Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence 3030981479, 9783030981471

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Vladimír Havlík

Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence

Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence

Vladimír Havlík

Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence

Vladimír Havlík Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences Praha, Czech Republic

Grantová Agentura České Republiky ISBN 978-3-030-98147-1    ISBN 978-3-030-98148-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book focuses critically on the foremost recent discussions on emergence, its tradition, and its various conceptual landscapes. It supports the belief that classical reductionism has its limits and that the strong reductionist programme is flawed. Reductionism can be methodologically successful only as a top-down, explanatory strategy, a reductionism “in principle”, whereas the bottom-up, predictive, and constructionist approach is more problematic and cannot arrive at the observed variability of the world’s complexities. This book illustrates the principle of emergence and its universal role across many different areas of complexity, pointing to its naturalism, which allows for scientific and philosophical investigation. The main aim is to recognize emergence as a universal principle, in the same sense as the principle of evolution is universal, setting out its ontological criteria and their role in the proposed hierarchical emergent ontology (HEO). The book focuses mainly on the discussion of ontological emergence, while in accordance with the mainstream view, the epistemological and conceptual forms of emergence are considered secondary. The fulfilment of this task presupposes a detailed analysis of the main ontological concepts of emergence, especially with regard to specific examples within the natural sciences. Thus, working conclusions are not primarily measured with respect to “high-level” questions of the relationship between mind and brain, but on the contrary, with respect to the universality of the principle of emergence in “low-level” examples from physics, chemistry, cellular automata, etc. The universal principle of emergence (UPE) is partly built upon new analyses and partly upon a synthesis of traditional viable aspects of emergence within one universal structure. Traditional discussions of emergence have tended to be corralled by the distinction between strong and weak emergence, generally accepting the commitment to supervenience as a synchronic relationship between basal entities and emergent whole. Recent discussion veers away from supervenient emergence and presents diachronic emergence as the only solution to traditional causality problems. These recent approaches emphasize only the diachronic aspect and maintain that there is no way of creating an acceptable framework which unifies synchronicity and diachronicity. This book does not share these tendencies, and in its formulation of UPE, it benefits from the following four crucial distinctions: (1) a v

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distinction between weak and strong emergence, (2) a distinction between emergence and supervenience, (3) a distinction between synchronicity and diachronicity, and (4) a distinction between dependence and autonomy. The detailed work and analyses of many emergentists and their critics have enabled the formulation of alternative syntheses for each distinction. In brief, this means: (1) the distinction between weak and strong emergence is only apparent, and they are instead two instantiations of the one UPE; (2) supervenience is not an exclusively reductive relationship but is, in fact, predominantly non-reductive and as such demonstrates the meaning of “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”; (3) there is an ontological necessity for the unification of the synchronic and diachronic aspects of emergence so that emergence can be understood as a natural process of organization and complexity in many natural phenomena; and (4) UPE has to conceptually explain the general form of interconnections between the base and the emergent considering the standard commitments of the emergentist view of the world. On the one hand, emergentists must accept the determination of an emergent by its base and, on the other hand, they want to prove the causal autonomy of the emergent. Regarding this, UPE strengthens the unity of the emergent entity, which is maintained in the dynamic persistence of its autonomy. Likewise, this book does not share in the tendency to reject hierarchical ontology in solving the traditional problems of top-down causality, overdetermination, etc., instead showing in what a true hierarchy is based without reviving the naive and oft-criticized hierarchy of levels of the special sciences. Upon these foundations are built the new concepts of UPE and HEO. Both are not only developed tightly bound to particular cases from the special sciences and their critical discussions but also the utility and practical applicability of the proposed HEO and UPE are analysed and tested in three different fields of science: cellular automata, quantum Hall effects, and the neural network of the mind. It is demonstrated that in these three different fields of phenomena—the algorithmic of automata, quantum physical phenomena, and biological neural networks—the operation of the principle of emergence can be identified. The tests applied herein prove that similar criteria for emergence, evaluated in three different domains and different processes, can be unified by the establishment of one universal principle. The hierarchical nature of these phenomena is also proven and tested via their number of degrees of freedom, which serves as an objective criterion of hierarchy. In this way, the resulting metaphysics of HEO plays a fundamental role in unifying science, a result which is impossible via classical reductionism.

Chapter 1: Reductionism and Holism I discuss the reductionism/holism dilemma as a metaphysical view of the world which impacts the different approaches to the explanation of complex and structured entities. Haunting such discussions is the notion that the problem with reductionism lies in its pretension to provide complete explanations from nothing but the

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fundamental elements of the world. Reductionism presupposes that a successful top-down explanation means that the reverse path has to be similarly fruitful. Although I do not deny that reductionism as a metaphysical concept and scientific methodology is a successful approach, employed in many scientific explanations and predictions, I unequivocally incline to the view that there are boundaries that cannot be crossed. I disagree that the “Battle of the Ages” between reductionism and emergentism only begins or is ongoing (Laughlin 2005, Gillett 2016). It seems to me that this battle was won long ago. Reductionism does a lot when it knows where to proceed, and yet it is confused over when to advance without additional information on how things really are in nature. Thus, the recipe for deriving the universe from first principles always needs more information than those first principles provide. In this sense, reductionism can always fight under the victorious banner of holism. I prefer to prove this background presupposition on some suitable examples from the natural sciences, where reductionism and emergentism can compete. One of these examples is the prevailing belief that chemistry can be reduced to physics via quantum mechanics. Recently, many competent authors have shown chemistry not to be fully reducible to physics and that the prevailing belief in its reducibility arose from the overly optimistic approach of some physicists and philosophers towards the early results of quantum theory. Consequently, it is argued, if chemistry and other higher special sciences are irreducible and deal with emergent entities, then there is a question regarding the autonomy and top-down causality of such entities. To express the range of possible strategies both pro and con top-down causality, I present Kim’s standard arguments from analytical metaphysics against the possibility of emergent causal powers, i.e., the principle of downward causation and the exclusion of causality. In favour of top-down causation, we consider the famous rolling wheel argument (Sperry and Searle) and then discuss these arguments’ possible results in the broader context of mental causation in the philosophy of mind (Davidson, Crane). The ongoing dispute between reductionists and emergentists I want to present and test in suitable natural science examples. There are excellent opportunities to test the consequences of the reductionist and holistic conceptions on the QMC and PDFs models of the atomic nucleus and theoretical–experimental pentaquark research. Ultimately, the limits of classical reductionism and the holistic approach’s legitimacy are laid out in a general conclusion about the possibility of the derivation of our universe’s current form from the few initial principles. This then leaves open a route to UPE.

Chapter 2: Towards a Universal Principle of Emergence (UPE) My route to UPE has to start with the discussion of basic concepts and commitments. Because I take emergence as a primarily ontological concept, the other possibilities are of secondary relevance. Many authors want to reflect upon all kinds of

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emergence at once, and they discover that emergence is so multifarious it is impossible to create a single universal frame for them all. They usually end up with pessimistic conclusions about the philosophical aims of such a task. My conviction is different. It is not philosophically acceptable “not to see the wood for the trees” but it is, indeed, philosophically obligatory to open up a new, unifying perspective to shine a bright light on hitherto tangled skeins. To this end, I answer some key questions. Can a unified conception of emergence be achieved? What is the difference between a universal principle of evolution and the principle of emergence? What is ontological and epistemological emergence? Is it reasonable to divide emergence into several types, such as inferential and conceptual, and which methodological conclusions follow? Clarifying these issues, I seek to remove possible misunderstandings via further steps in shaping the concept of UPE.  The journey towards UPE begins with the detailed analysis of different conceptions of ontological emergence, covering Searle’s emergence1 and emergence2; different supervenient approaches to emergence (Kim, Van Cleve, O’Connor, McLaughlin, Crane); non-supervenient approaches (Humphreys); and the influential conceptions of “weak” and “strong” emergence (Bedau, Chalmers, Gillett). Searle and McLaughlin, similar to Bedau, fear emergent properties which are fully autonomous irreducible causal powers: they assume that a disruption of causal fundamentalism, or causal transitivity, is unacceptable. Ontological emergence in the “strong” sense, i.e., as the existence of irreducible ontological entities or properties (Van Cleve, O’Connor), is sometimes compared to mythical vital properties (e.g., Cunningham) and considered a scientifically unacceptable form of emergence (Bedau, Kim). Thus it is questionable why we have a convincing belief in a “downward” determination from wholes to their parts which evidently contradicts the logical principles attributed to connections between causes and consequences. Similarly, we feel the autonomy of the whole yet cannot reject the work done by components for the existence of the whole. How can we escape this standard emergentist puzzle of opposing commitments? Usually, the best approach is to adjust or abandon some traditional presuppositions. The results which flow from such branching possibilities form the subject matter of my ensuing analysis.

Chapter 3: Emergence in Physical Systems Here I analyse ontological emergence as it branches out into the various possibilities provided by the adjustment of the substance-accidence model of an entity and its properties and the rejection of the causal character of determination of and by basal entities and wholes. Both such new approaches and their combination provide fruitful possibilities for the conceptualization of emergent relations. I begin with paradigmatic examples from condensed matter physics and phase transitions because these physical processes are often analysed from the emergentist point of view. Phenomena such as quasiparticles and other quantum effects have

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inspired some conceptions of emergence. Initially, the importance of such phenomena was recognized by condensed matter physicists (Anderson, Laughlin, Pines) and later reflected by philosophers (Humphreys, Morrison, Falkenburg, Lederer, Guay and Sartenaer, Ellis). They provide strong motivation for “fusion emergence” (Humphreys), “dynamical emergence” (e.g., Kronz and Tiehen), and “transformational emergence” (Humphreys, Guay and Sartenaer). Such dynamical conceptions are characterised by strengthening a diachronic aspect of emergence at the expense of its synchronic (supervenient) relations. Even if the detailed elaborations of fusion and transformation emergence seem to be tightly connected with quantum examples, I am not convinced that their interpretation is consistent with quantum effects. I show that there are quantum counterexamples in which we need the existence of parts to continue during the existence of the whole. For this reason, I support critical concerns about the basal loss features of structural properties (Wong). Furthermore, many macro-phenomena are not dependent on the kinds of their constituents because emergent phenomena are independent of any specific configuration of their microphysical base. Thus, fusion emergentism would have to presuppose that the fusion of different collectives of particles leads to the same macro-phenomena. If parts do not exist in the whole, then fusion emergence needs some unique mechanism to restore the original particles. Even though it is reasonable to investigate approaches to emergence solely on the basis of the emergence of properties and the part/whole relation, my conclusion is that radical fusion emergence has unacceptable consequences. More likely to further my end is the evidence of strong emergence examples in simple physical systems, which prove that weak emergence is insufficient in such cases and that the state of the system is determined not only by their parts but via links to their environment and to globally restrictive constraints (Bar-Yam). It is surprising that this understandable aspect is generally underestimated in many emergence concepts and that all attention is focused on the internal ties between base and emergent. I consider global constraints to be one of the essential ingredients of the proposed emergent ontology. The other branch of possibilities lies in how basal entities determine their wholes (or vice versa) because these are vertical synchronic relations and it is questionable how they can be causal when causality as a relation between cause and consequence has extension in time and is paradigmatically diachronic. Recently, one possibility has been offered in “mutualism” (Gillett), which takes the synchronic relationship as “non-productive mutual determination” and “non-productive mutual interdependence” between the whole and its components. Mutualism is generally a sound way forward but is excessively impacted by a fear of the whole’s autonomy and admits productive (horizontal) powers only to its components. Thus, I am not entirely convinced that one can prove emergentism without causal autonomy and the causal powers of emergent entities. Similarly, the computational and combinatorial approaches to emergence (e.g. Hunemann) reject approaches oriented solely towards properties resulting from emergence. These tendencies also support new ideas about the dynamical character of emergence and its processuality yet in addition jab a finger at the one key

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question: how strong is strong emergence and how weak is weak emergence? I show that the distinction between weak and strong emergence is only apparent, they being, in reality, only two instantiations of the one UPE. Finally, I am obliged to save scientific emergence from a strong attack by agent-­ based modelling proponents (e.g., Epstein). Generativists are convinced that when modelling complex phenomena based on actors, systemic properties only depend upon the full specification of actors or entities participating in their formation. They generally remain strongly opposed to emergence as something unscientific and try to prove that agent-based modelling and classical emergentism are incompatible. I am required to show that this attack is unfounded and fails in its central presupposition, i.e., that the whole can be generated from a correct description of the agents involved. My conclusion is that even the best description of an actor or entity can never provide the result of the whole, whilst a good-enough description of the whole must contain that which determines the actor or entity. I conclude that the existence of a universal emergent principle has not been disproven and remains as a mechanism through which new entities, qualities, and relations are formed on manifold and relatively independent contextual levels of a hierarchized reality.

Chapter 4: Hierarchical Emergent Ontology (HEO) I begin with two short analyses, the non-reductivist concept of supervenience and the synthesis of the synchronic and diachronic aspects of emergence, this being an extended version of my article (Havlík 2020). Both are essential prerequisites to the formulation of UPE. The concept of supervenience as an exclusively reductive relation is rejected, with proof provided that supervenience is predominantly a non-reductive relationship. This is essential because non-reductive supervenience in its original Moore and Hare flavour can show how “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Supervenience is a merely functional relation, not an alternative to emergence, but when I reject fusion emergentism and accept a commitment that “parts exist inside the whole”, then there is still a legitimate question about the whole’s supervenience on its parts. If supervenience is a reductive relation, as Kim tried to prove, then it is impossible to show that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts. However, I show that the original nonreductive sense of supervenience is similar to cases in complex systems where parts in complex correlated interactions produce emergents described by non-reductive supervenience. The second prerequisite is the solution of the synchronic/diachronic dilemma. I reject those unilateral solutions which favour only synchronic or diachronic concepts because they are inconsistent with emergent natural processes. I suggest the necessity of unifying synchronic and diachronic concepts of emergence because these unified features are recognizable in many natural phenomena and organizational processes. I analyse pattern emergence in cellular automata as a suitable example for detailed analysis of the synchronic and diachronic approaches. I accept

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the standard commitments of type and token emergence and specify what is emergent from the computational point of view. I demonstrate that the developmental history of a pattern alone is insufficient as a decisive criterion for emergence and that we need more criteria for evaluating a pattern as an emergent entity. Many approaches concentrate on a pattern’s appearance as an essential aspect of its emergent nature but I seek to prove that their persistence is equally crucial. The “appearance” and “persistence” of patterns are both integral to an understanding of their autonomy and identity. These mutually conditioned aspects allow me to show how the whole’s autonomy persists in time under its parts’ persisting contribution. I prove that this process is a unification of synchronic slices in diachronic extension. It is only a cellular automaton model of emergent autonomy, but its general features are similar to those of natural emergent processes. These two essential prerequisites need be fulfilled before the formulation of UPE. Having done so, I discuss the roles and taxonomies of the available criteria for emergence. My criteria cannot be entirely new but I can distinguish them from others by showing why I reject some standard options and prefer others. What renders my system of criteria unique is that every criterion is offered in juxtaposition to its antithesis and tightly bound to the ensuing metaphysical concept of HEO. Crucial to my concept is the hierarchy of ontological levels. The hierarchical view of nature has recently come under heavy criticism with alternatives having been provided, such as domains or scales. I do not deny that the naive and oft-­ criticized hierarchy of levels connected with the special sciences’ complexity is too simplified and cannot appropriately express genuine natural hierarchies. However, this is no reason to reject such a crucial ontological concept, all the less so if this is motivated by a vision of solving the traditional problems of causality (top-down causality, over-determination, etc.). I seek to show that reality is a multi-level ontology, and that the levels exist not in an absolute sense, such as layers resting on top of one another, but that they can sprout from every fertile spot and boundlessly increase with the growth in degrees of freedom at every level. These multi-­ hierarchical complexities I call the “multi-level inverse pyramidal structure”. Consequently, the presuppositions to UPE are embedded in this HEO.  It may seem strange not to formally define such a universal principle. However, I believe it is sufficiently conceptually described by the presuppositions, a formal shape not being something which would add any new information. However, I do not assume that the metaphysical concept might seriously be accepted without thoroughly testing its ability to do explanatory or predictive work in science and this is the task of the rest of the book, engaging in a detailed discussion of different areas of the multi-­ hierarchical level of complex entities. The utility and practicality of the proposed HEO and UPE, in both explanation and prediction, are assessed and tested in three different fields: cellular automata, quantum Hall effects, and the neural network of the mind. These three areas are often employed to provide examples of emergence but my interest is more profound than simply illustrating suitable exemplars, instead going into details hitherto unanalysed and connecting the metaphysical concept with recent research on cellular

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automata, composite fermion theory, and the neurological analysis of the mind. These are not only examples but territories where UPE can be developed further. These analyses demonstrate, firstly, that there is a recognizable effect of the principle of emergence even in such disparate phenomena as the algorithmics of automata, physical phenomena, and biological neural networks, and, secondly, that similar emergence criteria are evaluated across the three different domains, with different processes being unified by the realization of one universal principle. Furthermore, the multi-hierarchical nature of such phenomena is proven, having been tested via the number of degrees of freedom, which serves as an objective criterion for the existence of hierarchy. I believe that such a metaphysical concept of UPE in the multi-level HEO will have an explanatory and predictive impact upon science and scientific metaphysics.

Acknowledgement

I thank everyone close to me for their direct and indirect help, discussions and support in the preparation of this book. I thank Denisa Šebestová and Michael Pockley for their help with the English version of the manuscript. This publication is the outcome of project 17-16370S, Reductionism and Emergence: Perspectives in Contemporary Philosophy and Methodology of Science, funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, conducted at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

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1 Reductionism and Holism ����������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.1 Reductionism “in Principle”? ����������������������������������������������������������    5 1.1.1 Reductionism������������������������������������������������������������������������    8 1.1.2 Holism����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   12 1.2 Downward Causation������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 1.2.1 Kim’s Arguments������������������������������������������������������������������   16 1.2.2 Sperry and Searle on the Rolling Wheel������������������������������   21 1.2.3 QMC and PDF Models of the Atomic Nucleus��������������������   24 1.2.4 Quarks, Tetraquarks, Pentaquarks����������������������������������������   27 1.3 Classical Reductionism and the Atomist Hypothesis�����������������������   32 1.3.1 Whole and Part, Supervenience and Epiphenomenality ������   36 1.3.2 Boundaries of Classical Reductionism ��������������������������������   39 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   42 2 Towards a Universal Principle of Emergence (UPE)����������������������������   49 2.1 Universal Principle of Emergence?��������������������������������������������������   49 2.1.1 What Is Emergence? ������������������������������������������������������������   52 2.1.2 Ontological and Epistemological Emergence����������������������   55 2.1.3 Conceptions of Ontological Emergence ������������������������������   60 2.1.4 Bottom-Up and Top-Down ��������������������������������������������������   61 2.1.5 Ontological and Causal Reducibility������������������������������������   63 2.1.6 Emergence1 and Emergence2����������������������������������������������   65 2.1.7 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������   69 2.2 Supervenience and Emergence ��������������������������������������������������������   70 2.2.1 The Supervenient Conception of Emergence�����������������������   73 2.2.2 Supervenience and Causality������������������������������������������������   79 2.2.3 The Non-supervenient Conception of Emergence����������������   82 2.2.4 Hierarchy as a Result of Dependency and Determination����������������������������������������������������������������   86

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2.3 Nominal, Weak and Strong Emergence��������������������������������������������   89 2.3.1 Nominal Emergence��������������������������������������������������������������   91 2.3.2 Strong Emergence����������������������������������������������������������������   93 2.3.3 Weak Emergence������������������������������������������������������������������   93 2.3.4 Ontological, Causal and Explanatory Reductionism������������   96 2.3.5 Complexity and Its Criteria��������������������������������������������������   97 2.3.6 Explanatory Autonomy ��������������������������������������������������������   98 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 3 Emergence in Physical Systems��������������������������������������������������������������  103 3.1 Contextual Emergence����������������������������������������������������������������������  105 3.1.1 A Quasiparticle as an Emergent Entity��������������������������������  107 3.2 Fusion Emergentism ������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 3.2.1 A Dynamic Approach to Emergence������������������������������������  110 3.2.2 Transformational Emergence (TE) ��������������������������������������  113 3.2.3 Radical (Fusion) Emergence������������������������������������������������  117 3.2.4 The Basal Loss Feature of Fusion Emergentism������������������  122 3.2.5 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������  124 3.3 Strong Emergence in Simple Physical Systems��������������������������������  124 3.4 Machretic Determination and Mutualism ����������������������������������������  129 3.5 The Computational and Combinatorial Approaches to Emergence������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  132 3.6 How Strong Is Strong Emergence and How Weak Is Weak Emergence? ������������������������������������������������������������������������  135 3.7 Emergence and Agent-Based Modelling������������������������������������������  139 3.8 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  146 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  148 4 Hierarchical Emergent Ontology (HEO)����������������������������������������������  151 4.1 Reductive and Nonreductive Supervenience������������������������������������  151 4.1.1 The Supervenience Tradition������������������������������������������������  152 4.1.2 The Functional Conception of Supervenience����������������������  154 4.1.3 Criticism of Kim’s Conception ��������������������������������������������  155 4.1.4 How to Be Good ������������������������������������������������������������������  156 4.1.5 Multiple Realizability: Many Ways to Be Good������������������  157 4.1.6 Token Identity? ��������������������������������������������������������������������  159 4.1.7 The Heritage of Moore, Hare and Kim��������������������������������  161 4.1.8 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������  162 4.2 Synchronic and Diachronic Concepts: Escaping the Dichotomy����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  164 4.2.1 The Core Issue Separating the Synchronic and the Diachronic����������������������������������������������������������������������������  166 4.2.2 The Hierarchy of Levels ������������������������������������������������������  168 4.2.3 Weak and Pattern Emergence�����������������������������������������������  170 4.2.4 Type and Token Emergence��������������������������������������������������  171

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4.2.5 What Is Emergent from the Computational Point of View?����������������������������������������������������������������������  173 4.2.6 Appearance and Persistence��������������������������������������������������  174 4.2.7 The Ontological Role of Patterns������������������������������������������  176 4.2.8 Diachronically Realized Synchronicity��������������������������������  179 4.2.9 Conclusion and Unifying Framework����������������������������������  181 4.3 Criteria of Emergence and HEO ������������������������������������������������������  181 4.3.1 Hierarchy������������������������������������������������������������������������������  185 4.3.2 Autonomy ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  186 4.3.3 Holism����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 4.3.4 Persistence����������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 4.3.5 Hierarchical Emergent Ontology (HEO)������������������������������  188 4.3.6 Level Hierarchy��������������������������������������������������������������������  189 4.3.7 Degrees of Freedom��������������������������������������������������������������  191 4.3.8 Inverted Pyramid Schema ����������������������������������������������������  192 4.3.9 Presuppositions to the UPE��������������������������������������������������  193 4.4 HEO and the Cellular Automaton (GOL) ����������������������������������������  196 4.4.1 Level Hierarchy in GOL ������������������������������������������������������  197 4.4.2 Base and Emergent in GOL��������������������������������������������������  201 4.4.3 Autonomy and Persistence in GOL��������������������������������������  203 4.5 HEO and Quantum Hall effects (QHE)��������������������������������������������  206 4.5.1 Level Hierarchy in QHE ������������������������������������������������������  208 4.5.2 Base and Emergent in QHE��������������������������������������������������  211 4.5.3 Autonomy and Persistence in QHE��������������������������������������  213 4.5.4 Holism and Higher Organizing Principles����������������������������  214 4.5.5 Emergent Dependency����������������������������������������������������������  215 4.6 HEO and the Neural Networks of the Mind (NNM)������������������������  216 4.6.1 The Neuron as a Fundamental Entity in NNM ��������������������  218 4.6.2 Intensity in NNM������������������������������������������������������������������  219 4.6.3 Synaptic Connection Types in NNM������������������������������������  220 4.6.4 Brain as the Home of NNM��������������������������������������������������  222 4.6.5 Level Hierarchy in NNM������������������������������������������������������  224 4.6.6 Base and Emergent in NNM ������������������������������������������������  227 4.6.7 Autonomy and Persistence in NNM ������������������������������������  227 4.7 HEO and Consciousness ������������������������������������������������������������������  229 4.8 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  239 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  241 Conclusion: Emergence and the Open Universe������������������������������������������  247 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  249

Chapter 1

Reductionism and Holism

Abstract  The introductory chapter is devoted to the debate between the proponents of the reductionist and holistic conceptions, presenting exemplars employed by either side. The aim is to show to what extent each approach is justified and where the limits of their validity lie. There is a significant difference between the strong programme of reductionism and reductionism “in principle”, suggesting that there was excess optimism in the original expectations of a successful reduction of the various special sciences to physics as a fundamental science; a presentation is made of the reasons that have led to a greatly more sceptical view. More detailed analyses of suitable examples, such as the periodic table, quantum models of the atomic nucleus, and the history of pentaquark discovery, demonstrate that the reductionist quest to derive the universe from first principles systematically fails. Arguments ultimately lead to the conclusion that, for reasons of principle, this goal can never be achieved. In addition to examples from chemistry and physics, attention is given to metaphysical arguments raised in support of both approaches: arguments from analytic metaphysics are raised against the possibility of emergent causal forces (Jaegwon Kim), and the famous rolling wheel argument in favour of top-down causality (Roger Sperry and John Searle). The implications of these arguments in the broader context of the causality of mental phenomena in the philosophy of mind can then be outlined. Finally, as regards the possibility of deriving the universe from a few fundamental principles, the limits of classical reductionism and the legitimacy of the holistic approach are established.

In an Internet discussion thread, a dispute was going on between the proponents of the reductionist and holistic world-views. Its detailed content is irrelevant, but of note was the mutual lack of understanding between the proponents of the respective viewpoints, a general trait underlying the misunderstanding which governs these debates. Proponents of the holistic view use a number of examples which they believe prove the reductionist view to be unsustainable and unable to explain many phenomena, ranging from quantum physics, the chemical properties of substances, to evolution. Reductionists are rather more cautious, employing specific examples to show the instruments at the disposal of present-day physics which may explain the given phenomena reductively. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 V. Havlík, Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8_1

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So who is right—the reductionists or the holists? Let us take a closer look at the essence of their mutual misunderstanding. Reductionists presume that they explain differing chemical properties when they appeal to the microstructure and its organization. Holists are not contented with such an explanation. They object that different chemical properties are indeed caused by differences in the organization and filling of orbits, but that this is a mere description, not an explanation of why such an organization is manifested through different properties. Holists demand an explanation in the form of a principle; they want to know the reason why something occurs the way it does. For the most part, reductionists either do not understand these demands, or find them rather disproportionate. Are chemical properties not explained through Schrödinger’s equation? It allows us to calculate any atom, and once we know how electrons are grouped in an atom’s orbits, it is clear how and why bonds between atoms occur, and equally clear what forms the basis of the physical and chemical properties of substances. What other explanation is there for which to strive? Disregarding the pragmatic, illustrative and analogical types of explanation, the most valuable explanation, in scientific terms, is the nomological-deductive type (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948). This type presumes a covering-law model of explanation, whereby a statement about a partial or general fact is explained only when it is deduced from other statements, which must include at least one scientific law. In this way, an explanation is transformed into the possibility of the logical deduction of a phenomenon from initial conditions and scientific laws. Thus, reductionists seem to be in the right, that is, presuming that they provide an explanation of chemical properties by appealing to Schrödinger’s equation and given initial conditions. How can a phenomenon be explained if not by revealing the lower-level mechanisms responsible for it? The reductionist position appears to be supported by the nomological-deductive model of scientific explanation. Holistic arguments seem only to be invoking the spirits of multiplicity, and building non-existent chasms between the microlevel and the macrolevel. Let us now see why this is not the case, and why such a conviction is illusory. A case in point may be, for example, the argument regarding the chemical properties of oxygen and ozone. The ozone molecule is formed by three oxygen atoms, unlike the common, stable oxygen molecule which consists of two atoms. The argument is that although it is one identical gas in terms of the type of atoms, the two differ substantially in their characteristics. These cannot be caused solely by the identical oxygen atoms, but rather by their organization within the molecule, and therefore the molecule as a whole. Thus, as it is only the molecule as a whole which is decisive for the chemical properties of oxygen or ozone, the holistic view gets the upper hand. Reductionism, on the other hand, cannot explain the difference in chemical properties solely on the basis of identical atoms and their potential organization in the molecule as a whole. However, reductionists argue that both the shape of the ozone molecule and its individual properties are, on the contrary, efficiently explained by the properties of the basic oxygen atom. Most chemical and physical properties of substances derive

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from valence electrons. Quantum theory can provide us with the orientation of orbits in space and allows us to calculate that the energy of a single full orbit is lower than that of two orbits with one electron. Consequently, links are formed between atoms and differences between a filled, as opposed to a non-filled orbit of the same atom, cause dramatic differences in substance qualities. Most physical and chemical properties are thus derived from the properties of valence electrons, these properties being a direct consequence of the properties of the electron itself. Thus, it seems to be enough to know the charge and weight of the electron, the atomic nucleus field, Schrödinger’s equation, and quantum mechanical principles in order to explain all physical and chemical properties of atoms and their compounds. Reductionists may argue that particles such as nucleons and electrons are, within their particle families, identical and mutually interchangeable, not manifesting any properties which differentiate them, or even properties which may manifest themselves in some chemical elements while remaining hidden in others. Yet still, it is only through these particles and their proportions that the diversity of chemical elements and their qualities exists. Electrons identical to the particles of the atom cloud and the same nucleons as the particles of the atomic nucleus, in particular proportions, form hydrogen atoms (atomic number 1) all the way through the periodic table to oganesson (atomic number 118). However, given that we truly understand how these constituent particle proportions are formed through theory, we would expect to be able to predict the existence and properties of as yet unknown elements. Such predictions of properties were presented by Mendeleev, the discoverer of the periodic law, and later by other theorists for some elements still unknown at the time and later confirmed as very good predictions. The reductionist approach to chemistry, such as lower-level physics, has thus been significantly strengthened and gained in cogency. On the other hand, as we have a reasonable understanding of the chemical transformation of substances on a much lower physical level, Schrödinger’s equation does not reveal the whole truth. For the proponents of a holistic approach, the difficulties of a purely quantum-mechanical derivation of the periodic table of elements, which show the current boundaries of the purely physical deduction of chemistry, are thus essential. Philosophical chemists such as Eric R. Scerri and R. F. Hendry, point to many fundamental problems within the reductionist approach (see Scerri 2011). I will take but one of these by way of illustration, the derivation of Madelung’s rule, which determines how electron orbits are filled in the construction of the electron shell of an atom. The problem that Scerri highlights is that the rule is derived empirically and there are exceptions to it which must be verified by calculation for each atom separately. This has a fairly simple explanation if we realize that an atom not subject to external action occupies a state with the lowest possible energy. The rule that all lower “subshells” must be filled first is sometimes broken due to the principle of the minimum energy of the atom as a whole. This is not surprising, since the basic principles of quantum theory are not violated, but from a reductionist point of view it must be strange that “we can to some extent recover the order of filling by calculating the ground state configurations of a sequence of atoms but still nobody has deduced the n + l rule from the principles of

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quantum mechanics.” (Scerri 2011, 78) For the supporters of the holistic approach, this means nothing more than that it is the crucial unit that determines how the subshells will be sequentially filled. However, concerns about overly metaphysically constituted concepts of “whole”, “emergence” or “downward causation” are understandable and must be constituted in terms of specific cases so that they do not have the taste of something scientifically superfluous. Another example that can be cited in favour of a holistic approach is the question of the bottom end of the periodic table, containing only artificially formed and observed elements which are extremely unstable and disintegrate quickly. For example, the discovery and assignment of elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 was endorsed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) at the end of 2015 and the hunt for element 119 has begun (Stoye 2016; Chapman 2017). What is relevant to the holistic approach is the fact that there is no upper limit set to the existence of such elements, and the existence is presumed of “stability islands”, on which even such heavy elements should manifest much more stable structures in time. If we really have such a good insight into what leads to the diversity of chemical elements’ properties, why then is the existence of further and further heavy elements and their stability a question of empirical research rather than theoretical prediction? In the case of new elements, scientists have only theoretical calculations which have resulted in many predictions which are based on the 6th row analogy of the periodic table. “Finally, I can conclude that in contrast to ‘oddly ordinary’ transactinide elements of the 6d block, the 7p elements would be predicted to exhibit a much different chemistry than their 6p analogues.” (Nash 2005, 3499) This might seem encouraging for reductionists, but in fact there is no clear prediction of their physical and chemical properties and they cannot be determined without empirical investigation. For example, there is a prediction that element Oganesson (118), although a member of noble gas group, may under normal conditions exist as a solid (see Nash 2005; Jerabek at al. 2018). The conclusion is, therefore, very sceptical from a reductionist point of view. If we compare, for example, successful predictions in astronomy based on Newtonian mechanics then, “as far as we know, there is nothing similar in chemistry regarding the prediction of a new element solely on the basis of quantum mechanics” (Chibbaro et al. 2014, 138). This means that the unambiguous deduction of such wholes’ properties is presently impossible and always requires and perhaps always will require corrections in the form of empirical verifications and additional inputs. As we will see in the following chapters, this lack of predictability leads to a weaker form of reductionism, which can be called “reductionism in principle,” providing only an “explanation in principle” and does not lead to all the details of higher units’ properties. However, this is problematic because it is often the details that determine the boundary between the existence and non-existence of higher units and their properties.

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1.1  Reductionism “in Principle”? As for the reduction of chemistry to physics, and in this particular case the deduction of the periodic table of elements from the principles of quantum mechanics, many other theorists question the prevailing reductionist belief that the periodic table is strictly deducible from quantum mechanics in all respects (Scerri 2007, 285). Not only is the deducibility of the basic principles unsuccessful in this case, but Scerri shows that approximate methods also fail (Scerri 1994, 168). In general, Hendry also expresses this irreducibility of chemistry to microphysics on the basis of a wider spectrum of literature, when he briefly summarizes: Quantum chemistry turns out not to meet the strict demands of classical reductionism, because its models bear only a loose relationship to exact atomic and molecular Schrödinger equations, and its explanations seem to rely on just the sort of chemical information that, in a classical reduction, ought to be derived. (Hendry 2010, 183)

The reductionist perspective either overlooks or underestimates a possible transition from quantum physics to classical physics. It is a false belief that if we were to overcome the practical difficulties of quantum mechanical calculations then we would get higher macroscopic structures and units. In this context, Robert Bishop emphasizes that “the relationship between quantum and classical physics is much more subtle than reductionism usually assumes” (Bishop 2010, 172) and he also shows why and how a purely quantum mechanical description is insufficient to derive higher structures. For example, it does not lead to the shape of molecules, which is so crucial to the chemical properties of substances. Isomers are one example, i.e. molecules that have identical chemical composition but different chemical properties depending only upon their structural arrangement (Bishop 2010, 172). Another example is to be found in pyramidal molecules, whose different shapes result from small perturbations dependent upon cooperation resulting from interaction with the environment. Therefore, “the concept of molecular structure seems to be in strong disagreement with the basis of quantum mechanics” (Chibbaro et al. 2014, 134–136). In other words, the mutual, relational arrangement is not generated by individual constitutive entities but is only a matter of the whole and its resulting stability. According to Bishop, this means that QM provides “necessary but not sufficient conditions for chemistry” (Bishop 2010, 174). The fact that chemistry is not fully reducible to physics is not as surprising to the scientific community as we would expect. The prevailing belief in its reducibility arose from the overly optimistic approach of some theorists (both physicists and philosophers) to the results of quantum theory. For example, in his influential article on British emergentism, McLaughlin refers to the prevailing paradigm of reductive materialism, which admits doubt only about the reducibility of mental properties: “While chemical properties are reducible and biological properties seem to be as well, the question still persists whether all mental properties are reducible.” (McLaughlin 1997, 34–35) In the 1990s, belief prevailed not only in the reduction of the special sciences to physics and the success of

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“strong reductionism” but also in the convincing claims to have overcome the ideas of emergentism: Given the achievements of quantum mechanics and these other scientific theories, there seems not a scintilla of evidence that there are emergent causal powers or laws in the sense in question; there seems not a scintilla of evidence that there are configurational forces; and there seems not a scintilla of evidence that there is downward causation from the psychological, biological, or chemical levels. (McLaughlin 1992, 54–55)

However, the belief in the non-autonomous position of the special sciences persists among proponents of reductionism and strong physicalism. The laws of the special science are considered only to be appropriate, pragmatic simplifications enabling the creation of “dictionaries” as a suitable means to the description of the phenomena studied in each specific field. The reason for the existence of these individual sciences is simply that they reflect our way of looking at nature. Consequently, these sciences’ entities and laws can claim neither autonomy nor a fundamental presence in the world. On the contrary, they are fully reducible to microphysics under a strong version of physicalism, subsumed by the presumption that “the nomological structure of the world is completely specifiable by fundamental physics.” (Loewer 2009, 222) Weinberg also talks about the status of the laws of the special sciences with great uncertainty and his view can be considered symptomatic. For instance, he claims that “there are no principles of chemistry that simply stand on their own, without needing to he explained reductively from the properties of electrons and atomic nuclei.” (Weinberg 2001, 115) At the same time, however, he admits that this holds for simple molecules, in which “chemical behavior, the way molecules behave chemically, is explained by quantum mechanics and Coulomb’s law, but we don’t really deduce chemical behavior for very complex molecules that way.” (Weinberg 2001, 17) Thus, we may believe that the difficulties are not principial but caused simply by the complexity of the calculations. After all, this is also suggested by Weinberg’s claim that there is an algorithm for such a calculation, enabling us to calculate anything in chemistry provided we have sufficiently quick calculating equipment and enough time. In this context we need to consider the status of the laws not only of chemistry but also of all the other sciences. Why, then, should only chemistry be reduced to physics – why not biological, psychological or social phenomena too? Still, to return to the issue of the ambiguity of Weinberg’s statements about the laws of the special sciences, Weinberg does attempt to maintain clear water between himself and the above option of “physical imperialism” (Healey 1979, Cartwright 1999, Chang 2015): he is sceptical about the possibility that “the physicist provides a set of laws of nature that explain everything else and all the other sciences appear to be offshoots of physics.” (Weinberg 2001, 40) However, he does believe in the explanations “in principle”. He says: I do believe there is a sense in which everything is explained by the laws of nature and the laws of nature are what physicists are trying to discover. But the explanation is an explanation in principle of a sort that doesn’t in any way threaten the autonomy of the other sciences. (Weinberg 2001, 40)

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It is not consistent to claim that a reductive explanation is merely an explanation “in principle”, posing no threat to the autonomy of each science whilst also saying that there are no autonomous principles of chemistry. The above quotes, which come from various of Weinberg’s talks and from different contexts, are contradictory: this may be explained in various ways, including his simply having changed his mind. However, my primary aim is not to focus on the consistency of his reductionist views: of greater relevance is this inconsistency itself, that is, as a general characteristic shrouding the unambiguous solution to the question of the laws of the special sciences in the context of the reductionist programme. I believe that this inconsistency may be attributed to the reductionist programme as such, an inconsistency which may be considered its general and common characteristic. There is a kind of duality: on the one hand, a reductive knowledge of the complex leads to a satisfactory revelation of deeper mechanisms governing phenomena; yet on the other hand, such knowledge no longer leads to such precise and complete mechanisms, the application of which could observe phenomena with unequivocal certainty. A consistent version of physical reductionism thus probably needs to question the autonomy of the special sciences, or show a possible way of reconciling reductionism only “in principle” whilst preserving the autonomy of the special sciences. In other words, such a consistent physical reductionism would need to show what reductionism “in principle” actually means and how the autonomy of the special sciences should be understood. The trouble with any “in principle” strategy, or reducibility in principle (RIP), is that while physical reductionists do not propose to do reduction in practice, there is no evident meaning of the term “in principle”. Crane and Mellor showed that “reducibility in practice is neither feasible nor to the point; while those who claim reducibility ‘in principle’ either beg the question or appeal to principles, of the unity of science or of microreduction, which modern physics itself denies.” (Crane and Mellor 1990, 191) However, since it transpires that such immodest reductionism fails in individual, specific cases, it is necessary to reconsider the unjustified conclusions of its alleged success in various fields of the special sciences. Let us mention only briefly the areas where consistent reductionism has failed. (1) The reduction of thermodynamic physics to statistical physics is one of the basic examples of a physical micro-­ explanation of phenomenological physical theory. Reduction is unattainable due to the existence of “parameters” that cannot be derived from fundamental theory without experiments and approximations (see Sklar 1999, 202; Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, 3; Batterman 2011, 1033; Bishop and Ellis 2020, 497–498). The authors call it a “famous reductionist legend” and convincingly explain why thermodynamics cannot be understood as a course-grained description of statistical mechanics which thus reduces system properties (e.g. temperature, fluidity, etc.) to molecular motion, as is sometimes assumed in textbooks (Bishop and Ellis 2020, 497–498); (2) The reduction of chemistry to physics is problematic for similar reasons, as explained above in more detail. (3) The assumption in biology and genetics that all biological properties can only be understood as a combination of molecular properties (see Rosenberg 1997, 464) is questioned because it is not enough to know the molecules themselves and their properties but also one need know their functional context

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(Laubichler and Wagner 2001, 66). (4) The assumption in agent/individual-based modelling, that macro-behaviour can be generated by simply defining the properties of individual entities or agents, is questioned because “population-level properties emerge from the interactions of adaptive individuals with each other and the environment” (Railsback and Grimm 2012, 10; Weisberg 2013). We need both “to look at what happens to the system because of what its individuals do and what happens to the individuals because of what the system does.” (Railsback and Grimm 2012, 10) Thus, although undoubtedly there have been significant advances in the micro-­ explanations of chemical bonds, molecular biology, genetics, neurobiology, and other scientific fields, one ought not succumb to the belief that the hyped expectations of classic strong reductionism are now gradually being fulfilled. In all the aforementioned cases, it seems that full knowledge of the properties of the microconstituents of higher units does not suffice because it is necessary to understand the existence of the unit contextually, depending on the parameters of organization that are neither deducible from the individual constituents nor are part of them. On the contrary, they appear only at the level of the organization of these constituents into higher units. Before I give a detailed guide as to how such different cases could be related and could be subject to some universal principle of emergence, it is necessary to focus on the reductionist and holistic traditions.

