinking on evolutionary theory (cf. Glas 2010).
- 6.
- 7.
Thompson (2007, 39) says something similar about the term dynamic system. This term refers on the one hand to actual systems in the world, like the solar system, but on the other hand to the mathematical models of these systems.
- 8.
Henk Geertsema (2011, 63) combines both points (i.e., that laws cannot be the product of a development that itself presupposes their functioning, and that emergence suggests but does not really explain new orderings) at the end of a discussion of the relation between law and emergent evolution in Klapwijk’s book, when he says: “The suggestion of an immanent development, which is implied in the term ‘emergent evolution’ and which is expressed by terms like ‘self-transcendence’ and ‘self-organization ,’ can hardly be combined with the recognition of a creational order that is the very condition for this development.”
- 9.
Murphy endorses a non-reductive physicalist ontology and defends her positive account of downward causation with a variant of whole-part constraining. To maintain her physicalist ontology, she has to allow that higher order constraints can be redefined in terms of lower level boundary conditions, structures , or causal processes (Murphy 2006, 238−242). Her notion of causal closure of the physical boils down to a very weak form of determinism that says no more than that physical events by definition are preceded by physical events.
- 10.
Sikkema (2005) rightly notes that non-reductive physicalists usually refer to completely outdated (materialistic) conceptions of physics . The twentieth-century history of physics , however, is a history of dematerialization. From a reformational philosophical perspective it could be added that the thesis of the causal closure of the physical is the typical result of a neglect of the distinction between law and subject. Physical laws hold for reality as a whole, but that does not mean that all reality is (only and entirely) physical.
- 11.
There is some unclarity with respect to Clayton’s view on causation. Strong emergentism presupposes not only a realist metaphysics but also a realistic view on causation . But Clayton does not always seem to be consistent in this respect. Speaking about the counterfactual definition of causality , he says, for instance, that when “other factors influence the outcomes of processes in the world in a counterfactual fashion, there is no reason not to speak of them as actual causes ” (Clayton 2004, 57). This may be true, but the counterfactual approach to causality depends on a possible-worlds semantics and belongs, therefore, to another brand of metaphysics than Clayton’s own realist metaphysics . Counterfactual definitions of causality state that the occurrence of event e depends on the presence of condition c, provided that e is distinct from c: “Where c and e are two distinct actual events, e causally depends on c if and only if, if c were not to occur e would not occur ” (Menzies 2014).
- 12.
Clayton nevertheless prefers the term monism over ontological pluralism, because monism “better expresses the commitment of science to understand the interrelationship of levels as fully as possible ” (Clayton 2004, 54).
- 13.
Now and then Clayton comes close to recognizing the importance of this distinction . In Kauffman and Clayton (2006), for instance, the authors conclude that the current debate lacks an adequate theory of (self-)organization. This theory should serve as a linking pin between the empirical study of continuous development (emergent evolution) and the philosophical discussion on emergence versus reduction, they say. As indicated in the section entitled “Upshot to Self-Organization ,” self-organization is a hybrid construct in the sense that it fulfills two functions: it refers to the empirical process of increasing organization and differentiation , and it functions as principle by specifying standards for what counts as emergent phenomenon.
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- 16.
Mind in Life was initially conceived as a follow-up on earlier work by Varela and Thompson, but was severely delayed by the premature death of Varela in 2001. The text that eventually appeared contained the original ideas of Varela but had been recast and rewritten by Thompson.
- 17.
Differential equations are equations in which an unknown function (or dependent variable) is construed as the function of one or more independent variables. Differential equations are further classified according to the order of the highest derivative of the dependent variable with respect to the independent variable appearing in the equation.
- 18.
- 19.
Other names for nonlinearity are chaos theory and butterfly effect (the butterfly in the Pacific “causing” a hurricane at the Atlantic).
- 20.
In decomposable systems, there is a hierarchical organization in which each component functions according to its own intrinsic principles, independent of other components. In nearly decomposable systems , although there is some top-down and bottom-up interaction, the causal interactions within subsystems are more important in determining component properties than causal interaction between subsystems (Thompson 2007, 420). The four degrees of decomposability are interesting from a Dooyeweerdian point of view. In Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, there is a threefold distinction between aggregates (comparable with decomposable systems), part-whole structures (non-decomposable), and encaptic structural wholes (top-down and bottom-up “interaction ” but in such a form that the relative independence of the constituent parts is retained), which are more or less comparable with nearly decomposable systems. The distinction between nearly decomposable and minimally decomposable is interesting: it seems empirically and conceptually relevant and it is lacking in Dooyeweerd’s account.
- 21.
- 22.
Secondly, and more specifically, the old model overlooks the importance of endogenous brain activity as reflected in states of preparation, expectation, emotional tone, and attention, and the influence of this activity on the sensory perception.
- 23.
Thompson (2007, 427) cites and supports the comparison between organizational constraints and Aristotle ’s notion of formal cause.
- 24.
Topology is the application of set-theory on geometry. It studies properties of geometric forms that remain invariant under transformations such as bending or stretching. These invariants help define what is called a topological space. Important topological properties include convergence, connectedness, and continuity.
- 25.
Kelso goes one step further when he suggests an ontological (instead of epistemic) isomorphism between the levels (Kelso 1995, 288).
- 26.
The term stress refers to the stress that is built up in an iron rod when one tries to bend it. Selye (1956), who introduced the concept of stress, hypothesized that, just like there is a point at which the iron rod will snap instead of bend further, there will a maximum in the level of psychological pressure that an individual can bear. Beyond that point, the individual will “snap” (break down) psychologically. The metaphor is of course very mechanistic and inadequate, but it has given rise to much scientific research.
- 27.
Having said that, it is of course also important to warn against the sweeping statements of reductionist popscientists and -philosophers who declare that “we are our brains,” that humanity can best be seen as a “cosmic accident,” and so on.
- 28.
See, however, Denis Alexander ’s chapter “Order and Emergence in Biological Evolution” in this volume for a different view based on more recent developments in evolutionary theory.
- 29.
This brings my position factually close to the one developed by Jacob Klapwijk. My reservations concern his view on Dooyeweerd (as essentialistic thinker), his reference to Augustine ’s time-conception, and his expectations with respect to the explanatory power of emergence thinking (his expectations are higher than mine).
- 30.
It may come as a surprise, but I see the reformational philosophical tradition as representing a prime example of this kind of relaxedness. Dooyeweerd and his followers have never interpreted law and cosmic order as metaphysically necessary states of affairs. On the contrary, some of Dooyeweerd’s followers have criticized him for his law concept’s tendency toward nominalism (Strauss 2009). This is not the right place, however, to go deeper into this issue.
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Glas, G. (2017). Creation Order and the Sciences of the Person. In: Glas, G., de Ridder, J. (eds) The Future of Creation Order. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion , vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70881-2_10
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