1.1.1  Reductionism The problem with the term “reductionism,” as with other such universal terms, lies in that it is used in many ways and in many different conceptual schemes. Because the boundaries can be set differently in the landscape of meaning, I want to focus only on the sharpest distinction between reductionism and emergentism. I do not distinguish in advance between ontological, methodological, and epistemological reductionism (e.g., Murphy 2009, 4, 2010, 82), or semantic, fundamentalist, and scientific reductionism (Gillett 2016), or other possible variants of reductionism and physicalism. I assume that reductionism generally must commit to the view that “higher-level entities are nothing but their constituents” or, similarly, “wholes are nothing but their parts.” Usually, we call such a commitment an ontological commitment (in the Quinian tradition) because it introduces into our ontology certain existing entities, such as parts, wholes, constituents, etc. It is, therefore, an ontological commitment and thus, indirectly, ontologically defined reductionism. In this sense, the ontological commitment is primary and it gives meaning to all other possible derived variants of reductionism, such as methodological and epistemological, causal and conceptual, or semantic and scientific. The ontological assumption of the arrangement of entities then results in the organization and method of reductionist research and the belief that adequate theoretical knowledge of higher-level entities must be reducible to the theoretical knowledge of their constituents. In this sense, ontological reductionism is decisive as the

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primary assumption of the structure of things. One can fully agree with the demand that ontological focus must be founded in the concepts and evidence supplied by our best scientific theories, explanations, or models, rather than being driven or framed by alien ontological accounts designed for other purposes. (Gillett 2016, 17)

Our intuitive conviction of part-whole reductionism is justified by the success of the atomic hypothesis (e.g. Healey 1991, 398; Kim 1993, 77). This establishes a strong tradition of reductionism in which the examined entities (wholes) may be distributed into more elementary building blocks (constituent elements or parts), enabling us to explore such wholes on a simpler, more elementary level. The possibility of understanding complex structures through examining their parts also results in the presumption of a possible reduction, transformation and expression of a complex whole through its simpler parts. A whole is explained by being shown to be nothing but the parts, interrelated in a certain manner ... microreduction requires that compound elements (objects composed of parts) and their properties be explainable in terms of the parts and their interrelations. (Scharf 1989, 602)

In this strong form of microreduction, the phrase “nothing but” is significant, convincing us that a whole is nothing but the parts of which it is formed. In a similar vein, Searle claims that the basic intuition that underlies the concept of reductionism seems to be the idea that certain things might be shown to be nothing but certain other sorts of things. Reductionism, then, leads to a peculiar form of the identity relation that we might as well call the “nothing-­ but” relation: in general, A’s can be reduced to B’s, iff A’s are nothing but B’s.” (Searle 1992, 112–113)

Similarly, Gillett seeks a much more legitimate position for scientific reductionism by introducing a “Collectivist Ontology”, assuming that scientific reductionists make two commitments. First, “that the powers and properties/relations of aggregated individuals are determined only by other entities at the relevant component level or still lower levels”, and secondly, “that the determination of these new properties/relations and powers of aggregated individuals is continuous across both simpler and more complex collectives.” (Gillett 2016, 116) However, the attempt to enable scientific reductionism to maintain the macro-­ world’s legitimacy within a collectivist ontology is only partially possible. If everything is determined at a given or lower level, then either there must be some reason why the determination at a given level cannot be replaced by a determination at a lower level or that the determination at a lower level must be accepted as more fundamental. At the same time, acknowledging the existence of a higher-level determination that could not be replaced by a lower-level determination would be abandoning the reductionist position, while a consistent approach at each level inexorably leads to fundamentalism regarding the starting level and its entities, which somewhat calls into question the collectivist ontology itself. I therefore believe that it is not so easy to get rid of the fundamentalist image of “atoms-in-the-void” from which Gillett wants to protect scientific reductionism

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(Gillett 2016, 15). However, in accordance with reductionism, Gillett assumes that collective properties and powers are “nothing more than” component entities together (Gillett 2016, 115). Finally, Humphreys calls this ontological commitment, upon which micro-­ reductionism is based, generative atomism, because “everything in the world is generated from combinations of elementary physical objects and their properties.” (Humphreys 2016, 2) The only difference is that Humphreys strengthens the generative or constructionist way of building the macro-world. However, both the reductionist and constructionist ideas are present in generative atomism. The aforementioned ontological commitment of reductionism differs somewhat from some definitions of ontological reductionism: “that higher-level entities are nothing but the sum of their parts” (e.g. Murphy 2009, 4, 2010, 80). This is due to the fact that the emphasis on aggregativity is somewhat excessive in this context. Strong reductionism could not be a programme for physical research into particles, and chemical bonds could not be explained reductively on the basis of quantum mechanics, etc. In none of these examples does the assumption of the aggregation of parts appear, e.g. that a particle decaying into other more elementary particles contains its constituents only as a “sum” of its parts or possibly that chemical bonds are formed only due to a certain aggregation (i.e. sum) of electrons on valence orbits, etc. Strong ontological reductionism is much more sophisticated and, as we have seen in Scharf, Searl, Gillett and Humphreys, scientific reductionism assumes a combination of parts, their properties and internal bonds. Thus, strong ontological reductionism does not make the old mistake of simply summing parts into their wholes, but holds the assumption that higher entities are nothing but their constituents, whether they use aggregativity or dynamic internal relations to form higher units. Crucial to strong reductionism is the assumption that a knowledge of constituents and their properties is sufficient to derive, generate or calculate higher units or entities. In this respect, strong reductionism fails. The other side of this approach is its effort to unify, to find a single basis behind all the diversity of phenomena, entities, substances and properties. It is an effort to express diversity by reducing it to a unifying basis. It is prevalently this tradition which has allowed modern physics to proceed towards an ever more unified physical theory, a “theory of everything”. The first modern-day physicists to voice this idea were Oppenheim and Einstein (Dyson 2006). In their view, the ultimate goal of physicists is to arrive at universal and elementary laws from which the universe could be derived through pure deduction. Direct followers of this tradition include Weisskopf, Hawking, Weinberg, Penrose, Witten, Gross, and others. Steven Weinberg defends the reductionist programme of physics by an illustrative notion of points representing individual scientific principles, with arrows entering each point, starting out from all other principles which are necessary for explaining it. The resulting image is thus not formed by individual isolated clusters of arrows representing individual logically independent sciences; in fact, all the points are connected by arrows so that if we trace the arrows upstream to their source, all of them are shown to originate from the same place, the final principle of nature (Weinberg 2001). Dyson terms this shared source “a finite set of fundamental

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equations” (Dyson 2006, 31–33). The reductionist programme of physics is thus a search for both a common source of all explanations and a unifying bond for all of modern science. For instance, Scharf discusses a programme of unified science at the turn of the 80s and 90s in relation to problems of quantum theory. He claims that “the program for the unity of science is a program for universal microreduction; its success depends upon the proposition that every compound element is a structured whole.” (Scharf 1989, 608) This view is not far distant from the original attempt at forming a unified science within the scope of logical positivism, when—in Oppenheim and Putnam’s words—“the only method of attaining unitary science that appears to be seriously available at present is micro-reduction. … the assumption that unitary science can be attained through cumulative micro-reduction recommends itself as a working hypothesis.” (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958, 8) I have already shown that this ideal of the unification of the sciences on the basis of microreduction fails, not only in the case of the individual special sciences, but also in the case of physics itself as a hypothetically fundamental science (e.g. Anderson 1972, 1995; Crane and Mellor 1990; Schweber 1993; Sklar 1999; Batterman 2011). At the same time, it is necessary to reject the strategy of so-called neoreductionism, which seeks a suitable extension of physics, so that, for example, the reduction of chemistry to physics is possible. It is evident that the expansion of everything that can be considered as physics will then have no reasonable limit and will instead be about “the expansion of a theoretical framework to new domains, not the reduction of those domains.” (Bishop 2010, 175) The conceptual ambiguity of the content of “physicalism” has already been pointed out by Hempel (1969) and later by others, e.g. Earman (1975), Crane and Mellor (1990), Crane (1991), Loewer (2001), and Papineau (1991, 2001). Is reductionism really as successful as we presume it to be? Furthermore, is its role in present-day science as significant as is assumed? Although some view the current situation optimistically as a complete transition of science from the age of reductionism to the age of emergence (Laughlin 2005, 208), while others proceed much more cautiously, such as those in the ongoing and undecided new “battle of the ages” (Gillett 2016, 10), there is no doubt that there are many exemplary cases across different fields of the special sciences that allow for an unprecedented unifying interpretation using the universal principle. Thus the question is not whether the battle has been completed, is in progress, or a peace treaty will be signed. Every option assumes opponents who present irreconcilably different heuristics of ontology and interpretation of the world. In reality, however, they differ in only one thing: the acceptance or rejection of the above ontological commitment to reductionism. It goes beyond all conceivable examples and evidence applicable to a decisive battle. Reductionism, with the ontological commitment that “the whole is nothing but its parts”, is in a much more difficult position because a single falsification case is enough to win for emergentism. However, this does not mean a radical change in the world and the replacement of successful results from reductionist research. It is only a self-reflection of borders that cannot be crossed and that must be accepted with piety.

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Therefore, I believe that reductionism has retained its dominant position thanks to skilfully papering over the cracks, fully compensating for the concealed flaw through its abilities, which it flaunts, one after another. In other words, the reductionist programme is successful, but it has its limits. I shall show how these limits prevent it from succeeding fully and, in so doing, clear a path for holism.

1.1.2  Holism Thus far we have considered holism an alternative to reductionism. However, holism is a relatively broad platform which, particularly in relation to reductionism, adopts the specific form of emergentism. In emergence theory, the originally Aristotelian holistic assumption that “a whole is more than a sum of its parts” is elaborated in much more detail, taking into consideration not only the many different links between a system and its parts but also the processual and temporal character plus the potential fusion of entities which impact the system as a whole. The holistic approach cannot lean back on a comparable verifiable tradition in the empirical sciences. Rather, it is linked to metaphysics, stressing—unlike reductionism—the aspects of the whole and the wholeness and non-reducibility of its properties to more elementary entities. The individuality and uniqueness of a whole disappear if we try to express it not as unified, but rather as formed of mutually interchangeable, indistinguishable components. This tradition of thought is also ultimately supported by the natural sciences. We first find it when attempting to explain the constitutive principles of sciences, such as chemistry and biology, in search of an answer to the question of whether life can be fully expressed through physico-chemical laws alone, or whether, in order to understand life as such, it is necessary to adopt the anti-reductionist substance of the vitalists, i.e. “entelechy”. Beyond biology, the one and only realm dominated by holistic approaches is that of consciousness and mind: the questions and problems they pose and their place in nature are issues which lead to a consideration of the impact of reductionism and emergentism on present-day evolution theory. Thus, the traditions of reductionist and emergentist or holistic thought rarely come together. Reductionists confirm their conviction of the truth of their programme not only during the search for ever-more fundamental physical entities, from molecules and atoms through elementary particles to hypothetical superstrings, but likewise in the realms of sciences such as chemistry, dominated by the conviction of many physicists, such as Weinberg and Hawking, that all chemistry can be reduced to quantum theory physics; and even in evolutionary biology, where the prevalent view for many years had been that Mendelian genetics could easily be reduced to molecular genetics, reductionists view Mendelian genes and their properties as nothing but nucleic acids and their properties. However, it has become clear that a simple reduction of Mendelian laws to the laws of molecular genetics is impossible, and that the two theories cannot easily be connected (Rosenberg 1997).

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Proponents of emergentism do not dismiss those mechanisms discovered at the lower levels of a number of phenomena. However, they claim that in itself, knowing the properties of entities at such lower levels and the mechanisms in which they are involved is not sufficient to provide us with the properties of the whole. We cannot obtain the properties of a live cell based on the properties of its molecules, or the properties of a whole organism based on the properties of its individual cells, or even the properties of consciousness and mind based on the properties of neurons. These arguments may sound too metaphysical, even seeming to purposely use examples which cannot as yet be scientifically explained due to their complexity, implying that finding relevant answers is but a question of time. Thus, emergentist arguments are not viewed as principial, but rather as only temporally dependent upon the abilities of science. Recently, we have been able to observe that the purity of these two approaches has become rather questionable, causing theoreticians in a number of scientific realms to adopt more moderate positions. This has doubtless been influenced by the development of those branches of science which study organization, complexity and non-linear behaviour, such as theories regarding chaos, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, connectionist models, non-linear dynamics, the simulation of artificial life and artificial intelligence, etc. As regards emergence, most of these disciplines are united by a shared presumption of a dynamic systemic theory and non-linear systems. “Claims of emergence run through physics (both macro- and micro-) as well as biology (both evolutionary and molecular) and the mind sciences (both neuroscience and computation-based).” (Silberstein and McGeever 1999, 184) This focussed research into emergent phenomena results in a reconsideration of purely reductionist or holistic positions, leading ultimately, for example, to the consensus position of physicalist antireductionism in the recent philosophy of evolutionary biology (Rosenberg 1997, 370). Physicalist antireductionism aims to unite the positions of physicalism (i.e. the claim that biological systems are nothing but physical systems) and antireductionism (i.e. the claim that biological systems cannot be fully expressed only in the terms of the physical sciences (Rosenberg 1997, 360). A similar position can be found in philosophy of the mind, where it is termed more mildly as non-reductive physicalism, acknowledging the autonomy of mental states and the impossibility of reducing them to a physical basis of the mind. Thus, physics is deprived of its role of explaining all phenomena, but remains the general basis of all phenomena. Physicalist antireductionism respects the fact that biological systems as wholes manifest properties which cannot be derived from knowing the properties of the physical constituents of these systems alone. Beyond those biological systems which manifest life, we may extend the position of physicalist antireductionism to the inanimate sciences, including the whole realm of physics. This would mean proving that physicalism does not presuppose reductionism, which would result in a viewpoint unacceptable to many physicists. Not to all physicists, though – some, generally solid and condensed state specialists, argue in favour of emergent phenomena (Leggett 1987; Anderson 1995; Laughlin 1999; Healey 2010). This current of opinion can now be considered the official scientific opposition to the aforementioned strong reductionism (Weinberg and

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others). Recently, an increasingly common view has been that quantum mechanics provides the most convincing evidence for ontological emergence (e.g. Healey 1991; Silberstein and McGeever 1999; Kronz and Tiehen 2002; Hüttemann 2005) and implies a need to abandon reductionism, at least that reductionism known from classical mechanics (e.g. Redhead 1990; Mellor and Crane 1990). Physicalist antireductionism can cope with the complexity of those many phenomena in our world which cannot simply be reduced to the behaviours or properties of lower-­ level entities. However, such a position is much more acceptable to biologists than to physicists. To accept physicalist antireductionism in terms of physical science is, in a sense, to abandon the notion of the cognitive and explanatory powers of physics. Einstein never adopted the principial probabilities in quantum theory, being convinced of the cognitive powers of physics and of the non-probabilistic character of reality, arguing for the incompleteness and hidden parameters of quantum theory. Similarly, we might expect that we could demand the same type of rescue as regards reductionism. For instance, physics could be complemented by certain transitional laws or principles which would allow for reductionism even in such cases; or this may simply be the consequence of a currently imperfect mathematical apparatus which only presently prevents us from reducing such complex phenomena. However, the possibility of the existence of “bridge laws” (see Nagel 1961) is now considered very unlikely; instead, the “completeness of physics” is assumed (e.g. Loewer 2001). Neither, probably, can mathematics be suspected of imperfection because many emergent phenomena are characterized instead by parameters that need to be empirically added to mathematical equations without being deducible from the initial assumptions. In any case, the physicalist opposition in solid state and condensed matter physics to strong reductionism is far more significant than the earlier anti-reductionism of the special sciences, such as chemistry, biology, psychology, and neurophysiology. The fact that the exemplifications of the underlying principles of many higher-­ level phenomena, such as the diverse properties of chemicals, biological properties and processes of life, mental states and consciousness, can be explored at the lowest levels of physics is a fascinating opportunity to uncover the universal principle of creativity. If physics itself, often considered a fundamental science, is able to examine the principle which creates both order and the emergence of new entities, the “wholes”, and their new properties and causal forces, then this must be more seriously respected than similarly perceived metaphysical intuitions. The creativity of nature thus becomes an integral part of fundamental entities, without the need to invoke any form of dualism or make concessions to scientific naturalism. I find it fascinating that the metaphysical belief, which is hard to justify, in the existence of a universal principle of emergence, was expressed by the key physicists of the 20th century, with intentions similar to those I express, e.g. in opposition to the reductionist dream of searching for the “God particle”, Anderson calls emergence a “God Principle” operating at every level of reality, and thus takes it as an essential aspect of our understanding of the universe (Anderson 1995, 2019–2020). In addition to these ontological assumptions of emergence as a universal principle, this “God

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Principle” also presupposes its methodological role in justifying the irreducible position of the special sciences, i.e. facts which strong reductionists, despite some of their proclamations, doubt. Anderson sees that “the process of ‘emergence’ is in fact the key to the structure of twentieth century science, on all scales.” (Anderson 1995, 2019) Although many philosophers moderate this universalist perspective of naturalistically and scientifically inspired metaphysics and point to the multiplicity and great differentiation of the term “emergence” used in many different and, in their opinion, inconsistent contexts (Humphreys 2016), or many different ideas of emergence stemming from philosophical and scientific discussions (Gillett 2016, 174), I believe it is philosophically legitimate to seek universality despite diversity. On the contrary, it would be strange if the universality of emergence as a principle were not supported by unfettered diversity and differentiation. However, we cannot understand this as proof of the incompatibility of details, but instead as proof of individual instances of universality. Before attempting to show in more detail some concrete examples of phenomena which cause many to accept physicalist antireductionism or non-reductive physicalism, we need to pay attention to the metaphysical argument which is raised against any form of non-reductive physicalism,1 and thus even against emergentism as such. The basic thesis of non-reductive physicalism in the philosophy of mind is that despite the mind being physical in a sense, mental properties are neither identical nor reducible to physical properties as they are said to possess autonomous causal powers. In this sense, mental properties are the emergent properties of physical entities. Generally speaking, although everything has a purely physical basis, there are properties of wholes on higher levels which cannot be expressed solely through physical properties, or reduced to physical properties. These are autonomous entities with non-reducible downward causation.

1.2  Downward Causation In one of his seminal articles, Making Sense of Emergence (1999), Jaegwon Kim focusses critically on this very doctrine of emergentism, postulating the non-­ reducibility of the causal powers of emergent entities or properties. Based on a logical analysis of the causal links between the individual levels he then arrives at the conclusion that emergent properties are only epiphenomenal phenomena, i.e. without causal effects. Thus, emergentism as such is incoherent (Kim 1999, 25). Kim’s critique is fundamental in this respect and cannot be disregarded. Interestingly, Kim distinguishes between diachronic and synchronic variants as two types of top-down reflexive causality, with the claim that the diachronic variant does not lead to

1  Ontologically or metaphysically, the positions of emergentism and non-reductive physicalism are indistinguishable (see Crane 2000, 84, 2001, 209).

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problems since it is a type of causality, while “the synchronic kind is problematic and it is doubtful that it can be given a coherent sense” (Kim 1999, 30–31). In our case, it will be important to show how to deal with Kim’s arguments without accepting only the diachronic solutions which seek a way out in a consistent rejection of level hierarchy and synchronicity (e.g. Humphreys 1997a, 2016; Guay and Sartenaer 2016). Kim’s argument consists of two parts. First, the analysis of causal links between levels shows that causal links are always reduced to an emergent base, i.e. to the fundamental level. The second part of the argument denies the possibility of causal effects at a non-fundamental level. Consequently, emergent entities (if they exist at all) are causally inert, and thus also inert in terms of explication (Kim 1999, 33). They become mere epiphenomena floating above their causally fundamental, basal level. A brief reconstruction of Kim’s argument follows:

1.2.1  Kim’s Arguments Let us assume that property P1 in time t1 causes property P2 in time t2 on a non-­ fundamental level L.  If P2 is a non-fundamental-level property, it must have an emergent base EB2 on level L-1. According to Kim, there are two possible answers to the question why P2 is manifested on non-fundamental level L at time t2: 1) P2 is in t2 because it is caused by P1 in t1 2) P2 must be manifested in t2 with nomological necessity because there is emergent base EB2. Thus, there are two causes of property P2 being manifested in time t2. This questions the causal relationship between P1 and P2. What, then, should we consider as the cause of the emergent property – the causal relationship within the given level, or the emergent base of this property on a lower level? Kim believes that the only way to maintain a causal relationship between P1 and P2 in the first place is the presumption that P1 has an effect upon P2 through its emergent base EB2. This leads Kim to the general principle, saying that “to cause any property (except those at the very bottom level) to be instantiated, you must cause the basal conditions from which it arises.” (Kim 1999, 24) This part of the argument is termed “the principle of downward causation”. The latter part of Kim’s argument is aimed at denying a causal link outside the fundamental level, thus finding that emergent properties are causally inert and epiphenomenal. If we proceed with analysis of the above, it is clear that property P1 is a higher-­ level property and needs to have emergent base EB1 on lower-level L-1. Kim develops his argument as follows: Emergent base EB1 seems to be usurping the status of the cause of emergent base EB2, and thus of property P2. If EB1, being the emergent base of P1, is nomologically sufficient for EB2, then we may say that EB1 is nomologically sufficient for EB2 and can be considered its cause.

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The first and second parts of the argument lead Kim to conclude that the following causal effects must be rejected in order to take into account the objection regarding overdetermination: (1) Causal action at level L between emergent properties P1 and P2, because P2 as an emergent property has an emergent base EB2, which is fully sufficient for the manifestation of the property P2. (2) Downward causation between emergent property P1 and the emergent base EB2, because the sufficient cause of EB2 is emergent base EB1 of emergent property P1. Thus, the causal chain from EB1 to EB2 may not contain P1 as an intermediate member, and the emergent bond between EB1 and P1 may not be understood as causal at all. Emergent property P1 is therefore superfluous in terms of its causal and emergent base; EB1 can be understood as a sufficient cause of EB2. (3) If we still insist on a causal effect between P1 and P2, or on a causal effect between P1 and EB2, then we would have to deal with the objection regarding “overdetermination”, because the above analysis shows that the causal effects of the base (EB2 and EB1) are sufficient for the manifestation of the emergent properties (P1 and P2) and the role of other causes is unacceptable according to this logical analysis. Kim believes that should P1 remain the cause of EB2, and thus also of P2, it would need to be supported by a positive argument. In his opinion, this simple objection has not yet been resolved through any counterargument (Kim 1999, 32). An integral part of Kim’s argument is the presumption that emergent properties supervene synchronically on their emergent base. Some authors thus seek a solution in denying the role of synchronic supervenience in the case of emergence (e.g. Humphreys 1997a, b, 2016; O’Connor 2000; Guay and Sartenaer 2016) and are convinced of the need to abandon the synchronicity and metaphysics of hierarchical levels of reality and offer only a diachronic conception of emergence. I do not share such solutions owing to their one-sidedness, and I will show later why the unity of synchronic and diachronic aspects of emergence, as well as the hierarchical ontology of levels, is important to a consistent metaphysics of emergent change. I therefore omit here the recent and extensively elaborated landscape of various strategies for dealing with Kim’s arguments, whether in terms of physicalism, non-reductive physicalism, emergentism or substance dualism. Suffice to say that the simple counter-argument to Kim states that for P1 to remain the cause of EB2, and thus also of P2, it will suffice if P1 cannot be causally “replaced” by its base EB1. The way of ensuring that P1 is not causally equivalent to EB1 is simple. It is enough for P1 to be in any way causally above EB1, and the sense in which P1 may play exactly this role lies in its not being causally reducible to its basal level EB1. This is exactly the claim of non-reductive physicalism, as well as the doctrine of emergentism. Being an emergent entity, P1 has causal consequences which its microlevel base EB1 cannot have. However, it is clear that in order for a counter-argument to be sufficiently convincing, it must justify why emerging entities are not causally reducible to their basal levels, and how two seemingly contradictory assumptions can be consistently unified:

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1 . Upward determination: emergent entities are determined by their base. 2. Intralevel and downward causation: emergent entities are not epiphenomena, but have their own irreducible, autonomous causal powers. We shall deal with this demanding task in subsequent chapters. For the time being, I consider it sufficient to emphasize only the fundamental difference in metaphysical assumptions. Kim understands the emergent entity as a supervenient epiphenomenal property on its emergent base, and therefore their relationship is not causal, but only synchronically supervenient. In the counter-argument, however, I consider the relationship between the emergent entity and its base to be not only synchronically supervenient but also diachronically persistent. Yet what all this means in terms of ontological relations, synchronicity, diachronicity, causality and identity will need to be shown in detail. It will be necessary to find a form of emergence, as an ontologically universal principle, which plays its part in emergent ontology. At this point, let us note simply that Kim receives as a result of his logical analysis only what he accepts in advance. He views emergence merely as synchronic supervenience the result of which is a belief in the epiphenomenality of all causal phenomena. Kim claims that: All observable phenomena are macrophenomena in relation to the familiar theoretical objects of physics; hence, our first claim entails that all causal relations involving observable phenomena – all causal relations familiar from daily experience – are cases of epiphenomenal causation. (Kim 1993, 95)

Kim’s concept of mereological supervenience, or “microdeterminism”, claims that “In this global microdeterministic picture there is no place for irreducible macrocausal relations.” (Kim 1993, 97) Ultimately, this means that all levels of reality are reducible to a basic, fundamental level, all else being mere epiphenomenal supervenience on the actual causal processes of this fundamental level. While in some cases he formulates such a position very carefully – “Wouldn’t the same argument show that all properties that supervene on basic physical properties are epiphenomenal, and that their causal efficacy is unintelligible?” (Kim 1998, 46) – in others he is much more straightforward, such as in formulation of the principle of downward causation: “To cause any property (except those at the very bottom level) to be instantiated, you must cause the basal conditions from which it arises.” (Kim 1999, 24) I believe that such an ontological or metaphysical position is extremely difficult both to defend and to adopt. Kim’s ambiguous attitude can be documented in a parallel text, where he reacts to authors’ criticism, such as in Van Gulick (1992), Burge (1993) and Baker (1993), Kim claiming that “The exclusion-based arguments … do not generalize across micro-macro levels” (Kim 1998, 84) and therefore that “then macroproperties can, and in general do, have their own causal powers, powers that go beyond the causal powers of their microconstituents” (Kim 1998, 85), which clearly contradicts the generality of previous statements. Here, Kim wants to distinguish the hierarchy of n-order properties from the micro-macro hierarchy and states that “microphysical, or mereological, supervenience does not track the micro-macro hierarchy any more than the realization relation does” (Kim 1998, 86). On a related

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matter, he even claims that, “In general, supervenient properties and their base properties are instantiated by the same objects and hence are on the same level” (Kim 1998, 86), thus breaking with the traditional distinction between supervenient and base properties that cannot share the same ontological level. Nevertheless, he admits the validity of the argument within a given level (i.e. intra-level causal exclusion) against all supervenient properties, i.e. biological, geological, chemical and other properties within the special sciences (see Kim 1998, 87). However, the consistency of Kim’s position is not crucial to the hypothetical assumption of consistent micro-­ reductionism if causality were to be found only at the bottom-most level. From the point of view of the current standard model of particle physics, we would have to admit causality only to the fundamental level of subatomic particles, i.e. the level of quarks and leptons. If we subscribe to Kim’s mereological supervenience argument, causal effects belong only to this level, everything else being only synchronically epiphenomenal phenomena. Not only is such a metaphysical conception likely to result in paradoxical consequences; as indicated by many authors (e.g. Churchland 1989), there is the non-negligible possibility of this subatomic level of quarks and leptons likewise being merely epiphenomenal in relation to the possible existence of further, ever-deeper levels.2 The idea of the absence of a fundamental level at all is thus at odds with Kim’s way of arguing. Assuming real causality only for the fundamental level and the derived epiphenomenality of all higher levels is incompatible with the idea of their possibly infinite arrangement. We should therefore respect the fact that although we do not know the organization of the universe in terms of ontologically distinguishable levels, we are able to count causal relationships as an important part and tool of the special sciences and scientific metaphysics. This gives us a relatively good reason to try, regardless of the possible existence or non-existence of such a supposed most-fundamental level, to explain these causal forces as the properties of sufficiently rigid entities in the individual ontological levels of reality. Then, whether the structure of ontological levels is finite or infinite, it makes sense to examine how individual entities, as relatively rigid inhabitants of individual levels, acquire causal forces, the action of which is then a source of the dynamics of change at a given level and across levels. We can therefore consider causality at various levels as a legitimate premise and a tool of scientific and metaphysical explanation. The crucial question, however, is which types of links and relations need to be included under causality. The issues discussed include, above all, what type of links can be assumed between the individual ontological levels. For example, is the relation between the constitutive parts and the whole it creates a causal relation? Is this type of bond necessarily a bottom-up bond, from the lower level of constituents to 2  e.g. “… consider the possibility that, for any level of order discovered in the universe, there always exists a deeper taxonomy of kinds and a deeper level of order in terms of which the lawful order at the antecedent level can be explained. It is, as far as I can see, a wholly empirical question whether or not the universe is like this, like an ‘explanatory onion’ with an infinite number of concentric explanatory skins. If it is like this, then then are no basic or ultimate laws to which all successful investigators must inevitably be led …” (Churchland 1989, 293–294)

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the higher level of the whole? Furthermore, if we say that the whole affects its parts, is it also a causal relation, in this case downward? For example, Kim’s reflections on downward causation are considerably influenced by the presumption of supervenience and the transitivity of causation. Kim considers such a causal link absurd: But how is it possible for the whole to causally affect its constituent parts on which its very existence and nature depend? If causation or determination is transitive, doesn’t this ultimately imply a kind of self-causation, or self-determination—an apparent absurdity? (Kim 1999, 28)

In these analyses, Kim seems to rely too much on logic alone, disregarding empirical facts against which some assumptions need to be abandoned or changed. Logical facts are independent of the state of the world and therefore the world does not have to respect them, although their role in the systematization and consistency of knowledge is irreplaceable. Therefore, it is a question of the extent to which we should follow the obligations arising from that logical analysis which we seek to apply to ongoing processes which are independent of logic. Gillett is similarly critical of Kim and other authors, arguing that while they have rejected semantic models and focused on ontology, they still persist in using the tools of the “functionalist” machinery developed for different phenomena. (Gillett 2016, 11). To this end, I prioritise the ontic nature of ongoing events over logical analyses derived from their overly idealized models. In principle, I accept the two commitments made by Humphreys: 1) [that] a robustly ontic attitude towards emergent properties, rather than the more common logical approaches, can give us a sense of what emergent features might be like. 2) stop thinking of [emergent] issues exclusively in terms of mental properties, and to look for examples in more basic sciences. (Humphreys 1997a, 15)

If the whole really influences those parts of which it is constituted, then this must be accepted as a necessary fact and subjected to our conceptual means of description. We should respect such a fact with natural piety, as Samuel Alexander originally said of emergent qualities (Alexander [1920] 1950, 46–47). By this, however, I do not mean giving up on the effort to reveal such principles, or even accepting the fact that they are undetectable in nature and resistant to scientific research, but simply accepting the common fact that the causes of phenomena must be respected. If, for example, the synchronic relations were of a different ontological character than causal ones, then it would be necessary to take into account their constitutive influence on the part and the whole. This will be discussed in more detail in later chapters. However, to show in more detail how Kim’s logical analyses of the supervenient conception of emergence clash with Humphreys’ preference for the ontic attitude to logic, I shall share a few examples which may shed light on this clash.

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1.2.2  Sperry and Searle on the Rolling Wheel Whether to understand systemic properties as a source of new causal forces or to try to prove their epiphenomenality can be well illustrated by the example of the rolling wheel presented by neuroscientist Roger Sperry (1969, 1980), one of the first advocates of top-down causality. This illustrative example was later developed by John Searle who, as an opponent of epiphenomenalism, sought to demonstrate the autonomy of the causal forces of systemic properties (Searle 1992, 2001). Searle claims: The mere fact that a system feature is fixed by the micro elements does not show that the system feature is epiphenomenal. On the contrary, we saw how consciousness could be fixed by neuronal behavior and still not be epiphenomenal. (Searle 2001, 508–509)

Searle’s concept of emergence will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, but his attempt to illustrate systemic features between the macro and micro levels is sufficiently instructive in this case (Searle 1992, 2001). Let us consider a wheel rolling down a hill. The wheel is formed of molecules whose behaviour causes a macrolevel property (a systemic property, and in terms of our reflections we may term it an emergent property), namely the solidity or rigidity of the wheel. The rigidity of the wheel, however, has crucial influence over the behaviour of individual molecules. While the wheel is rolling down the hill, the trajectory of each individual molecule is influenced by the behaviour of the whole solid wheel. If we say that solidity has a causal effect on the behaviour of the wheel as well as on the individual molecules forming the wheel, we are not saying that solidity is something additional in relation to the molecules; rather, it is a condition of how the molecules are organized within the wheel. Still, the solidity is an actual property of the wheel and has causal effects. Thus, the property of a whole, the solidity of the wheel, has causal effects upon the molecules forming the wheel (the constituent entities). Through this example, Searle follows an analogy: the relationship between the solidity of the wheel and the behaviour of the molecules is similar to that of consciousness in relation to the behaviour of neurons.3 “Consciousness is a feature of the brain in a way that solidity is a feature of the wheel.” (Searle 2001, 498) However, we are not concerned with questions of consciousness but rather with the general possibility of a causal effect of the whole over its constituent parts. The molecules constituting the solidity of the wheel are influenced by the wheel’s solidity so that they succumb to a specific trajectory, formed through gravitation, friction, the shape of the wheel and the unevenness of the hill. Is this example revealing enough to prove that the whole can indeed have causal influence over its constituents? Can the 3  Searle points to at least two conditions which impact this analogy’s validity; first, the wheel must be viewed as purely deterministic, while consciousness, with its aspects of volitional decisionmaking, is not deterministic; second, the solidity of the wheel is ontologically reducible to the behaviour of molecules, and not only causally. We presume that consciousness is not causally reducible to the behaviour of microelements, but it cannot be reduced ontologically, as the subjectivity of consciousness cannot be reduced to “third person” ontology.

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wheel’s solidity not be reduced to an actual property with causal effect on an even more elementary level, namely the level of molecules, being the constituent parts of the system – as it is evident that they are the reason for the wheel’s solidity as such? I consider this dilemma the consequence of a certain freedom of articulation which needs to be limited not only by logic but also by empirical evidence. This view may face the well-known objections that any notion of empirical evidence, as well as anything else, is part of a certain conceptual system, a theoretical framework, lending meaning and sense to empiricity itself; thus, appealing to empirical evidence cannot lead us out of our conceptual system. I do not mean to trivialise this type of objection, as in many cases such objections may be essential. However, I believe that in allowing for such a strong Feyerabendian theoretical predetermination, we would have to give up on many other basic elements of scientific work, starting with experimental practice. Thus, admitting that it makes sense in such dilemmas to let nature speak, in the broadest sense, then it is appropriate to list some further examples capable of documenting the holistic and reductionist dilemma. If Searle’s analogy is to serve as a counterargument to Kim’s conclusions, it must contain something which would be lost through a potential reduction of the whole to its parts. I believe that in the case of the wheel rolling down the hill, we may reduce the rigidity of the wheel to the individual molecules causing this rigidity, but we cannot sensibly reduce the trajectory of every wheel molecule through the rotation of the wheel as a whole. Presumably, it is this in particular which Sperry and later Searle had in mind when using this example. However, the wheel rolling downhill implies many more questions in the context of Kim’s argument. Sperry and Searle both view molecules and their links as parts forming the wheel as a whole. Thus, molecules are viewed as fundamental constituent entities in relation to the whole of the wheel. A molecule, however, is a complex system constituted by atoms, just as an atom is not an unstructured entity, but on the contrary a complicated structure of a nucleus and electron orbits. Furthermore, even the atom’s nucleus and its elements, protons and neutrons, are quarks structured through exchange particles – mesons. In this case, should we not look into the deepest of structures for the causal reasons for the rotation of the wheel when rolling down the hill? I assume that this is neither necessary nor sensible from the viewpoint of causal influence. This, however, gives rise to another problematic question. If we ignore the deepest level of causal fundamentality, on which level should we search for the causal determinations?4 In this case, I believe that it is purely a matter of context, which shall be discussed in the final chapter. However, we now reveal that the example of the wheel and its constituents is completely unsuitable from the emergent point of view. It certainly does indicate the causal influence of the whole on its parts but unfortunately the relationship of the 4  In this respect, other questions deserve our attention as well. E.g., in what way are the discussed levels hierarchized and fixed? Is their hierarchy arbitrary? Do they have any ontological autonomy, or are they only an epistemological tool for structuring the world? These questions will be discussed in the final section.

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whole and parts in this case is not emergent – that is, if we do not wish to trivialize the emergent link. In other words, the wheel is not an emergent shape, formed by the constituent molecules in a logical or law-like sense, i.e. necessarily. Rather, the wheel is the outcome of a constructional intention, drawing on the solidity of the substances forming it, without its shape being necessary in any way in relation to its constituents. It is similar, as we shall see, to the example of an airplane (Johnson 1995, 26), manifesting the property of flying as a whole, without its individual parts having such a property (see Sect. 3.7). There is nothing emergent, unless we trivialize emergence. In spite of all this, Searle uses this analogy to do away with the mysteriousness of how consciousness can causally influence the neural level and through it, for instance, move the body. Searle’s biological naturalism presumes that, giving up traditional dualistic categories, there is no mystery in consciousness being able to operate causally. Given the above analysis and Kim’s arguments against not only the causal effects of consciousness but in general against any possibility of downward causation, we need to consider whether Searle’s use of Sperry’s wheel analogy can be a reliable counter-argument. However, we must not forget that Searle disagrees over whether emergent phenomena could have their top-down causal forces. We will discuss his reasons in the next chapter, but this fact similarly affects many other authors. It seems incomprehensible and contradictory to ask, “how can one combine the determination of the macroproperties by the microstructure with the causal impact of such determined macro-phenomena on the parts of the microstructure?” (Stephan 1992, 45) Yet, as a non-reductive physicalist, Davidson does not have a mental causation problem within his conception of anomalous monism. Still, he bothers those who hold some form of the constitutional theory, whether expressed in terms of supervision, composition, realization, or dependence (see Crane and Brewer 1995, 226–229). This is not an attempt to justify the existence and causal effect of the remarkable ability of consciousness in a world which is unconscious on more fundamental levels, but rather a justification of a certain general principle by which this world is structured and interlinked causally. The condition here is a certain uniformity of nature, a uniformity allowing for this general principle to operate on any given contextual level of reality. Uniformity allows us to reveal analogies between the emergent properties of wholes and their constituents, from simple systems through more complex ones to the most complex systemic manifestations of which we know. Thus, even if anomalous monism were justifiable in the realm of mental states, it could not provide general salvation for all the emergent phenomena we assume at various hierarchical levels. I said that Sperry’s original example of the wheel enables us to demonstrate how the whole impacts on its parts, but unfortunately, in case of the wheel, we cannot consider its whole-to-parts relation emergent. Let us therefore list some further examples which may not only effectively illustrate the fact of the causal influence of a whole over its parts, but also show emergent relations between the whole and its parts.

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1.2.3  QMC and PDF Models of the Atomic Nucleus From Kim’s argument of mereological supervenience follows the possibility that, in certain circumstances, there is causality only at the most fundamental level of reality. Thus another example of this may be the attempt to describe the nucleus of an atom at a more fundamental level than the standard description using nucleons in the Quark-Meson Coupling Model (QMC) of the atomic nucleus, which was designed in the late 1980s (Guichon 1988) and developed in the 1990s. This model describes nucleons as non-overlapping static regions with three quarks (so-called bags of quarks), which interact through meson exchanges (Guichon et  al. 1996; Saito et al. 2007). Later, Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) were developed, in which quarks, antiquarks and gluons, including virtual quark-antiquark pairs, are considered to be constituents of nucleons (i.e. partons). The result is a much more complex and detailed distribution of the momentum of individual quarks within the nucleon and possibly in the nucleus of the atom (nPDFs). The conventional hierarchy of matter, implied by the standard particle model, differentiates between the basic level, formed by quarks, and a higher level of nucleons forming the atomic nucleus and bound to the nucleus by forces represented by mutual meson exchange. Nucleons are formed by a cluster of three quarks, bound together as a nucleon by mutual gluon exchange. Likewise, the mesons ensuring the links between nucleons are formed of a pair of quarks. Unlike this conventional hierarchy, the QMC nucleus model is remarkable because nucleons as such, i.e. protons and neutrons, play no role in it. Due to all the descriptions of interactions in the atomic nucleus being possible only on the quark level, the notion of nucleons in a nucleus becomes superfluous, as their structure plays no part in the nucleus and we only speak of quasi-nucleons.5 At first sight, this may be seen to support Kim’s arguments. Why presume causal effects at the nucleon level when this causality may be described on the lower level of quarks? In fact, though, this question proves more complicated. The QMC model leads to a much more accurate and realistic description of the boundary between higher energy physics (“particle” physics) and lower energy physics (“nuclear” physics). It presupposes a certain dichotomy in the description of a nucleon. On the one hand there is the nucleon itself in the region of lower energies, when the nucleon structure of the nucleus of the atom makes sense; yet on the other hand, there is the description of the nucleon at higher energies inside the nucleus of the atom, where according to QMC it becomes only a kind of quasi-nucleon, because on this level the structure and dynamics of quarks are decisive. This dichotomy, or two different perspectives on the nucleon, is essential in this example. The nucleon as an individual particle outside the atomic nucleus is ontologically different from the

5  Later, in the discussion of quasi-particles (see Sect. 3.1.1), we can dwell upon this fact in detail. In these phenomena, quasiparticles only arise through the influence of many particles in the system as a whole. While these particles in the whole system disappear as individual particles, new particles—i.e. quasiparticles—arise on the system level.

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nucleon inside the atomic nucleus. While in the nucleus it is a (relatively) stable particle; as a free neutron it decays into a proton, an electron and an electron antineutrino in about 15 min (879.6 ± 0.8 s). As an individual particle, it is composed of three quarks, which are locked inside the nucleon due to bond forces, the mutual exchange of gluons. However, if a nucleon becomes part of the atomic nucleus, the structure of the nucleus as a whole seems describable even without the nucleon structure, the description being carried out on a lower level, i.e. the level of quarks. Here, the nucleon structure becomes superfluous. However, the question is whether this means that the description at the quark level is more fundamental than the description at the nucleon level. If it is more fundamental, this is only because we associate fundamentality with the dimensions and structures of the examined entities, and thus also with the energies that are necessary to reveal these structures and mechanisms. However, if a nucleon behaves outside the nucleus of its atom in its straightforward way, i.e., if it remains as a given entity with given properties for some time in a network of causal changes, then the replacement of this entity only by a description at the quark level is not possible without a significant loss of information on these phenomena. The relative stability of the nucleon as a whole, including its physical properties (e.g. zero charge in a neutron), cannot be easily replaced by a description at the level of its parts, i.e. quarks and gluons. The other side of the matter is that the faculty of differentiation depends to a large extent on energy. In high-energy (i.e. GeV) experiments, nuclear physics is a matter of quarks interacting through gluon exchange. With lower energies, nuclear physics is a matter of nucleons interacting through meson exchange. Still, even with these lower energies, it is convenient to view the nucleon in its structure of quarks, as their movement within the nucleon may change when the nucleon is in the atomic nucleus. The advantages of the quark description lie in its ability to overcome the problems of the hadron description; the model is simpler, includes only few parameters, and can successfully be applied to many problems of nuclear matter, from descriptions of atomic nuclei to neutron stars (see, for example, Saito et al. 2007; Panda et al. 2009; Carroll 2010). In the end, however, it does not follow from the above examples that the nucleon structures of atomic nuclei and the structure of individual nucleons cannot be said to be epiphenomenal phenomena without causal forces, and that it would be necessary to descend to their constituents to reach the real causes. Both nucleons and atomic nuclei are ontological units that are as fundamental as their constituents because the units of such constituents (in this case quarks, antiquarks and gluons) are not only random aggregations of such parts, but in terms of causal stability, systemic units that are robust enough to play the designated roles they have in the network of causal change. Unlike the wheel as a whole, which is the result of a constructional intent, the nucleon is a necessary structure, the result of the fundamental laws of the universe. Quarks must interact with each other in given combinations and configurations which are—with certain energies (and therefore with certain differentiation abilities)—manifested as hadrons (mesons and baryons) or as hyperons. In this sense,

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we can consider the nucleon as an emergent phenomenon, as a whole that persists only due to its constitutive parts, which create it under the operation of given organizational principles. Under these persistent conditions, the nucleon, as a stable entity with characteristic, given properties, plays a specific role in the network of causal changes at a given ontological level. Unlike the previous example with a wheel, it thus shows that it is necessary to understand the whole’s arising owing to the entities that create it following the whole’s organizational principles. The wheel does not necessarily occur from molecules, and the shape of the wheel is arbitrary due to the forces acting between the molecules. However, due to the given principles, the nucleon does not arise by chance but results from some of the energetic whole’s principles. Yet this example is also intended to point to one further important fact related to our problem of reductionism and holism. Does this example support the reductionist or the holistic view? If we can disregard higher nucleon or meson wholes and describe everything only on the quark level, then reductionists must be enthusiastic. However, as already stated, the question remains whether the realm of high energies with the differentiating ability on the quark level is ontologically more significant than the realm of low energies, wherein these structures are lost and higher-level entities manifest themselves (i.e. nucleons and mesons as equally real “particles”). Yet as we have seen, the assumption of ever-more fundamental levels of matter, beginning at the most fundamental level, is justifiably criticized for various reasons (e.g., Churchland 1989). As such, however, it is part of classical reductionism, whose difficulties do not lie in a legitimate attempt to reveal the internal mechanisms and causes of phenomena but in the lingering belief that reduction to these partial mechanisms of phenomena is sufficient for their successful reconstruction. According to reductionism, such a reconstruction should be feasible not only from a lower level than the level to be explained, but also, concerning the arrows of explanation, from the most fundamental level (Weinberg 2001). This persistent mistake was opposed by physicists working in the field of condensed matter physics in the early 1970s: The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a “constructionist” one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. (Anderson 1972, 393)

Yet it can be assumed that the reductionists’ enthusiasm must fade when its advocates, armed with a starting set of equations, are forced to prove the viability of their reductionist ideas and derive by pure deduction at least some of the specific systemic (e.g. chemical) properties. For the moment, it is irrelevant that we do not yet have a reductionist ideal, i.e. the initial set of equations for deriving the universe, at our disposal. Quantum theory and its success discussed above in deducing chemical properties can serve as interim evidence. According to holism, on the contrary, it can be shown that there are principial reasons why classical reductionism cannot be successful. Holism seeks to prove that the existence of the whole as an emergent structure is not only logically or mathematically non-deducible from the knowledge

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of its separate parts, but also unpredictable, and thus essentially new in the world. If such emergent structures exist, they cannot be reached through the deducibility of the universe in terms of the classical reductionist programme, based on part-whole relations. If an emergent entity arises unpredictably and is essentially new in terms of diachronic emergence, then the deductive set of initial laws cannot contain such newly arising, unpredictable and non-deducible entities. Avoiding the use of too many high-level phenomena as examples of individual demonstrations (e.g. the existence of consciousness), it may seem that emergent phenomena which meet the aforementioned conditions are rare. In fact, as shall be shown later in the proposal of a Hierarchical Emergent Ontology (HEO), they are common on every hierarchical level of reality and they are involved in the formation of new entities which arise on any given level and which on higher levels may act as basic entities and co-create new emergent entities as their constituent parts. Likewise, in the following example which aims to demonstrate the problems of deducibility, we will adhere to the elementary phenomenon if possible, not departing from the level of quarks and their combinations.

1.2.4  Quarks, Tetraquarks, Pentaquarks The example I shall now provide to further illustrate the dispute between reductionism and holism has, currently, a fairly prosaic solution. Thanks to analyses of data obtained during the operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), several exotic combinations of tetraquarks and pentaquarks have been observed: their existence may now be considered proven (see LHCb collaboration 2019). Taking this fact into account in terms of theoretical predictions and experimental verification, reductionist assumptions could be strongly supported for several reasons. The theory for the description of strongly interacting particles was proposed in the early sixties (independently by Murray Gell-Mann (1964) and George Zweig (see Aaij et al. 2015)) to explain the experimental observations of many different types of baryons and mesons using combinations of more fundamental entities (later called quarks). The theory was successful not only in explaining the existing strongly interacting particles in a single model, but also in predicting the existence of other as yet unobserved particles, which were later experimentally confirmed. In such cases, the theory strongly gains in credibility and reliability. The theory based on a mathematical model did not rule out the existence of quark combinations other than three in baryons and two in mesons. Gell-Mann says, “we can construct baryon octets from a basic neutral baryon singlet b by taking combinations ( b t ť ), ( b t t ť ť ), etc.” (Gell-Mann 1964, 214) [where b and t are quarks and ť antiquarks] However, these combinations have not been observed for a long time. Theoretical predictions can often precede the experimental confirmation of a phenomenon (e.g., a predicted particle). Even in this case, the possibility of the more exotic structures of tetraquark and pentaquark was thrown up by theory much earlier than confirmatory experimental research in the field was possible

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(Praszałowicz 1987). Reductionists would therefore argue that the theory predicted the existence of combinations of quarks in more than triplets, and it was only necessary to experimentally confirm their presence. Such a statement is acceptable and, in principle, correct, but only if it is not intended to be an argument in support of the reductionist hypothesis. The claim that the theory “predicted a phenomenon” before it was observed experimentally might conceal a spectre of commitments to its ontological existence, a covert movement from the mild claim that “the existence of a phenomenon is not forbidden by theory” to the very strong, “the phenomenon must necessarily exist.” From this point of view, the theory did not provide unequivocal support for the existence or non-existence of objects created by combinations of four (tetra) and five (penta) quarks. The decision had to await experimental verification. If we ignore the history that led to the experimental confirmation, we would miss more closely assessing the strength and support of the theoretical basis for the prediction, and we could evaluate the “prediction of the phenomenon” more arbitrarily. The history of discoveries is often very merciful and ultimately obscures the real paths that led to the discovery. The quark combinations are just such a case. Without claiming the historical completeness of all the individual events, I will briefly mention those that I believe are important and illustrative in this story. In 1997, the mass of a hypothetical pentaquark was predicted (Diakonov et al. 1997), but the article was very sceptically received by the scientific community (Muir 2003). Although most of these fundamental predictions are mostly accepted with reservations, due to the prevailing scepticism the theory was prevented from playing a major role in estimating that mass. To predict the mass of the Θ+ (theta+) particle, the authors used calculations based on QCD quantum chromodynamics, a theory formulated in the early 1970s to describe strong interactions that had already been tested in a large number of experiments. Thus, it was no longer just a question of using the Gell-Mann model’s mathematical symmetries but of a theory that had been tested in various experiments over more than twenty years. Nevertheless, even in such a case, the results depend on the chosen model, approximation techniques and other assumptions. It was not until six years later that the discovery of the pentaquark’s previously unobserved structure was finally announced. In 2003, the existence of an exotic particle containing five quarks (four quarks and one antiquark) appeared to be experimentally demonstrated by several independent research teams (Muir 2003). Over the next two years, there was a continued eruption of scientific articles, theoretical studies and experimental observations of other possible combinations of quarks and antiquarks in the pentaquark. Later, however, it turned out that the evidence of the allegedly observed phenomenon did not have sufficient statistical support. Going further, in 2006 the Review of Particle Physics stated that there was substantial evidence that the pentaquark as a general structure, and therefore a particular case of quark and antiquark combination, identified as the particle Θ+ (theta+), did not exist (Yao et al. 2006).

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[T]here have been a number of other high-statistics experiments, none of which have found any evidence for the Θ+; and all attempts to confirm the two other claimed pentaquark states have led to negative results. The conclusion that pentaquarks in general, and the Θ+, in particular, do not exist, appears compelling. (Yao et al. 2006)

According to the current report (Review of Particle Physics 2020), the above statement “well reflected the prevailing mood in the particle physics community” (Karliner and Skwarnicki 2019). Unconvincing attempts to detect pentaquarks from previous years were then explained in 2007 by Ken Hicks (2007) with a statistics lesson. He tried to show how several teams obtained 3–5 sigma statistically significant measurement results in data fluctuations, without the discovery being finally confirmed. A year later, the situation had not changed much, although the last two or three experiments still showed only weak evidence for the desired phenomenon. On the contrary, the vast majority of experiments denied the evidence of the pentaquark: There are two or three recent experiments that find weak evidence for signals near the nominal masses, but there is simply no point in tabulating them in view of the overwhelming evidence that the claimed pentaquarks do not exist. The only advance in particle physics thought worthy of mention in the American Institute of Physics “Physics News in 2003” was a false alarm. The whole story—the discoveries themselves, the tidal wave of papers by theorists and phenomenologists that followed, and the eventual “undiscovery”—is a curious episode in the history of science. (Wohl 2008, 1124)

The fact that multiple and independent experiments have primarily failed to find a tested phenomenon and that such results were interpreted as confirmation of the nonexistence of pentaquarks is remarkable from the perspective of the methodology of science. If it was a curious situation in 2008, how instructive was this story in 2015, when the pentaquark was finally discovered? Although in 2008 there was still very little hope that the existence of the phenomenon might arise from inconclusive data, the scientific community did not rely on theoretical grounds, arguing that the phenomenon should exist according to theory, but instead leaned towards its denial. So far, this does little to prove the possible success of a strong reductionist programme. The current theory of strong interactions is so compatible with both the universe that allows the existence of the pentakvark and the universe that forbids it. However, a consistent reductionist would demand that the universe’s derivation from the initial theory has led to only one correct option. The answer to this objection would be that we do not have this kind of theory yet, and its possible future extension can provide answers to the questions we are asking now. However, this does not seem satisfactory to the proponents of holism. If we have a theory that nicely describes the properties of individual entities—and if it did not, the description of their combinations in the case of duplets (mesons) and triplets (baryons) could not be successful—why is it not equally successful for multi-element combinations? It is precisely the question that reductionists must be able to answer. How successful is the approach of generativist atomism based on the presupposition that if you describe the entity and its interaction well, you have to get the right whole? The problem is not that there is always only an approximately valid model of the real entity and that we need piecemeal experimentation for its improvement:

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that is obviously the one and only right approach. The problem lies in the fact that neither that approach nor the exact model of an entity and its interaction(s) will provide the whole’s complexity. If many similar entities partake in complex interaction during the whole’s constitution, generally some organizational powers or principles fundamentally affect each constituent’s behaviour. Some think that even the constituents cease to exist and transform into the whole. The crucial point is that these powers or principles are independent of the nature of the constituents and holists alone assume that wholes are not only the aggregative consequences of their constitutive parts but that wholes create conditions to which the constituent entities must adapt when they become part of the whole. Let us return to the story of the pentaquark. It was not until 2009 that further results with a value of 5.1 sigma were measured, which again supported the existence of the Θ+ particle (Nakano et al. 2009). A year later, other resonances of a possible pentaquark were measured in a hypothetical multiplet as Θ+, with the result that additional accurate measurements were needed (Karliner and Lipkin 2010). Finally, after more and more measurements, the pentaquark’s existence was convincingly demonstrated in 2015 (Aaij et  al. 2015). In 2019, data on the LHC in Switzerland discovered other new combinations of quarks in the pentaquark. Two structural forms of the pentaquark were proposed, including tightly bound pentaquark states and loosely bound molecular baryon-meson states. This again means that the theoretical model does not contribute to the form of the pentaquark whole. Proponents of holism would be much more successful because they assume that not only is it the parts that determine the whole, but also the system conditions of their existence. The decision as to whether the pentaquark is a tightly bound or loosely bound state thus again depends only on the measurements’ experimental results. Instead, they tend to form a free-bound baryon-meson state and speak of a molecular analogy. Experimentation “has revealed that the pentaquark is made of two smaller types of particles called a baryon and a meson stuck together in a sort of miniature molecule.” (Aaij et al. 2019) It seems understandable that if we do not have a sufficiently fundamental theory (in this case, particles at the boundary of the standard model), it is not surprising that we have to rely on experimental observation results, as confirmed by the researchers: This is sort of the last experimental frontier in the standard model of particle physics, where we are dealing with particles where we weren’t sure whether they would exist or not,’ says Skwarnicki. ‘For this particular problem of making particles out of many quarks, the theory is just useless right now. (Crane 2019)

However, in this case, the situation is not as simple as we might assume. It is uncertain whether the existence or possible non-existence of the pentaquark means or would mean different physics and in this particular case, the role of the experiment itself is also questioned. If the experiments initially mainly indicated the non-­ existence of the pentaquark, they later confirmed its existence. It is not just a question of whether the experiments were better or worse, but of course, distinguishing the empirical and theoretical level is problematic in these cases. Theoretical

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assumptions, to some extent, determine what can be observed and also determine the conditions under which it can be observed. Thus, the story of pentaquark is far from over. In addition to being a rather strange event in the history of scientific knowledge, it is an exemplary case of how difficult it can be to deduce from the initial schedule within a reductionist program. In this case, the reductionists could still argue that we do not yet have the required set of initial equations and that our objections relate only to provisional types of theories. However, there seems to be another problem that is difficult to answer from reductionist positions. Consider the hypothetical possibility that a pentaquark, which disintegrates very quickly into other particles, does not causally affect any other processes, and its existence is thus more or less random in this respect. Assume it is unimportant whether the resulting products appear as precipitation residues directly or through a pentaquark. The lifespan of pentaquark is very short, and the universe can exist identically in both cases. (I emphasize that this is a hypothetical possibility.) In this case, how would a reductionist deduce, from the initial set of equations, the form of our universe? The existence of pentaquarks would have to appear superfluous and would be omitted – yet the derived universe would not be the universe to be deduced. However, if the presence of pentaquarks were deduced, then what would be the reason for that? And what would be the reason not to deduce more such processes or entities that have no causal consequences in the world and yet exist? There is no satisfactory answer to this question if we accept the possibility of the existence of phenomena that do not have fatal causal consequences for the universe’s existence. However, since the universe is probably not a system of interconnected phenomena in such a way that each of them fatally threatens its existence, then it seems that reductionist assumptions must always be incomplete. Their hypothetical initial system of equations, which would allow the deduction of the universe’s basic physical properties, cannot contain entities that would be random in terms of the initial set of equations (i.e. the theory). Such entities would not be explicitly forbidden by theory, nor would they necessarily follow from it. If the reductionists argued that such random entities were irrelevant to the theory of the universe, they would have to recognize that their reductionist programme could only lead to the derivation of the necessary consequences of the initial equations. All other phenomena that would in some way exceed these necessary consequences would be undeducible. That is a general objection to the reductionist program. However, there is an even more particular form of objection – how classical reductionism would like to proceed and how strongly the atomistic hypothesis influences it.

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1.3  Classical Reductionism and the Atomist Hypothesis Classical reductionism presumes that every whole can be decomposed into its constituent parts, as well as being deducible and explainable by means of the properties and behaviour of these constituents. If the constituent parts no longer have a structure and cannot be further decomposed, then they are the fundamental entities (real atoms – i.e. indivisible parts), whose properties and behaviour is the key to understanding all the other entities in the world including higher structured wholes. The precondition for such ontological minimalism is the existence of a relatively small number of basic building blocks from which all other entities and properties are formed. Even living organisms, in the final instance, are formed of the same atoms which form inorganic nature, and the same atoms are also the building blocks of the brain as a structure manifesting the property of consciousness. Naturally, it is not easy to give reasons for the existence of consciousness in a world formed on the fundamental level only from unconscious particles; from the reductionist and physicalist viewpoint, however, this does not pose a major issue. In this case, the reductionists’ initial equation set pertains to the description of entities and the behaviours of these fundamental entities, allowing us to deduce the whole universe from them. Classical reductionism is thus not only the precondition for a top-down analysis (i.e. from wholes to parts), but also for the bottom-up synthesis (from parts to wholes). This makes sense because otherwise reductionism would be inconsistent. Let us take the possibility that reductionism includes only top-down analysis, and call such a position, for example, explanational reductionism. In this case, there must be a reason why the opposite (bottom-up) synthesis is not possible. Whatever it is, it is also an admission that something is missing from the constructionist approach (in the ontological or epistemological sense) and therefore that this kind of explanational reductionism is only reductionism in principle. In addition, such a position is close to emergentism because emergentism claims that the missing issues are the “organizational principles” that fundamentally organize complex phenomena of many constituent parts and these principles cannot be gleaned from the constituents alone. There is, however, major asymmetry between the two procedures. While the top-­ down procedure proves relatively highly successful, the bottom-up procedure is considerably limited by our prior knowledge of what needs to be reached. In this sense, again, wholes are considerably more than merely sums of their parts; and the knowledge of the properties and behaviour of parts does not automatically reveal possible wholes or complex structures. It is exactly this type of phenomenon which encompasses emergent phenomena, which transcend the possibility of deducing systemic properties from a mere knowledge of the properties of the constituents. As early as 1956, P.  E. Meehl and Wilfrid Sellars noted that the question of whether our universe contains such emergent entities is scientific and cannot be answered on an a priori basis (Meehl and Sellars 1956, 239). If emergent entities are neither a priori determinable nor deductively derivable, then they must be revealed by empirical scientific research. Emergent entities are not the consequence of a

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logical necessity but the consequence of the empirical laws of the universe. The non-deducibility of emergent entities does not mean that only an inductive approach to acquiring knowledge about them is possible. The inductive/deductive distinction is a question regarding the methods that can be used during scientific research into these entities, but not for detecting or discovering their ontological existence. As I mentioned, Alexander considered this to be an inexplicable “brute empirical fact” which we have to accept with “natural piety” (Alexander [1920] 1950, 46–47). Recently this supposed inexplicability has been overcome. Emergent entities are counted as explainable, derivable or deducible, such as in cases of weak emergence (e.g., Bedau 1997). However, they are only explainable or deducible by simulation. In some cases of physical emergence, on the contrary, they assume “it is possible to explain the presence of some emergent property or structure in terms of the base or underlying theory; yet the property or structure remains irreducible” (Batterman 2002, 21). The enduring status of the “brute empirical fact” thus apparently remains regarding consciousness. For example, Elly Vintiadis notes, “that though it seems clear that certain physical states somehow give rise to certain conscious states, we have no explanation of how or why this happens” (Vintiadis 2018, 210). Currently, thanks to research into non-linear phenomena in complex systems, self-organization, chaos, fractals, phase transmission, selection and evolution, this type of phenomenon seems to constitute a large part of our universe; and apparently, classical part-whole reductionism cannot deduce their existence. These are the sharp boundaries of classical reductionism which cannot be transcended. In many cases, these nonlinear phenomena are characterized by a similar mathematical description, and some authors count these mathematical instruments as a sign of emergence. They are essential mathematical features of “the singularities and divergences that appear as one tries to understand the relationship between macro and micro theories, or more generally, between phenomenological theories at some energy scale and ‘more fundamental’ theories at higher energy scales” (Batterman 2011, 1032). The position of Kim with which we are dealing – that all emergent entities are epiphenomenal – is not new to discussions on emergentism. A similar objection to emergent laws was raised by Stephen Pepper as early as 1926, in the context of reductionist reasoning. Pepper rejects the predictability and deducibility of changes in general, as in his view it is only laws which are predictable and deducible. Cosmic happenings cannot be predicted or deduced from each other; they simply occur. What is strictly deducible, on the other hand, is laws, not qualities or events (Pepper 1926, 243). It is a natural ideal of science to derive all laws from a certain limited number of primitive laws or principles – not necessarily from one single law – and so to convert science into a mathematics. […] The assumption of science appears to be that such a system is obtainable. […] Now, there seems to be no intention on the part of emergent evolutionists to deny that such a system is possible or to assert that there are chance occurrences. If that is so, they seem to be faced with the following dilemma: either the emergent laws they are arguing for are ineffectual and epiphenomenal, or they are effectual and capable of being absorbed into the physical system. But apparently they want their laws to be both effectual and at the same time not part of the physical system. (Pepper 1926, 243–244)

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Pepper’s objection may be interpreted in two ways, in both the classical and the non-classical reductionist manner. If we presume that a physical system which should absorb emergent laws is based on the reductionist notion of the part-whole relationship (which Pepper likely had in mind), the emergentists’ requirement is really as follows: they demand efficient emergent laws, i.e. laws which have causal consequences (not being epiphenomenal), whilst not being incorporable into the classically mechanical physical system, presuming the functionality of the reductionist programme. Necessarily, classical reductionists will perceive emergentists as charlatans postulating non-scientific entities, in this case laws which cannot be incorporated into any physical system and whose character must thus be non-scientific. The non-classical interpretation, on the other hand, results in two options. The weaker variant presumes that such laws are incorporable into a much more broadly conceived physical system (i.e. a system transcending the boundaries of classical part-whole reductionism), allowing for the formulation of some initial principles responsible for the deduction of emergent laws. The stronger variant, likewise, presumes the possibility of incorporating emergent laws into the physical systems; it does not, however, allow for any way of deducing them from any initial principles. The weaker variant rescues the modern version of reductionism, while the stronger variant reflects the principial impossibility of deducing emergent laws from any given set of primary laws or principles. In such a case, the existence of emergent laws (as well as that of all emergent entities or phenomena – objects, properties and relationships) is only a matter of their realization; i.e. the process which establishes them cannot be described, explained or derived otherwise than merely through their realization. Pepper’s objection is therefore still interesting from the reductionist viewpoint, as with a certain interpretation it enables us to accept a presumption transcending classical reductionism, thus rescuing the reductionist programme in general. We need to ask whether macroscopic behaviour can really be wholly incorporated into a more fundamental theory, as required by Pepper, or as might be in accord with the results of Kim’s analysis of causal influence. Despite their objections being different, they share the presumption that behaviour, happenings, processes of structurally higher and more complicated levels, all these can be fully expressed through the means of a lower, structurally simpler level. There is still the possibility of emergent entities being expressed adequately through a description of more elementary entities (such as the trajectories of microscopic parts) producing— on a higher level—behaviour which is not associated with them within their level; and yet these emergent entities cannot be viewed as epiphenomenal, as they are causally responsible for new behaviour. This is the option that the causal influence of emergent entities can be describable and expressible through the means of lower-level, more elementary entities but only by always retaining in such a description the additional information about the description of higher structural entities through more elementary means. In other words, this situation reflects the asymmetry between top-down and bottom-up reductionism. Proceeding top-down, we know the wholes we aim to express through

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their constituent parts. Therefore, we adapt the descriptions so that they conform to the resulting whole. This adaptation deserves closer analysis. It contains many presumptions which need to be adopted in order to succeed both in descriptions and predictions. On the other hand, though, bottom-up reductionism has been very unsuccessful to date. Higher complex structures, not merely the likes of live organisms or consciousness, but also more elementary physical wholes, appear not to be deducible from the mere knowledge of their constituent entities. Pepper’s objection (that what is deducible is only the laws of higher levels, not entities, properties or relationships) cannot be taken seriously because if such laws are deducible, then it is evident that such laws must describe the behaviours or properties of some entities. What else would such laws describe? If higher-level laws are deducible, as supposed by Pepper, then so too must the higher-level entities to which those laws pertain. Exactly the same applies in the above example of quasi-nucleons. The information that we are dealing with quasi-nucleons is not irrelevant; on the contrary, it provides a faithful description of the situation in which a higher structure, a whole, is described through its constituents. In this description, the whole may not be decisive, but it has causal influence over the lower-level organization. If we disregard nucleons completely and only accept as distinguishing features information regarding the quark building blocks, we would be faced with the specific behaviour of quarks manifested, for example, in three quarks at a time being bound together by exchange forces, represented by gluons, and then exchanging other gluons (i.e. quarks and antiquarks) with similarly bound quark triplets. These frequently recurring formations of quarks may lead us to certain generalizations and simplifications, such as viewing the structure of three bound quarks as a unified complex (i.e. a nucleon), and hence gradually arriving at an understanding that the unity of three mutually bound quarks causes the conditions of its own existence in such a quark formation. However, this is only a very elementary model of the nucleon. In a more complicated model, this persisting pattern of three quarks forming a nucleon (i.e., a proton or neutron) is only a seemingly stable entity that maintains itself against the dynamics of the transformation of many, many quarks according to given principles of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The dynamical model of a nucleon is close to the dynamics of patterns persisting in the cellular automaton, the analysis of which we will discuss later. However, both cases connect the dynamics of (different) rules that govern the relatively stable and persisting units, whether they are persistent patterns in the cellular automaton or persistent structures of nucleons of strongly bound quarks. To quote Searle, this is not the mechanical causality of pool balls but rather a mutually conditioned link between the whole and its parts, the macrolevel and microlevel (Searle 1992, [2004] 2007). Just as we can describe the atomic nucleus on the microlevel through the causal interaction of quarks, we cannot explain the nucleus without additional causal interactions in the atom, as Searle notes:

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1  Reductionism and Holism The existence of consciousness can be explained by the causal interactions between elements of the brain at the micro level, but consciousness cannot itself be deduced or calculated from the sheer physical structure of the neurons without some additional account of the causal relations between them. (Searle 1992, 112)

1.3.1  Whole and Part, Supervenience and Epiphenomenality A corresponding description of the relationship between a whole and its parts, between a higher and lower level of existence of entities and their properties, is the key to adequate articulation. However, this is not only a matter of language. Although many philosophical problems can be solved through suitable linguistic analysis and the clarification of meaning, language is not only the Wittgensteinian limit of our world but also a relatively transparent medium enabling access to the world. Articulatory equilibristics are, then, a price that must be paid for the possibility of reaching such understandings. In the case of emergent entities, we presume their existence to be a given fact of how the world and the entities in it exist. Therefore, there is no need to prove their existence; their existence simply needs to be taken into consideration, understood, and described and, where required, we need to explain the non-reductive mechanisms or the principles of their establishment. In a similar vein, Samuel Alexander has stated the facticity of the existence of emergent qualities in an oft-cited passage: The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special laws of behaviour. The existence of emergent qualities thus described is something to be noted, as some would say, under the compulsion of brute empirical fact, or, as I should prefer to say in less harsh terms, to be accepted with the “natural piety” of the investigator. It admits no explanation. (Alexander [1920] 1950, 46–47)

However, due to the facticity of emergent phenomena, Alexander surrendered even the possibility of explaining them. He believed that it was impossible to grasp the mechanisms behind their arisal. They were seen as a fact of this world which needed to be taken into consideration, but their arisal could not be explained. We may claim that he was against both top-down and bottom-up reductionism. He believed that Laplace’s demon (i.e. a calculator) of unlimited computational ability, only aware of the basic principles of physics and of the state of the universe in the pre-biological phase, could predict the following distribution of all matter through physical terms, but could not predict emergent qualities and the processes of living and conscious systems (Alexander [1920] 1950, 327–329). Nevertheless, Alexander does not credit these truly new and unpredictable phenomena in the world with any autonomous causal influence additional to the causally fundamental physical influence, unlike, for example, Mill or Broad in the British emergentist tradition. His approach seems rather controversial given the traditional view of supervenience and epiphenomenality, and thus also in relation to Kim’s arguments as discussed above.

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Alexander presumes a supervenient conception of emergence, whilst not considering emergent phenomena epiphenomenal, which may seem inconsistent with the standard approach. In Alexander’s view, emergent qualities are fundamentally new, supervening on a specific type of physical-chemical process. They have their own forms of activities, but still remain in full accordance with the completeness of fundamental physics. They are not epiphenomenal because, thanks to supervenience, they undergo a counterfactual test of causal efficiency: a given neural process could not have its specific neural character if it were not mental at the same time (Alexander [1920] 1950, 8–9). I address Alexander’s approach in some detail because it presents a unique conception of a solution to the relationship between supervenience and epiphenomenality, in so doing indicating a way of overcoming Kim’s arguments. Alexander’s initial, central presumption is the rejection of the parallelism of neural and mental processes: “The mental process and its neural process are one and the same existence, not two existences.” (Alexander [1920] 1950, 9) Although Alexander focusses on the processes of the mind, we may read his rejection of parallelism much more broadly – namely as valid for all emergent phenomena. Alexander wants his readers to understand that if we speak of an emergent phenomenon, there may exist a macrolevel as well as a microlevel description of the phenomenon; however, the phenomenon itself (let us say, ontologically) does not exist as a parallel existence of two processes, but rather as a one identical process. Kim’s arguments disregard this ontological unity of emergence, and his (standard) dualistic view of the supervenience of something above something in turn is the reason for the causal analysis resulting in the epiphenomenality of emergent phenomena. What would be the consequences of respecting Alexander’s requirement for the elimination of parallelism between an emergent phenomenon and its emergent base? A merger of the level of an emergent phenomenon with the level of its emergent base would result in a merger of causal influences. We could no longer claim that the only way in which the emergent phenomenon V1 can be causally responsible for the phenomenon V2 is through the causal influence of V1 on the emergent base EB2 of the phenomenon V2; or even that the only way in which V1 can have any causal influence over EB2 is solely through the causal influence of its emergent base EB1 on the base EB2, whereby the emergent phenomena V1 and V2 become causally impotent and ineffective epiphenomenal phantoms. Alexander’s reference to the unity of an emergent phenomenon and its base (to use Kim’s topology) requires causal influence to be derived neither from the phenomenon nor from its emergent base, but from their unity. Thus, from this perspective, a synchronically supervening phenomenon is not something above its more fundamental base; instead, it is a unified process of the synthesis of the phenomenon and the base, with the corresponding causal influence of this synthesis as a whole. However, the synthesis of the phenomenon and the base is also a rather clumsy case of articulation, evoking two things merging into one, although in fact no such merger occurs. Emergent phenomena simply occur in given processes in their specific ways. Thus, rejecting Kim’s parallelism and adopting the view of emergent phenomena as processes which establish themselves in unified ways, we gain solid ground to

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oppose Kim’s arguments. Unified causal influence may not result in the epiphenomenality of emergent phenomena, but it does not resolve the status of such causal influence. Alexander believed that emergence of new qualities and high-level causal patterns connected to them, realizing themselves on the basis of microscopic interactions, is indeed new and metaphysically primary, but it does not causally change basic physical dynamics. In other words, the causal influence of emergent entities can be fully expressed through fundamental physics.6 At this point, Alexander seems to disagree with others British emergentists who assume that “emergent properties are fundamental force-generating properties, over and above the force-­ generating properties of physics.” (Horgan 1993, 557) Which other reasons may we take into account when supporting emergence and refuse to conceive it as mere epiphenomenal synchronicity? Besides a deep conviction of the irreducible nature of consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality and mental causation (e.g. Searle 1992), there are ontologically emergent entities which cannot be reduced to, for example, the biological, chemical and physical sciences. I shall demonstrate in the ensuing chapters that there are many more elementary examples of phenomena on different ontological levels which can be said to show the essence of the functioning of emergent entities. One of the examples which are considered the most convincing is quantum entanglement, such as when EPR-Bohm systems manifest such correlations in their particle spin orientations that the most acceptable explanation would be the presumption that the particles are manifesting holistic correlational properties on the level of the system as a whole which are not, however, carried locally by separate individual particles (Silberstein and McGeever 1999, 187). Current ideas regarding quantum theory thus significantly contradict the original reductionist view of atomism. The material world as a whole is not formed of individually existing particles and there are no individual, separated subsystems. Quantum theory sees matter not as a substance but rather a carrier of patterns. Individual, relatively stable entities such as quarks, photons, electrons, atoms and molecules are not the independent building blocks of matter – instead, they are contextual objects without independent existence. Their individuality emerges as an accord with their environment. Other remarkable fields of mathematical and physical research include non-­ linear dynamic systems grouped under dynamic systems theory: chaos theory (e.g. Lorenz 1993, Strogatz 2000), non-equilibrium thermodynamics (Prigogine 1980), synergetics (Haken 1977), connectionist models (e.g. Kauffman 1990, Wolfram 2002), research into artificial life (A-life, Langton 1986) and intelligence (AI), ecological and socioecological models (Bronfenbrenner 1979), models of artificial neurons networks (ANN), etc. Diverse approaches are linked through the presumption that dissipative and systemic structures behave according to certain dynamic 6  Naturally, the question remains of how to understand the term “fundamental physics”. Let us say that for the purposes of these reflections, we will define fundamental physics as those physical theories which describe the four fundamental forces, i.e. electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear and gravitational.

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principles which cannot be fully reduced to microphysical theories. In a similar vein, R. B. Laughlin, D. Pines and others (such as Laughlin et al. 2000) point out that there are many properties and macroscopic states of matter which are insensitive towards microscopic processes and cannot be reduced to the field of fundamental physics because their behaviour is guided by principles which cannot be transformed to fundamental physical forces. In light of this, they do not consider the central task of present-day physics to lie in the writing of infinite equations but rather in the cataloguing and understanding of emergent behaviour in its diversity, potentially also including life itself, terming this next-century physics the study of complex-adaptive matter.7 Thus, several justifications for the ontological status of emergent entities have been considered and the view of emergent entities as mere epiphenomenal phenomena has been rejected. Approaches in dynamic system theories emphasize the role of the whole as something beyond its constitutive parts. It contributes significantly to the conditions in which the constituents that make it exist within the whole. The way to a consistent emergent principle consists in thinking about the distinctions of part/whole, base/emergent, supervenience/dependence, and diachronic/synchronic. In general, we could characterize current tendencies as a departure from an excessively mechanical and statically conceived causality in favour of a dynamic, procedural concept. An emergent entity is not a whole at one time and a cooperation of constituent parts at another. The whole and its parts are merely markers to guide our approach to the phenomena in the world. The entities do exist in a way which allows for such possible differentiation between a whole and its parts, but in their originality, however, they are individual. From this viewpoint, what is also decisive is the causal influence of emergent entities on the distribution of matter in the universe, which cannot be explained by mere reference to actual causality on the most fundamental level; instead, it requires taking into account the holistic conditions in which these fundamental processes occur.

1.3.2  Boundaries of Classical Reductionism Therefore, and mainly for these reasons, I shall proceed on the basis that classical reductionism has been hollowed out and that physics itself reveals that in seeking to progress we must respect the specificity of many phenomena on different levels of reality, guided by the universal principle of the establishing of complex structures and phenomena. Similar to the mechanism of evolution, the principle of emergence is independent of the entities through which it is manifested. Together with the universal principle of evolution, the principle of emergence is the source of fundamental new entities (structures, properties and relationships) in our universe, arising

 Professor David Pines is one of the founding members of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter.

7

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through the complex behaviour of many identical parts and forming relatively stable and individual wholes on many different levels of reality, which in turn can become the entities of new emergent phenomena. However, the hierarchical layers do not form one pyramidal scheme (Morgan 1923); rather, they form relatively independent domains in which a specific type of law is manifested. It is possible to distinguish individual levels of the layers in which the emergent structures/objects are distributed based on increasing complexity, each next level being the consequence of new entities (i.e. substances, properties, relationships and laws). However, it is impossible to find in this growing complexity any vertically closing direction of hierarchization, as is generally presumed, e.g. elementary particles, atoms, molecule, cells, multi-cellular organisms, social groups (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958). Rather, we are dealing with not only a vertical but also a horizontal structural expansion. Individual levels can be distinguished not only based on physical characteristics (e.g. size, temperature etc.) but also by the complexity, integration and behaviour of entities on the given levels. By the end of this work I shall have proposed a more precise form of such hierarchical emergent ontology, together with a universal principle of emergence which, similar to the principal underlying evolution, is independent of the entities through which it is manifested. It is a possible think of the law-like character of emergence as a bond arising between necessary physical conditions and the emergent, so that if the required structural conditions are given, a new emergent level arises with nomological necessity. The universe we observe and attempt to explain is characterized by matter tending towards structuration. In accordance with cutting-edge cosmological inflation theory and associated empirical measurements (from the COBE, WMAP and Planck probes), the initial structuration, very swiftly attaining vast cosmic scales, was caused by forces of gravitation, effecting minor deviations in the homogeneous distribution of matter in space. Such processes of structuration can be both explained and modelled reductively. In these cases, the effect of gravitation is aggregative. Apart from such processes, however, there are other, non-aggregative ones, as shall be outlined towards the end of this volume. However, these also result from the tendency of matter to structuration, contributing significantly to the form of our universe. Some authors presume a close link between the direction of time, the expansion of the universe, and the processes of structuration in dissipational systems distant from their equilibrium (e.g. Prigogine 1980; Prigogine and Stengers 1984). Apart from these sudden changes in organization, manifested in history through a bifurcation of the given system, matter is structured through another type of process which is much slower and distributed over relatively large timespans. These are adaptive evolutionary changes and the creation of complex dependencies and links. Such evolutionary changes also have a considerable impact on the form and, in some cases, perhaps also on the physical properties of the universe. If these processes, occurring according to the principles of evolution and emergence, are characteristic of our form of the universe, which is the subject of our

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understandings reached through descriptions and observations, then classical reductionism must be revised once its potential is drawn out. This does not mean, however, that we need to scorn every result reached through reduction. What is needed is the correction of its unjustified aspirations and, if needed, a modification of its presumptions. It remains debatable whether the original presumption of acquiring such a set of initial equations or principles from which the form of our universe could be derived would have to contain the principles of universal evolution and emergence as sufficient principles. The principal of evolution would be responsible for adaptivity and the emergence principle for the existence of the structure and complexity of adaptive matter. Some authors consider the aforementioned initial set of equations because of the world’s algorithmic complexity (Solomonoff 1964; Li and Vitanyi 1992; Chibbaro et al. 2014). Scientific laws, or systems of laws within a theory, serve in this sense as parsimonious abbreviations for extended thought, negating the need to repeat again and again the research of all the world’s regularities (Mach). According to Mach’s evolutionary conception, laws are unifying and universalizing abbreviations of our experience (see Havlík 2010). In a more modern sense, they are understood as compressible algorithms that integrate and express all possible diversity on the basis of which they were derived. The hypothetical theory of everything is then the sought-after set of initial equations, “the ultimate algorithm for the whole universe” (Chibbaro et al. 2014, 150). However, these authors also point out that such “extreme reductionism” must face the oft-neglected distinction between laws and initial conditions. Thus, although laws undoubtedly have a unifying, compressible, and predictive role, in action their results depend largely on generic initial conditions that are incompressible in some nonlinear processes. (Chibbaro et al. 2014, 151–152) However, it can be assumed that even such a supplemented initial set of equations could not lead to a deductive derivation of the observed form of the universe because the principles of evolution and emergence would highly unify such a project at its very start. Both principles integrate boundary conditions that cannot be unambiguously determined in advance and therefore they are always a matter of the current state of the universe and significantly affect each of its next steps in the temporal sequence of its states. Using analogies for such a process, one can be inspired by many diverse natural processes which are governed by boundary conditions in which the state of the system as a whole tend to favour the state with the lowest potential energy, without clearly defining the states of the subsystems making up the system. For example, it is not possible to determine with certainty the random rotation of the magnetic dipoles of particles in individual domains of ferromagnetic substances in the absence of an external magnetic field. The magnetic dipoles’ orientation in the separate domains depends on the whole, the resulting magnetic moment of which is zero and occupies a state with minimal total energy. A similar effect of the whole on its parts can be found in the twisting of the protein molecule. The molecule occupies the lowest energy state, determining the

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spatial arrangement of the individual subsystems and parts. There is nothing nonphysical in such a principle but with the increasing complexity of the molecule the whole shape’s derivation grows unusually complicated. It is impossible to fulfil the requirements of reductionism and construct a universe from first principles, that is, only from a knowledge of individual entities’ properties, because the principles of organization are the principles of wholes and not of their constituents. Similarly, quantum-mechanical calculations of simpler chemical bonds benefit from empirical knowledge and previous observation of the whole. The calculations contain many empirically determined inputs, according to which the necessary approximations of the calculation are performed. Neither the orientation of the magnetic dipoles nor the shape of the protein; nor can the molecular structures be derived from the knowledge of the properties of the individual constituents of the system. However, the simple principle of the state of the whole with minimal energy and thus nothing non-physical or otherwise mysterious significantly contributes to their arrangement. Similarly, the universal principle of emergence is independent of the entities it organizes, but significantly affects the form of the universe of entities that it organizes structurally. Just as there are an incredible number of ways in which proteins can be spatially arranged without having to have a different principle for each such arrangement, the variability of the form of our universe governed by a few universal principles could unfold. Thus, even if there were a hypothetical initial set of equations, it could not lead to the derivation of our universe’s current form. Such a set would either be incomplete, and then derivation would not be possible a priori, or it would have to contain universal principles regarding the structuring and adaptation of entities as necessary parts. Thanks to them, the constructionist version of reductionism would be unattainable a posteriori. This book aims to elucidate the possible nature of such a universal principle of emergence and to incorporate it into an emergent ontology.

References Aaij, R. et  al. (LHCb collaboration). 2015. Observation of J/ψp Resonances Consistent with Pentaquark States in Λ0b→J/ψK−p Decays. Physical Review Letters https://doi.org/10.1103/ PhysRevLett.115.072001. ———. (LHCb collaboration). 2019. Observation of a Narrow Pentaquark State, Pc(4312)+, and of the Two-Peak Structure of the Pc(4450)+. Physics Review Letters. https://doi.org/10.1103/ PhysRevLett.122.222001. Alexander, Samuel. [1920] 1950. Space, Time, and Deity. 2 vols. Macmillan & Co. Reprinted at 1950 by The Macmillan Company. Anderson, Philip W. 1972. More is Different. Science 177: 393–396. ———. 1995. Historical Overview of the Twentieth Century in Physics. In Twentieth Century Physics, ed. Laurie M.  Brown, Abraham Pais, and A.B.  Pippard, 2017–2032. Bristol/ Philadelphia/New York: Institute of Physics Publications/American Institute of Physics Press. Baker, Lynne Rudder. 1993. Metaphysics and Mental Causation. In Mental Causation, ed. John Heil and Alfred Mele, 75–95. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Guay, Alexandre, and Olivier Sartenaer. 2016. A New Look at Emergence. Or When after Is Different. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (2): 297–322. Guichon, P.A.M. 1988. A Possible Quark Mechanism for the Saturation of Nuclear Matter. Physics Letters B 200 (3): 235–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-­2693(88)90762-­9. Guichon, P.A.M., K.  Saito, E.  Rodionov, and A.W.  Thomas. 1996. The Role of Nucleon Structure in Finite Nuclei. Nuclear Physics A 601 (3–4): 349–379. https://doi. org/10.1016/0375-­9474(96)00033-­4. Haken, Hermann P.J. 1977. Synergetics: An Introduction Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions and Self- Organization in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Cham: Springer. Havlík, Vladimír. 2010. Ernst Mach a evoluční pojetí vědy. In Ernst Mach– Fyzika – Filosofie – Vzdělávání, ed. Dub, Petr and Jana Musilová.1. vyd. Brno: Masarykova univerzita 2010: 206–219. https://doi.org/10.5817/CZ.MUNI.M210-­4808-­2011-­206. Healey, Richard A. 1979. Physicalist Imperialism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 79(1978–1979). Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Aristotelian Society. 191–211. ———. 1991. Holism and Nonseparability. The Journal of Philosophy 88 (8): 393–421. ———. 2010. Reduction and Emergence in Bose-Einstein Condensates. Foundations of Physics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-­010-­9481-­8. Hempel, Carl G. 1969. Reduction: Ontological and Linguistic Facets. In Philosophy, Science, and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel, ed. S.  Morgenbesser et  al. New  York: St Martin’s Press. Hempel, Carl G. and Oppenheim, P. 1948. Studies in the Logic of Explanation. Philosophy of Science 15(2): 135–175. Hendry, Robin F. 2010. Ontological Reduction and Molecular Structure. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 41: 183–191. Hicks, Ken. 2007. Pentaquark Searches (A Lesson in Statistics). High Energy Physics  – Phenomenology (hep-ph), . Horgan, Terence. 1993. From Supervenience to Superdupervenience: Meeting the Demands of a Material World. Mind 102: 555–586. Humphreys, Paul. 1997a. How Properties Emerge. Philosophy of Science 64: 1–17. ———. 1997b. Emergence Not Supervenience. Philosophy of Science, vol. 64, Supplement. In Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers, S337–S345. ———. 2016. Emergence. New York: Oxford University Press. Hüttemann, Andreas. 2005. Explanation, Emergence, and Quantum Entanglement. Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 114–127. Jerabek, P., Bastian Schuetrumpf, Peter Schwerdtfeger, and Witold Nazarewicz. 2018. Electron and Nucleon Localization Functions of Oganesson: Approaching the Thomas-Fermi Limit. Physical Review Letters 120: 053001. Johnson, Jeffrey. 1995. A Language of Structure in the Science of Complexity. Complexity 1 (3): 22–29. https://doi.org/10.1002/cplx.6130010307. Karliner, M., H. J. Lipkin. 2010. About a Possible Nonstrange Cousin of the Theta+ Pentaquark. High Energy Physics – Phenomenology (hep-ph), arXiv:1002.4149v2 [hep-ph]. Karliner, M. and T. Skwarnicki 2019. 85. Pentaquarks. https://pdg.lbl.gov/2020/mobile/reviews/ pdf/rpp2020-­rev-­pentaquarks-­m.pdf. Kauffman, Stuart A. 1990. The Sciences of Complexity and “Origins of Order”. Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1990, vol. 1990, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1990), 299–322. Kim, Jaegwon. 1993. Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Making Sense of Emergence. Philosophical Studies 95: 3–36.

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———. 2001. The Rise of Physicalism. In Physicalism and Its Discontents, ed. Barry Loewer and Carl Gillett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pepper, Stephen. 1926. Emergence. Journal of Philosophy 23: 241–245. Praszałowicz, M. 1987. Proceedings of the Workshop on Skyrmions and Anomalies, ed. M. Jeżabek, M.  Praszałowicz. Krakow, Poland, 1987, 112. World Scientific. http://www-­spires.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/books?cl=QCD161:W594:1987 Prigogine, Ilya. 1980. From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. 1984. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. London: Flamingo. Railsback, Steven F., and Volker Grimm. 2012. Agent-Based and Individual-Based Modeling: A Practical Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Redhead, Michael. 1990. A Philosopher Looks at Quantum Field Theory. In Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory, ed. Harvey R.  Brown and Rom Harré. Oxford Clarendon Press. Rosenberg, Alex. 1997. Can Physicalist Antireductionism Compute the Embryo? Philosophy of Science 64, Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetingsof the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers, S359–S371. Saito, K., K. Tsushima, and A.W. Thomas. 2007. Nucleon and hadron structure changes in the nuclear medium and the impact on observables. Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics 58 (1): 1–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ppnp.2005.07.003. Scerri, Eric R. 1994. Has Chemistry Been at Least Approximately Reduced to Quantum Mechanics? PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1994, Volume One: Contributed Papers (1994), The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science, 160–170. ———. 2007. The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2011. What is an element? What is the periodic table? And what does quantum mechanics contribute to the question? Foundations of Chemistry 14: 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10698-­011-­9124-­y. Scharf, David C. 1989. Quantum Measurement and the Program for the Unity of Science. Philosophy of Science 56 (4): 601–623. https://doi.org/10.1086/289516. Schweber, Silvan S. 1993. Physics, Community and the Crisis in Physical Theory. Physics Today 46 (11): 34–40. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.881368. Searle, John R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press, kapitola 5, Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness. Cite from: Emergence, ed. M. A. Bedau – P. Humphreys, the MIT Press, 2008. ———. 2001. Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology. Philosophy 76 (298): 491–514. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0031819101000535. ———. [2004] 2007. Freedom and Neurobiology. Reflections on FreeWill, Language, and Political Power. New York: Columbia University Press. Silberstein, Michael, and John McGeever. 1999. The Search for Ontological Emergence. The Philosophical Quarterly 49 (195): 201–214. Sklar, Lawrence. 1999. The Reduction(?) Of Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics. Philosophical Studies 95 (1–2): 187–202. Solomonoff, R.J. 1964. A formal theory of inductive inference. part i and ii. Information and Control 7 (1): 1. Sperry, Roger W. 1969. A Modified Concept of Consciousness. Psychological Review 76 (6): 532–536. ———. 1980. Mind-Brain Interaction: Mentalism, Yes; Dualism, No. Neuroscience 5(2): 195–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-­4522(80)90098-­6.

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Chapter 2

Towards a Universal Principle of Emergence (UPE)

Abstract  This chapter clarifies the essential theoretical background. In opposition to the prevailing diversification of the meaning of the concept of emergence, it advocates universalizing it as a generally valid principle in the creation of complex wholes. Achieving unification and universalization in the creation of new perspectives is one of the primary intentions of science and philosophy; thus, we should not reject it as an option but should seek to establish why it is necessary to limit the search for a universal principle of emergence to ontological emergence and its role in the emergence of complex wholes in different domains of reality. Thus, the starting point is a critical analysis of traditional conceptions of ontological emergence, tracing the fundamental ideas underlying each approach, including the distinction between emergence1 and emergence2 (Searle), the supervenient (Kim, Van Cleve, O’Connor, McLaughlin, Crane) and non-supervenient conceptions of emergence (Humphreys), and the influential concept of “weak” and “strong” emergence (Bedau, Chalmers, Gillett).

2.1  Universal Principle of Emergence? Having shown elsewhere that evolution is a universal principle (Havlík 2011), I shall now approach emergence as a principle of universal validity. Thereby, emergence should be viewed as a necessary change, liable to occur whenever the required conditions occur. Having demonstrated that evolution is a universal principle which may occur through different means in different environments without this influencing the basic universal mechanism of evolution, I similarly presume that regarding emergence we may also unveil general and universal criteria for changes of this kind, and identify individual instantiations of emergent changes in various areas of reality. Unlike evolution, which is widely accepted as one of the fundamental aspects of our world, the issue of emergent changes remains subject to debate. If evolutional development is doubted in fields such as culture or science, this does not cast doubt on the mechanism of evolution itself. Irrespective of problematic alternatives, such © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 V. Havlík, Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8_2

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as creationism or intelligent design, biological evolution is a sufficiently proven empirical fact and an integral part of the contemporary scientific view of the world. In contrast, as regards emergent changes there are no fields to which we could refer as convincingly as in the case of evolution. Rather, there are individual analyses of specific natural or social phenomena which defy any simple reductionist plan or attempt to explain such phenomena as the consequences of emergent change. To cite but a few examples, in physics this pertains to phenomena in condensed matter and solids; in chemistry, to covalent bonds and the features of chemical compounds; in biology, to the general irreducibility of biological phenomena; in ecology, to the emergence and stability of ecosystems; in economics, to market (in)stability; and rather more generally, in complexity theory this concerns, among others, the features of agent-based systems. Paul Humphreys describes the situation as characterised by a transdisciplinary aspect and argues that this is one of the reasons why a unified conception of emergence cannot soon be achieved (Humphreys 2016a, XVII). Thus, for many, transdisciplinarity is a reason for scepticism, discouraging those authors who doubt the possibility of revealing a unified mechanism of emergence on account of the number of areas where phenomena appear which defy the notions of classical reductionism. For instance, Mario Bunge claims, “An adequate and general definition of the conditions for emergence is elusive, if not impossible, given the large variety of emergence mechanisms.” (Bunge [2003] 2014, 33) Similarly, Humphreys presumes that this task is bound to fail due to the existence of a great many different approaches to emergence, thus preventing a unified conception from being found. He claims: One of the obstacles to progress in this area, and the source of many unproductive disputes, has been the view that there is one correct definition of emergence. In an intellectually ordered world, we would stop using the word “emergence” and use more precisely defined terms such as “self-organizing system” and “computational incompressibility,” together with features that are characteristic of, but neither necessary nor sufficient for, emergence. (Humphreys 2016a, XVIII)

Humphreys and Bunge certainly have a point about the transdisciplinarity of emergent changes, but we do not want to be discouraged by his scepticism towards a satisfactory definition of emergence. Transdisciplinarity need not be viewed only as a disadvantage. If a vast number of various fields employ the term emergence in their explanations, this means at the very least that in all these cases, however specific to that field the reasons may be, we are faced with phenomena which cannot simply be explained in reductionist terms: thus it is worth examining whether they may be the result of a single universal principle. In this regard we do not share the doubters’ scepticism even as regards the sense of a search for a unified conception of emergence. In an intelligently ordered world, as intelligent beings we use and have to use exactly this type of generalisation in order not to be forced to repeat everything time and again from the beginning, but instead to obtain suitable intellectual tools for understanding the world. Similarly, we do not share with authors such as Huneman and Humphreys the uncertainty regarding the necessity or randomness of the application of such a hypothetical principle to particular levels or domains.

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We do not know yet whether—provided that we have a robust concept of emergence, possibly computational—(a) an emerging phenomenon initially happens inside one peculiar domain, or one special science devoted to this domain (e.g., biology, economy, etc.) which then sometimes leads to a common model able for contingent reasons to be used in several sciences (like the same equation being used to account for two essentially different phenomena, e.g., gravitation and static electricity), or (b) the emergence phenomenon is essentially the same across all domains and hence deserves a peculiar kind of science, besides the special sciences, which perhaps deals with their common internal structures. (Huneman and Humphreys 2008, 428)

On the contrary, I wish to show that there are already good reasons to prefer solution (b) and to understand emergence as a lawlike relation, independent of a particular area but instead being a principle which is applied universally, whenever and wherever the necessary conditions are met. This standpoint is not merely a metaphysical belief but also allows for falsifiable predictions based upon accepted criteria for the conditions under which the given phenomenon is thought to occur. It can thus be viewed as a falsifiable metaphysical hypothesis which may be verified or refuted. From the viewpoint of metaphysics or philosophy, we can fall back on the presumption of a certain uniformity in nature, and initially we may presume rather vaguely that nature does not waste realization mechanisms, which offers the possibility of such mechanisms resulting from a single universal principle of emergence. I aim to highlight the analogous situation which I tried to prove in the case of evolution (Havlík 2011), where I viewed individual instances of evolutionary change as the consequence of the existence of universal principles of evolution. Similarly, here I presume that individual particular instances of emergent mechanisms in one area of reality or another are simply the consequences of a universal principle of emergence. If, for some reason, this is not possible, then as generalisations and universalisations are among the fundamental criteria shared by science and philosophy, this would imply abandoning any scientific and philosophical reflection of the world. However, apart from such analogous cases of evolution and emergence, here we are also forced to consider a rather remarkable asymmetry regarding their empirical provability and the status of their scientific acceptability. While evolution in its biological instantiation is sufficiently empirically proven and we are able to refer to a sophisticated theory of evolution, as regards emergence, we cannot rely on a similarly sophisticated or extensive theoretical support in most of the particular areas of each individual science. This corresponds to the asymmetry in the assertion of evolution and emergence as universal principles. With evolution it was not necessary to evidence evolutionary changes as such but merely to prove that biological evolution, being the best known case, is only one possible instance of such changes, and that the specificities of other individual instances of evolution are no reason to reject its universality, i.e. the principle of evolution. With emergence, the task at hand is different. We need to find suitable examples to prove the existence of changes on various levels of reality whose nature is contrary to the ideas of classical reductionism and can be unified through the perspective of a universal principle of emergence. This principle, in its generality, should be noticeable in various areas of reality and, similar to evolution, it should contribute

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towards our understanding, explanations and predictions, because like evolution, it is a characteristic feature of our world without which the world can be neither understood nor explained in a satisfactory manner. The following section analyses the individual conceptions of emergence and seeks to demonstrate how they are able to explain and predict the emergence of the new in the broadest sense, i.e. of new entities, which can encompass individuals, properties, qualities, phenomena and relations. This raises the question of how emergence is involved in the formation of complex structures and results in the occurrence of new causal links, which may be further systematised, and some of which may be regarded as laws which can help form the bases of new branches of science.

2.1.1  What Is Emergence? Emergence long ago ceased to be the rather clumsy, mysterious term which philosophers and scientists engaged in philosophy used in an effort to define a basic distinction between changes whose result could be predicted, deduced or calculated in advance, as opposed to changes which could not. This concerned changes whose unpredictable outcomes could be examined and related to known contexts only ex post. However, this distinction is very vague, not only because the meanings of prediction, derivation and calculation are difficult to define but also because the real cause of the impossibility of prediction, derivation or calculation remains unclear. Is this only a matter of our lack of knowledge of all the aspects of the changes in question, or rather a principial impossibility? If the latter, what are the reasons preventing us from achieving something which in other cases poses no insurmountable problems? In other words, is a problem thus formulated of an epistemological or ontological nature? Such questions are certainly valid and our task will be to phrase them with a commitment borne of precision. Yet my present aim is to intuitively define the space and briefly outline the problem relevant to contemporary approaches to emergence. Thus, I surrender any claim to a historically complete genesis of the ideas of emergence; I wish only to illustrate the problem via several individual examples. The most famous distinctions between the results of various changes comprise J. S. Mill’s distinction between homopathic and heteropathic effects. Based on the physical principle of the dynamics of the composition of forces, Mill considers the composition of causes along similar lines (Mill [1843] 2011, 354). In the homopathic effect, the effect of the composition of several causes is identical to the sum of all separate influences at hand, just like in the vector composition of forces: in mechanical terms the result is identical to the sum of the separate influences of individual forces operating in different directions. In contrast, the heteropathic effect is conceived by Mill as a non-mechanical approach to the composition of causes, where the result is not only different from its causes, but moreover is not deducible beforehand. Evident examples of heteropathic effects include chemical reactions

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whose result is the product of the effects of individual causes (substances), but the resulting substances of the reaction manifest qualitatively different features from the substances entering the reaction. In this respect, we may identify heteropathic effects, and even heteropathic laws describing these operations, as “emergent” phenomena. Similarly, the philosophical status of emergent entities was described in 1875 by G. H. Lewes while examining the problems of life and mind (Lewes [1875] 2009). Lewes was already using the term “emergent” to refer to entities (i.e. features and substances) which arise from considerably more fundamental entities while still being “novel” and non-reducible entities. Lewes’ conception of emergent entities inspired the subsequent tradition of British emergentism, which made a major contribution to the honing and thus the clarification of the initial questions of the emergence of new complex entities whose properties cannot be found in any of their parts. Further, the existence of emergent qualities was often held by British emergentists to be a “brute empirical fact or […] to be accepted with the ‘natural piety’ of the investigator. It admits no explanation.” (Alexander [1920] 1950, 46–47) One example of this was the existence of life, arising from a sufficient complexity of physical and chemical processes. Life as an emergent quality is a physical-chemical complexity, while at the same time not being merely physical-chemical, but rather characterised by novel qualities which are not limited to the physical or the chemical. In this sense, life is a higher quality than its physical-chemical basis. Alexander explains this as follows: The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special laws of behaviour. (Alexander [1920] 1950, 46)

The use of the term emergent was inspired by Lewes and promoted by Lloyd Morgan to refer to the novelty of this type of entity. It was not only life as an emergent entity that was something more than a physical-chemical complexity. Likewise, in the case of the mind, the term emergent referred to “the novelty which the mind possesses, while the mind still remains equivalent to a certain neural constellation.” (Alexander [1920] 1950, 14, note 2) At the same time, Alexander points out that the emergent notion of the mind is in direct contradiction to the notion of the mind being merely resultant from something lower. As life is not a mere physical-­ chemical complexity, but rather a higher, novel quality, so too the mind is not merely the result of a neural basis in the brain, but something qualitatively higher, novel and original, something which cannot be the predictable result of neural changes and processes. Mind and life are thus exemplary emergent phenomena which cannot be predicted, derived, or calculated from a knowledge of their basis. In a similar vein, the fundamental question of emergence is formulated in the modern approaches to emergentism as follows: “Emergentism hopes to give sense to the idea that mental properties are metaphysically dependent on physical properties but yet possess causal autonomy with respect to them.” (Ganeri 2011, 672) More generally, with regard not only to mental properties but also to all emergent phenomena, “Emergent phenomena are Janus faced; they depend on more basic

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phenomena and yet are autonomous from that base.” (Bedau and Humphreys 2008, 6) Finally, on a more technical, formal note: Emergence is an empirical relation between two relata, namely an emergent E and its emergence basis B, such that the two following theses simultaneously obtain: (DEP) E is dependent on, or determined by, B; and yet (NOV) E is novel with regard to, or autonomous from, B. (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 298)

Regardless of the differences in the means of expression and the contexts in which the in/dependency of emergent phenomena is conceived, it seems that this dependency or independency of entities (wholes, properties, relations and laws) can be viewed as a condensed expression of emergence. Thus, as noted by Bedau and Humphreys, “if emergence is to be coherent, it must involve different senses of dependence and independence.” (Bedau and Humphreys 2008, 6) With a pinch of salt we may presume that the noticeable shift between British emergentism and Aristotle’s observation of the whole being more than its parts (Aristotle, Met. Book 8, sect. 10f-1045a) is what divides the British emergentists’ ideas from the present-day approach to emergence. Although the progressive development of philosophical thought has often been questioned (e.g. Schlick 1979), it is more than provable in philosophical discussions of emergence. Undoubtedly, philosophy here profits from its close link with each individual science, as well as from its ability to reflect and apply universal relations and mechanisms occurring across the ever-diversifying range of sciences. To a certain extent, philosophy substitutes a hypothetical individual branch, establishing emergent phenomena as its subject. This is not unique in the philosophy of science. Other sciences have undergone a similar process, including cybernetics, systems theory, catastrophe theory, game theory, fractal geometry, chaos theory, informatics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, synergetics, and probably some others too.1 What they all share is that their findings are universally applicable. They do not examine a particular chosen part of reality which is characteristic for its causal relations; instead they study, in specific fields, universal relations (i.e. laws) which are valid regardless of their carriers or the areas in which they manifest themselves. From this viewpoint, identical behaviour occurs e.g. in the development of stock market prices or solar activity (in other words, any given dynamic system), the behaviour of a thermostat and the ability to keep stable the inner environments in live organisms (i.e. homeostasis, cybernetic systems with feedback), or the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, the emergence of coherent radiation (laser) and live systems in general (i.e. open systems which self-organize based on the flow of energy, mass and information). The above examples are listed only for the sake of illustration. Their sole purpose is to document the vast diversity of areas which may come into play once we concentrate on a universal relation to which various 1  This list does not attempt to be complete, or to do justice to the specificities of the individual disciplines. On the contrary, although many of these have established a specialised branch of mathematics (e.g. fractal geometry), the processes to which they are applicable are often the subjects of other disciplines. Chaos theory pertains to dynamic systems, which often contain mathematical structures called attractors and fractals.

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phenomena are subjected. In the same sense, emergent phenomena—their properties, relations, entities—are also based upon a generally systemic approach, presuming the revelation of universal behaviour principles independent of the given level of reality. In all these cases of emergence in specific yet universal branches of science we can trace the role of philosophical thought, which not only tries to provide ever new theoretical formulations of perennial “philosophical questions” but often directly participates in the science through reflections upon empirical research. In this respect, the thought involved in developing a concept of emergence is not vastly different from that given to the above disciplines. At the same time, discussions of these universally valid relations and phenomena are inspired by empirical research in a number of contemporary scientific disciplines, ranging from non-linear dynamics, chaos theory, connectionist models and complexity through to computer models of artificial life, research on economic and social systems, and even quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind. The present-day form of an emergent theory does not yet amount to a coherent scientific discipline but, unlike the original, purely philosophical tool representing the specificity of certain phenomenal relations in the world, the current status of emergence is fully derived from its empirical contents, in which various scientific disciplines participate. It is thus considerably more acceptable to claim that this situation has resulted in a justified philosophical interest in reflecting upon such findings, while the extent to which philosophy as such may have contributed to these findings remains greatly more problematic and open to question.

2.1.2  Ontological and Epistemological Emergence If we wish to demonstrate the fundamental role of emergent changes and achieve a satisfactory notion of emergence as a universal principle, we first need to subscribe to certain metaphysical commitments. In the following analysis of the leading conceptions of emergence, I deliberately focus only on those belonging to ontological emergence. The reason for this is clear enough: should emergent changes exist only as the result of a given conceptual perspective (i.e. a model, dictionary, theory), they could not have the role of a universal principle, and its formulation would thus be unnecessary. However, if we presume that emergent changes also exist in ways other than the consequence of our epistemological perspectives then it makes sense to consider their potential universal validity and the ontological role of a universal principle. My phrasing of the ontological commitment is intentionally tentative, as there is no present consensus in the literature over the delimitation of ontological and epistemological emergence. There is not only “the lack of clarity concerning the distinction between epistemological and ontological forms of emergence” (Rigato 2017, 179); at the same time, this distinction is often applied with a lightness which makes consensus even more problematic. Most authors define ontological emergence with

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reference to the objectivity, autonomy and non-reducibility of emergent entities. Emergent entities are objective and autonomous parts of the world, not the results of our apparatus of representation or of our cognitive abilities (see, among others, Humphreys 2016a, 56). Their objectivity implies independence of our existence and our knowledge; therefore, we must presume that emergent entities existed long before cognitive agents developed in the universe (Humphreys 2016a, 38). Similarly, distinction is often associated with theories about the world and the world itself: “Epistemological emergence is a relation existing between theories or models of the world. Ontological emergence is a relation existing between objects or properties in the world. Even though the latter implies the former, the inverse is not true.” (Rigato 2017, 179) Although I essentially agree with this delimitation of ontological emergence, I prefer the aforementioned tentative phrasing to any strict delimitation. This is, firstly, because any statement of the ontological character of ongoing changes may be questioned with regard to our lacking direct access to the ongoing changes and being forced to consider them within the range of scientific models, a particular theoretical vocabulary, etc., thus more or less questioning the ontological nature of emergence and pointing to its epistemological conditioning. Such a procedure is generally applicable as regards any attempt to define ontic/epistemic distinction. Although some authors assume that this distinction can satisfactorily be conceptually and formally defined, for example, in quantum mechanics (Scheibe 1973, Primas 1998, Atmanspacher 2002), they cannot fully cope with this kind of task. Indeed, the philosophical delicacy lies in distinguishing the ontic states by describing all the properties of the physical system in an exhaustive way, that is, “an ontic state is ‘precisely the way it is’, without any reference to epistemic knowledge or ignorance” (Atmanspacher 2002, 50–51). Finally, the remark in the later ontic extension of the originally proposed interlevel epistemic descriptions in physics (Bishop and Ellis 2020) does not contribute to clarifying the ontic-epistemic distinction in these approaches. According to the authors, we should not confuse “human states of knowledge with epistemic states. Epistemic states describe those properties of systems that can be measured. Human knowledge describes what we know after a measurement has taken place.” (Bishop and Ellis 2020, 491, note 4) Given the many ambiguities illustrated, focusing on ontological emergence in my case means only a programmatic disregard for those conceptions that consider emergent phenomena merely as the consequences of various modes of description. The causes of emergent phenomena in these concepts are not considered as inherent properties of the phenomena themselves, but exclusively as external causes which arise purely from the description of such phenomena. I presume ontological emergence to be an inherent element of other objective processes and events, thus making it a subject of potential epistemological reflection. Epistemological emergence is then a secondary effect, formulated within our cognitive apparatus; its significance for our knowledge of these phenomena can vary, and in some cases it can be only temporary or apparent. However, I do not presume that there is no ontological basis for such phenomena in principle, or that emergence is merely the consequence either of our cognitive abilities or of their limitations. Referring to emergent processes as a mere artifact of a certain model or

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formalism caused by a higher-level description or explanation, unlike the low-level basis of such phenomena, is then counterproductive and only complicates the epistemological possibilities of rationality. Some conceptions of epistemological emergence try to explain emergent phenomena merely through different descriptions on different ontological levels, and interpret their incompatibility as an illusion conjured by levels of descriptions. Proponents of epistemological emergence then claim, for instance, that: The language of design L1 and the language of observation L2 are distinct, and the causal link between the elementary interactions programmed in L1 and the behaviors observed in L2 is non-obvious to the observer—who therefore experiences surprise. (Ronald et  al. 1999, 228)

Similarly, epistemological emergence is defined as follows: A property of an object or system is epistemologically emergent if the property is reducible to or determined by the intrinsic properties of the ultimate constituents of the object or system, while at the same time it is very difficult for us to explain, predict or derive the property on the basis of the ultimate constituents. Epistemologically emergent properties are novel only at a level of description. (Silberstein and McGeever 1999, 186)

I agree that epistemological emergence can be caused only by the manner of description of phenomena, thus depending on various conceptual approaches and terminologies employed to describe the particular areas or levels. Nevertheless, “reducible to” and “determined by” need not always apply at the same time, and it is difficult to imagine how it would be possible at the same time to determine, in any objective sense, the reducibility of emergent phenomena to basic constituents, given that their non-deducibility from basic constituents remains valid. Nor can ontological emergence be considered satisfactory; it is defined by Silberstein and McGeever thus: Ontologically emergent features are neither reducible to nor determined by more basic features. Ontologically emergent features are features of systems or wholes that possess causal capacities not reducible to any of the intrinsic causal capacities of the parts nor to any of the (reducible) relations between the parts. Ontological emergence entails the failure of part-whole reductionism in both its explicit and mereological supervenience forms. (Silberstein and McGeever 1999, 186)

This delineation of ontological emergence is problematic with regard to a monistic commitment to which the authors themselves subscribe: “Ontological emergence means monism without reductionism.” (Silberstein and McGeever 1999, 200) What is problematic here is not the non-reducibility but the determination of phenomena of a higher emergent level through their basal level. I have mentioned the requirements for dependency and autonomy for each emergent entity; in this case it seems that emergent entities not determined by their basis would contradict the monistic commitment. If they were not determined by their basis, they would be independent of it and their autonomy would be simple and self-evident. However, the problem of emergence lies in aligning the dependency of emergent phenomena upon their basis at a lower level with their autonomy at a higher level. This is a significant question and my presumption is that it is fundamentally ontological rather than merely epistemological.

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In a similar sense, it is necessary to consider another kind of ontological emergence, called “O-emergence” in Gillett’s taxonomy of emergence (Gillett 2016, 173). Although he commonly uses the term “ontology” in a standard way, he assumes that some authors (e.g. O’Connor 1994, Clayton 2006, and others) characterize ontological emergence as an anti-physicalist position and thus admit the existence and effect of non-physical forces. He considers an essential characteristic of emergent properties to be “higher-level properties that are unrealized by any lower-­ level properties” (Gillett 2016, 182). Perhaps this emphasis on unrealization and opposition to physicalism leads Gillett too far in the general assessment. He sees a link between O-emergence, for example, and the “life force” or other “supernatural phenomena” and thus finds it in conflict with science (Gillett 2016, 186). However, this is unjustified for several reasons. (1) Ontological emergence is not understood exclusively in a way which necessarily introduces a dualistic ontology. On the contrary, O’Connor and Clayton reject the extremes of both radical reductionism and dualism and make a commitment to ontological monism (Clayton 2006, 2). The reason for this is that a radical-physicalist perspective does not lead to an explanation of apparently emergent phenomena such as life and consciousness. Moreover, radical physicalism cannot define what “physical” is (e.g., it is impossible to determine the finite and fundamental set of physical entities). Hence, the commitment to ontological monism is a much more acceptable solution. (2) Proponents of this type of solution assume that ontological emergence must be “at once grounded in and yet emergent from the underlying material structure with which it is associated” (O’Connor 1994, 91). Thus, the authors try to respect the ontological arrangement of certain phenomena and not postulate any other entities beyond ontological monism’s commitment. Therefore the relation of emergent properties to their base is not denied; only, it is not realized in a reductionist way. (3) Ontological emergence is preferably defined in juxtaposition with epistemological emergence, without its ontological character being already influenced by the existence or non-existence of any relations to their constituents or determinants. O-emergence, in the sense of ontological emergence, is therefore not a completely happy term for a dual conception of emergent phenomena. For these reasons, I will use ontological emergence in the sense of the ontological/epistemological distinction, although it is burdened with many ambiguities. In each case, I understand by ontological emergence a specific process consistent with physical monism but not with reductive micro-physicalism. I thus agree in principle with the position proposed by Crane (2000, 2001) to distinguish non-reductive physicalism from non-physicalist monism, i.e. emergentism. He argues that the rejection of both “conceptual and ontological reduction gives us a non-physicalist position; but it does not give us dualism.” (Crane 2000, 84) The only difference is that Crane does not want us to use the term physicalism in any form in this sense, because in his view physicalism is always linked to some kind of reductionism, thus leaving it difficult to find room for such a monistic doctrine.

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Therefore, it seems to me more appropriate to use the term non-reductive physicalism, which is non-reductive in both the ontological and conceptual senses, while emphasizing its microphysical irreducibility. In other words, we might call such a position emergent physicalism, since we are not merely concerned with distinguishing the mental from the physical, but the mental as an emergent property which is in a similar relation to its base as many other emergent system properties are to their bases. Unlike this sort of distinction between ontological and epistemological emergence, Humphreys considers it more convenient to distinguish, within epistemological emergence, between inferential and conceptual emergence, as each of these two types highlights different aspects and concrete examples bear witness to each. Conceptual emergence is, above all, a matter of new theoretical and linguistic tools which may be more efficient in representing or predicting phenomena in various fields, while inferential emergence highlights the non-derivability of systemic features from constituents of a whole. The two are closely linked but, as Humphreys points out, representation takes the lead in conceptual approaches, while derivability takes the lead in those that are inferential. (Humphreys 2016a, 39) Humphreys’ distinction between ontological, inferential and conceptual emergence, however, is not entirely distinctive. For instance, inferential emergence need not be a matter of solely epistemic limitations to derivability—its base can be ontological, too. The limited predictive ability of inferential emergence is not merely the consequence of limited human abilities but it also pertains to considerably more objective limitations. If a system is represented through a theoretical model, the knowledge of the emergent feature of this system as a whole must arise from sources other than the theoretical model itself (see Humphreys 2016a, 38). Ontological and inferential emergence are thus not exclusively distinctive types, and similar challenges would also be faced with the remaining options. This raises the question of whether this distinction may be puzzling rather than heuristic. After all, this is demonstrated by Humphreys’ examples: other than two, marked as exclusively ontological (probably only because they lack a formal model of the phenomena involved), the rest of the examples are marked as combinations of two or even all three types, i.e. ontological, inferential and conceptual emergence. For the above reasons, a consensus on ontological and epistemological emergence seems difficult to attain, and in some contexts it may complicate our conclusions rather than simplify them. The difference between whether emergent phenomena are derivable or predictable in principle but not in practice, and whether emergent phenomena are neither derivable nor predictable either in principle or in practice, is clear enough, but on the borderline between ontology and epistemology it is virtually undecidable. This undecidability is not a matter of emergent phenomena as such, but rather a question of delimiting borders between our cognitive apparatus, the way it describes phenomena and the independent phenomena in themselves. Let us repeat that I do not deny the existence of epistemological emergence as such: I simply do not think that concentrating solely on it would prove decisive as the question of ontological emergence is much more fundamental. If it is possible to

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argue against ontological emergence in the sense which was introduced above, then the proponents of ontological emergence are left with a similar option. If someone claims that emergent phenomena are merely a matter of the lexicon of the given level of description, and that in fact an epistemologically emergent feature can be reduced to the constituents of the system, then let them prove such reduction through finding functional reductive rules or bridge laws. In many reductionist arguments, e.g. the reduction of chemistry to physics, it turns out that reduction is clearly not achieved; also, without the involvement of many empirical measurements, or without mathematical approximation methods, no predictions regarding higher-level phenomena (e.g. chemistry) can be attained based on a mere knowledge of lower-level phenomena (e.g. physics). The question of a mere manner of description can be turned against critics of ontological emergence; unless they are able to prove at least some successful reduction of a higher to a lower level then their referring back to the principial derivability of higher levels is a very weak and questionable argument. I will come back to arguments against epistemological emergence later when analysing some empirical examples of emergence in physics and complexity theory.

2.1.3  Conceptions of Ontological Emergence Among the traditional interpretations of ontological emergence one might include Searle’s conception of emergent phenomena. In ontological emergence, Searle looks for support for his conception of the mind and consciousness, which he considers exclusively biological as they are substantially dependent upon their biological carrier, i.e. the brain. Thus, consciousness is a feature of the brain, a complex system as a whole, and this feature cannot be attributed to individual constituents of this whole, i.e. to neurons. Searle frequently employs physical analogies in order to explain his theory of the specificity of consciousness. He often refers to certain physical system features such as liquidity, solidity, transparency etc. (Searle 1992, 111), which can only be attributed to substances on a particular macrolevel, without such features being borne by the microlevel constituents of these substances. Thus, a molecule of water is not “wet”, not a liquid, and unlike macroscopic liquids does not possess many of the other physical characteristics of water, such as capillary action. By analogy, consciousness is a causally emergent feature of the complex system of the brain, not to be found at the microlevel of individual neurons. However, the physical analogy of liquidity, which relates to water molecules in the same way as consciousness relates to the neuronal structure of the brain, is often criticised because liquidity can be predicted based on the features of elementary particles, while consciousness cannot be predicted from the features of neurons (see e.g. Scaruffi 1999). This objection has now become problematic. Previously (Havlík 2012) I accepted some justification of this objection but suggested that it may be a fragile stance should we see the unpredictability and non-derivability of consciousness from the

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features of neurons merely as a temporary state destined to end when neurobiology achieves similar success to physics and, sooner or later, acquires the ability to predict, in a similar fashion, the transitional state of the neuronal system towards establishing consciousness. Then, the above analogy would be fully justifiable and the relationship of liquidity to water molecules would be no different from that of consciousness to the brain. There is, however, another way of avoiding the above criticism; surprisingly, this other way now seems much more likely. Recently it has been shown that we need to re-examine more closely what is meant by physics being capable of predicting the macrofeatures of entities based on elementary particles, and thereby to establish, for example, the exact conditions of the transition phases of individual water molecules towards liquidity. It seems that we should be much more sceptical towards the predictive powers of physics with regard to establishing the conditions of such actions. Recent experimental research shows that the unusual features of water are caused by water being in two phasal states at once (see Poole et  al. 1992; Limmer and Chandler 2013; Perakis et al. 2017), thereby being significantly different from the behaviour of other liquids. What is remarkable for us is that this idea was first put forward as early as 1992 and remains an aspect of experimental research yielding new discoveries. For the purpose of our present argumentation, it does not matter what actual conclusions scientists will reach; what is crucial is that it is unthinkable for us to derive or predict from water’s components its features as a liquid. If this were possible, these predictions would have been established long ago on the basis of quantum theory, and would by now have been experimentally tested. In fact, however, this bottom-up procedure is not feasible. A physical explanation of the features of water is only possible with the decisive help of the experimental results of measurements which are then ex post construed using a variety of techniques and strategies, including mathematical approximations. With regard to predictability and reducibility, we thus need to distinguish between two basic strategies, which should not be used interchangeably, and to try to compare them to Searle’s conception of ontological emergence.

2.1.4  Bottom-Up and Top-Down The first strategy, bottom-up, is based on the presumption that it is possible to predict or derive results at a higher level (new entities, features or laws) without needing to work backwards towards such predictions from the empirical evidence of previous cases. Phenomena corresponding to this can be considered fully reducible, because if they are predictable, then they are derivable or deducible from the knowledge of lower levels, and their existence is not conditioned by anything except their constituent parts. The existence of such phenomena is ontologically possible and at the constituent level there is no information missing which is necessary for the explanation of the existence of such phenomena at a higher level.

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The other, the top-down strategy, is based on the presumption that we can begin from higher level entities and reveal everything on the lower levels which causes their existence. Essentially, this procedure is also applicable to first level phenomena, and if applying the top-down strategy leads us back to the bottom-up strategy, such phenomena are reducible, as in the former case. The problem is that most top-­ down strategies only presume the practical complications of applying a bottom-up strategy, i.e. computational complexity, computation time and sufficiently efficient computer technology, but not the principial difficulties of such a task. By principial difficulties, I mean the fact that some phenomena cannot be considered fully reducible as they are not predictable, derivable or deducible from the knowledge of a lower level, and their existence is conditioned by something other than their constituent parts. The existence of such phenomena is ontologically possible and at the constituent level there is missing information which is necessary for the explanation of the existence of such phenomena at a higher level. In the bottom-up scenario the features of a whole or system arise through what Mill considered homopathic effects. In the top-down situation we have more of a “brute empirical fact” which we first face in terms of its existence, but which can subsequently be explained if we examine sufficiently closely the mechanisms leading to its existence. This does not automatically imply that such an explanation within the top-down strategy also corresponds to the bottom-up strategy. If we have all the relevant information for the top-down explanation, this alone does not guarantee that all this information can be revealed at a lower level: if not, the phenomenon cannot be fully reducible. Let us now go back to Searle’s analogy of the liquidity of water as a macrolevel feature of the liquid. The question is whether in this case we have successfully achieved the bottom-up strategy, or whether this is too optimistic a presumption. At any rate, if we know at which “brute empirical fact” we need to arrive, then we may experiment with a number of ways of reaching it through various model procedures and approximations. Eventually this proves very similar to the case of the neurons’ relationship with consciousness. We know well enough which kinds of brain activities are connected with certain mental states, and although we are currently unable to use a mathematical approximation of any sort, the activations are clearly correlated with the existence of the given mental states. Therefore, I can see no reason to presume that the relation of the liquidity of water to its constituents is not analogous to that between consciousness and brain, or that this analogy has its limitations. This finding is an important aspect in the effort to formulate a universal principle of emergence. If there were any crucial differences in the realisations of emergent phenomena in areas of reality with varying complexity, then we could hardly consider a unified principle of the emergence of the new. The fact that even numerous physical and chemical processes are not reducible to the behaviour of microlevel constituents is an important finding in this case; I shall return to some exemplary cases in later chapters. It was commonly presumed—and in a number of fields this conviction still survives—that thanks to quantum theory, all complex phenomena are essentially explicable, the only difficulties being practical matters pertaining to the computations of vast numbers of equations. In another chapter I shall attend to

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this question in more detail: what is relevant now as regards Searle’s ontological conception of emergence is that Searle himself is one of those who take into account a limitation to the liquidity of water as an analogy to consciousness and the brain.

2.1.5  Ontological and Causal Reducibility In his response (Searle 2012, 203), Searle essentially only repeats the conclusion of Chapter 5 in The Rediscovery of the Mind (Searle 1992). He claims, “Liquidity is ontologically reducible to molecular behaviour in a way that consciousness is only causally reducible, but not ontologically reducible, to brain processes” (Searle 2012, 203). According to Searle, the distinction between ontological and causal reducibility lies in the fact that in ontological reduction we are able to show that an object or entity is no different from objects or entities of a different sort. In causal reducibility, viewed as a less valuable reduction, it means that we are able to explain the causal powers of the reducible entity in terms of the causal powers of entities to which the initial entity is reducible. Ontological reduction is thus the most important and valuable reduction we can perform, a maxim which may be required for the explanation of phenomena, while in the case of causal reduction we need to presume that it is only explicable thanks to the causal powers of the constituent parts. In the case of water and its macrofeatures, ontological reduction lies in the possibility of showing that water as a liquid is nothing but a set of molecules of a particular type, whilst causal reducibility only means that the causal powers of one of its features (e.g. liquidity) are explicable in terms of the causal powers of individual molecules. Searle connects the two cases of reductionism thus: “the question is whether the causal reductionism of my view leads—or fails to lead—to ontological reduction” (Searle 1992, 115) and presumes that every ontological reduction is based on primary causal reduction (Searle 1992, 118). This is why, according to Searle, there is a shocking asymmetry between the ontological reducibility of warmth, solidity, colour, sound (and liquidity) on the one hand, and on the other, the non-reducibility of consciousness (Searle 1992, 116). Searle tries to demonstrate that the non-reducibility of consciousness follows from the fact that in ontologically reducible items we disregard their subjective perceptions, but once the subjective perception itself becomes the subject of reduction, it cannot be disregarded. In other words, “that the reductions that leave out the epistemic bases, the appearances, cannot work for the epistemic bases themselves” (Searle 1992, 122). Unlike Searle, I do not believe that this is a fatal flaw; the fact that we are conscious beings can be ascertained through the very same consciousness of which we are the possessors. Therefore, the fact that something is reflected through itself does not imply that it defies the demands of reductionism—at least in the sense of how it is achieved in other cases. Proving this is not, however, our current concern: rather, I would like to question Searle’s conviction that ontological reduction is possible and common in all other cases.

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It seems that the foundations of the widely adopted convictions of physical reductionism are not as firm as the reductionists would wish. A more detailed explanation follows in the next chapter; for now, let the liquidity example suffice. I believe that the analogy of the liquidity of water is a much more fitting example regarding current research than what Searle held it to be at the time. The results of current research give us reason to doubt the ontological reducibility of water to individual molecules, and justifies the presumption that what occurs here is the failure of the mereological link between the parts (molecules) and the whole (water). Therefore, we cannot claim that the liquidity of water is nothing but a set of features of individual water molecules, because here we also see manifested “systemic features” of the whole which cannot be reduced to the features of individual molecules. In this case it is not true that the whole is nothing but its parts, and ontological reduction is impossible, as in the case of neurons and consciousness. However, the weaker presumption of causal reduction may also be problematic: it is not yet certain whether the relation between neurons and consciousness is of a causal nature; similarly, it is not clear whether there is a causal relation between water molecules and water as a liquid. Searle claims, “There is nothing mysterious about such bottom-up causation; it is quite common in the physical world” and that if we recognize this type of causation then supervenience “no longer does any work in philosophy.” (Searle 1992, 126) Still, proponents of the supervenience conception (e.g. Kim 1978, 1984, 1999, 2005) do not view relations between the micro and macro levels as causal but merely as a constituting supervenient link, linking macrolevel phenomena (epiphenomena with no causal powers of their own) with their microlevel base. In this vein, consciousness merely supervenes on a brain’s neural processes but is not their causal consequence. Similarly, we could claim that the liquidity of water is, by analogy, an epiphenomenal consequence of the systemic cooperation between individual water molecules, and although liquidity has a number of macrolevel causal consequences, these are exclusively consequences which have to be explainable through a microlevel base, i.e. the cooperative behaviour of individual water molecules; thus, in fact, no specific causal powers of liquidity exist. It is remarkable in this regard that although Searle firmly disagrees with the supervenient conception, ultimately the intentions of both supervenience and Searle’s causal bottom-up conception are virtually identical. On the one hand, Kim and other proponents of the supervenient conception deny the existence of causal powers for epiphenomena, presuming that what is causally decisive is only their base. On the other hand, Searle does not deny the existence of causal powers, which may be possessed by more complex macrolevel wholes, but presumes that these forces are both causally and ontologically—or in the case of consciousness, only causally—reducible to their microlevel bases. Thus, there is no crucial difference between these two conceptions. I will revisit the supervenient conception in more detail—here I aim only to illustrate the lack of clarity related to Searle’s distinction between ontological and causal reduction. For our task of characterizing emergence as a universal phenomenon, Searle’s analogy is of great value as it indicates that the link between the micro and macro levels, as exemplified by the emergence of the liquidity of water, is a common

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physical fact which occurs in countless cases. In this regard, it is in no way unusual to presume a similar link between the neuron structure of the brain as microlevel, and consciousness as macrolevel. I thus presume that nature is in a sense uniform, employing realization mechanisms sparingly. Although Searle is aware that despite developments in neurobiology we do not yet know the exact conditions of how consciousness is formed, we are still able to think about the principles and mechanisms which may be behind such a phenomenon. By bridging the gap in our knowledge with the presumption of an analogous mechanism to that arising in many other cases, he expresses his conviction of the biologically and physically natural character of mind and consciousness, also presuming this lack of knowledge shall be filled later by the neurosciences. Let us summarise the above analogy between two cases as widely different as the macrofeatures of water as liquid, and consciousness as a feature of the brain. The fact that we examine the physical conditions of the phase transition of water molecules towards liquidity does not imply that we are able to derive or deduce all of the macrolevel features of water as a whole based on our knowledge of the features of water molecules. In most cases, such explanations are only possible ex post, once we have known these features from their macrolevel manifestations, and only then do we explain them through examining the conditions under which they occur. However, predicting systemic features in advance, deriving them from the mere knowledge of microstructure features (i.e. knowledge of the features of constitutive entities) proves impossible. Thus, the appearance of water’s liquidity and the appearance of consciousness in the neuron structure of the brain may be similarly emergent.

2.1.6  Emergence1 and Emergence2 In his conception, Searle outlined a typology of emergent changes aiming to express more precisely the type of emergence which best corresponds to the ongoing changes in natural processes and, if necessary, to differentiate such natural changes from other logically possible changes which are, however, either unlikely or even contradict our empirical intuitions. The diversity of distinctions in the typology of emergence later developed such breadth that currently we speak of a “conceptual landscape of emergence” within which individual typologies are placed (e.g. Guay and Sartenaer 2016). Searle sees emergent features as a type of systemic feature which are not (or not necessarily) features inherent in the system’s constituent parts (Searle 1992, chapter 5), as illustrated by the shape and weight of a stone not being features carried by each individual molecule forming the stone. Searle, similar to Mill, distinguishes between systemic features of two types: derivable and non-derivable. Some systemic features can be deduced, derived or computed from the features of elements, from their composition and organization, and sometimes also from their relations with their environment. There are, however, also systemic features which cannot be

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derived from their organization or surrounding relations. These need to be explained in terms of causal interactions between microlevel elements. Such features need to be considered “causally emergent systemic features”. According to Searle, these comprise the aforementioned macroscopic physical features, such as hardness, density, liquidity, and transparency; and similarly, consciousness. These are all “examples of causally emergent system features.” (Searle 1992, 111) On the one hand, Searle highlights the importance of the additional causal links of the constituent entities of a system, but on the other he presumes that these causal links must be explicable through their microlevel causal interactions. For instance, he claims that: The existence of consciousness can be explained by the causal interactions between elements of the brain at the micro level, but consciousness cannot itself be deduced or calculated from the sheer physical structure of the neurons without some additional account of the causal relations between them. (Searle 1992, 112)

The requirement of the explicability of causal interactions through the microlevel leads Searle to distinguish between two types of emergence, termed emergence1 and emergence2. Emergence1 refers to those systemic features which are non-­ derivable from the features of the constitutive entities. Emergence2 is defined as follows: A feature F is emergent2 if F is emergent1 and F has causal powers that cannot be explained by the causal interactions of a, b, c. . . (Searle 1992, 112).

According to this definition, the difference between the two types of emergence is dependent upon the ability to explain a systemic feature through the causal interactions of the constituent elements of a system, i.e. through microlevel interactions. The emphasis on the ability to explain can be misleading. Clearly, Searle does not intend to base the distinction between emergence1 and emergence2 on epistemological abilities of explanation but he derives the possibility or impossibility of such an explanation from the objective state of things, i.e. from causal links. The difference between emergence1 and emergence2, I suggest, is to be understood thus: A feature F is emergent2 if F is emergent1 and F has causal powers that are not the causal results of interactions of constitutive elements a, b, c. . .

Although Searle establishes this distinction, he continues to consider most emergent phenomena, including consciousness, as a type of emergence1. Regarding emergence2, Searle doubts whether such a thing can even exist. He argues that the existence of such features would violate even the slightest principle of the transitivity of causality, i.e. if event c is the cause for d, and d is the cause for e, then c is the cause for e. This principle would not hold in the case of features of the emergence2 type, which is unlikely. In emergence1 the principle of transitivity has to be fulfilled; therefore, according to Searle, even consciousness (being a type 1 emergent feature) is a causal consequence of interactions of constitutive elements—neurons. Should a type 2 emergent feature exist, this would imply that a particular systemic feature (causal power) would not be the causal consequence of interactions of the constitutive elements of the system, and thus could not be explained through these causal

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interactions. However, because it may not be clear what the relationship is between explanation and derivation, or how we should interpret the possibility of a systemic feature not being the consequence of the interactions of the constitutive elements of a system, this claim can be the source of the following misunderstandings. Firstly, Searle uses the terms explanation and derivation to characterize consciousness as an emergent feature in the above quotation, where he claims: The existence of consciousness can be explained by the causal interactions between elements of the brain at the micro level, but consciousness cannot itself be deduced or calculated from the sheer physical structure of the neurons without some additional account of the causal relations between them. (Searle 1992, 112, my italics)

Thus, consciousness is a systemic feature of emergence1, and therefore is explicable through microstructure causal interactions, but not derivable or calculable from this microstructure alone without the causal links between them. Searle suspects that it is the dynamics of mutual causal links within the constituting system that determines the existence of systemic emergent features (in the sense of emergence1). There is a certain asymmetry between explanation and derivation as mentioned earlier in relation to the bottom-up and top-down strategies. Since explaining something through something else is normally necessary only once the explained is already in existence—i.e. the explanation occurs only after the existence of the explained (ex post)—the feasibility of derivations or deductions of something from something else may be required before something has come into existence by means of something else (ex ante). In other words, it may not always be possible to discover beforehand what mutual causal links will occur between microstructure entities, and thus what features will emerge. However, existing emergent features can be explained ex post through interactions between constitutive entities. Secondly, I still believe that we can differentiate between a weaker and stronger version of emergence2. In the strong sense, Searle’s claim cited above would mean that such a systemic feature is causally independent of the state of the microstructure, and if the system is in state S, then it may or may not possess feature F. In the weak sense, this would imply that such a feature is causally dependent upon the microstructure—if the system is in state S, then it must necessarily either possess or not possess feature F—but this systemic feature is not derivable from the microstructure, not even if we count causal interactions as constituents. In that case, feature F is not a direct causal consequence of the microstructure but still it depends on its existence as the microstructure gives rise to the systemic conditions which are the direct causal reason for the feature. Searle does not, however, consider this a weak vs strong interpretation; he views a systemic feature which is not a causal consequence of microstructure entity interactions simply as a form of emergence2, the existence of which is highly unlikely because the principle of the transitivity of causality would be broken. The question is whether or not Searle would agree that consciousness is derivable from the interactions of neurons. Interactions between neurons are certainly a type of additional causal relation between constituents without which, Searle argues, the deduction or calculation of consciousness is impossible. If this is the case, it

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remains unclear why consciousness could not be ontologically reducible in such a case; why then is causal reduction the only option here? In his response, Searle disagreed with my terming (in Havlík 2012) the additional causal interactions a mysterious incantation, the contents of which we can only guess. What I had in mind was precisely the lack of clarity over their contents, which I consider important given that they are responsible for the formation of consciousness as a systemic feature. If I claim the non-derivability of consciousness based on the physical structure of neurons alone and refer to additional causal interactions, then it is unclear what these interactions may possibly comprise. In his reply, Searle points out that despite neural structure being anatomical or physical in nature, its role is above all functional, and this very activity among neurons should be one of the aforementioned additional causal interactions (Searle 2012, 204). However, this still fails to explain my question of deriving consciousness from these interactions. If the anatomical structure of the brain, including complex functional activity among neurons, is what causes consciousness, then we would expect such an explanation to also contain a reply to the question of how mental phenomena can be deduced based on functional activity among neurons. The concern here is that even if complex functionalism is behind these additional causal interactions, this is insufficient grounds for such an explanation. It bears comparison to a magical incantation which can summon any remarkable property comparable to consciousness. To offer a constructive strategy, rather than only critical remarks on Searle’s approach to emergence, I believe that we need to differentiate between the level of causal interactions between neurons and causal interactions at the level of a system as a whole. Although Searle would probably object that causal interactions at the level of the brain as a whole must, after all, occur between individual neurons, I would proceed to reject the scheme of this bottom-up causal strategy, i.e. the notion that consciousness is the result of causal contributions from individual neuron interactions which add up and gradually combine towards the peak functionality of conscious states. In contrast, I believe that consciousness arises from top-down causality. Water again seems a suitable analogy. Similar to water, in which the numerous causal contributions of individual water molecules do not add up to create a ripple as a characteristic pattern caused and causally synchronized—it needs an earthquake, or wind, or an external agent to throw a pebble into water, etc.—so too the causally synchronized impulse of electrochemical changes spreads through the neuron structure of the brain. Causal responsibility for the arising of consciousness is exclusively a matter of top-down causality. Searle’s bottom-up causal strategy also points to the somewhat mechanical nature of his notion of emergence, which has been abandoned in more recent, diachronically oriented conceptions. Another similar trait is the more or less tacit presumption of the stable identity of constitutive entities in creating systemic features. In such cases, when forming a system as a whole, entities remain the same as if they were isolated outside the system. The properties of isolated entities remain theirs

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even in the system as a whole. Thus, only additional causal interactions between these entities must be considered the cause and source of systemic features. In fact, Searle never directly rejects the potential transformation of entities’ features in a system, or even their fusion, but even if he does not suggest them or list them explicitly as relevant characteristics for the formation of systemic properties, this is not enough to overcome the general air of mechanicism. Later, however, we will see that the concept of emergence as a fusion, in which entities cease to exist and merge or transform into a whole, is far too radical a concept which lacks sufficient empirical support and leads to other conceptual problems.

2.1.7  Conclusion We can presume that Searle’s ontological conception of emergence strictly corresponds to the transitivity of causality and that its structure is as follows: (1) Entities do not lose the identity they had in isolation, even if they participate in the formation of a system as a whole. (2) Entities and their properties are the cause of additional causal links which arise between them within the system. (3) These additional causal links cause systemic emergent features. (4) Systemic features are in principle explicable (i.e. causally reducible); however, they are not directly derivable simply from a knowledge of the entities, their features and their systemic structure (i.e. they are not ontologically reducible). If Searle insists on the transitivity of causal features, then we can presume that consciousness is caused by microlevel causal features, i.e. the electrochemical states of neurons in the brain, similar to the electrochemical states of water molecules which cause the liquidity of water. However, according to Searle, water as a liquid is also ontologically reducible to individual molecules, i.e. it is nothing but the physical-chemical interactions of its individual molecules, while consciousness is not ontologically reducible to the system of neurons because we cannot disregard the subjectivity of our perception. Although I have rejected some of Searle’s presumptions, I consider highly relevant his presumption that emergence is a much more widespread mechanism in the world than we may hitherto have thought. Searle considers it not only decisive in the formation of consciousness but much more broadly as a mechanism through which new entities, features and relations arise at a level above the level of constitutive entities. This principle is later developed in other conceptions of ontological emergence which are more closely linked with particular physical analyses of certain phenomena on which these mechanisms can be demonstrated much more convincingly than on the problem of mind and consciousness. Proponents of ontological emergence (e.g. Humphreys, Silberstein, Huneman, McGeever, O’Connor, Hong Yu Wong, R. B. Laughlin, Pines, Kirchhoff) are convinced that emergent phenomena are much more widespread than pertaining merely to such phenomena as life and consciousness, presuming instead that a number of physical and chemical phenomena are emergent in nature.

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This alone does not imply a general consensus on the universal mechanism of emergence; rather, I have mentioned an ongoing scepticism regarding the attempt to find a universal conception of emergence. However, I believe that it is philosophically reasonable to presume the operation of a universal mechanism underlying the emergence of the new, as this enables us to reveal a suitable metaphysical perspective of general laws or fundamental principles, which in this case are not limited to the supposedly fundamental physical level of reality, but instead find their specific forms of operation at different levels of complexity. Individual instantiations of this universal principle at various hierarchically different levels of reality enable the formation not only of special physical, chemical, biological etc. features, but also significantly qualitatively different features, such as life and consciousness. Searle’s distinction between emergence1 and emergence2 foreshadowed the efforts to offer greatly more detailed emergence typologies in order to present a comprehensive and plastic account of the “conceptual landscape” of this field. However, my present aim is not to provide a detailed historical survey of all emergence typologies, but rather to sketch the major and innovative moments in the history of the study of emergence; those contributions which I consider important in terms of the search for a universal principle of emergence shall be dwelt upon in greater detail.

2.2  Supervenience and Emergence Since the 1980s, discussions of emergence have been characterised by their link to “supervenience”. The mutual link between supervenience and emergence, however, has an interesting and rather conflicting history. Whilst at the beginning, the supervenient and emergent relationship could be considered mostly identical, the late 20th century was marked by an effort to analytically distinguish and specify their respective roles. At present, the predominant effort is to eliminate supervenience altogether at the expense of diachronic relations which some conceptions consider decisive for emergence. To record this rather complicated history, let us first try to characterise it in brief, and later proceed to discuss its individual periods in more detail. In his early 1990s article, James Van Cleve mentions the original synonymity of emergence with supervenience, as well as the recent possibility of defining emergence through supervenience: I was surprised to learn that as recently as three decades ago, ‘supervenient’ was used in some quarters as a synonym of ‘emergent.’ I can only suppose it is a coincidence that today’s technical sense of ‘supervenience’ permits a definition of emergence in terms of supervenience. (Van Cleve 1990, 225)

His belief that this was a coincidence is later supported by Brian P. McLaughlin, who distinguishes the modern analytical notion of supervenience from the original, common lay conception of supervenience as an “unexpected occurring above” (see McLaughlin 1997a, 41). According to McLaughlin, supervenience understood in

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more modern terms as the dependence of the mental on the physical was not introduced into philosophy by the discussions on emergence, but rather, with reference to Davidson (1970), in an effort to clarify the position of consciousness in the physical world. Thus, McLaughlin proves in his detailed historical analysis that in its original lay sense, supervenience was very close to emergence, as Lloyd Morgan employed it in his conception of emergent evolution to refer to novel and unpredictable consequences occurring “above” fundamental laws. Only later, after supervenience entered philosophical discussions thanks to the effort to characterise the dependency of the mental on the physical, did a much more technical sense of supervenience occur (see below), through which emergence came to be defined (Kim 1978, 1984, 1999; Van Cleve 1990; O’Connor 1994; McLaughlin 1997a). In time, Kim came to summarise the link between supervenience and emergence by saying that supervenience is an expression of the dependency of the properties of a whole (higher level) on the properties of a base (lower level); and as this relation is not very explanatory but only indicative of dependency, emergence is a subset of supervenient relations: Emergentism is committed to supervenience: when the same basal conditions obtain, the same emergents must emerge.” (Kim 2003, 567) It is noteworthy that emergentism, too, appears to be committed to supervenience: … physically indiscernible systems cannot differ in respect of their emergent properties. (Kim 2005, 14)

As a consistent analysis of emergent relations from the viewpoint of causal links between base and emergents, i.e. a determination of emergent phenomena and at the same time of their presumed causal top-down effect, led Kim (1998) to argue that emergents were mere epiphenomena, there was a need for a different solution which would salvage the ontological status of emergent entities. Probably the first attempt to question the influential supervenience-based conception of emergence—and to face the unacceptable consequences of the classical supervenient conception—was Humphreys’ article, Emergence, not Supervenience (1997b). Humphreys points out that the definition of “strong supervenience” does not in any way imply that this relation needs to be limited to a vertical inter-level relation, not being also a horizontal intra-level relation: “there is nothing in the nature of the supervenience relation itself that will explain why ‘vertical’ uses are appropriate and ‘horizontal’ uses are not.” (Humphreys 1997b, S340) Humphreys does not yet mention explicitly the form of a horizontal relation, which will later be exclusively diachronic, unlike supervenience in its purely synchronous interlevel conception. Yet he does mention that supervenience is more of a logical or epistemological tool of consistency rather than providing a sufficient understanding of the ontological inter-level links: [S]upervenience is acceptable as a consistency condition on the attribution of concepts, in that if A supervenes upon B, you cannot attribute B to an individual and withhold A from it. […] But supervenience does not provide any understanding of ontological relationships holding between levels. For that emergence is required. (Humphreys 1997b, S341)

This view can only be supported. Above I have also mentioned Kim’s later statement of supervenience not being a very explanatory relation but rather only a logical expression of dependency. Thus it is to be expected that to ensure a more profound

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understanding of ontological links between emergents and base, these relations need to be investigated nomologically, not merely through logical principles. I will now show how the contemporary tradition of the supervenience conception, as referenced and employed by Kim and criticised by Humphreys, lacks—or at the very least does not highlight—an important aspect which is absolutely fundamental for supervenient and emergent relations, and consequently questions Humphreys’ rejection of the supervenient conception of emergence. Nevertheless, as will be seen in more detail later, Humphreys’ initial belief is supported by analyses of several examples in physics, chemistry and complexity theory which strive to show the insufficiency of the supervenient relation for the dynamic and diachronic nature of unfolding processes in non-linear dynamics (Kirchhoff 2014). Kirchhoff tries to prove that what the standard philosophical account of emergence based on mereological supervenience misses entirely is the dynamics of how higher-level emergent phenomena arise and are maintained over time. (Kirchhoff 2014, 114)

This is a thought-provoking point which I will revisit later in an effort to prove the unified conception of emergence given the synchronic and diachronic aspects of these changes. Here we need to underscore that Kirchhoff explicitly rejects the possibility of any unification of such aspects and stresses only the diachronic dimension of emergent phenomena at the expense of their synchronicity. This is because he sees supervenience and emergence as mutually exclusive relations, considering it impossible for them to be viewed as mutually conditioning aspects of dynamic processes (Kirchhoff 2014, 105). This view, relying on the mutual exclusivity of supervenience and emergence, is supported by parallel reactions to the classical critique of emergentism and non-­ reductive physicalism (e.g. Kim 1984, 1999), and evidently is a response to the imbalanced exclusive preference for the synchronic approach to emergence as supervenience. The final part of this story of the mutual relationship between supervenience and emergence may be seen in the preface to Humphreys’ book Emergence (2016a), where he explicitly states: A principal theme of this book is that in many cases it is diachronic processes that produce emergence and that the philosophical emphasis on synchronic emergence is a distraction. (Humphreys 2016a, Preamble XIX)

As I have hinted before, the aim of these approaches is not only to apply ontological emergence to particular cases of dynamic processes, but also to solve philosophical objections raised against the strictly supervenient view of emergence. To what extent this strategy provides real solutions to problems, or rather only attempts to eliminate them, will be the subject of a later discussion. To foreshadow it, let me declare that my aim is to introduce a position which is neither purely supervenient in its view of emergence, nor strictly diachronic. I will show that the solutions to classical objections to emergence, such as downward causation, causal exclusion, and causal overdetermination, introduced by current conceptions of emergence such as fusion or transformational emergence (cf. Humphreys 1997a, 2016a, b; Guay and Sartenaer 2016) are only thought to be solutions as actually, rather than solving the

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problems at hand, they merely try to eliminate them by completely disregarding the synchronic inter-level relation and only see emergence in terms of causal-diachronic changes. The emphasis on diachronicity is undoubtedly necessary given emergence and the dynamic nature of processes leading to emergent phenomena, but I believe this does not require synchronicity to be sacrificed on account of the importance of the diachronic aspects. Therefore, I will present a conception of emergence which accommodates both its fundamental components, synchronicity and diachronicity, and considers them not only two different aspects of emergent processes but rather as fundamental ontological components of emergent phenomena. Only thus can we form what we seek, a conceptually coherent framework for emergence as a universal principle.

2.2.1  The Supervenient Conception of Emergence Unlike the contemporary sense of supervenience, the original sense of the supervenient link was closely associated with emergence in British emergentism. Lloyd Morgan, in Emergent evolution (1923), accepted Samuel Alexander’s pyramid scheme (1920) and the presumption that all that exists on the individual levels of this pyramid scheme “has emerged in the course of evolutionary progress” (Morgan 1923, 9). Each individual level of the pyramid emerges from the lower level as its necessary prerequisite, interlocking and linking the individual levels of reality which manifest new emergent properties and are governed by new emergent laws. In this original context, supervenience is linked with emergence as follows: from the original basal, all-encompassing and omnipresent spacetime events, first “matter” emerges, with its primary and later secondary qualities. “Here new relations, other than those which are spatio-temporal only, supervene. So far, thus supervenient on spatiotemporal events, we have also physical and chemical events in progressively ascending grades.” (Morgan 1923, 9)

Thus, Morgan uses the supervenient relation as the dependency of some qualities on others, but above all to underscore that emergent properties are different from base properties, and are formed from them in unpredictable ways. The classical emergentism of the 1980s and 1990s is closely linked with supervenience (Kim 1984, 1999; Van Cleve 1990; O’Connor 1994; McLaughlin 1997a) as a specific mutual link between levels. I presume that other than for historical reasons, there are two main logical reasons for emergence being defined through supervenience. Firstly, both emergence and supervenience are relational terms linking various levels of reality, such as the level of phenomenon type A with the level of phenomenon type B. Let us note that this formulation does not in any way require a hierarchical arrangement of these levels, unlike the original notions of British emergentism. If emergence and supervenience are relations between different levels of phenomena, then logically there should also be a relation between these relations

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themselves; supervenience and emergence should be linked in some way. This is the first logical reason. Secondly, supervenience, which was historically introduced mainly as a technical term for the dependency of the mental on the physical, has shown that there was at least one type of phenomenon (mental phenomena on a consciousness level) bound very specifically to another type of phenomenon (physical-chemical phenomena in the neurophysiological brain structure). As scientific findings have been unable to explain with sufficient detail this connection between the mental and the physiological, philosophical reflection has resorted to metaphysically justifiable assertions of supervenience general enough to avoid being jeopardised by empirical research into neurological and mental mechanisms. Mental phenomena thus supervene on the physical structure of neurons in the brain in that no change on the mental level may occur unless accompanied by change on the physical level. According to McLaughlin, Davidson’s idea of the dependency of the mental on the physical appears to have introduced supervenience into contemporary philosophical discussions (cf. McLaughlin 1997a, 45; McLaughlin and Bennett 2005): [M]ental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be two events alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respect, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respect without altering in some physical respect. (Davidson [1970] 1980, 214)

Thus, the second logical reason is rooted in a particular problem: the need to explain the dependency of mental phenomena upon the physical; therefore, it is not a purely logical, abstract solution to the potential relations between relations. A related presumption is that a successful solution to this particular relation is then transferable to other analogous relations of phenomena supervening on other base phenomena. In the case of the mind and brain relation, supervenience is asymmetric: if the mental supervenes on the physical, then the physical cannot supervene on the mental. More generally, though, supervenience is considered a nonsymmetric relation (cf. Kim 1984; McLaughlin [1995] 2007; McLaughlin and Bennett 2005). In the case of the mind-brain relation we may consider the roles of other potential relations. As there are enough empirically attestable observations of mental phenomena being undoubtedly fixed by neurological, i.e. physical-chemical changes, such a relation may be termed “fixation”, unlike, for example, “correlation” or “causation”. Correlation is symmetric, while fixation and causation are asymmetric, causation being a stronger relation than fixation, as causal dependency is existentially indispensable for the resulting phenomenon, unlike fixation. An elementary example of fixation is a drone, whose motion may seem to be correlated with the control interface, but in fact this is not a symmetric correlation,2 but instead a mere asymmetric fixation, monolateral, but not causal in terms of the existence of the drone as such, as the drone’s existence is independent of that of the control.

2  It is correlation if the control system includes feedback, which then correlates the motion of the drone e.g. through its pilot.

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We could say that the second logical reason lies in the fact that if we are dealing with the fixation of a certain type of phenomenon, this relation is insufficient, as there also needs to be causal dependency of some sort. Mental phenomena need to be causally bound in their existence, and we generally presume that they are also bound onto a neurophysical base, not merely fixed onto it. Then, a supervenient relation is insufficient and needs to be reinforced with a causal relation. This can be provided by emergence, as it is based on the presumption that mental states will only emerge provided there is sufficient complexity in the structural and functional base. Again, we have reasons to require a logical form of relation between supervenience and emergence. Unlike the first case, now it is because either of the two relations plays a different role in interlevel relations and it seems logical to presume that they are mutually conditioned. Thus, in contemporary analytical philosophy, supervenience is, in a variety of ways, defined as the dependency of a set of properties on another set of properties, as in: “A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if a difference in A-properties requires a difference in B-properties.” (McLaughlin and Bennett 2005) The various forms of the definition of supervenience more or less comply with the original definition of “strong” supervenience, proposed in the 1980s by Jaegwon Kim: A strongly supervenes on B just in case, necessarily, for each x and each property F in A, if x has F, then there is a property G in B such that x has G, and necessarily if any y has G, it has F. (Kim 1984, 165)

Using this definition of strong supervenience, James Van Cleve later attempted to clarify the relation between emergence and supervenience as part of a critical reassessment of panpsychist tendencies and the problem of mind and consciousness. He connected the emergence of British emergentism (Broad 1925) with the above form of strong supervenience as characterised by Kim. In this case, strong supervenience pertains to the supervenience of an object’s properties on other properties of the same object, for instance, the aesthetic property of the beauty of a given object supervening on the physical properties of the same object, or the ethical property of good supervening on the properties of its bearer. A-properties supervene on B-properties = df. Necessarily, for any object x and A-property a, if x has a, then there is a B-property b such that (i) x has b, and (ii) necessarily, if anything has b, it also has a. (Van Cleve 1990, 220)

As regards the modal operators in the definition, Van Cleve emphasises two main components: dependency and determination. A-properties are dependent on B-properties and B-properties determine A-properties (cf. Van Cleve 1990, 221). However, dependency and determination are also the exact two necessary relations characterising emergent phenomena, i.e. dependence upon their emergent base and being determined by this base. Therefore, Van Cleve concludes that this fact “makes emergence a species of supervenience” (Van Cleve 1990, 222). At the same time, Van Cleve tries to answer the question of how the modal operator of necessity is to be conceptualised. Necessity is either logical or nomological, both options being possible. The supervenience of normative over natural properties

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is more of a logical necessity, while the supervenience of mental over physical properties is, rather, a nomological necessity (Van Cleve 1990, 221). As emergent phenomena are fundamentally characterised by their unpredictability and undeducibility, emergent phenomena cannot logically be necessarily determined. Thus, Van Cleve arrives at the following definition of emergence: If P is a property of w, then P is emergent iff P supervenes with nomological necessity, but not with logical necessity, on the properties of the parts of w. (Van Cleve 1990, 222)

However, this definition turns out insufficiently restrictive for aggregative or resultative, deducible properties not to be subsumed under emergent ones. Therefore, based on a critical analysis of the above definition of emergence (Van Cleve 1990), McLaughlin later proposes the following connection of emergence and supervenience: If P is a property of w, then P is emergent if and only if (1) P supervenes with nomological necessity, but not with logical necessity, on properties the parts of w have taken separately or in other combinations; and (2) some of the supervenience principles linking properties of the parts of w with w’s having P are fundamental laws. (McLaughlin 1997a, 39)

The fact that this is an emergent part of the whole is conditioned by its supervenience on the properties of the whole’s parts, being linked with the property of the whole by at least one fundamental law. Thus, a fundamental law has become a decisive criterion of emergence. McLaughlin defines it as follows: “A law L is a fundamental law if and only if it is not metaphysically necessitated by any other laws, even together with initial conditions.” (McLaughlin 1997a, 39) In other words, a law is only fundamental if it is not reducible to other laws and is autonomous. McLaughlin introduces a distinction of supervenient principles as fundamental and nonfundamental in order to limit Van Cleve’s overly liberal notion of emergence which enabled the inclusion of evidently aggregative properties subject to principles of composition, such as weight (at least within Newtonian physics). It is understandable that McLaughlin has tried to suitably limit the definition of emergence to the non-aggregative properties of wholes, but it needs to be considered whether the distinction between fundamental and nonfundamental laws could indeed provide sufficient precision for emergence in its supervenient conception. McLaughlin’s starting point is the thesis of strong supervenience, claiming that supervenient principles or laws bind the properties of the whole and its parts in such a way that if the parts of a whole have such and such (subvenient) properties, then the whole will have such and such (supervenient) properties, such supervenient principles corresponding to Broad’s trans-ordinal laws (Broad 1925, 77–78; McLaughlin 1997a, 32–33). Trans-ordinal laws, i.e. inter-level laws, ensure a bridging link between individual levels, connecting the properties of parts with those of wholes. Obviously, the nature of these laws then determines the status of high-level phenomena—their reducibility or autonomous emergence. The insufficiency of this solution is self-evident. The problem of emergence is merely shifted, becoming the problem of deciding the status of the fundamentality of these inter-level laws. Fundamental laws need to be “unique” and “finite” in the sense of not being deducible from other laws or initial conditions. This criterion is

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inherently problematic for at least two reasons: 1) it depends on the level of scientific knowledge and currently accepted theories and models; 2) it is crucially dependent on our metaphysical presuppositions, which cannot be resolved experimentally. Let us illustrate this in detail in terms of particular laws given as examples by McLaughlin. He claims that the laws of thermodynamics are nonfundamental in this sense, while the Schrödinger equation aspires to be labelled as a fundamental law (McLaughlin 1997a, 39). Let us start from metaphysical presuppositions. McLaughlin starts with the basic presumption that the laws of thermodynamics are laws of “phenomenal” science, describing the behaviour of a large number of particles (e.g. in gases) and their dependencies among physical macrolevel properties such as pressure, temperature, volume, energy, heat capacity etc. As opposed to statistical thermodynamics, here the laws of macroscopic phenomena are deduced independently from the presumptions of the structure of macroscopic systems, only from experimentally measured data. Although the deducibility of macrolevel thermodynamics laws based on the knowledge of lower-level laws and of the microstructure of substances is widely presumed, such deducibility is most likely merely the result of reductionist notions, and only involves a hypothetical or principial possibility of this deduction (see Sect. 1.1). For instance, the pressure of gas in a container, being a macroscopic quantity, is presumed to be deducible from the individual power contributions of each molecule forming the gas, manifested through the molecules pressing against the container walls. Although it is possible to deduce, for example, a steady state equation based on the notion of particles, this deduction is based on a number of additional presumptions which need to be accepted for such a deduction to be feasible in the first place. In practice, such calculations are impossible due to the immense number of individual contributions and equations which would need to be solved. In this case, reductionists use the phrase deducible “in principle” (see Sect. 1.1), drawing on many presumptions which, however, should be seen as consequences rather than presumptions. I do not wish to state, then, that the deduction of macrolevel phenomenological laws from microlevel notions is impossible; rather, that it is not as straightforward as reductionists may believe. Similarly, David Bohm has noted that it is impossible to exactly predict the behaviour of a system containing 1023 molecules yet the factors making a detailed prediction impossible are the very same factors which enable a general prediction of the overall or macroscopically averaged properties of a system without the need for precise information on the activities of individual molecules (Bohm 1957, 34). This is a most apt characterization which, on the one hand, enables reductionists to count on a certain principial deducibility and reducibility, but on the other hand serves antireductionists as proof of the nondeducibility and irreducibility of a whole’s properties. Thus, the conviction depends on metaphysical presumptions which cannot be determined experimentally. Regarding the issue of the state of the art, current theories and models, even McLaughlin’s presumption of the Schrödinger equation’s aspiring fundamentality is problematic. There is no reason to presume any deeper existence of a lower level of reality from which the Schrödinger equation would be deducible, as per the above

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laws of thermodynamics, although this is merely a hypothetical reflection given the current state of the art. The probability—or lack thereof—of the existence of such a level is not decisive at this stage. Our aim is simply to point out the problematic nature of the law fundamentality criterion, if it is to be used to define the supervenient conception of emergence as suggested by McLaughlin. The problem is that its results are too strong. McLaughlin states that in the case of weight, supervenient principles are not fundamental laws because they are instances of the general compositional laws of the additivity3 of weight. This is acceptable as, in common instances, weight is a compositionally predictable property, and there is no need to consider it an emergent phenomenon. However, the consequence of McLaughlin’s conception is much stronger: in his view, chemical properties are not emergent either because the corresponding supervenient principles of chemistry are not fundamental laws, but laws principally derivable from the laws of quantum mechanics. Moreover, McLaughlin goes even further, claiming that not even the properties of life are emergent in this sense; and that any given mental property allowing for functional analysis is likewise a non-emergent property. According to him, the properties of consciousness are the sole candidate for emergent properties in this sense (McLaughlin 1997a, 40). A definition of emergence as restrictive as this will result in emergent properties being virtually non-existent, which places the only potential candidate—consciousness—outside natural processes through which systemic properties are commonly formed in other cases. Besides, emergence is dependent on the fundamentality of laws connecting the macro and micro levels. Whether or not the properties of consciousness are emergent depends only on whether or not supervenient principles, in the case of consciousness, are fundamental laws. In turn, the decision upon whether or not a law is fundamental depends on whether or not that law is deducible from other laws. Yet how is deducibility itself constituted? As we can easily imagine the existence of our universe without the existence of conscious beings, and by extension without the property of consciousness, it seems that the laws resulting in this property cannot be deducible from other laws at least until the quality of consciousness appears in the universe. In such a case, would their nondeducibility ensure their fundamentality? On the other hand, if we presumed the contrary, i.e. that these laws were deducible from other laws, and therefore were not fundamental, then consciousness would not be an emergent property, while becoming a likely property of the universe. I aim to underscore that this purportedly simple criterion of distinction is in fact treacherous. I am not primarily concerned with the question of whether or not consciousness is an emergent property but rather with the critique of the supervenient conception of emergence, which in McLaughlin’s case is strongly dependent on the fundamentality of laws, which is problematic and in principle results in rejecting emergence altogether. McLaughlin himself admits to favouring the view that even 3  Compositional laws of the additivity of weight are only valid in Newtonian physics. In relativist physics, relativistic effects must be taken into account; yet it remains a difficult question whether or not these effects should be viewed as emergent.

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the properties of consciousness are not emergent, although they do not allow for functional analysis. In his opinion, they supervene on the basis of nonfundamental laws which are deducible from physical properties, i.e. the neurophysiological properties of the brain. Put simply, he expresses his belief in reductive materialism (McLaughlin 1997a, 40).

2.2.2  Supervenience and Causality I will not go in the details of the problem of supervenience, which still resides under the spotlight of contemporary analytical metaphysics. I am only interested in the supervenient conception of emergence, which I shall now extend to cover the issue of causality. As seen in the previous chapter, authors such as Van Cleve (1990) and McLaughlin (1997a) drew on the heritage of British emergentism, trying to reformulate and integrate their contemporaries’ ideas of emergence into more precise analytical formulations. Likewise, O’Connor follows up on these discussions, extracting three essential features of emergence from British emergentism: supervenience, non-structurality, and novel causal influence. In his view, emergence cannot be defined without reference to supervenience: supervenience is needed if emergence is to be capable of being incorporated within a scientific framework. Without the two components of determination and dependency, there would be no potential for uncovering precise causal conditions under which emergence occurs. (O’Connor 1994, 14)

He also considers strong supervenience a suitable form for the definition of emergence, but questions Van Cleve‘s above definition: as we have seen, it divides emergents, as specific cases of supervenience, into two classes. One class contains those whose macroproperties are the necessary logical consequence of the base properties; the other is those whose macroproperties are the causal or nomological consequence of the base properties, being random rather than logically necessary. As emergent properties are required to be nonderivable or nondeducible from base properties, Van Cleve limits them to a nomological link between the base and macro properties. Yet, metaphysical presumptions may be intuitively understood and interpreted in various ways. For instance, O’Connor tries to show that the presumption of causal necessity is problematic for many reasons. Above all, apparently it fails to result in the required distinction between emergent and non-emergent properties: the logical or nomological necessity linking the base properties to macroproperties in particular cases is questionable. Moreover, it seems “that the relationship between an object’s properties and its causal powers is a logically necessary one.” (O’Connor 1994, 13) This in turn problematizes this criterion, as it too turns out to be metaphysical or logically necessary. Therefore, O’Connor requires a definition of an emergent property independent of the presumption “that causal or nomological necessity is weaker than metaphysical or broadly logical necessity.” (O’Connor

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1994, 12) He aims “to give an account of emergence that does not rest on such a major assumption concerning the nature of causal necessity.” (O’Connor 1994, 13) This presumption is certainly metaphysically questionable and would appear to require the terms logical and causal necessity to be more generally grounded. In any case, this reinforces the need to specify in what sense emergence as a case of supervenience should be understood. I have cited a form of this dependency of emergence on supervenience, according to Kim, consisting in that “when the same basal conditions obtain, the same emergents must emerge.” (Kim 2003, 567) This is a minimalist requirement which says nothing about the nature of the powers causing emergents based on the base properties, or of the status of these caused phenomena. The original sense of supervenience, derived from “super” (on, above) and “venire” (to come), means “to occur above something”; in this sense the ontological status of emergent phenomena supervening “above” the base level is questionable. If we accept Kim’s commitment to emergents, then if given base (low-level) properties exist, the emergent properties necessarily occur. Is, however, such necessity caused by the causal effect of the base’s powers, which need to perform something in order for emergents to occur; or are emergents merely an automatic side effect of the base’s status? O’Connor supposes “that the relevant form of necessity is causal, given that the occurrence of an emergent property is presumably a function of the causal potentialities of underlying base properties.” (O’Connor 1994, 14) This means that in such cases we do not expect any other cause for the establishment of emergent properties than the status of the base level above which emergent properties supervene. In other words, the space of causes resulting in the manifestation of emergent properties is exhausted by the causal status of the base level. This close link between properties supervening on base properties results in a dilemma. Either emergent properties are caused by the base causal powers to necessarily supervene on base properties—and if so, this is a causal process in time, and the emergent properties resulting from the causal process will be distinguishable from the base, and therefore will have a different ontological status—or their instantiation is indeed superveniently necessary, but they occur without being caused by the causal process in time, i.e. automatically, with the mere establishment of a base level. However, both these options pose further questions. In the former case it is difficult to say in what sense emergent properties exist “above” a base level, and we need to accept the ontological commitment to their different existence; in the latter case, where emergent properties are only “fixed” by base properties, we need to state what their nature is in relation to base properties, and if they are “nothing but” the effects of base properties, then we need to determine whether there are, for example, only epistemological reasons for their existence. Admittedly, supervenience is not usually viewed as a causal link. For instance, McLaughlin agrees with Kim that supervenience “is not a ‘deep’ metaphysical relation; rather, it is a ‘surface’ relation that reports a pattern of property covariation, suggesting the presence of an interesting dependency relation that might explain it.” (Kim 1993, 167) McLaughlin adds that “supervenience is a dependency relation only in the following purely modal sense: variation in supervenient respects requires variation in subvenvenient ones.” (McLaughlin 1997b, 210) However, causal or

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mereological links can serve as suitable examples of links which meet the criterion of such a supervenient link. Thus, if O’Connor in his definition of emergence required supervenience as a relation of dependency and determination, from this purely modal viewpoint it was also a proper commitment for emergence as a causal relation. Later, however, O’Connor himself abandoned the requirement for supervenience to be a relation related to emergence. In the early 1990s he still defined emergence in terms of supervenience, systemicity, nonstructurality and autonomous causal effect: Property P is an emergent property of a (mereologically-complex) object O iff: (1) P supervenes on properties of the parts of O; and (2) P is not had by any of the object’s parts; and (3) P is distinct from any structural property of O, and (4) P has direct (“downward”) determinative influence on the pattern of behavior involving O’s parts. (O’Connor 1994, 15)

O’Connor is trying to capture the strong sense of emergence, in which an emergent causal effect is irreducible to a mere aggregative effect of the microproperties upon which the whole supervenes. It is a direct causal downward influence, unlike the influence of a simple structural macroproperty whose causal influence is realised through the activity of all its constituent microproperties. The link between microproperties and systemic emergent macroproperties is no longer a type of direct causal dependency but instead an attempt at making macroproperties autonomous and irreducible to microproperties. Supervenience then modally corresponds to this causal link, as a dependency and determination between the macro and micro levels. O’Connor’s definition of emergence thus contains very stringent conditions for something to be called an emergent property. In this respect, meeting the criterion of supervenience as a modal dependency between the supervenient and subvenient is the least problematic aspect. O’Connor integrated requirements (2) and (3) in the non-structurality principle, whereby an emergent property cannot be the property of any base constituent, but on the contrary only a property occurring under a certain degree of system complexity, as a systemic property of the whole, and needs to be distinct from the structural properties of the whole. The most problematic requirement is (4), i.e. that of the autonomous causal influence of emergent properties not only on the emergent level (i.e. on the level of the given emergent phenomenon) but also as regards downward causation, in which the whole exerts its causal influence over its constituents. The problems of causal overdetermination, causal competition and causal exclusion will be discussed later. Use is made, mainly by Kim (1999), of similar causality analyses to argue against the autonomy of emergent entities and against emergentism and non-reductive physicalism. The problems of causality relating to the formation and influence of emergent entities thus remain open to debate, yet are not subject to further analysis in O’Connor’s conception of emergence. He only states formal requirements in his definition, supported by analyses of British emergentism and a critical reflection upon the similar efforts of other authors. By his definition, however, O’Connor establishes the standard conception of strong emergence. Later, the requirement for the autonomy of emergent properties caused O’Connor and Yu Wong to abandon supervenience. They then defined a strongly emergent

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property as a non-supervenient property with irreducible causal powers which influence both the macro and micro levels and manifest downward causation. Emergent properties are basic properties, token-distinct in character and propensity from any microphysically structured properties of their bearers. If their appearance in certain systems is to be explained at all, they must be explained in terms of a causal, not purely formal, relationship to underlying, immediately preceding structures. And the whole question of whether there is any sense in which they supervene on lower-level features […] is subtle, and should not be built in definitionally from the outset. (O’Connor and Wong 2005, 664)

In this respect, I consider O’Connor and Wong’s standpoint highly relevant to the conception of emergence. They refuse to characterise emergent properties through purely formal links (supervenience) as this has undesirable consequences, instead favouring causal links, which can explain emergent properties as equally fundamental properties in relation to base properties. Therefore, a supervenient relation in this sense is not a primary relation and should not deform the emergent relation beforehand. However, this does not mean it is possible to get rid of supervenience completely. The task thus remains to find the meaning in which the emergent supervenes on the base. Nonetheless, we have to pay attention to the non-supervenient concept of emergence as well.

2.2.3  The Non-supervenient Conception of Emergence The potentiality of a non-supervenient approach to emergence had been mentioned long before O’Connor and Wong (2005) doubted the formal and logical concept of supervenience being a suitable tool to adequately explain the emergent relation. Paul Humphreys, in his article Emergence, Not Supervience (1997b), was one of the first to attempt to show that similar to how aggregativeness was an inadequate tool to describe the emergent link (see Wimsatt 1997, 2007), supervenience as an analytic explanatory tool is an ontologically unacceptable expression of the emergent relationship. Thus, Humphreys does not reject supervenience as a possible formal relation between two sets of properties but only tries to show that the consequences of a supervenient approach to emergence fail to correspond to a number of, for example physical, examples of specific emergent phenomena. His analysis is motivated by the effort to provide a nomological or metaphysical interpretation of the modal operators in a purely formal definition of supervenience, thus revealing the consequences resulting from such an interpretation. Relating to this, he poses an important question: if the definition of supervenience contains no requirement for a supervenient relation to be used only between different levels, why then is it understood only as an inter-level relation and has no use as an intra-level one? (Humphreys 1997b, S339) If supervenience is applicable only inter-level, not intra-level, then this should be delimited by means of a definition. Humphreys uses the strong supervenience definition, citing one of Kim’s versions of the 1993 definition:

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A family of properties M strongly supervenes on a family N of properties if, necessarily, for each x and each property F in M, if F(x) then there is a property G in N such that G(x) and necessarily if any y has G it has F (Kim 1993, 65).

This form of the supervenience definition would indeed allow for its application to any two families of properties, even if they were to occur within a single level. Humphreys presents two examples to show that applying supervenience within a given level leads to unacceptable results. This conclusion does not come as a surprise as neither of the two examples are related to supervenience in any way. Causal volume expansion does not supervene on the properties causing expansion (the nomological example), nor does triangularity supervene on other geometrical properties (the logical example). Supervenience is precisely such a relation which only makes sense if the supervening properties are qualitatively distinct from the base properties. Let us disregard the potential meaning of “qualitatively distinct” for the moment. Kim in his detailed analysis of supervenience, referring back to Davidson, mentions as its two fundamental components dependence and nonreductiveness, which are commonly closely linked with supervenience (Kim 1990, 9). Nonreductiveness could, in this case, explain the above “qualitative distinctness”, whereby a family of properties A supervening on a family of properties B is qualitatively distinct from properties B, and therefore not reducible to them. However, this evidently does not hold for either of Humphreys’ two examples, such as claiming that the property “is triangular” supervenes on the properties “closed”, “three-sided”, “Euclidean” and “polygon”. Nevertheless, he rates himself as one of the philosophers who have rejected the supposed supervenience of such concepts as “triangularity” because this property does not differ in its nature from other geometric properties on which we had supposed it to supervene. (Humphreys 1997b, S340) Nonreductiveness is thus an implicit, yet independent condition of supervenience, as “supervenient dependency is not to entail the reducibility of the supervenient to its subvenient base.” (Kim 1990, 8) Still there is something odd about the requirement for nonreductiveness, and by extension about the supervenient relation. Kim claims that nonreductiveness appears a less implicit condition of supervenience than dependence. “Nonreducibility, however, has been less firmly associated with supervenience than dependency has been; and there has been some controversy as to whether supervenience is in fact a nonreductive relation.” (Kim 1990, 17) Thus it is odd that we could define supervenience regardless of whether the relation is reducible or not. The very sense of the supervenient relation sems to lie in its being a non-reducible dependency between supervenients and the supervenient base. Nevertheless, accepting this condition brings us very close to the emergent relation, which in this case is characterised by the identical relation of non-reducible dependency between emergents and the emergent base. Nonreductiveness is not meant as absolute nonreductiveness in the strongest sense, but only relative, or not full nonreductiveness. In other words, “[the] concept of supervenience is supposed to denote this dependence relationship that appears to be weaker than reducibility.” (Savellos and Yalçin [1995] 2014, 2) At the same time,

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however, this should not result in a direct opposition of reducibility which could be termed antireductiveness. Kim notes: “nonreductive” is also consistent with reducibility. Thus, “nonreductive” is to be understood as indicating a neutral, noncommittal position with regard to reducibility, not as an affirmation of irreducibility. (Kim 1990, 8)

This can be explained as follows: we know the base on which the phenomenon supervenes, but this base alone cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of the supervening phenomenon. To illustrate, the aesthetic category of “beauty” is attributed to a work of art without supposing that a mere naturalistic list of the artwork’s properties (such as its shape, dimensions, arrangement, colour, material etc.) can fully identify the “beauty” attributed to it as an aesthetic category. In a similar vein, R. M. Hare analysed the category of “good” to show that the evaluative role of the concept of “good” cannot be saturated by a naturalistic list of properties on which the evaluative concept of “good” supervenes. Kim admits the possible influence of the emergent hypothesis that emergent properties are not reducible to the base conditions from which they emerge (Kim 1990, 17). Interestingly enough, this approach to supervenience should, in fact, be close to the contemporary concept as Kim, playing a crucial role in the modern approach to supervenience, refers to this very tradition: “What is true, I believe, is that our current use of the concept [of supervenience] is continuous with its use by Hare and others around the mid-20th century.” (Kim 2003, 557) He discusses the beginnings and history of the concept of supervenience in more detail in his early 1990s article (see Kim 1990, 3). Unlike this tradition of supervenience as a nonreductive relation, Humphreys refers to some reductive approaches to supervenience (Lewis [1986] 2001, Armstrong 1989, Rosenberg 1997) which include ontological minimalism in the sense of the physicalist claim “that non-fundamental entities are nothing but collections of fundamental entities.” (Humphreys 1997b, S338) This conception of supervenience is fully reductive, presuming that a family of properties A (entities) is nothing but a family of properties B (entities). I consider this position difficult to justify as it is unable to provide a sufficiently clear explanation of the meaning of this “nothing but”; in a sufficiently consistent approach, “nothing but” should only prove the existence of fundamental entities and nothing else. If A supervenes on B and A “is nothing but” B, in what sense then does A exist, or what reasons do we have to claim that A supervenes? This approach does not lead towards the universe as we know it; it also proliferates problems rather than solving them. Does the non-reductionist variant of supervenience possibly suffer from a similar problem to the reductionist version? If the reductionist view is problematic in its presumption of “nothing but”, is not the non-reductionist variant equally suspicious in the fact that if we are unable to fully define a supervenient entity descriptively through a naturalistic list of base properties, on the supervenient level we obtain “an ontological free lunch” as proposed by the proponents of reductionism? Although this is a frequent objection to all non-reductive conceptions, whether non-reductive physicalism or non-reductive conceptions of supervenience and emergence, there is

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an argument in favour of non-reductivity, allowing for a defence against this criticism. This argument is far from new. We can find it as early as in the aforementioned mid-century authors (Moore 1922; Hare [1952] 2003) and later in Davidson (1970). Kim reinterprets it as follows: [T]he main point of the talk of supervenience is to have a relationship of dependence or determination between two families of properties without property-to-property connections between the families. (Kim 1978, 150)

Later others, such as Robert L. Klee, emphasise this form of supervenience relations as a more general relation of determination than causality. He also believes that this dependency can also be generalised as a relation beyond the field of analytical ethics (Moore 1922; Hare [1952] 2003), where it was first formulated. From the point of view of supervenience as a general model of determination outside the moral realm, the important intuition behind it is that there may be determinative connections holding between the two families or classes of properties (including relations) without there being property-to-property connections between respective members of the families. (Klee 1984, 55–56)

This argument shows the possibility of consistently preserving the sense of supervenience as dependency and determination without having to accept a reductionist standpoint of the type “A-property is nothing but B-property”, thus depriving supervenient entities of any potential causal influence. Such a conception of supervenience brings us very close to the emergent relation; this could be a way of not only saving supervenience but also of explaining the ontological position of emergent phenomena. I must emphasise that this is not Humphreys’ intention. On the contrary, he tries to show that supervenience is insufficient for the causal explanation and requires a non-supervenient conception of emergence. One possible reason for this is that Kim, in the aforementioned 1978 article, ultimately proves that supervenience in the sense of the dependency of two families of properties without individual links between the elements of these families fails under scrutiny, and no longer includes this characteristic in his later formulations of supervenience: At any rate, supervenience as defined does not fulfil its promise: it falls short of being determinative relationship between properties without requiring correlations between them. (Kim 1978, 154)

Admittedly, with the exception of Klee (1984), no-one was enthusiastic about this possibility and although attempts were made to change the results of Kim’s strictly reductionist analysis (e.g., Tooley 1999), this possibility was not successfully developed. This is slightly disappointing as it would have presented a consistent possibility of explaining the rather vague claim that a whole can be more than only a sum of its parts. This would have given the definition an analytically convincing content. Let us now hypothesize that Kim’s conclusion was based upon overly reductionist presumptions which prevented this solution. Kim himself states that “our belief in supervenience is largely, and often, a combination of metaphysical convictions and

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methodological considerations” (Kim 1978, 154), suggesting that the conclusion may have been influenced by these. We will see later whether this may be an acceptable option (see Sect. 4.1). Thus Humphreys’ objection to the supervenient conception of emergence needs to be viewed in the light of the rather unclear concept of supervenience as primarily a relation of dependency and determination, yet lacking clarity in the delimitation of the role of reductivity. Humphreys’ critique of supervenience is motivated by supervenience in this unclear form failing to address fundamental questions regarding causal links between an emergent base and emergent entities as the consequences of ontological processes, thus lacking the required dynamic of ontological transformations or changes. It remains to explain in more detail why supervenience is not defined solely as a relationship between levels when its use within a given level does not lead to acceptable consequences, and in what sense levels can be considered.

2.2.4  Hierarchy as a Result of Dependency and Determination The supervenience of properties on other properties may be considered even without the presumption of different levels and their hierarchical arrangements. Thus, the presumption of ontologically arranged levels of reality is not a given or necessary reason to apply supervenience, and Humphreys’ examples can be approached in a different fashion. Let us suppose that we have no reasons to postulate the arrangement of the level of reality other than our ability to distinguish properties and classify them into types or families. Such classification does not tell us anything of the possible relations between these properties. However, let us assume that there are ways of deciding about the dependency of some property families on others, and that such inter-family relations can be determined. The relations of dependency and determination operate in opposite directions: e.g. if A depends on B, then B determines A. We cannot exclude any possibility of inter-family relations: e.g. A may depend on B as well as B may depend on A, depending only on the ways in which we can verify the validity of such relations. The particular form of such verification is not decisive at this point. What is crucial is the outcome, which may be as follows: there are property families determining other property families, these determined property families being dependent on the determining ones. Let us term the family of determining properties the base family, and the family of determined properties the supervening family. Let us now suppose that even the supervening family further determines another property family which in turn is dependent on it. Here we arrive at the elementary relations of dependency and determination between three families, A, B and C. There is no valid reason not to term A, B and C “levels” and their oriented relation of dependency and determination “hierarchy”. The result is a hierarchically arranged model, without referring to commonly cited hierarchies of elementary particles, atomic, molecular or cellular structures or the like. The point of this example

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is the close link between supervenience and the hierarchic nature of the level arrangements, regardless of any ontological presumptions or reasons. If supervenience is a relation of dependency and determination, a point upon which most would agree, then a hierarchy in the levels of reality is not a presumption but a necessary consequence of such a relation. In his critique of the supervenient conception of emergence, Humphreys does not consider supervenience as a possible explanation for the hierarchical arrangement of levels. He approaches the ontological arrangement of levels as rather insufficiently explained and, as we will see, later he attempts to abandon it altogether in the case of emergent links. The ontological hierarchy of levels can also have its disadvantages, such as in the specific application of a supervenient level in a particular situation (e.g. connections of mental states to their neurophysiological base) where we have to face the certain degree of vagueness and randomness with which individual levels can be characterized, and possibly also adapt the required analysis results. A potential misunderstanding may also lie in the idea that the level of mental states is actually a “higher” level than those of neurophysiological, electrochemical changes. The topology introduced through this hierarchy of change only serves illustrative purposes, since it reflects our intuitive judgments. This does not mean that such a pragmatic system of levels, ensuring better comprehensibility, is necessarily something which rigidly exists in the sense of layers being positioned hierarchically one on top of the other. If mental properties belong in some sense in a set of properties other than the neurophysiological, then this is probably because of a determination of one set by the other, and a dependency of one set on the other. That is exactly what is necessary for the delineation of individual levels, as we have witnessed in the example above. If these exact two types of dependency are met in supervenience, then one should remain unconvinced by the objection that “there is nothing in the nature of the supervenience relation itself that will explain why ‘vertical’ uses are appropriate and ‘horizontal’ uses are not” (Humphreys 1997b, S340). If, in the case of mental phenomena, there is no need to presume that they are located ontologically “higher” than the physiological structure of the brain, and thus that the mental layer levitates above the neural connections of brain cells, does this not prove wrong the objection against level hierarchy, in light of supervenience being a relation of dependency and determination? Evidently, it depends on the perspective from which we aim to view mental and physiological phenomena. In this case, supervenience should be seen as an abstract relation between qualitatively different spheres of phenomena. Indeed, Humphreys later requires level topology to be abandoned altogether, employing instead the term domain since he finds the hierarchical model unsuitable, trying to prove emergence phenomena in the different topology of domains instead. I shall analyse these issues in greater detail later, in the discussion on diachronic and synchronic emergence. My present aim is to tidy up three issues regarding the relevance of Humphreys’ objection to supervenience, which is only meaningful between levels, without this being stated in the definition. As discussed above, this is Humphreys’ chief argument against supervenience and in favour of emergence.

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As shown above, the primary reason for introducing the supervenient link was the effort to emphasize the subordinate status of supervenient properties to their subvenient base, as Humphreys admits (e.g. Humphreys 1997b, S340). For this reason, the vertical dependency of the supervenient link seems self-evident, while the effort to apply it horizontally seems problematic. The examples used by Humphreys to illustrate the ungroundedness of supervenience as an internal relation inside a given level are irrelevant in the light of the objections listed above. The conception of supervenience as a relation of dependency on and determination of properties cannot be applied either in the present physical or in the geometric level, although this may seem possible at first glance. Despite the unconvincing selection of examples, Humphreys arrives at the acceptable conclusion supporting the tendency towards a greatly more dynamic conception of emergence than that provided by a purely formal and logical analysis of the concept of supervenience. Both examples of the application of the supervenient link within a given level lead him to the conclusion that there is good reason to presume that a supervenient property has a certain independent status (Humphreys 1997b, S341), yet does not express an ontological relation between levels: supervenience is acceptable as a consistency condition on the attribution of concepts, in that if A supervenes upon B, you cannot attribute B to an individual and withhold A from it. If aesthetic merit supervenes upon just spatial arrangements of color on a surface, and you attribute beauty to the Mona Lisa, you cannot withhold that aesthetic judgement from a perfect forgery of the Leonardo painting. But supervenience does not provide any understanding of ontological relationships holding between levels. For that emergence is required. (Humphreys 1997b, S341)

In fact, Humphreys rejects the supervenient relation as an ontologically feasible relation between groups of properties, suggesting that this inter-level link may only be realized by emergence itself. Thus, supervenience is not an inherent part of the emergent relation, but rather a purely logical, formal correlation, disregarding any ontological connections between the established complex structures. In this regard, emergent properties should meet at least some of the following six criteria suggested by Humphreys: (1) novelty, (2) qualitative difference, (3) impossibility of existence on a lower level, (4) different laws apply to emergent features than to the features from which they emerge, (5) they result from an essential interactions of their constituent parts, 6) they are a holistic part of the whole system (Humphreys 1997b, S342). Since Humphreys goes on to change both the mandatoriness and number of these criteria, I will address these requirements separately later (see Sect. 4.3). In summary, the rejection of the supervenient conception of emergence is based on three presumptions: (1) emergent properties are likely to be fairly widespread in the physical world; (2) the existence of these detailed models of emergence on the physical level overcomes the mysterious nature traditionally attributed to emergence; and (3) the level of detail available in these models reveals that the supervenient relation is an oversimplification (Humphreys 1997b, S344–S345). It remains an open question whether abandoning the supervenient relation in particular cases of emergent phenomena is indeed unavoidable, or whether the

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supervenient relation may be formulated in such a way that it concurs with the ontological conception of emergence. Given that opinions on emergent phenomena tend towards an ever-more dynamic conception—as will be shown in the following chapters—this question is not a deal-breaker. Some arguments are independent of whether the conception of emergence is based on supervenience or not, and we can address them without first having to solve the relation between emergence and supervenience. In a sense, we will come back to synchronic supervenience in relation to the conception of synchronic and diachronic emergence, where I seek to show how both concepts could be connected in a unifying general framework (see Sect. 4.2).

2.3  Nominal, Weak and Strong Emergence The early 90s witnessed, in addition to the supervenient models of emergence, the influential conception of weak emergence, represented by Mark Bedau (1997, 2002, 2008). Bedau not only established a particular philosophical direction for further discussion (e.g. Chalmers [2002] 2006) but also claimed that his conception of emergence had become widely accepted in complexity theory, connectionist models, non-linear dynamics, theory of chaos etc., rendering it directly and practically applicable to science. The conception of weak emergence is remarkable in that most of its arguments are based on discrete models of cellular automata, presuming that a number of processes (waves, vortices, traffic jams, etc.) are suitable candidates for weak emergence (Bedau [2002] 2008, 177). In other words, there is an implicit presumption of unifying processes from various areas of reality, governed by particular principles. The advantage of weak emergence lies in the fact that discrete cellular automata follow simple rules, creating the “physics” of the base which results in complex behaviour and complex phenomena, but the base level remains straightforward in terms of its principles. In this respect, the computational basis of emergence is easily justifiable, unlike strong emergence, which was more or less inspired by the problem of mind and brain, a case in which both base (neurophysiological) and emergent (mental) mechanisms are complicated. Yet we cannot say that clarity and the ease of comprehension of how a cellular automaton’s base works would, per se, present an easier route to the presumed conclusions. For instance, Bedau opens his study ([2002] 2008) by establishing a metaphysical framework in such a way as he supposes suits the scientific presuppositions, while also holding to the weak emergence conception; yet ultimately he questions this framework himself. I shall reinterpret his intention and critically assess the cornerstones of the weak emergence conception. Bedau starts the discussion on emergence with the standard connections between emergent entities and their base, which, like the characteristic features of all emergent phenomena, have to meet the two following seemingly incompatible requirements (see Bedau [2002] 2008, 155):

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2  Towards a Universal Principle of Emergence (UPE) (1) Emergent phenomena are dependent on underlying processes. (2) Emergent phenomena are autonomous from underlying processes.

The relation between dependency and autonomy needs to be clearly explained, illustrating how emergent phenomena can be dependent on their base while also being autonomous in relation to it. The dependency and autonomy dilemma is closely linked to the questions of supervenience discussed above. For instance, we may expect that in order to express the autonomy of emergent entities, we would need to expand ontological commitments so that emergent entities exist in an autonomous sense “above” base properties (on the macro level), thus having a different ontological status. In most cases, autonomy is acquired through emergent entities possessing causal powers which are nonreducible to the causal effects of the entities constituting them on the base level (the micro level). On the contrary, if emergent entities do not possess such nonreducible causation and are only a reducible effect of the base level (the micro level), then emergent entities are ontologically innocent, and thus epiphenomenal. We face the dilemma of consistently connecting the dependency of emergent entities with their base level while preserving their autonomy in spite of it. According to Bedau, solving this dilemma is the objective of any philosophical defence of emergence, which should: (1) “explain its apparently illegitimate metaphysics”, (2) show that it “is consistent with reasonable forms of materialism” and (3) show that it is “a central and constructive player in our understanding of the natural world” (Bedau 1997, 376). Although he considers potential objections along the lines that the weak emergence conception “is too weak to be called ‘emergent’, either” (Bedau 1997, 394), he believes that it is widely applicable to science, and solves most of the problems of strong emergence, which in turn he considers scientifically irrelevant. Therefore, even the question of supervenience does not play a decisive role in the conception of weak emergence. Supervenience is thus associated mainly with strong emergence, according to which emergents possess causal powers which are irreducible to the causal powers of microconstituents; this presumption makes it contradict the generally accepted conception of causal fundamentalism. On the contrary, the weak emergence conception aims to be in accordance with causal fundamentalism, viewing it as a badge of “scientificness” and thereby avoiding the usual objections raised against strong emergence. In his original 1977 article on weak emergence, Bedau defines the dependence of emergent phenomena in more specific terms, claiming that emergent phenomena are constituted by, and generated from base processes. The distinction between dependence and autonomy is considerably less vague in this case, because there may be numerous dependency relations, but constitution is a purely ontological relation whilst generating a causal, temporally dependent. Unlike dependency alone, which can only be logical, such more precisely specified links allow even for the presumption of nomological grounding. Let us first outline Bedau’s solution to the dilemma of dependency and autonomy in the weak emergence conception. Dependency is explained and understood as the

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manner in which weak emergent phenomena are constituted and generated through low-level processes. The macrostates of a system are constituted and generated exclusively through their microstates and the microdynamics of, for example, the cellular automaton; therefore, even weak emergent phenomena are ontologically dependent and also reducible to microphenomena or microproperties. The existence of weak emergent phenomena on the macrolevel is causally dependent on the coordinated existence of microentities (or microproperties) on the microlevel. Thus, weak emergence not only does not contradict, but indeed presupposes causal fundamentalism. On the other hand, as regards the autonomy of weak emergent phenomena in relation to lower level processes, this lies in the non-trivial manner of their derivation, i.e. only through simulation. In general, the basic principles of weak emergent phenomena can only be examined through empirical observation on the macrolevel. In this sense, the existence of weak emergent phenomena on the macrolevel should then be independent. According to Bedau, there is nothing inconsistent or metaphysically illegitimate about phenomena which can only be derived through simulation and for which explanatory autonomy (i.e. irreducibility) may be combined with ontological and causal dependency (i.e. reducibility). To what extent is Bedau’s suggested solution satisfactory?

2.3.1  Nominal Emergence Before answering this question, let us briefly introduce the typology of emergence with which Bedau is working. To the basic distinction between weak and strong emergence (Bedau 1997) he adds nominal emergence (Bedau [2002] 2008), which finishes the suggested typology of emergence. He does not claim that this triad covers all possible typologies, yet it seems to cover all ontological forms of emergence. By “nominal emergence” he means a conception of emergence in which the emergent property is a “macro property that is the kind of property that cannot be a micro property” (see Bedau [2002] 2008, 158). The reason for this, according to him, is that this conception meets the two conditions mentioned earlier, i.e. dependency and autonomy: Macro-level emergent phenomena are dependent on micro-level phenomena in the straightforward sense that wholes are dependent on their constituents; and emergent phenomena are autonomous from underlying phenomena in the straightforward sense that emergent properties do not apply to the underlying entities. (Bedau [2002] 2008, 158)

This conception of nominal emergence is not only very broad, encompassing all macrolevel properties which were not present on the microlevel, but apparently it is also self-contradictory. It seems that in this case, also some resultant properties are considered nominally emergent, whereby the original purity of the intuitive distinction between resultants and emergents is lost. Bedau himself mentions the property of circle, the circle being formed of points which do not themselves have the properties of a circle. Circle is thus the property of the whole but not of its

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constituents—points. By meeting this condition, it classifies as an emergent property, although we know that these points are equally distant from the centre and thus the circle property can be derived as a resultant property. This poses the question of whether there may be more cases like this, devaluing the typology at hand more convincingly than just the problematic example of circle. Overall, geometric examples usually rest on a number of presumptions which are questionable in this respect. Is a circle really formed of dimensionless points? How can we obtain the finite length of a circle through an infinite addition of dimensionless points? etc. Perhaps this example is unsuitable as it is not of the same type as the traditional issue of mental states and a neurophysiological base, mental states being presumed to occur emergently as a property not carried by any of the individual constituents (for simplicity’s sake, by neurons). The examples are not analogous as we do not presume that neurons carry the properties of consciousness or mental states, but we do presume them to have a functional physical ability to participate in such states as parts of the whole. As for points, no such functionality is presumed; on the contrary, an ability to form dimensioned wholes through connecting dimensionless points would be paradoxical in geometry. Although Bedau claims that an emergence of a type other than nominal is necessary to differentiate resultants and emergents, this devalues his typology, as there is no reason to establish a typology so as not to clearly differentiate resultant and emergent properties. Originally, the notion of emergent phenomena was introduced precisely for the class of phenomena which could not be explained as aggregates or resultants;4 thus being emergent implied not being resultant, not encompassing these phenomena. This conception of nominal emergence thus results in the loss of the original ability to distinguish emergence as such. I discuss this at length because this is not merely a terminological inconsistency but indeed the basic delimitation of the conditions of emergence. Bedau delimits this condition as follows: if the requirements of dependency and autonomy are met, then this is a case of emergence (see nominal emergence citation above). This definition entails that a macroproperty cannot be also a microproperty of the constituents (autonomy) which form the whole which manifests the macroproperty (dependency). Thus, the condition for emergence cannot be merely the requirement that it be a property which as a macroproperty cannot be attributed to microlevel entities. For some properties this condition is sufficient, e.g. if we return to the water example: if water as a whole—a system of molecules—manifests the property of liquidity, then this property cannot be attributed to individual water molecules. Likewise, in this example of Searle’s, we again presume the water molecules to possess a functional physical ability to interact so that the whole has the macrolevel property of liquidity, and we are not forced to face any conceptual paradoxes in forming the whole. The convenience of such a typology rests mainly in its enabling Bedau to define weak emergence not only through the dichotomy with strong emergence, but instead in a triplet of nominal-weak-strong, characterizing it as “[involving] more than mere

 Cf. Mill’s heteropathic and homopathic composition of causes.

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nominal emergence but less than strong emergence.” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 160) Thus, it should be a scientifically acceptable type of emergence.

2.3.2  Strong Emergence According to Bedau, strong emergence as redefined by O’Connor (see above) is logically possible but scientifically unacceptable, for the following briefly summarised reasons: (1) It is unfortunately as strong as magic, because how could irreducible yet supervenient downward causative powers form if they were not the result of an aggregation of microlevel properties? (2) The causal powers of strong emergence are beyond our scientific scope, being mysterious and traditionally the cause of concern regarding an illegitimate “free lunch”. (3) It contradicts all reasonable forms of materialism. (4) It is scientifically irrelevant as there is no evidence of it playing any role whatsoever in contemporary science. In sum, strong emergence is mysterious and not required for our explanation of emergent phenomena; in fact it begins where scientific explanation ends (see Bedau [2002] 2008, 159). This is a radically metaphysical rejection of strong emergence which presumably was not directly prompted by his analyses of individual emergent states in cellular automata, described by Bedau in great detail and most convincingly in his papers. I believe that his metaphysical attitudes are not justifiable through analysable cases of cellular automata as those would, on the contrary, enable conclusions much more accommodating towards strong emergence, as we shall shortly see. Therefore, we may presume that Bedau’s metaphysical rejection of strong emergence is not consistent with his own analyses and that it can now be demonstrated how irreducible powers with downward causation may be formed without being the result of the mere aggregation of microlevel properties. Consequently, their existence does not amount to the infamous “free-lunch” solution, and can play a fundamental role in today’s science. However, this needs to be proven. Let us continue with Bedau’s conception of weak emergence.

2.3.3  Weak Emergence In Bedau’s opinion, weak emergence is unique in meeting the stated requirements: “It is metaphysically innocent, consistent with materialism, and scientifically useful” (Bedau 1997, 376). Weak emergence differs from the strong in that weak emergent causal powers may be derived and explained based on microlevel component causal powers. However, if weak emergent phenomena can be derived from and explained in terms of the microlevel, why indeed do we speak of emergence? Bedau believes that the sole reason is the complexity of such behaviour. Weak emergence pertains to the aggregative behaviour of systems whose general behaviour is derived from microlevel processes but is too complex to yield a simple explanation. The

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central idea is that emergent causal powers are derivable from the microlevel only in a specific, complex way. Therefore, the definition of weak emergence requires a rather more formal, rich means of expression, directly inspired by the description and behaviour of cellular automata. In general, cellular automata are considered a highly suitable research tool in complexity sciences with a number of applications of non-linear dynamics in standard natural and social sciences. Moreover, some types of cellular automata, such as Conway’s Game of Life,5 are highly illustrative in their documentation of the complexity formed according to elementary automatized rules. Bedau is not alone in employing cellular automata to explain emergent phenomena, stressing that “[o]ne advantage of such systems is that we have exact and total knowledge of the fundamental laws which govern the behavior of the micro elements.” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 165) Despite this, we are unable to predict through any other means (short-cut derivation) the future statuses of a system, apart from simulating them. Some of these statuses are particularly interesting in manifesting unexpected complexity in some cases and types of automata. Furthermore, cellular automata are excellent tools in philosophy, being not only illustrative and educational regarding issues of complexity and emergence, but also functioning as a powerful tool of argumentation which “renders vivid and robust a set of intuitions that are otherwise absent” and “it sometimes leads them to change their minds about their philosophical positions.” (Dennett 2003, 40). Which other philosophical arguments allow this? For our purposes, the presumed analogy between the type of processes occurring in cellular automata and other types of natural processes is decisive and necessary in order to formulate the potential universal principles of emergence. If cellular automata are an exemplary research tool pertaining to emergent phenomena and processes in numerous branches of science, then if universal principles of emergence do exist, they must be trackable on this level, where complex behaviour is formed above constituent elements governed by simple rules. A definition of weak emergence: 5  The best-known realization of a cellular automaton is Conway’s “Game of Life”, demonstrating the formation of various emergent forms, structures and properties based on simple recurrent algorithms. The Game of Life cellular automaton is a 2D grid of cells where cells can have two values. They are full (alive) or empty (dead). A distribution of live and dead cells provides the initial configuration of the grid, following which Conway’s “genetic laws” for birth, death and survival (i.e. rules for changing the values of cells) are applied step by step, allowing one to see the dynamic evolution of changes in the distribution of live and dead cells in the grid. It is remarkable how simple rules lead to the complex behaviour of wholes. “Conway’s genetic laws are delightfully simple. First, each cell of the grid (assumed to be an infinite plane) has eight neighboring cells, four adjacent orthogonally, four adjacent diagonally. The rules are: (1) Survivals. Every live cell with two or three neighboring live cells survives for the next generation. (2) Deaths. Each live cell with four or more live neighbors dies. Every cell with one live neighbor or none dies from isolation. (3) Births. Each empty cell adjacent to exactly three live neighbors—no more, no fewer—is a birth cell at the next move. It is important to understand that all births and deaths occur simultaneously in one step. Together they constitute a single generation in one ‘step’ in the complete ‘life history’ of the initial configuration.” (modified from Gardner 1970)

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Macrostate P of S with microdynamic D is weakly emergent iff P can be derived from D and S’s external conditions but only by simulation. (Bedau 1997, 378)

In this definition S’ is a system consisting of microlevel constituent parts whose number and identity may change over time. Based on causal microdynamics D, this system undergoes various microstates and macrostates. Macro and microstates only differ depending upon the point of view adopted: they are identical. A microstate is the internal state of its constituent parts, while a macrostate is composed of the microstates of system S. Thus, the crucial factor is the complexity and number of states of a system through which we may derive systemic properties which cannot be attained other than through simulation. Bedau uses the phrase “underivability except by simulation”, where underivability is in fact principial: Although a Laplacian supercalculator would have a decisive advantage over us in simulation speed, she would still need to simulate. Underivability without simulation is a purely formal notion concerning the existence and nonexistence of certain kinds of derivations of macrostates from a system’s underlying dynamic. (Bedau 1997, 379)

Within weak emergence we can already distinguish between resultants and emergents: resultants are directly derivable without simulation, while for weak emergent macrostates simulations are necessary, there being no “short-cut derivations”. Thus, a macrostate of a system in its nth iteration cannot be attained other than through gradually conducting all iterations over time. Bedau points out his reasons for terming the process “simulation” as this is not strictly speaking a simulation in the sense of imitating something through something else, but rather the emphasizing of causally ordered steps over time as the system evolves from one state towards another. Bedau specifies the term “derivation by simulation” as “a technical expression that refers to temporal iteration of the spatial aggregation of such local micro interactions.” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 164) In this case, simulation in fact refers to the realization of phenomena, as there is no other way of reaching the resulting states of the system as a whole. There is no calculation or other method, no “short-cut derivation” which may mediate the desired state of the system more simply and outside simulation. Bedau further compares simulation to natural processes and the realizations of many natural phenomena. Thus, his technical term simulation is suitably understood as the “realization” of a state, as the only way in which a weak emergent state of a system may be “attained” or “derived” is its realization through the required number of steps of the individual iterations of the system’s states. Finally, Bedau uses the term simulation because he documents weak emergent phenomena through discrete mathematical models, the aforementioned cellular automata, and it is therefore much more natural to refer to the simulations of individual cells of an automaton, rather than the realizations of phenomena. Where, then, shall we search for the reasons for the metaphysical and overly radical rejection of strong emergence in favour of weak as regards analyses resulting from processes in cellular automata? The metaphysical reasons lie in the effort to promote an acceptable form of emergence as an answer to the traditional critique of emergentism, and thus meet more or less the requirements of reductionism. I

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believe that Bedau’s conviction that weak emergent phenomena are fully reducible to microconstituents is caused by a certain misunderstanding of micro and macro level ontologies and that this constitutes a major drawback of this conception of emergence.

2.3.4  Ontological, Causal and Explanatory Reductionism Bedau distinguishes between three types of reductionism, namely ontological, causal and explanatory reductionism, claiming that both ontological and causal reductionism pertain to all types of cellular automata. All of these, whether or not leading to the formation of weak emergent states, work identically; their functioning is determined by the application of relevant rules to individual cells of the automaton, followed by discrete iterations. Thus, the requirements of ontological and causal reductionism seem justified. Bedau supposes that the automaton’s macrostates are nothing but complex aggregates of microconstituents, i.e. the state of the automaton’s cells, and considers this an advantage, as this allows him to avoid any objections to strong emergentism. For instance, the claim that the top-down causation of emergent entities must collide with or violate the microcausality of entities does not pertain to weak emergent entities; as Bedau says, “a weak macro cause is identical with the aggregation and iteration of micro causes.” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 178; my italics) Similarly, he is able to reject any potential objections. I do not consider it necessary to mention all of them as it is not essential and provides no further argument in favour of this basic reductionist presupposition. Yet is this strong reductionism not a reason for a lack of the required autonomy? In what does this autonomy consist? Bedau argues that “autonomy and irreducibility, due to the complex way in which the iteration and aggregation of context-dependent micro interactions generate the macro phenomena.” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 160) Our objections will now centre on two essential parts of the arguments listed above: complexity and complexity criteria. If the only criterion of weak emergence is complexity, resulting in weak emergent systemic properties, then the question is, in which phase of the simulation is the system’s macrostate sufficiently complex, and therefore emergent? Bedau offers no criteria to evaluate the state of the system in order to answer this question. This can be considered a major issue as, by definition, weak emergent phenomena depend on complexity. However, this question entails another, much more serious problem: we need to ask what differentiates the system’s macrostate from its basic microstate, so that we can reasonably consider a dependency between micro and macro states and the autonomy of the macrostate in relation to the system’s microstate. Otherwise, the defining criteria of emergence as established by Bedau cannot be met. A weak emergent phenomenon must meet the following condition: “For P to be weakly emergent, what matters is that there is a derivation of P from D and S’s external conditions and any such derivation is a simulation.” (Bedau 1997, 379) In other words, from a microstate of system S including external initial conditions, we

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may derive the system’s state after n iterations, as the difference between micro and macro state is unclear. The complexity of the simulation lies in the number of steps during which we allow the system to develop; it is simulation because for no following step in this sequence of steps are we able to predict what system state will occur. Still it remains far from clear how the microstate and macrostate of a system are different. The relationship between the micro and macrostate may thus be only “seeming” or subjective, because if “existence consists in nothing more than the coordinated existence of certain micro phenomena” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 160) then we cannot differentiate between the microlevel description of the arrangement of individual microlevel constituents, and the macrostate, which is nothing but this very specific aggregate of microconstituents.

2.3.5  Complexity and Its Criteria My objection is threefold. (1) Complexity criteria do not exist and thus we are unable to responsibly evaluate a given macrostate or even a series of several macrostates. (The processual concept is more adequate in the case of cellular automata.) (2) Complexity itself is a concern, as Bedau refers interchangeably to the complexity of a number of iterations, sometimes a great many, towards a desired state, and to the complexity of the link between microconstituents and macrostate. This suggests the idea of an initial microstate P, i.e. initial conditions of the arrangement of cells, and dynamics D, i.e. the automaton’s rules which after n iterations result in macrostate P’, which is already weak emergent, as it was reached through the simulation of a complex coordination of constituents. The description of the automaton’s behaviour is correct, but the idea that from the given microstate we achieve a macrostate is fallacious. Any microstate and any macrostate are nothing but a strictly rule-dependant deterministic arrangement of the values of m x n cells, in the case of a two-dimensional cellular automaton. The criterion of the existence of emergent phenomena cannot depend on complexity in the way suggested above, although the required and sufficient complexity is indeed a necessary condition of their existence. As a result, the criterion needs to consist in something else. (3) The required autonomy is also a concern, as this fails to be met due to the above objections. This problem is acknowledged by Bedau; he tries to show that some weak emergent phenomena have macro-explanations which are strongly autonomous and irreducible (Bedau [2002] 2008, 182). In the light of initial metaphysical presumptions, the claim of strong explanatory autonomy is controversial, yet correct; it proves that the presumptions of causal as well as ontological reducibility, and by extension those of strong emergence, need to be reconsidered. However, let us leave this reconsideration for later and instead discuss the strategy of strong explanatory autonomy.

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2.3.6  Explanatory Autonomy As complexity criteria are non-existent and therefore unable to provide a clear-­ enough distinction between micro and macro levels, Bedau attempts to preserve macrolevel autonomy through explanatory irreducibility. He realizes that causal fundamentalism and the ontological reducibility of any macrostate to a microstate cannot fulfil the required macro-autonomy. Therefore, he assumes that three types of reduction—ontological, causal and explanatory—are mutually independent (Bedau [2002] 2008, 174), suggesting that: (There is) nothing metaphysically illegitimate about combining this explanatory autonomy (irreducibility) with ontological and causal dependence (reducibility), so weak emergence dissolves the problem of emergence. (Bedau [2002] 2008, 160)

There may be nothing illegitimate about this if the mutual independence could be justified with sufficient consistency. However, in point of fact Bedau himself—in contradiction with the initially proclaimed independence—is forced to acknowledge a link between macro-explanatory and macro-ontological autonomy. First, he points out that there is a substantial difference between merely random patterns (random groupings of cells with random effects on the development of the automaton’s states) and stable patterns (relatively stable cell groupings with known effects on the development of the automaton’s states), which may occur in a cellular automaton of the Game of Life type. This raises the question of how these forming macro-­ patterns (macrostates of the system) can be explained and described. Bedau believes that there are two types of explanation, depending on the randomness of forms. He claims that in the first case—a randomly established microstate of the system, based on the aggregation of the histories of individual constituents—this is only an epistemological explanation of effects which is reducible as “the explanatory autonomy does not signal any distinctive macro structure in reality.” (Bedau [2002] 2008, 182) However, in the latter case an established microstate can instantiate robust macro regularities that can be described and explained only at the macro level. The point is not just that macro explanation and description is irreducible, but that this irreducibility signals the existence of an objective macro structure. This kind of robust weak emergence reveals something about reality, not just about how we describe or explain it. So the autonomy of this robust weak emergence is ontological, not merely epistemological. (Bedau [2002] 2008, 182–183)

I entirely agree, because this point of view is close to my conception of emergence and the universal principles in question, and I will endeavour to refine it in the following chapters. Although this is a welcome conclusion, it is in crucial contradiction with the previously declared metaphysical legitimacy of the independence of ontological, causal and explanatory reductionism. Thus, explanation, ontology and causality seem to be much more closely linked than Bedau supposes. Moreover, claiming the irreducibility of macro-explanation, which transcends ontological macrolevel commitments (and presumably transcends also towards causal ones), absolutely contradicts the initial metaphysical presumptions! This undermines the

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proclaimed position of weak emergence as the only scientifically acceptable version, showing on the contrary a much more likeable side to strong emergence. Therefore, I will seek to show—in so doing directly contradicting the stated starting points—that there is nothing mysterious about strong emergence, and it is indeed necessary for the explanation of emergent phenomena, as a scientific explanation proves impossible without it. This likewise contradicts other conceptions mentioned previously: Searle and McLaughlin, similar to Bedau, fear emergent properties which were fully autonomous irreducible causal powers. They assume that a disruption of causal fundamentalism, or causal transitivity, is unacceptable. Ontological emergence in the “strong” sense, i.e. as the existence of irreducible ontological entities or properties (Van Cleve, O’Connor), is sometimes compared to mythical vital properties (see, for example, Cunningham 2001, Gillett 2016) and considered a scientifically unacceptable form of emergence (Bedau, Kim). Interestingly, Searle doubts the possibility of emergence2, even explaining consciousness as emergent1, thereby considering emergence1 a universal relation. In contrast, Bedau believes that weak emergence is not a universal, metaphysical solution, claiming that “if we were to acquire good evidence that human consciousness is weakly emergent, this would not immediately dissolve all of the philosophical puzzles about consciousness.” (Bedau 1997, 395–396) Thus he admits that, in principle, consciousness cannot be explained through a micro-explanation, and can be strong emergent. In the context of Bedau’s conception, this is rather odd as it essentially admits that consciousness is one of the magical and mysterious properties whose explanation lies outside the scope of science. Earlier we saw a similar conclusion about the exclusive status of consciousness in McLaughlin (1997a, 40) and I must repeat that, in my view, this conclusion is unacceptable.

References Alexander, Samuel. [1920] 1950. Space, Time, and Deity. Macmillan & Co., in two volumes, reprinted 1950 by The Macmillan Company. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 8, section 1045a. Armstrong, David M. 1989. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Westview Press. Atmanspacher, Harald. 2002. Determinism Is Ontic, Determinability Is Epistemic. In Between Chance and Choice, ed. Atmanspacher, H. and Bishop, R., Imprint Academic. Bedau, Mark A. 1997. Weak Emergence. Philosophical Perspectives, 11, 375–399, quoted from Philosophical Perspectives: Mind, Causation, and World, chapter Weak Emergence, 375–399. Blackwell. ———. 2002. Downward Causation and the Autonomy of Weak Emergence. Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 6(1): 5–50. (Reprinted as Downward Causation and the Autonomy in Weak Emergence. In Emergence, ed. Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphreys, the MIT Press, 2008, 155–188.) ———. 2008. Is Weak Emergence Just in the Mind? Minds and Machines 18 (4): 443–459. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11023-­008-­9122-­6.

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Bedau, Mark, and Paul Humphreys, eds. 2008. Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bishop, Robert C., and George F.R.  Ellis. 2020. Contextual Emergence of Physical Properties. Foundations of Physics 50 (5, May): 481–510. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-­020-­00333-­9. Bohm, David. 1957. Causality and chance in modern physics. London: Routledge. Broad, C.D. 1925. The Mind and Its Place in Nature. Routledge. Bunge, Mario. [2003] 2014. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. Toronto Studies in Philosophy. Toronto/Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Clayton, Philip. 2006. Conceptual Foundations of Emergence Theory. In The Re-Emergence of Emergence, ed. P. Clayton and P. Davies, 1–31. New York: Oxford University Press. Crane, Tim. 2000. Dualism, Monism, Physicalism. Mind & Society 1 (2): 73–85. https://doi. org/10.1007/bf02512314. ———. 2001. The Significance of Emergence. In Physicalism and Its Discontents, ed. B. Loewer and G. Gillett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cunningham, Bryon. 2001. The Reemergence of ‘Emergence’. Philosophy of Science 3: S63–S75. Davidson, Donald. 1970. Mental Events. Reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events, ed. D. Davidson. 1980: 207–224. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dennett, Daniel C. 2003. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2011. Emergentisms, ancient and modern. Mind 120: 671–703. Gillett, Carl. 2016. Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Guay, Alexandre, and Olivier Sartenaer. 2016. A New Look at Emergence. Or When after Is Different. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (2): 297–322. Hare, Richard Mervyn [1952] 2003. The Language of Morals. Reprinted. Clarendon Paperbacks. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Havlík, Vladimír. 2011. Vstříc univerzálnímu evolučnímu principu. In Z evolučního hlediska, ed. Vladimír Havlík and Tomáš Hříbek et al. Filosofia, Praha. ———. 2012. Searle on Emergence. Organon F 19 (2): 40–48. Humphreys, Paul. 1997a. How Properties Emerge. Philosophy of Science 64: 1–17. ———. 1997b. Emergence Not Supervenience. Philosophy of Science, Vol. 64, Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers, S337-S345. ———. 2016a. Emergence. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016b. Emergence. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, Oxford Handbooks, ed. Paul Humphreys, Anjan Chakravartty, Margaret Morrison, and Andrea Woody, 759–778. New York: Oxford University Press. Huneman, Philippe, and Paul Humphreys. 2008. Dynamical Emergence and Computation: An introduction. Minds and Machines 18 (4): 425–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-­008-­9124-­4. Kim, Jaegwon. 1978. Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables. American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (2): 149–156. ———. 1984. Concepts of Supervenience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (2): 153–176. ———. 1990. Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept. Metaphilosophy 21, no. 1–2 (1990): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­9973.1990.tb00830.x. ———. 1993. Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Making Sense of Emergence. Philosophical Studies 95: 3–36. ———. 2003. Supervenience, Emergence, Realization, Reduction. In Loux, Michael J., and Dean W. Zimmerman, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 556–584. ———. 2005. Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton University Press. https://doi. org/10.1515/9781400840847.

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Kirchhoff, Michael. 2014. In Search of Ontological Emergence: Diachronic. But Non-Supervenient. Axiomathes 24 (1): 89–116. Klee, Robert L. 1984. Micro-Determinism and Concepts of Emergence. Philosophy of Science 51 (1): 44–63. https://doi.org/10.1086/289163. Lewes, George Henry. [1875] 2009. Problems of Life and Mind. the @study of Psychology: Its Object, Scope, and Method Third Series, Third Series, Whitefish (Mont.): Kessinger publishing, 2009. Lewis, David K. [1986] 2001. On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Limmer, David T., and David Chandler. 2013. The Putative Liquid-Liquid Transition Is a Liquid-­ Solid Transition in Atomistic Models of Water II. The Journal of Chemical Physics 138 (21): 214504. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4807479. McLaughlin, Brian P. [1995] 2007. Varieties of Supervenience. In Supervenience: New Essays, ed. E. Savellos and Ü. Yalçin, 16–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997a. Emergence and supervenience. Intellectica 25: 25–43. ———. 1997b. Supervenience, Vagueness, and Determination. Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 11, Mind, Causation, and World, 209–230. McLaughlin, Brian P., and Karen Bennett. 2005. Supervenience. Stanford Encyklopedia of Philosophy, First published Mon Jul 25: 2005. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/. Accessed 4 July 2021. Mill, John S. [1843] 2011. A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a connected view of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, eBooks@Adelaide. Moore, George Edward. 1922. Philosophical Studies. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Morgan, C. Lloyd. 1923. Emergent Evolution. London: Williams & Norgate. O’Connor, Timothy. 1994. Emergent Properties. American Philosophical Quarterly 31: 91–104. O’Connor, Timothy, and Hong Yu Wong. 2005. The Metaphysics of Emergence. Noûs 39 (4): 658–678. Perakis, Fivos et al. 2017. Diffusive dynamics during the high-to-low density transition in amorphous ice. PNAS, vol. 114(31): s. 8193–8198. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705303114. Poole, Peter H., Francesco Sciortino, Ulrich Essmann, and H.  Eugene Stanley. 1992. Phase Behaviour of Metastable Water. Nature 360 (6402): 324–328. https://doi.org/10.1038/360324a0. Primas, Hans. 1998. Emergence in Exact Natural Science. Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica Mathematics and Computing Series 91. Rigato, Joana. 2017. Looking for Emergence in Physics. Phenomenology and Mind 2017: 174–183. https://doi.org/10.13128/PHE_MI-­21116. Ronald, E., M. Sipper, and M. Capcarrère. 1999. Design, observation, surprise! A test of emergence. Artificial Life 5 (3): 225–239. Rosenberg, Alex. 1997. Can Physicalist Antireductionism Compute the Embryo? Philosophy of Science, Vol. 64, Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetingsof the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. S359–S371. Savellos, Elias E, and Ümit D.  Yalçin . [1995] 2014. Supervenience: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scaruffi, Piero. 1999. John Searle: The Rediscovery of the Mind. https://www.scaruffi.com/mind/ searle.html. Accessed 3 June 2021. Schlick, Moritz. 1979. The Future of Philosophy. In Philosophical Papers, ed. H.L. Mulder and B.F.B. van de Velde-Schlick, vol. 2, 210–224. Dordrecht: Reidel. Searle, John R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, the MIT Press, kapitola 5, Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness. Cite from: Emergence, ed. M. A. Bedau, P. Humphreys, the MIT Press, 2008. ———. 2012. Reply to Commentators. In Organon F, Philosophy of John Searle, vol. 19, Supplementary Issue 2, 199–225. Scheibe, Erhard. 1973. The Logical Analysis of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Silberstein, Michael, and John McGeever. 1999. The Search for Ontological Emergence. The Philosophical Quarterly 49 (195): 201–214.

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Tooley, Michael, (Ed.). 1999. Laws of Nature, Causation, and Supervenience. Analytical Metaphysics 1. New York: Garland Pub. Van Cleve, J. 1990. Mind-Dust or Magic? Panpsychism versus Emergence. Philosophical Perspectives: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind 4: 215–226. Wimsatt, William C. 1997. Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence. Philosophy of Science 64 (4): 372–384. ———. 2007. Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: piecewise approximations to reality. Harvard University Press.

Chapter 3

Emergence in Physical Systems

Abstract  This chapter continues with analyses of some approaches to ontological emergence inspired by physical processes. The studies show how purely metaphysically oriented approaches to emergence diverge from natural physical processes, creating a need to abandon some traditional assumptions, such as the substance-­ accidence model of entities and their properties and the causal determination of wholes solely by their basal entities. Physical processes in condensed matter and phase transitions, quasiparticles, quantum entanglement and other quantum phenomena lead to different ontological conceptions of emergence which need to be taken into account, such as fusion emergence (Humphreys), contextual emergence (Bishop and Atmanspacher), dynamic emergence (Kronz and Tiehen) and transformational emergence (Humphreys; Guay and Sartenaer). Attention is also paid to examples of strong emergence in simple physical systems (Bar-Yam), to the concept of machretic determination and mutualism (Gillett), to the dynamical and procedural notion of emergence in computational and combinatorial approaches (Hunemann and Humphreys), and finally, to the criticism by proponents of agent/ actor-based modelling (e.g., Epstein) that emergence is an unscientific concept. Critical analyses emphasize some of the supporting ideas upon which to focus when formulating a universal principle of emergence: the substance-action model, the mutual causal conditioning of the whole and the parts, the contextual and procedural nature of emergent phenomena, and the strong emergence, under global constraints, of a system relative to its environment. Most taxonomies of emergence, as already demonstrated, are based on the distinction between entity (substance) and property (accident), thus preserving the substance/accident ontology. No conception of emergence has yet questioned this presumption. Within new analyses and approaches, however, it seems necessary for us to abandon this distinction in order to reach an adequate conception of emergence. This was observed in reflecting upon Searle’s conception of emergence1. Current alternative conceptions of emergence note the great complexity of the behaviour of the whole, not necessarily presuming that during its existence even the identity of its constitutive parts is preserved. Another characteristic feature of these © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 V. Havlík, Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8_3

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conceptions is that they do not focus primarily on high-level emergent phenomena, such as consciousness, but rather on low-level, physical processes, in which the emergent relationship is more readily comprehensible. This is considered of utmost importance by Humphreys (1997, 15), who claims that we should abandon studying emergence solely within the context of mental properties, and instead look for examples in much more basic sciences. In his recent research, one of the advantages of model examples of the emergence of patterns in cellular automata is that there is no room for speculation about the details of the examples because the algorithms that underlie them are explicitly given, thus avoiding the speculative mist that surrounds many discussions of emergence in the philosophy of mind. (Humphreys 2008, 432)

Let us therefore begin with an example of physical emergence which is already viewed as a convincing empirical exemplification of emergence and its archetype. At first, the importance of these phenomena was recognized and mentioned by condensed matter physicists (Anderson 1972; Laughlin 1999; Laughlin and Pines 2000; Laughlin 2005) and later reflected also in philosophy (Morrison 2006; Falkenburg and Morrison 2015; Lederer 2015; Guay and Sartenaer 2016; Humphreys 2016; Ellis 2016; Gillett 2016, etc.). Ever since the beginning, Anderson and Laughlin have opposed the reductionist programme in physics, and through solid-state and condensed-matter research have identified the borders preventing classical reductionist views of the reconstruction of the world from some initial fundamental equations. Laughlin, in his 1998 Nobel lecture (Laughlin 1999), points out a range of physical processes, such as superliquidity, superconductivity and Hall effects, which are not derivable from the primary principles (i.e. formulae) of quantum theory. Thus, there appears to be a vast chasm between the knowledge of the initial formulae of quantum mechanics and the processes commonly occurring on the level of a large quantity of quantum mechanical entities (particles). Laughlin, with reference to Anderson (1972), states that both superliquidity and quantum Hall phenomena are emergent phenomena, i.e. the low-energy effects of immense quantities of particles are not to be deduced rigorously from the microscopic formulae of their behaviour, which disappear completely once the system decomposes (Laughlin 1999, 863). In reaction to the potential objections that these phenomena are not fundamental from the viewpoint of quantum theory and thus are not to be taken seriously, Laughlin stresses that the basic constants of quantum theory, e (the charge of an electron) and h (Planck’s constant) are defined and determined precisely by these processes. Therefore, they are fundamental phenomena, determining the basic constants of the theory which cannot be obtained in a more reductive way, i.e. disregarding the complexity which determines them. It is not only my opinion that this purely physical situation is a fitting example of classical micro-reductionism being exhausted, for as Laughlin (1999, 863) states, “I myself have come to suspect most of the important outstanding problems in physics are emergent in nature.” Thus, empirical support for emergentism is not to be sought merely in biological systems, in which we may still presume that we are not yet familiar with all the decisive causes due to the complexity of organic systems and thereby keep the formerly successful reductionism alive. In a physical environment, such efforts are no longer sustainable. In the above cases of superliquidity and superconductivity, no other

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causes (forces or entities) are involved which cannot be reductively examined in the individual independent carriers (particles) of physical interactions. The only difference in the case of these phenomena is the context in which these physical interactions occur. The context of these unusual phenomena is merely an enormous number of particles, leading to the emergence of new qualities of the whole and to new behaviours of the whole, which cannot be deduced from the initial formulae describing the behaviour of the individual particles. Before we focus on a closer analysis of the above physical phenomena, let us note the role of context in emergent processes.

3.1  Contextual Emergence The term context plays a crucial role in relation to emergence if it sufficiently clearly defines the area in which it is possible to distinguish between emergent and non-­ emergent phenomena. In this case, the context plays the role of a “transparent classification scheme”, which makes it possible to classify the phenomena in question on the basis of established criteria. The authors of the contextual emergence proposal (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006) start from hierarchical levels of reality and the hierarchical levels of their descriptions, where the relations between properties at different levels require a corresponding context. However, contextuality in this sense has a deeper grounding in contextual ontology (Primas 1998), according to which we are able, through various non-equivalent context-dependent theories, to look deeper into the structure of mind-independent reality (Primas 1998; d’Espagnat 1998). In the case of contextual ontology, Bishop and Atmanspacher propose the use of necessary and sufficient conditions to distinguish different relations between properties at different hierarchical levels. They then consider contextual emergence to be the case when “the description of properties at a particular level of description (including its laws) offers necessary but not sufficient conditions to derive the description of properties at a higher level” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, 5). This establishes the role of more fundamental theories (e.g., quantum mechanics), which provides the necessary basis for higher-level phenomena to occur but contains only their necessary, but not all of their sufficient conditions. These do not exist at this more fundamental level, and this explains the fact that higher-level emergent phenomena are not derivable from lower. The original proposal for contextual emergence (2006) focused exclusively on the epistemological relations between descriptions of the various hierarchical levels, but later the concept also sought “the ontic extension of this relation to different domains or levels of physical reality” (Bishop and Ellis 2020, 481) with a vision of the applicability of this framework with respect also to other theoretical disciplines, and a general applicability, as “the Framework of contextual emergence can provide a unified view of the sciences” (Bishop and Ellis 2020, 506). The combination of necessary and sufficient conditions is generally a good tool for defining relations between properties, so it is unsurprising that it works well in

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this case. Hierarchically, the lower fundamental levels provide only necessary conditions for the existence of possible emergent phenomena, while the higher levels contribute sufficient conditions for determining what can emerge, and how, at a given level. Thus, for example, physics, from this point of view, provides only the necessary conditions for the existence of chemical properties and laws, but at the same time does not provide all the sufficient conditions for the existence of chemical properties, which are attainable only at higher levels. In contrast with the original, exclusively epistemological contextual emergence, which focused only on the description of properties between levels, ontological contextual emergence focuses on the “ontological furniture” of the physical states and observables, the necessary and sufficient conditions for their existence and persistence, and the transitions that must take place from one level or domain of reality with one set of states/observables to another level or domain with new states/observables. (Bishop and Ellis 2020, 483)

According to the authors, the important contextual characteristics include the dissociation between the system and its environment, stability conditions that determine the sufficient robustness of states and observable entities, and many constraints that determine the behaviour of the system. All of these characteristics relate to the contextual delimitation of the domain that is crucial to the manifestation of emergent phenomena. The combination of stability conditions and necessary and sufficient conditions at different levels leads to the conclusion that, in contextual emergence, the stability conditions necessary for emergent phenomena are not fully contained in the lower levels but are given at the higher levels (Bishop and Ellis 2020, 485). This is fully consistent with many concrete physical examples (e.g., nonlinear dynamics), but it is also consistent with the metaphysical requirement of dependence and autonomy, i.e., that emergent phenomena are not only determined by the lower level, but are also autonomous. Thus, their autonomy and causal action are not only non-derivable and non-deducible from necessary conditions at lower levels, but also require sufficient conditions from higher levels. Contextuality is thus crucial not only in the description of phenomena but also in their ontological definition. Contexts cannot be identical to the hierarchical levels, but emphasize inter-level relations and connections. The interplay of necessary and sufficient conditions is sufficiently universal for contextual emergence to operate in many other domains, as the authors suggest. However, the instrument of necessary and sufficient conditions is also too general to illuminate the mechanisms of emergence and, for example, to decide which conditions are necessary and sufficient in a particular case. Therefore, it is difficult to assume that a mere asymmetry between necessary and sufficient conditions can have any predictive and explanatory power in a given particular case. So how does ontological contextuality apply in particular cases? For example, the above physical phenomena, such as superfluidity and superconductivity, show that the behaviour of particles within a complex system is inherently inferable from the behaviour of individual particles. The context of individual particles contains only the necessary conditions for their existence, conditions which are not enough

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for the different context of “an enormous number of particles.” The complexity of an enormous number of particles requires other (sufficient) conditions which are not derivable from the individual context. Therefore, this is not merely the epistemological inability of such a derivation or prediction; it is an ontologically different situation in which the particle is realized as a particle. We may say that there is no simple relation between the individual particle and the particle in a complex system allowing for such a derivation or prediction. In search of the role of a particle in a complex system, we remain within the limits of classical reductionism, assuming the preservation of a particle’s identity and its characteristics even in the context of a system of many such particles. However, emergent phenomena lead us to abandon such notions, allowing that in a complex system, particles lose their identity in favour of the whole, being “used up,” as it were, by a new contextual reality. Thus, this is by no means merely a matter of different levels of description as the cause of emergent phenomena; rather, it is to some extent a matter of the same ontological level (in the discussed cases, the level of low-energy particle physics within which the phenomena are realized). This means that the traditional interpretation of emergent phenomena, which generally presumes the existence of entities on the microlevel and the manifestation of emergent characteristics on the macrolevel, is not entirely adequate. The ontological status of an entity on the microlevel in the context of isolation turns out to be different from its ontological status in the context of participation in the system. This, too, can be proven by suitable examples from the realm of low-energy physics. Laughlin states that one of the typical characteristics of emergent phenomena is their creation of new particles. This is hardly strange or surprising. What is important here is the question of the character of these “new” particles and of their relation to the whole. In light of their unusual “reality”, they are generally termed quasiparticles. At the same time, these are no exotic, unusual phenomena – indeed, quite the contrary. Quasiparticles seem to be an excellent example of emergent phenomena in a range of the physical realms of nuclear and rigid materials physics.

3.1.1  A Quasiparticle as an Emergent Entity A quasiparticle is formed as a defect in a medium and behaves as would a legitimate particle, moving freely, carrying energy and angular momentum, interacting with other particles, etc. A common example of a quasiparticle is the “hole” formed by a missing electron in an electron sea, carrying the opposite charge. To me it is relevant that a “hole” has no individual existence outside the electron sea, and that other electrons participate in its motion and existence. A similar case in point is that of the quantum of sound, termed a phonon, which is a defect—a collective excitation linked to the vibration of a large number of atoms in a crystalline structure. Here, the phonon also acts like a particle, but its existence is meaningless outside the crystal, being dependent upon the excitations of atoms in the crystal. Other examples of quasiparticles include the magnon, plasmon, polaron, Landau’s

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quasiparticles, Laughlin’s quasiparticles, Stoner’s excitations in ferromagnetic metals, Bogoliubov’s quasiparticles, Majorana fermions and magnetic monopoles. This list clearly indicates that behind the existence of these quasiparticles there is a common mechanism, occurring in various cases, always involving the emergence of particles which cannot exist independently of the whole which construes them. This physical example forces us to abandon the above substance/accident presumption of an entity and its properties. We may object that physical properties are attributed to a quasiparticle in a similar manner as to a classical particle; and not only are they attributed to a quasiparticle, but they can be observed and measured experimentally. However, this does not imply the preservation of the substance/accident presumption. This is not to say that to give up this presumption is to abandon physical characteristics entirely; it is merely that the substance basis is not preserved as the bearer of properties outside the complex existence of a number of particles in a given state. The identity and ontological existence of a quasiparticle makes no sense outside a complex whole. However, a complex whole of particles is no longer merely an aggregation of individual particles and their properties; it is a qualitatively different entity. For instance, the aforementioned Laughlin’s quasiparticles occur in a two-dimensional electron medium, carrying an electron’s fractional charge. Electrons condensing into the state of an incompressible quantum liquid are no longer free electrons with qualities which could be observed outside this new quantum state. Electrons, together with quanta of magnetic inductive flow, form quasiparticles which behave as if they had a fractional charge (e.g. 1/3 e). Thus, in a particular state, electrons lose their property and size of electric charge, being involved in the formation of quasiparticles of fractional electron charge, these particles likewise forming a quantum liquid and causing the fractional quantization of Hall resistance. Thus, we need to drop the simplified notion of identical entities, bearing properties outside a system. Searle’s emergence1 type, evoking the idea of mere additional causal interactions between identical entities within the system as well as outside it, proves unsustainable as a general principle of emergence. Humphreys (2016) terms this presumption of the stability of basic constituent entities “generative atomism” and shows that in order to understand emergence, a much more dynamic approach to the constituents themselves is required. However, this fact can have further, greatly more general implications. As the notion of a quasiparticle can be shown to overcome the classical idea of a material entity as an isolated and independent part, one which it replaces with the dynamic and processual dependence of a quasi-entity on a medium consisting of numerous particles in a given quantum state, then we may be faced with a considerably more universal idea than it may seem at first sight. It is no longer only that these holistic processes, conditioning the existence of quasiparticles, are common in many realms of physical research; they may well represent the universal and only mechanism of any entity’s existence. In the above instances, a quasiparticle is indeed defined as a defect, or as an excitation of the background of a large number of particles but, in fact, this difference may not be decisive at all. In a sense, the individual particles are also excitations of the background of a vacuum; or, more generally, they are defects

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in a more fundamental medium, and thus likewise quasiparticles. This notion, corresponding to current physical and cosmological theories of the vacuum, would imply that the mechanism upon which our idea of a quasiparticle is based is a general emergent mechanism. The difference between such quasi-entities generally viewed as such then consists only in the temporal duration of these entities. Their basis is not static, inert and independent; on the contrary, it is dynamic, active and fundamentally dependent upon its fundamental carrier, which is a multi-entity, more fundamental basis.

3.2  Fusion Emergentism This situation of physical processes containing quasiparticles may be solved by an attempt to introduce the fusion operator [.*.] (Humphreys 1997), which should mark a process combining two i-level qualities Pim and Pin into an (i + 1)-level quality [Pim*Pin].1 Although Humphreys does not introduce the fusion operator in order to describe a particular physical emergence process, but rather to find a solution to the problem of downward and upward causation,2 he understands it as a real physical operation, and not a mathematical or logical operation on predicative representations of properties. That is, * is neither a logical operation such as conjunction or disjunction nor a mathematical operation such as set formation. * need not be a causal interaction, for it can represent interactions of quite different kinds. (Humphreys 1997, 10)

From our viewpoint, two more facts stressed by Humphreys are relevant. (1) A key feature of fusion is the fact that it comprises a unified whole (on the level of i+1) in the sense that its causal consequences cannot be correctly expressed in terms of the separated causal consequences of the characteristics of the lower i-level. (2) Furthermore, during fusion, the original instances of characteristics cease to exist as separated entities, not having all their i-level causal forces available on the i+1 level. As Humphreys states, “some of them, so to speak, have been ‘used up’ in forming the fused property instance” (Humphreys 1997, 10). Thus, the aforementioned abandoning of the presumption of the independent identity of entities and characteristics is realized even within the purely abstract framework of reflections. Despite

1  For the sake of illustration, I present a simplified formula, fully capturing the fusion operator. In the original formulation, Humphreys uses a more complex formula containing entities as bearers of qualities and the parameter of time. In general, the mth quality of P on the level of i is marked as Pim, its bearer being the rth entity x on the level i in time t, i.e. Pim(xir)(t1). The fusion of all these characteristics then results in the following formula: [Pim(xir)(t1) * Pin(xis)(t1)]. 2  Humphreys searches for an emergentist counter-argument to Kim’s exclusion and downward causation arguments, which are focused against non-reductive physicalism as well as against emergentism. Towards the end of Humphreys’ article (1997), he considers possible physical processes which would represent his fusion operator, and goes on to mention the quantum “entanglement” of statuses as well as the physics of solid materials, which studies the processes of superconductivity and superliquidity.

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the fusion operator being defined as a purely abstract physical process which should support emergentism against critical arguments from the viewpoint of reductive physicalism, Humphreys succeeds in not only capturing the more dynamic ontological status of emergent entities but also in approximating some particular physical emergent processes. Fusion would capture these physical processes in which quasiparticles occur, as well as the fundamental quantum properties of particles, such as the “entanglement” of their states. However, the extent to which fusion emergence meets the requirements of individual physical exemplifications needs to be critically examined.

3.2.1  A Dynamic Approach to Emergence Another example of such “fusion” may be the quantum-mechanical interaction (Kronz and Tiehen 2002), leading to a certain “entanglement” of entities’ (particles’) states and resulting in a non-separable quantum state. Again, the presuppositions that an entity’s identity is not preserved within a whole, and that the distinction between an entity and a characteristic need not be preserved, would here lead to different causal consequences as regards transitivity or causal fundamentalism. However, Kronz and Tiehen somewhat mitigate the radicality of Humphreys’ solution. First, they extrapolate the following three presuppositions, based upon Humphreys’ views: First, there is for a given system at a given time a highest level of organizational complexity. Second, this system can have subsystems that causally evolve at a lower level in a manner that is independent from other subsystems of the given system. Third, for at least some systems undergoing a causal process at a level higher than physics, there are time intervals during which there are no independently-evolving lower-level subsystems for some (and possibly all) of the lower levels. (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 336-337)

I assume that this extrapolation of presuppositions reflects a certain misunderstanding which leads the authors to further doubt the radicality of fusion as an emergent relationship. The core of this misunderstanding seems to be in the different view of individual levels L, as suggested by the authors themselves. Humphreys defines this hierarchy of levels through the following presupposition: “(L) There is a hierarchy of levels of characteristics L0, L1,…, Ln,…, of which at least one different level is linked to the subject of every specialized science, and Lj may not be reduced to Li for any i < j.” (Humphreys 1997, 5)

To this hierarchy of levels, Humphreys adds the note that he does not attempt to present any additional criteria regarding differentiation between levels, the present form being sufficient for the purposes of his argument. He goes on to point out that we are dealing with an idealization of sorts, and that this whole “discrete hierarchy of levels is seriously misleading and probably false” (Humphreys 1997, 5). I assume that the mistake of this presupposition lies in his conception of fusion. As Humphreys states,

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It seems more likely that even if the ordering on the complexity of structures ranging from those of elementary physics to those of astrophysics and neurophysiology is discrete, the interactions between such structures will be so entangled that any separation into levels will be quite arbitrary. (Humphreys 1997, 5)

Kronz and Tiehen do not mention these views of Humphreys’; however, they only argue that unlike Humphreys’ requirement for at least one level to be linked with a specialized science, “there will be an immense number of levels associated with each of the special sciences.” (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 337) The above statements may not seem to be in direct contradiction, yet they lead the authors towards a different conception of fusion. The example whereby they aim to support their conception of multilevels may show how this presupposition influences the whole conception of fusion and leads them to a much more moderate position. Kronz and Tiehen attempt a particular application of the fusion operator [.*.] directly in quantum mechanics. In this case, the fusion operator becomes a mathematical operation resulting in the non-separable states of the composite systems of quantum mechanical objects. The authors point out that it is not the tensor product—the status vector—itself which is non-separable; rather, a further operation is needed to result in a non-separable status, which can only then be considered emergent. Thus, “each nonseparable state vector is a (nontrivial) superposition of tensor product state vectors” (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 333). The application of the fusion operator then results in the following: if level-1 corresponds to the properties of individual two-state systems, then properties of pairs (triplets, quadruplets, etc.) of two-state systems that can be represented as a tensor product of properties of its components are also at level-1. Properties of pairs (triplets, quadruplets, etc.) that cannot be represented as a tensor product of its components are at level-2 (level-3, level-4, etc.) (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 335)

As can be seen, the authors derive individual levels from each emergence of a non-­ separable status of a composite object. Should we then have a triplet of two-state systems, for instance, such a system may be unentangled (level-1), partially entangled (level-2), or completely entangled (level-3) (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 337). Obviously, the number of such levels will depend on the number of systems which may be entangled. Therefore, the authors require every specialized science to be linked to an enormous number of levels. In fact, however, for Humphreys’ conception of fusion, this is entirely irrelevant. What Humphreys requires is merely for at least one level to be linked to the subject of some specialized science, so that between these different levels of characteristics, the fusion operator can be the mechanism responsible for the emergence of emergent entities. Of course, this does not in any way devalue the multi-levelled character of the given specialized science (i.e. quantum theory). However, a quantum conception of multi-levelledness has another consequence due to which the authors adopt the above mitigated conception of dynamic emergence. In the example of a triplet of two-status systems, what is relevant is not merely the number of levels which the system may influence through entanglement, but also the temporal development of such a process. Thus, the presented triplet may

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start out as non-entangled (level-1), its parts evolve independently for a time, until they become partly entangled (level-2). Then, the elements of a triplet may again evolve independently, until becoming fully entangled (level-3). “The evolution is then reversed” (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 337-338) and the individual parts of a triplet cease to be entangled. The authors view this situation as decisive, suggesting that if it is possible to retrieve original parts which originally formed a fully entangled system (i.e. an emergent system formed through fusion) during temporal development, then this causes a re-evaluation of Humphreys’ original notions of the products of fusion, and thus of the conception of emergent entities. Therefore, Kronz and Tiehen differentiate between three possible metaphysical conceptions of emergence (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 345): prototypical, radical and dynamic emergence. Prototypical emergence is a well-known conception of British emergentism, differentiating between resultant and emergent wholes. What is relevant for this conception is that each whole consists exclusively of simultaneously existing parts which may be determined independently. We may say that parts exist simultaneously with the existence of the whole which they form. By contrast, radical emergence presumes that only resulting wholes have simultaneously existing parts; emergent wholes do not have such parts. Parts are used up during the fusion of an emergent whole, and if the whole exists, its parts do not exist independently. They only exist if the whole does not exist, and vice versa. According to the authors, this is the stance suggested by Humphreys, but they doubt whether his example of fusion forming a non-separable status is suitable. (This critical aspect will later be discussed and supported in more detail.) They are strongly in favour of a third, dynamic understanding of emergence, presuming that emergent wholes have simultaneously existing parts, but these parts may not be determined independently of their wholes. Emergent wholes are thus formed by the essential and everlasting interactions of their parts. The concept of dynamic emergence, according to the authors themselves, falls between the first (prototypical emergence) and the second (radical emergence). It acknowledges that there is no point in speaking of a reduction of the emergent whole to its parts if its parts are involved in a non-eliminable way in creating the whole. Unlike radical emergence, however, the dynamic approach presumes that wholes have parts, “however there is no characterization of these parts that is independent of that of the whole to which it belongs” (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 346). According to the authors, the dynamic approach to emergence is less extreme than the radical approach as it does not claim that wholes do not have parts. In fact, however, their understanding of emergence is even more radical in that is presumes, like the radical conception, that thanks to essential interactions, the originally independent parts cease to exist in forming the whole, and furthermore there appear and arise new parts which are fundamentally dependent on the whole. “The independent parts cease to exist and the dependent parts come into existence.” (Kronz and Tiehen 2002, 346) Thus, if we accept the dynamic understanding of emergence (in the sense of not being less radical than the other conception, but rather encompassing it within itself and transcending it, as fusion results not only in the elimination of original parts,

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which are utilized to create the whole, but also in creating new parts dependent on the whole), then we obtain a reasonable tool for the explanation of many questions and problems arising from emergence. We also gain the possibility of formulating a universal principle of emergence as an important part of our ontology. In my view, dynamic emergence corresponds best to the examples of the physical emergence of quasiparticles and of quantum entanglement as discussed above.

3.2.2  Transformational Emergence (TE) The changeability of system constituents during their fusion into a system as a whole can be generalized as “transformational emergence”, the basic tenet of which is the possibility of transforming the system’s basic constituents, differentiating transformational emergence from “generative atomism” (Humphreys 2016, 60), in which the basic entities are constant and stable. Transformational emergence, on the other hand, views constituents as flexible, dynamic entities which can change or transform. Generative atomism’s presumption that “everything in the world is generated from combinations of elementary physical objects and their properties” (Humphreys 2016, 2) is insufficient here. On the contrary, in this case emergent phenomena are conditioned by a transformation of entities: original independently existing entities are transformed into different entities in a systemically bound whole, which in turn is the carrier of the emergent phenomenon. We will introduce two approaches to transformational emergence. In the first approach, Humphreys defines it based on entities as the fundamental elements of a given domain: Transformational emergence occurs when an individual a that is considered to be a fundamental element of a domain D transforms into a different kind of individual a*, often but not always as a result of interactions with other elements of D, and thereby becomes a member of a different domain D*. Members of D* are of a different type from members of D. They possess at least one novel property and are subject to different laws that apply to members of D* but not to members of D. (Humphreys 2016, 60)

In the other approach, Guay and Sartenaer focus on the process of transformation as such, viewing it as the transformation of a system in progress over time, from t1 to t2. This enables them to identify the conditions for system state S2 at time t2, having been transformed from system state S1 at time t1. Transformational emergence occurs if and only if there is a transformation [Tr] present, such that: S2 is the product of a spatiotemporally continuous process going from S1 (for example causal, and possibly fully deterministic). In particular, the “realm” R to which S1 and S2 commonly belong (e.g. the physical realm) is closed, to the effect that nothing outside of R participates in S1 bringing about S2. And yet S2 exhibits new entities, properties or powers that do not exist in S1, and that are furthermore forbidden to exist in S1 according to the laws governing S1. Accordingly, different laws govern S2. (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 302-303)

As we can see, in his approach Humphreys emphasises the transformation of entities within a domain D (where D-type laws apply) into other entities in domain D*

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(where D* laws apply). In contrast, Guay and Sartenaer focus on the continuous nature of the transformation process and its causal closure, as they intend transformational emergence to be “perfectly consistent with physicalism as well as with the causal closure of the physical world.” (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 306) Although both these conceptions of transformational emergence are inspired by the changeability of basic entities and are essentially very similar, Guay and Sartenaer try to differentiate theirs from Humphreys’ 1997 conception. Then, Humphreys defined transformational emergence through the hierarchy of discrete levels (such as micro/ macro), which he later rejected and replaced with the conception of domains, and later (2016) revised in a similar vein his definition of transformational emergence. Perhaps that is why Guay and Sartenaer consider their conception a further development of the original ideas of the transformation of entities during emergence. They point out that unlike fusion, their transformational emergence, which they denote by the symbol [TE] is a weak ontological relation, as it does not result in causal overdetermination through the introduction of additional causal forces on higher levels. Thus, Guay and Sartenaer’s conception follows Humphreys’ original intention as well as his solution (1997) of avoiding the arguments (causal exclusion, downward causation) against emergentism and nonreductive physicalism (e.g. Kim 1993). As we have seen, Humphreys’ original idea of avoiding the commitment to defining the relation between the emergent whole and its parts during emergent change consisted in the fusion of parts, or their transformation into a whole and ceasing to exist as original constituents. Guay and Sartenaer go on to define [TE] without any hierarchical levels, and view in the same way the transformation relation, resulting in the formation of new entities (objects, properties or relations) not affected by any potential risk of causal conflict with the causal contributions of base constituents, as these no longer exist, having been transformed. In this case, transformation is a contiguous process between two states of a system, S1 and S2, which also differ in the laws governing the behaviour of the system in these respective states. If we reflect on both of the 2016 versions of transformation, we can say that transformation links two states of a system, of which the temporally later state S2 differs from the preceding S1 at least in one new property manifested by S2 and at least one new law governing the behaviour of S2. Guay and Sartenaer consider their suggested conception of [TE] advantageous in relation to fusion emergence for two reasons: (1) They are convinced that [TE] has empirical exemplification, unlike fusion emergence, although they admit that Humphreys (1997) as well as other authors (e.g. Kronz and Tiehen 2002) try to prove that the empirical exemplification of fusion emergence is quantum entanglement. (2) They stress the presumption of discrete hierarchical levels within the conception of fusion, although again they admit that Humphreys voiced criticism of this presumption as early as his original conception of fusion emergence (see Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 307). More importantly, Humphreys developed his original conception of fusion emergence (1997) as a special case of transformational emergence (2016) and, as we have observed, defined it essentially in the same way as Guay and Sartenaer (2016). This is noteworthy because henceforth I shall be approaching

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transformational emergence as a unified conception of emergence. Before discussing selected critical views of [TE], we need to briefly outline the empirical exemplification of [TE], considered by Guay and Sartenaer—apart from its metaphysical sophistication—to be an indisputable advantage over other conceptions of emergence. As a key example of the empirical exemplification of [TE] they discuss the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), briefly discussed above. Although they present a remarkably thorough analysis of the theoretical models employed by contemporary quantum physics to describe these processes and phenomena, several questions are left unanswered. The existence of [TE] is allegedly proven by an experimental setup enabling the retrieval of fractional quantum Hall effects, e.g. the measured data of fractional quantum values. It is the manifestation in our 3+1-dimensional world of a kind of physics that theoretically could only exist in 2+1 dimensions. The FQH experimental setup is an exemplification of [Tr]. We interpret the fact that this effect has been experimentally produced as an empirical proof that a case of [TE] exists. (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 317)

If we are to present empirical evidence of the ontological existence of a process, it seems insufficiently robust for this evidence to be based on models which we use to describe them within current physical theory. The presumption of [TE] necessarily includes the transformation relation [Tr] as a contiguous process from system state S1 towards system state S2. As the quantum model QED4 (3 space + 1 time dimensions) cannot contain virtual particles with the required statistics (i.e. anyons), it does not suffice to describe a situation during the experimental setup in which a strong magnetic field and sufficiently low temperature force electron gas to form quantum liquid in a thin 3D section (2 space + 1 time dimensions). In this case, a suitable mathematical-physical description is provided by the QED3 model. However, the fact the QED4 provides a good enough description of system state S1, and QED3 provides a good enough description of system state S2, leads Guay and Sartenaer to the conviction that there are new phenomena or properties in S2 which were prohibited in S1. As we saw earlier, this is generalized into the definition of the transformation relation: S2 needs to differ from S1 in being governed by at least one new law. The existence of [TE] seems to be excessively bound to the existence of two different physical descriptive models, both of which are quantum physical but their initial conditions are so widely different that QED3 is not derivable from QED4. In light of this, Guay and Sartenaer try to face another potential objection: whether it may be more suitable to limit the description to QED3 only, as it can be expected that before using a magnetic field and a forming quantum liquid in the 2+1 dimension model, the conductor is already likely to be planar (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 317). My objection is more general, independent of the type of model employed to describe the individual initial conditions of the experimental situation. If we succeeded in finding a way, and by extension a suitable model including the description of the initial conditions of both QED4 and QED3, say a hypothetical QED4+, within

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which the existence of anyons (virtual particles with fractional quantum properties and the required statistics) were possible, would this imply that such a model does not include the transformation relation, and therefore lacks [TE]? Possible answers to this question entail unfavourable consequences for Guay and Sartenaer. If the answer is yes, then [TE] is not an ontological process, but is bound merely to the epistemological models employed to describe the phenomenon at hand. If the answer is no, we succeed in preserving the presumption of [TE] as an ontological process, but need to find another definition of [TE]. The reason why Guay and Sartenaer bind the definition of [TE] to a particular form of the current quantum models within quantum theory lies in their conception of ontology being both minimalistic and constructionist at the same time. In our conceptions and theories, “things in themselves” in Kantian terms leave only minimal traces, providing the reason for us to construe the form of a “thing in itself” outside these theoretical conceptions. They say: Because we cannot claim to have a privileged and direct access to the ontology of natural systems, the best we can do is to recast ontological claims […] into claims about the traces that [Tr] leaves in the formal constructs we use to investigate these natural systems. (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 304)

Not even this tentative presumption can remove the possibility of another quantum model existing which would enable a contiguous transfer between QED4 and QED3; hence, the epistemological dependency of [TE] persists. This fact rather undermines Guay and Sartenaer’s conviction of the empirical exemplification of [TE], supposed to be more convincing than the examples provided by other authors who consider quantum entanglement to be such an exemplification. Transformational emergence is considered a fully dynamic conception of emergence, marked by a radical move away from the classical conception, based mainly upon supervenience between hierarchical levels, mereology (i.e. the persisting relation between a whole and its parts), and the formation of new downward causation forces possessed only by a higher-level whole, not by its lower-level parts. [TE] is conceptualized in order to be independent of the presumption of hierarchical levels and their possible supervenient relation in order to avoid having to deal with mereological part-whole links, and to be in accordance with physicalism and the causal closure of physics. This intention is either explicitly admitted by Guay and Sartenaer—“The original motivation for drawing attention to the existence of fusion emergence was to address the problem of downward causation.” (Humphreys 2016, 70)—or they see its indisputable advantage in the fact that [TE] is not “committed to some problematic ideas like downward causation or that emergents are brute, sui generis empirical facts.” (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 312) This is because “there is also no room in [TE] for the controversial notion of downward causation.” (Guay and Sartenaer 2016, 311) The initial attraction of the transformational emergence conception ultimately fades away, overridden by the impression that avoiding the answers to fundamental questions does not mean eliminating them altogether. Most of the advantages

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associated with [TE] (Guay and Sartenaer, 2016 version) or with transformational emergence (Humphreys 2016 version) are in fact only an effort to answer conceptually and not factually. Moreover, there is the concern that this may result in transformational emergence giving up its original task related to emergent phenomena: to show and explain how such phenomena are possible and how they are significantly different from other non-emergent phenomena. In other words, the fact that the world is in constant flux, its changeability characterized by processes and their dynamics forming over time, rather than a mere succession of individual static states, is not in itself a reason for all dynamic processual changes to be considered emergent. If the state of a system changes from S1 to S2, S2 containing a new behaviour within the system, describable through at least one new law unlike S1 laws, then this is too broad a delineation of the conditioning of transformational emergence. For instance, a number of natural phenomena are to some degree independent of particular physical parameters, such as friction, independent of velocity; or on the contrary, to a degree dependent on a parameter, such as buoyancy dependent on velocity. In general, then, friction is independent of velocity, but with increasing velocity, the body is prone to skidding, because the forces acting on the body overcome the friction between the body and the pad. On the other hand, buoyancy depends on velocity, and after a certain threshold (related to a number of other parameters of the object’s shape, cf. e.g. an airplane) it enables flight. Evidently, both skid and flight are different states of the system S1, and during both skid and flight as S2 states of the system, different laws hold which would prevent such behaviour in S1. It seems that these physical processes (skid and flight) would also correspond to the above definition but we could hardly find a reason for them to be considered transformationally emergent.

3.2.3  Radical (Fusion) Emergence A similar case in point is radical fusion emergence. It presumes that original entities cease to exist through fusion, and what subsequently exists is only the whole, which logically cannot relate to its parts, nor can the parts relate to one another once they no longer exist. The result of fusion is not, logically, a relational entity – the fusion operation does not produce a relation between two property instances because there are no longer such instances to relate. […] it is a transformation of two separately existing entities into a single, unified whole. (Humphreys 2016, 76-77)

Such a radical conception of transformation poses a different problem from the aforementioned transformational emergence. While the previous objection pertained mainly to the vague definition of transformation which would encompass even processes that are clearly non-emergent, in this case the conception of fusion emergence is too radical. We presume that in reality there is no suitable example

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which could correspond to this radical conception of fusion. This would require identifying a natural process whereby initial entities are transformed into a structureless whole (radical emergence). We have seen that Kronz and Tiehen tried to limit this radicality by presuming the transformation of original entities into transformed entities in such a way that the whole retains relations with its parts. It would be conceptually unsustainable to refer to a whole if it is not a whole of some constituents, but only an unstructured entity. Humphreys would probably seek an answer in diachronicity, which he considers decisive from the perspective of transformational emergence, at the expense of synchronicity. He would claim that the extant structureless whole without parts is a whole in the diachronic sense, the previous existence and interaction of individual entities having resulted in its formation over time, but once the whole has been formed, these individual entities are no longer identifiable as its parts. What exists henceforth is only a whole, which later may—but need not—be “defused” into the previous, or into other independent parts: “it will be a contingent fact what the results of a defusion interaction will be.” (Humphreys 2016, 80) “Defusion” as the inverse operation of fusion enables the whole to be divided into individual parts. In his remark on the results of “defusion” being random, Humphreys corrects his earlier idea from 1997, in which a scheme “represented the results of a defusion operation as being the same as the property instances that originally fused.” (Humphreys 2016, 80) He was prompted to correct the original suggestion by the objection in (Wong 2006)—a potentially powerful argument—that “defusion” into original properties is most likely explained by these properties having been contained in the whole as its constituents. This seems reasonable, because the possible alternative (i.e. radical fusion during the existence of the whole and a reforming of the original entities through “defusion”) is motivated by nothing other than an effort to avoid the problems of the conception of synchronic emergence – overdetermination and causal exclusion. The option of having random results from “defusion”, eventually favoured by Humphreys, is not convincing in relation to the empirical exemplification of fusion, and the doubts about radical emergence persist. I shall now present reasons for this sceptical outlook. From the “whole and parts” point of view, Humphreys does not accept the Kronz and Tiehen (2002) version of dynamic emergence as a more realistic conception, considered by them also to be physically exemplified by quantum entanglement. In fact, from the very beginning (1997) Humphreys considered quantum entanglement a possible exemplification of his original conception of radical fusion emergence. He insists on a fusion of constituents resulting in an unstructured whole, “[believing] that this reference to parts is inadvisable.” (Humphreys 2016, 82) The reason for Humphreys considering quantum entanglement an example of fusion emergence is his finding a similarity between the abstract conception of fusion emergence and some accepted facts about quantum entanglement: put simply, the composite system (i.e. the whole) is in a purely quantum state, while its component parts are not and their state cannot be determined in isolation from the states of other components. Thus, the classical presumption of the supervenience of a phenomenon, whereby the resulting state of a whole supervenes on the states of its

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parts, does not hold here; on the contrary, the state of the whole determines the states of its parts. Therefore, Humphreys believes that: The interactions which give rise to these entangled states lend themselves to the fusion treatment […], because the essentially relational interactions between the ‘constituents’ (which no longer can be separately individuated within the entangled pair) have exactly the features required for fusion. (Humphreys 1997, 16)

Unfortunately, Humphreys does not provide a more detailed analysis, but he points out that while his original conception pertained to the fusion of properties, it was likewise open to other entities, such as states and objects. In relation to Kronz and Tiehen’s article (2002) and other authors’ notes, he respects the fact that quantum entanglement relates to states; therefore, we should primarily focus on the states of a system and search for emergent fusion in them (see Humphreys 2016, 82). However, if fusion emergence requires the fusion of constituents for the benefit of the whole, the question arises of whether a quantum entangled system is really a structureless entity resulting from the fusion of parts. Suppose that we intended to meet Humphreys’ requirement and viewed the state of a system as a structureless whole. In terms of emergence, quantum entanglement is attractive in that the whole manifests holistic characteristics, and its behaviour towards parts is different from that in classical physical systems: In quantum theory, then, the physical state of a complex whole cannot always be reduced to those of its parts, or to those of its parts together with their spatiotemporal relations, even when the parts inhabit distinct regions of space. (Maudlin 1998, 55)

From the perspective of parts, we may say that the state of the whole in this case does not supervene on the states of its parts; in light of this, Humphreys’ note that “reference to parts is inadvisable” is justified, as “the description of this or any other fully entangled state is as complete as it can be, but the state of the components is indeterminate.” (Kenyon 2019, 151) If the state of a system’s components is not determined, could this imply that those components did not exist in the first place? This question is difficult to answer, potential arguments being based on our metaphysical intuition rather than fact. Our being necessarily limited to current physical theory, its models and experimental practice, does not help, given the persisting ambiguities in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Still, there are some authors whose views cohere with mine, although admittedly lacking a comparable amount of support in physical practice. For instance, Gordon N. Fleming, following up on Abner Shimony (1986), claims he is convinced: that state vectors represent ontological, physically real situations, and not, in any sense, our knowledge of those situations. By contrast, density operators for so-called mixed states, […] represent a hybrid combination of ontological and epistemic situations. Consequently, when the correct state vector for describing a physical system or an ensemble of physical systems must change as a result of a measurement act this change represents an ontological change, the occurrence of a physical process. (Fleming 1988, 112)

From the point of view of quantum mechanics, however, the conception of reality is rather specific, and markedly far from our intuitions about reality gained in our contact with the macroscopic world. For example, Shimony supposes that the

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quantum world should be viewed as a network of potentialities which are actualized at the moment of measurement, i.e. in the pure state of the quantum system a physical variable may not have a defined value, while at the moment of measuring this value it becomes actualized. Nevertheless, “the actualization of a potentiality must not be conceived as a limiting case of probability – as probability 1 or 0. Instead, actuality and potentiality are radically different modalities of reality.” (Shimony 1986, 153) Whether we consider this interpretation of quantum mechanics or another, the decision whether or not parts exist within the quantum system as a whole is not easily made. At any rate, the relation of whole and parts is much more problematic than we may have assumed. Moreover, if we consider not only the consequences of quantum theory but also the principles of relativity and the dependency of measurements on the coordinate system employed (see Maudlin 1998), the whole-parts relation proves even more complicated. In any case, the result is much more radical than the whole being something more than the sum of the parts: the parts have no specifiable physical state at all (or even a lack of a physical state) until they have been specified as parts of some larger whole, with a multiplicity of such specifications equally acceptable. (Maudlin 1998, 58)

If we try to interpret this, it seems that parts cannot fuse into unstructured wholes, as supposed by fusion emergence, because their existence and physical states can only be presumed once we sufficiently delineate their whole, as well as the remaining parts of the system as a whole. At the same time this does not imply that we are free to presume any given mechanisms which may be hidden in the fact that in quantum entanglement it is, “in principle, impossible to explain the behavior of the compound (in this case: the state) in terms of the behaviour (states) of the parts.” (Hüttemann 2005, 117) Thus, the state of a system may possibly be a suitable candidate for something which has no structure after transformation, and does not consist of constituent substates as its parts, and thus reference to which is futile. This, however, is very little in comparison with the requirements of fusion emergence. It requires the fusion of the parts of a system, not merely states. This possibility is further complicated by the fact that in quantum entanglement (e.g. of two particles, for simplicity’s sake) we are forced to presume that entangled particles still remain parts of the transformed system as a whole. Earlier, several different but very significant quotes on states were carefully selected, wholes and parts in quantum entanglement, none of which indicated in any way that the indeterminacy of the states of parts should be the reason for their nonexistence within the whole. On the contrary, there are reasons to presume their existence in a whole even under such quantum circumstances as are curious from the classical point of view. This applies most notably to the case of the experimental verification of the nonlocality of quantum mechanics, where quantum entanglement is proven through particles independent of their mutual distance. (The record, as of the beginning of 2020, stands at 12 km.) The experimental setup and isolation of entangled particles, ensuring that at the moment of the measurement of one particle’s state, the state

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“attributed” to the other particle is also verified, prevents randomness given the number and types of particles following “defusion”. The presumption that the (quantum) identity of particles prior to entanglement and after their entanglement has been damaged by measurement remains the same is a prerequisite for practical applications of quantum entanglement e.g. in quantum cryptography and transmitting information, and thus reflects the structured nature of the entangled whole. Consequently, Humphreys’ requirement for the randomness of fusion is not met in quantum entanglement if we consider particles as the carriers of states into the transformed whole. If we still wanted to limit ourselves only to states, regardless of their carriers, then there appears to be a way to remain consistent with the claim that the transformed whole can (yet need not be) further “defused” over time into its original or into different independent parts. As we observed above, the current quantum entanglement model presumes that the state of the entanglement of the whole cannot be distributed between individual parts, and the state of the whole cannot be derived from the parts, yet during measurement the global state is randomly (in relation to the original pre-entanglement values) divided into the states of individual parts or constituents. The question is to what extent this solution would be acceptable at all, as it works with a strict division between the state (i.e. a property of the particle) and its carrier (the particle itself), which probably makes little sense in quantum mechanics. If Humphreys, despite these difficulties, viewed radical fusion emergence in the sense of the fusion of states, not their carriers, then this conception of fusion emergence would be endangered by its similarity to the common non-quantum processes of classical physics. For example, we do not assume that the resulting temperature of a liquid as a whole is an ongoing cooperation of the different temperatures of the parts from which the liquid has been formed. They cannot add their temperatures to the whole (in an isolated container). They can only interact with each other during some (brief) time when the liquids temperature value is unified. This interaction continues but not as an ongoing addition of different isolated private temperatures to the whole but as a compact, unified liquid. Temperature, being the quantified state of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium, has no parts. There is nothing emergent about this resulting state of the system, and such a broad definition of emergence would devalue the emergent relation. Indeed, we could simply refer to some other criteria of emergence which need to be met for a given phenomenon or process to be considered emergent, and thus distinguished from others. We will return to the question of emergence criteria later. For now, let us only foreshadow that even in this case we cannot see an easy solution to fusion emergence. However, it seems unlikely for the original conception of fusion emergence to only pertain to states. Its primary aim has been to differentiate the presumptions of generative atomism from the more dynamic possibilities of emergence. The core idea is that parts of the system are not preserved as stable constituents, but instead that these can transform within the whole. Therefore, it is justifiable to consider not only states but also their carriers as the objects of fusion.

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In this case we are forced to face another problem, as fusion emergence in its radical form requires the resulting whole not to have parts. The structureless objects of current science are particles within the standard particle model; outside the standard model there are hypothetical strings. Quantum entanglement occurs not only among standard model particles but has also been proven to occur among macroscopic objects such as, at the very least, molecules. Thus, we cannot claim that a quantum entangled system of particles or molecules is not related to its parts, or that its parts are unrelated to each other. The result is not an unstructured amorphous whole, a unity where reference to its parts would be meaningless. For these reasons, fusion emergence seems an overly radical conception, either degrading emergence to a mere formation of the resulting state of a system, or in the latter case having no real physical exemplification. What, then, was the aim of this brief introduction to the fundamental questions of quantum theory interpretations? My intention has been to point out that while quantum entanglement is an attractive example for interpretation as an emergent phenomenon, it rather seems instead simply to be a fundamental quantum mechanism. Its quantum specific characteristics, however unusual they may be, are not enough for the phenomenon to be emergent. However, I agree that quantum entanglement plays a crucial role in emergent phenomena, such as the fractional quantum Hall effect, phasal transitions and superconductivity, superfluidity etc. Quantum entanglement is a specific quantum mechanism resulting in a wide range of macroscopic emergent phenomena; however, that does not make the mechanism itself emergent.

3.2.4  The Basal Loss Feature of Fusion Emergentism Similar objections to fusion emergence have been voiced by Hong Yu Wong (2006), who believes that the radicality of fusion must have an impact upon the structural properties of a system undergoing fusion transformation. Consider a system S with emergent property E. The basal properties giving rise to E also constitute myriad nonemergent, structural properties of S. If these lower level properties literally ceased to be in fusing into E, then so, it seems, would those structural properties. These structural properties may include those crucial to the proper functioning of the system. (Wong 2006, 355)

Humphreys responds to these objections by eventually considering them “an important constraint on when fusion emergence can occur” (Humphreys 2016, 88), but at the same time he believes that “they do not show that fusion emergence cannot exist or that it is a rare phenomenon.” (Humphreys 2016, 87) Humphreys’ suggested solution is to presume that “[i]n general, when a system’s state is given by (x) and P(x) fuses with Q(x), the properties R, ... , Z will remain unchanged.” (Humphreys 2016, 87-88) This seems a generally acceptable requirement, yet if applied to quantum entanglement as discussed above, which Humphreys considers

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an exemplification of fusion emergence, the presumption of properties and their carrier proves to be insufficiently defined at the very least. If we were to meet Humphreys’ requirement for the partial fusion of some properties, we would be forced to face a certain devaluation of emergence: mereologically speaking the system has been structurally preserved, as what is fused is the system’s state, not its structural setup; or we remain loyal to the original radical 1997 conception, whereby we need to abandon, from the mereological perspective, even the system’s structural properties. Consequently, a quantum entangled system not only has no definable (physical) states from individual entangled particles, but even these particles do not exist as long as the system is entangled. What is more problematic is what to call a “part” (i.e. one of the particles) of the entangled system, a particle which has to be kept from any interaction required to enable measurement, in order to, for example, verify the prediction of values measured in the other distant correlated “part” (i.e. particle) of the system. Thus, we would be obliged to accept the consequences of such conceptual equilibristics, and admit that at the moment of measurement what appears is not only the correlated states but also the original particles in themselves. What seems conceptually more sustainable is the presumption of the existence of both entangled (i.e. transformed) particles during entanglement, rather than their fusion into an unstructured system state without individual state carriers. The fact that these component states cannot manifest particular values during the entangled existence of the whole does not imply that the carriers of these states have been fused; moreover, we can find support in the setup of individual experiments. This still implies that fusion emergence can hardly find support in quantum entanglement as its empirical exemplification. For the above reasons the Kronz and Tiehen conception of dynamic emergence is much more sophisticated and suitable in terms of preserving the specificity of emergence, resulting in the preserved existence of transformed parts within the whole, and by extension preserving the supervenient relation between whole and transformed parts. This consequence would be unacceptable for proponents of transformational emergence as they would be worried by a potential return of the usual objections to emergence, as also remarked by Wong in relation to Humphreys’ conception: “He believes that if emergents coexisted with their bases—as is the case in supervenience emergentism—we would then have the exclusion problems all over again.” (Wong 2006, 354) Ultimately, however, I shall show how such concerns can be faced even within a rehabilitated supervenient conception of emergence. One of the conditions for such a conception is a requirement to resolve the distinction between diachronic and synchronic emergence, which later will be discussed in detail (see Sect. 4.2).

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3.2.5  Conclusion I have shown how the ever more dynamic conception of emergence may solve the question of the relation between the whole and its parts in a new, non-mechanical way, or in other words, through questioning generative atomism’s presumptions (Humphreys 2016); yet even this solution disregards some other questions which need to be taken into consideration when formulating a universal principle of emergence. We need to come back to the differentiation between weak and strong emergence and to demonstrate how, contrary to the original presumption, even a strong emergence may occur in simple systems. As we have seen, Bedau presumed only weak emergence to be a philosophically and scientifically relevant conception, with many particular examples from specialized sciences of complexity. However, now it turns out that strong emergence is also necessary if we are to describe all the possible dependencies between wholes and their parts. Therefore, in the following two parts, I will focus on two different approaches to demonstrating strong emergence as a much more common phenomenon than previously discussed conceptions have assumed. Both emphasize collective ties and collective restrictions. The first of these approaches is Bar-Yam’s taxonomy, emphasizing the collective, and global constraints with the environment; the second is Gillett’s conception of Machrese and emergent mutualism. In both, we gain sufficient support for the formulation of emergence as a universal principle in the context of emergent ontology.

3.3  Strong Emergence in Simple Physical Systems Another presumption which is often held tacitly in traditional philosophical discussions of emergentism is that of the causal isolation of a system in relation to its environment. Usually, emergent phenomena are derived only from internal microlevels and in relation to a local macrolevel, without taking into account possible correlations between a system and its environment (Bar-Yam 2004). However, as regards emergent phenomena, the relation between a system and its environment proves to be no less important in relation to the constituent parts of a system. Moreover, this relation poses the fundamental question of the limits of the system itself. Again, the traditional conception of emergence, based upon unproblematised presumptions, changes considerably once these presumptions are changed. Here, the delimitation of a system has a considerable impact upon the character of its possible relationships, and thus also on its ability to fully determine all aspects involved in emergence. Bar-Yam starts out from the traditional conception of weak and strong emergence and demonstrates that believers in strong emergence look down upon weak emergence, considering it reductive; while those who do not believe in strong emergence use the term “reductionism” to refer to its stronger form, denying the existence of a relationship between parts and weak emergent characteristics. The weak

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interaction pertains to a mathematical description of dependencies such as the correlations arising from the interactions between a system’s components, such as in the aforementioned cellular automaton. However, there is a different way, in which systems cannot be described in terms of their parts, and such systems then also show strong emergence. Bar-Yam’s work is based on the discovery of mathematical expressions representing the k-fold dependencies in a system, i.e. multiscale variety. It is an analysis of systems containing dependencies between many variables, for which subsets of variables are not analogously dependent. The multiscale variety reveals anomalous behaviour in these cases and shows many characteristics of strong emergence. The resulting conception of strong emergence is suitable for the study of complex systems, but there are also cases in which strong emergent behaviour may be detected in simple physical systems (Bar-Yam 2004, 16). Bar-Yam differentiates between four types of emergent relationships based on the relation between the microlevel and macrolevel. Type 0: Parts in isolation without positions to whole Type 1: Parts with positions to whole (weak emergence) Type 2: Ensemble with collective constraint (strong emergence) Type 3: System to environment relational property (strong emergence)

Type 0 is the basic type, only expecting characteristics of the system as a whole and the characteristics of parts observed in isolation. Mutual relationships between particles and the whole are not considered; what is dealt with is only a comparison of the characteristics of isolated particles and the characteristics of the whole system. Weak emergence is represented by type 1, which contains a mutual relation between the microscopic and macroscopic level of the system. The microlevel can be described, for example, in terms of positions, momentum and interactions between all the particles, and the macrolevel in terms of collective behaviour, which can only be observed on the macrolevel. Bar-Yam points out that weak emergence is insufficient for the description of some types of collective behaviour that are observable at a macroscopic scale. For that reason, we also need to consider other types of relationship, such as types 2 and 3, both of which represent strong emergence. Bar-Yam demonstrates that a mutual relationship, which needs to be considered as regards strong emergence, does not appear as the effect of constituent parts on the system, but on the contrary when global constraints are defined which have an effect over whole collectives, not necessarily on each single component. “When a system is faced with global constraints, the properties of an entire system may determine the properties of a part, without the properties of a part determining the properties of the whole system.” (Bar-Yam 2004, 19) According to Bar-Yam, the development of a strong-emergence relation is conditioned by global constraints not directly influencing each component of the system, but only whole collectives of elements. Such a situation fully meets the requirements of strong emergence: strong emergent entities should show top-down

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causal effects, which cannot be explained through the causal behaviours of individual parts of the system. Indeed, we may consider such global constraints of the system as a whole which affect the state of its individual parts indirectly, only through the whole as such. Such systemic constraints consequently cannot be derived either from the states of the individual parts of the system or even from the states of any given subsystem; they can only be derived from the state of the system as a whole. To illustrate such a global constraint, Bar-Yam gives the following example of a parity bit ensemble (Bar-Yam 2004, 20): OXXO OXOX OOXX

This three-bit system with two options (O, X) allows for four possible states which can be determined as globally constrained by the condition of an exclusively odd number of O bits in any state. Each bit has a 50% probability of each option, and each pair of bits has a 25% probability of each of the four states of two bits. The system may consist of all combinations of two bits and by adding the parity bit in accordance with the condition. The system is symmetrical in terms of the exchange of bits. Thus, the observation of any given subsystem cannot reveal the existence of a global constraint. The state of every bit is fully determined (constrained) by the global constraint applied to the whole system, although this will not be revealed by any observation of the bit. This simple example illustrates that Bedau’s concern about strong emergence, i.e. a concern based in the unjustified requirement for the existence of non-reducible and downward causal forces which may not be the consequence of an aggregation of microlevel characteristics. Evidently, there are global constraints which do not appear as the consequence of aggregation and which determine the states of system parts indirectly, through the system as a whole. The question may arise of how such constraints are grounded ontologically. In the example discussed above, we feel that the condition of an odd number of ‘O’ bits is arbitrary and external to the system. For strong emergence to have the status of a truly fundamental principle: global constraints or causal forces would need to be linked more firmly to the system. The system may be subject to causal effects which are not necessary but then the law-­ like character of such a relationship is lost. We presume that a system showing strong emergent characteristics shows these characteristics necessarily, due to the state in which it is. Should the global constraints of causal forces then be the necessary consequences of the system’s state, there needs to be an ontological link between the system and these strong-emergence properties. However, we should consider the possible objection of whether we are committing an inconsistency when, on the one hand, we admit the possibility of the existence of disaggregated characteristics in the system and, on the other hand, we require their close and necessary link to the system. A possible solution is offered

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by the dispelling of Bedau’s other concern, namely that strong emergence is scientifically irrelevant, there being no evidence of its role in contemporary science. By contrast, Bar-Yam believes that the study of strong-emergent systems is not limited to a particular context, but rather that it is a general trend in the study of complex systems. He offers concrete examples of physical, social and biological systems showing strong emergence. It can be found wherever global constraints affect individual behaviour without posing analogous individual constraints (Bar-Yam 2004, 23). Of the many examples listed by Bar-Yam, let us discuss two in more detail. The former is “a fixed number of entities in a group” (players on a team) and the latter “quota filling” (course selection for a degree, or filling seats in an auditorium). In both cases (as in those others not listed here), the behaviour of individuals is subject to shared conditions. In the case of the team players, the objective is to reach the goal of the game through respecting the rules of the game. However, the individual behaviour of the players is not determined merely by the rules. The individual behaviour of the players is determined by the rules indirectly, through the individual behaviour of all other players. The result is a strong emergent system (the course of the game), globally determined by the rules and goals of the game, and individually by the individual behaviours of the players. “Quota filling seats in an auditorium” is a similar case. The global constraint is the number of available seats. Individual behaviour in taking a seat is not affected directly by this constraint but rather by all other individual behaviours in taking a seat. In essence, taking seats may be viewed as a concrete example of a game in the former case. The difference is that in the former case, there was a fixed number of entities in a group (players in a team), while in the latter case the number of entities is unlimited and may be higher than the available quota. The availability of the quota then affects the behaviours of all entities involved as a global constraint. May these concrete examples of strong emergent systems help us in considering the possible existence of non-aggregative characteristics in the system, which would not be random and system-external, but intrinsically and necessarily linked to the system? The former example of a fixed number of entities in a group (players in a team) does not grant us much support for these reflections. In general, the rules of a game are viewed as arbitrary and external in relation to the system. In the latter case of filling the quota, however, the number of seats available is, in a sense, a physical or spatial limit, and is therefore necessarily linked to the system as a whole. The given quota size is indeed arbitrary, as in the former example, but here the general link between the constraint determined by the quota and the system as a whole seems intrinsically and necessarily linked to the system. I believe that in this way the system may possess non-aggregative characteristics, having the character of Bar-Yam’s global constraints resulting in the strong-emergent behaviour of the system. Probably, such intrinsic and necessary global constraints could be proven even in physical examples of strong emergent systems, among which Bar-Yam lists the following physical systems: systems with boundary conditions leading to harmonic vibrations (periodic conditions or fixed boundaries), frustrated interactions

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(antiferomagnetic systems), soliton carrying systems, steady-state flows, systems at temperatures just below a phase transition (Bar-Yam 2004, 23). Apart from the systems showing type 2 strong emergence (i.e. sets with collective constraints), we also need to consider strong emergence of type 3 (i.e. characteristics of a system in relation to its environment). An example of a type 3 strong emergence—differing from the usual conception in which the behaviour of a system is based only on the characteristics of its component parts—is the relationship between a lock and key. The characteristics of a key when opening the door are not contained within the description of the key’s parts. Rather, they are contained in the relationship between the components of the key and those of the lock, while this relationship is not contained in the description of the parts of the key. Nevertheless, “the ability of the key to open the door for a particular instance can be inferred from the structure of the parts themselves without reference to the ensemble of possible keys and doors” (Bar-Yam 2004, 19). By this example, Bar-Yam points to the general link between a system and its environment, without which the system may not be fully described. Furthermore, the link between the lock and key has a much more general validity. For example, biological enzymes function in the same way. Disregarding the link between a system and its environment is thus another grave shortcoming, absent from common discussion of the characteristics of a system determined by the system itself. Thus, there are forms of strong emergence which may be formalized in mathematical terms. We are dealing with the characteristics of the parts of a system which are not linked to the system’s constituent parts but rather to sets of such parts or, in another case, to the system’s relationship with its environment. At first sight, there seems to be no difference with regard to a direct relationship between the entities constituting a system—or their sets in relation to systemic emergent characteristics. However, Bar-Yam attempts to show that this particular ensemble perspective is decisive for the possibility of strong emergence, as the conception of physical systems themselves is much closer to the ensemble perspective than is the conception of individual states of those entities which constitute the systems. Here, we have completely abandoned the original ontological structure of part/whole, entity/system, in which a system is viewed as qualitatively different from the mere sum of its parts, but at the same time preserving the presumption that the system is formed of the very same entities and their characteristics which may be studied outside the system in isolation. Within the set, the individual states and the characteristics of isolated entities are, so to speak, forgotten. A new ontological entity arises, not only determined causally by the microstates of the system but rather directly causally subjected to the macrostates of the system as a whole. At the same time, these causal constraints are the characteristics of the system as a whole. They cannot be determined through any set of observations of the states of a given subsystem or all subsystems of the given system. It is a characteristic which can only be revealed in observing the states of the system as a whole.

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3.4  Machretic Determination and Mutualism Another approach that seeks to show that strong emergence is not just a question of the existence of consciousness but also commonly present in many physical phenomena is Gillett’s scientific emergentism or “Mutualism” which was conceived as an opponent to reductive fundamentalism. Gillett (2016) systematically develops scientific reductionism and emergentism to prove not only both concepts’ legitimacy but also their ongoing conflict in contemporary science. Gillett derives both scientific concepts from the reductionists’ and emergentists’ texts, from which he reconstructs the opposing conceptions. This approach is one of the few to understand the relationships between components and wholes according to real natural processes, and not primarily on the basis of analyses of metaphysical tools, such as functionalism, which have been developed for other cases (Gillett 2016, 55). What does Mutualism bring to emergentism’s fundamental dilemma for determining the form of the dependence and autonomy of emergent entities? I shall provide a detailed account only of the core of Mutualist scientific emergentism and its contribution to the solution of this dilemma. Because the proposed solution programmatically distances itself from existing metaphysical analyses, it introduces rich new terminology to describe relations within the framework of scientific reductionism and emergentism. Thus, scientific reductionism is characterized by “collectives of entities” and the “collectivist ontology” derived from them as a reductionist way of approaching complex entities and properties, whereas scientific emergentism is very differently characterized by Mutualism, which emphasizes “the existence of mutually determinative, and interdependent, composed and component entities” (Gillett 2016, 207). We have already seen that the mereological links between parts and their whole have become decisive in terms of the degree of autonomy of the whole and the degree of dependence of the whole on the base. In some proposed cases of fusion emergence, we also considered such a dramatic transformation of parts into wholes that the mutual connections of the whole and the parts fused into an indistinguishable whole. However, Gillett’s conception of emergence seeks to maintain the original mereological approach to parts and wholes so that the originally reductionist thesis, that “wholes are nothing but parts,” remains valid even in the event of strong emergence. The reason is Gillett’s fear of the excessive autonomy of emerging entities and the threat of anti-physicalism. Thus, the mutual determination of parts and units becomes decisive. For one component of this mutual determination, Gillett proposes a new term, “machresis”, which is derived from the Greek words “macro” and “chresis” (“use”), to capture the macro-determination of entities within the whole (Gillett 2016, 207). Gillett considers the new term to be important because, in his opinion, these are relations that have been omitted by philosophers and must therefore be specified terminologically. Gillett proves the existence and ontological effect of such a determination in several analyses of emergent phenomena in scientific emergentists (e.g. Freeman, Laughlin, Couzin and Krause), who point to the effect of organizational

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principles or laws, discontinuities of phase transitions and the complexity of the behaviour of units’ reductionist aggregations or collective ontologies. These phenomena are linked to collective complexity, which reductionist aggregation is unable to explain and predict. Emergent entities should be mutually determinative and interdependent in this respect (Gillett 2016, 236). Thus, in contrast to the original obligations of emergentists, formulated in such a way that it is necessary to understand emergent entities as dependent on their base but also autonomous with a downward causation of their causal forces, it is now a matter of mutual conditionality and the mutual determination of relations between parts and wholes: However, in compositional relations, the entities that do the joint productive role-filling determine the entity whose role they fill. With machresis the situation is reversed. The entity whose productive role is filled determines the powers, and hence shapes the roles, of one or more of the entities that jointly fill its productive role. (Gillett 2016, 246)

The interdependence of the two types of determining forces seems likely due to the phenomena and processes that precede such actions. Thus, the objection to such interdependence can only be that if both vertical relationships between entities are totally interdependent, how can the emergence of an emergent entity be initiated at all when one is dependent on the other and vice versa? Gillett points out that although an emergent entity and its components are different entities in terms of their determination, an emergent entity and its components are also a “unit” entity, meaning that they come along “together” (Gillett 2016, 236). We should look for the reasons behind their origin in diachronic productive relations. Unfortunately, Gillett does not pay sufficient attention to the unity of synchronic and diachronic relations, which, as shall be discussed later, is an important prerequisite for the universal principle of emergence. Thus, mutual determination is not problematic, but within it, causal effect remains a question. Previously, I suggested that the nature of relations between constituents and wholes would not necessarily be understood as causal. In the usual traditional causal sense, the cause precedes the consequence and is thus a diachronic, causal process that is spread over time. However, this does not apply to synchronic mutual determinations of parts and the whole. In line with scientific emergentists, Gillett emphasizes the non-productive determination of these types of bonds and their purely synchronic nature: We have non-productive determination in “upward” compositional relations, whilst also having “downward” non-productive machretic determination as well, thus leaving us with mutual determination between the relevant composed and component entities. (Gillett 2016, 207)

Does Gillett’s Mutualism even vaguely meet the requirement of a strong emergence that it must have its own causal effects through its causal forces acting top-down? It seems to be a crucial question if we understand Mutualism as a possible solution to strong emergence. With reference to Laughlin, Gillett tries to prove the non-­ productivity of both vertical determining relations: that component entities non-­ productively determine the whole from the bottom-up; and that some of the properties or forces which these entities possess are the result of the “downward”

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non-productive determination of the whole (Gillett 2016, 236). Therefore, the existence of these forces is conditioned by the whole and not only by the individual entities that make up the whole. In this way, Gillett tries to meet the requirement of strong emergence for the whole to influence its parts. Still, at the same time, he tries to meet the physicalist requirement so that some ontologically non-physical entities and forces do not act. Thus, “unproductive determination” can be translated as “non-autonomous determination” because composite entities always mediate top-­ down machretic determination. Thus, Gillett considers generally “the assumption that determination between ‘parts’ and ‘wholes’ must be causal or productive is dubious on general grounds” (Gillett 2016, 223). Non-causality should be understood in accordance with the proposed notion of unifying parts into complex units. It assumes that “scientific composition involves working components that non-causally result in the composed entity because they together result in the role of this entity” (Gillett 2016, 62). Machretic determination is therefore non-causal and non-productive because it is mass-energy neutral, i.e., it does not involve energy transfer or force mediation (Gillett 2016, 246). Thus, a complex whole cannot causally influence its components, and all compositional relations that apply to the constitution of wholes have this non-causal and unproductive character. The machretic determination of the whole is thus “benign” and is only “mediated by the productive relations, and powers of its component” (Gillett 2016, 247). Yet what is the essence of this determining influence, which is neither productive nor causal? What kind of determination can it be if it does not mediate the changes in the motions of masses and therefore cannot influence material objects’ distribution? Although Gillett emphasizes that causation is a much broader term than production (Gillett 2016, 237), there is still no broader causal effect left for the machretic relation because the machretic relation is established as non-causal. The distinction between causal and productive determination cannot be applied in this case. Another significant complication might be the subsequent, possibly arbitrary interpretation of the various causal effects of the emergent whole and its parts on the horizontal and vertical levels. Regarding the vertical: “Strongly emergent properties do causally (but not productively) interact with other lower-level entities in a compositional hierarchy.” (Gillett 2016, 247) This means that in addition to non-causal top-down machretic determination, there may be unproductive but causal interactions with entities in the top-down compositional hierarchy. What top-down forces are responsible for such a causal influence, and how can they be separated from the machretic causal action? Regarding the horizontal: “Strongly emergent properties are also productive of effects at their own levels and joint causes of higher- and lower-level effects along with their realizers.” (Gillett 2016, 238) In his view, the reason is that an emerging entity is “nothing more than the components” (Gillett 2016, 236) and therefore we have to understand it as joint causes of both higher- and lower-level causal effects (and hence “diagonal” causes of these inter-level effects) (Gillett 2016, 237).

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Such an outcome is confusing because it in fact allows productive causal effects to be attributed to any entity at any level and in any horizontal and diagonal direction. Also, it seems to me that Gillett fails to demonstrate any strong emergence in the context of strict physicalism, as it proves, on the one hand, that the argument “offered by scientific reductionists for their claim that ‘Wholes are nothing but their parts’ is actually invalid,” (Gillett 2016, 9) but on the other hand, the statement is valid for the reason the parts behave differently in the wholes. If Gillett insists that an emerging entity is nothing but its components (Gillett 2016, 201), then that emergent entity seems redundant. The fact that “parts behave differently in wholes” seems too little for strong emergence. If a machretic relation makes sense then the autonomy of emergent entities must go beyond their components’ mere mereology or behaviour. The emergent entity must be more than just its differently behaving parts. Thus, although Gillett’s approach is inspiring and the emphasis on mutual determination is correct, too much concern about possible anti-physicalism and the O-emergence type seems to prevent him from understanding the emergent entity as being more than just its components. Another shortcoming is that machretic determination is limited to the relationship between the emergent entity and its components. In the previous chapter, we saw how important were relations with the environment and that they are often the source of strongly emergent behaviour. A final note is that Gillett, with his concept of strong emergence (or, in his typology, S-emergence), continues to justify the distinction between weak (W-emergence) and strong emergence. However, I aim to show that the difference between weak and strong emergence is only apparent and is only an instantiation of one universal principle of emergence.

3.5  T  he Computational and Combinatorial Approaches to Emergence The critique of approaches towards emergence solely on the basis of the emergence of properties and the part/whole relation thus gradually turns out to be limiting in relation to the progression of these processes (fusion), their link to their environment and to global restrictive constraints. Realizing this situation, further theoreticians have reassessed their original aspirations and their limits when describing emergent phenomena, and adopted a different perspective to better cope with these problems. Similarly, Philippe Huneman (2008) rejects approaches oriented solely towards properties resulting from emergence, often based only on the assumedly fundamental part/whole relation. I accept that his approach understandably results from the failure of a certain contextual framework, whose articulation difficulties or even total failure have necessitated moving towards a deeper or more fundamental level of presumptions in order to solve problems which need to be faced within the present framework. Huneman uses the term combinatorial emergence for efforts to

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comprehend the properties of a whole which are not reducible to the properties of its parts. He aims to contrast this standard approach with the computational approach (the computational definition of emergence), focussing on the emergent process itself rather than on the emergence of properties (Huneman 2008, 596). In this respect, Huneman draws on Bedau’s concept of weak emergence. With Humphreys (Huneman and Humphreys 2008), he defines incompressibility as a criterion of emergence. “A state of a computation process is weakly emergent iff there is no shorthand to get to it except by running the simulation” (Huneman 2008, 597). In fact, this is a modification of Bedau’s definition of weak emergence. However, through this criterion Huneman aims to gain more than a mere distinction between weak and strong emergence. He believes that incompressibility as a criterion provides emergent processes with a status “That would be, if not ontological, at least objective in the same way that conceptual truths in mathematics are objective, independent of our cognitive abilities or epistemic choices.” (Huneman 2008, 598) The objectivity of emergent phenomena should result from the principle of incompressibility as a mathematical truth comparable to other types of mathematical conceptual truths. Provided such mathematical truths are objective, then the incompressibility of certain states of computational processes likewise points towards the objectivity of such states rather than merely to the epistemological ability or lack thereof to reach such compression. Huneman supports his conclusions using arguments derived from examinations of cellular automata (Buss et al. 1992) which show convincingly that the incompressibility of certain states is not merely temporal, depending only on our ability to discover the manner of such a compressibility; but rather that these systems are fundamentally unpredictable, and thus there is no better predictive method than simulation. Thus, the computational definition of emergence is objective (Huneman 2008, 599). Huneman’s conclusions derived from the mathematical examination of cellular automata, let alone the objectivity of emergent phenomena, can hardly be doubted. However, I believe that objectivity may also be proven by means other than merely through any fundamental incompressibility as an objective mathematical fact. Such a criterion, albeit certainly supporting the conviction of the objectivity of emergent phenomena and their ontological character, in my view seems insufficiently universal. It pertains mainly to a special form of emergent phenomena, i.e. the shapes and patterns formed in the environment of cellular automata, based on several simple rules. Despite the cellular automaton being an instance of a universal computational machine (i.e. a Turing machine), and possibly capable of solving any algorithmizable problem, the objectivization of these special processes in cellular automata does not seem to objectivize all emergent phenomena. We may possibly think that provided at least some of these phenomena are demonstrably objectivized, there is no reason not to presume that other cases can be just as objective. There is one more side to this type of reflection—realizing the processual character of emergence and abandoning a sole focus on the emergence of properties. Even in these reflections, the decisive role is played by cellular automata. As illustrated by Huneman using the simple example of the “blinking” pattern formed in the automaton’s cells, it is not the pattern itself which is emergent, but rather

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“emergence is a feature of the whole agent-based simulation process—otherwise there would be no difference between blinking patterns” and the static picture of this pattern (e.g. a photo of the pattern) (Huneman 2008, 601-602). Humphreys emphasizes (2008) in connection with this that emergent patterns are only token and not type. Thus, Huneman sees the processual character of emergence as another significant difference between the computational and the traditional combinatorial approach. The move away from combinatorial emergence, based exclusively on part/whole relations and the relations between the properties of parts and the properties of the whole, and the move towards processual emergence within the computational approach, are in accordance with the above approaches of dynamic emergence and fusion. They are thus significantly involved in a growing tendency which I seek to delineate here, namely on the necessity of abandoning the substance/accident approach in matters of emergence. This tendency may also be characterized as the necessity for a change in the conceptual framework or perspective for the successful formulation of a universal principle of emergence. In this respect, Huneman’s conclusions as regards the computational conception of emergence are highly inspiring. However, they introduce a certain lack of clarity into the observed change of emergent conceptions. This lack of clarity could be fatal to the nascent conception of dynamic emergence. The lack of clarity is linked to the basic distinction between weak and strong emergence. Although thus far Bedau’s original assumption of the magic of strong emergence has appeared exaggerated, and strong emergence has seemed indispensable in particular physical and systemic instances, this distinction needs to be reconsidered in light of Huneman’s conclusions. The computational conception of emergence as suggested by Huneman is based in computer simulations in which dynamic shapes and patterns are generated based on simple rules and initial conditions3. During the evolution of a system (i.e. the temporal development of the simulation), patterns are formed which show relative stability and move within the space of a cellular automaton as independent individuals. We may say that as such, they also have causal consequences to the further development of the simulation. Also, we may easily differentiate between the macrolevel and microlevel of such a simulation. The macrolevel is formed by emerging and disappearing patterns, the microlevel by the binary state of each cell and by the rules of changing a cell’s status, which mostly depend on the states of its neighbouring cells. As we have observed, the incompressibility principle is expressed by the fact that at least some states of the cellular automaton cannot be derived in any other way than through simulation itself. This means that, (1) a given global macrostate cannot be deduced from the knowledge of the preceding global macrostate; (2) from the knowledge of a given microstate m we may not deduce another microstate earlier than m-1 or m+1. In other words, from a given microstate m, we may deduce any other microstate located

3  The best-known case of a cellular automaton enabling the generating of macroscopic patterns is Conway’s “Game of Life” (see Sect. 2.3.3).

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in the evolutionary temporal line of the system but this may be done only through a gradual inspection of all the following or all the preceding states. Based on a given microstate m, we may thus directly deduce only the two nearest microstates, i.e. the immediately preceding and subsequent. Generally, every macrostate of a cellular automaton is fully determined by its microstate, and as such it can only be deduced through a simulation (i.e. a gradual realization) of all the preceding microstates out of the initial conditions. The incompressibility principle says that this deduction of a state may not be shortened. All the preceding steps leading to the given state need to be simulated/realized. Thus, we are dealing with weak emergence, as we are able to deduce an emergent pattern (the macrostate), but only through its simulation/ realization. This is Bedau’s condition of weak emergence (see Sect. 2.3.3). If we compare this situation to the aforementioned physical examples of emergence (quasiparticles, quantum entanglement, etc.) and with Bar-Yam’s examples of strong emergent systems (quota filling, team players), then what is the crucial difference between them, making them strong and weak, respectively? In other words, this poses the question: how strong is strong emergence and how weak is weak emergence?

3.6  How Strong Is Strong Emergence and How Weak Is Weak Emergence? First, let us compare the above example of the cellular automaton with some examples of strong emergence. In what way is the simulation resulting in the macrostate of the cellular automaton so different from filling seats in an auditorium or playing out the rules of the game of a fixed number of team-players?4 In all the cases, we know the rules as well as the initial conditions of many entities’ behaviours, these behaviours being subject to the rules in an emergent state of the system on the macroscopic level. From this point of view, there is likely no difference between these instances. In all cases, the behaviour of the entities can be deduced only through their realization or simulation, and all the cases also meet the type/token distinction. A game including all its rules is a general type as opposed to its progression being a unique token. Similarly, a given emergent pattern is always a token rather than a type.5 What about the requirement of incompressibility in these cases? Here there may seem to be a difference. Cellular automata are incompressible, i.e. the state of the system may only be acquired through its realization/simulation. In the case of a game of occupying seats, the resulting state of the system is given—fulfilling the rules of a game and a complete occupation of the seats in an auditorium. However,  See Bar-Yam’s examples of strong-emergence systems (Sect. 3.3).  In relation to this, Huneman cites Humphreys (2008), who points out that emergent patterns are always types rather than tokens, as otherwise, other patterns of the same kind would not be emergent. Such a situation would arise e.g. with the photography of the above “blinking” pattern. Thereby, Huneman points out the processual character of emergence (Huneman 2008, 602). 4 5

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this difference is merely apparent. Claiming that in the latter two cases, the resulting state of the system is compressible, i.e. it may be reached outside the realization/ simulation, we are viewing the system as a general type, not a unique realization of a game or the filling of seats in an auditorium. Viewing even these cases as tokens, the compressible realization of the resulting state of the system becomes impossible. These cases are as incompressible as certain cases of cellular automata. Does this mean, then, that all these cases are weak-emergent and that Bar-Yam’s presumption of strong emergence in simple systems is mistaken? Or on the contrary, are all cases only emergent and is Bedau’s distinction between strong and weak inconclusive? Bedau is not the only proponent of weak and strong emergence. Chalmers, too, considers this distinction important and believes that it refers to two quite different concepts (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 244). His distinction of weak and strong emergence is not based on Bedau’s requirement for simulation, but should not contradict it as Chalmers refers to Bedau’s paper as “a nice discussion of the notion of weak emergence and its relation to strong emergence.” (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 245) His distinction is thus: a high-level phenomenon is strongly emergent with respect to a low-level domain when the high-level phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are not deducible even in principle from truths in the low-level domain. a high-level phenomenon is weakly emergent with respect to a low-level domain when the high-level phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are unexpected given the principles governing the low-level domain. (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 244)

Chalmers notes that these are initial approximations which may later be specified, but despite a certain vagueness (or what he calls unexpectedness) they express the key difference. Chalmers’ definition allows for all cases of strong emergence to be cases of weak emergence at the same time, all of them being unexpected, while cases of weak emergence can never be cases of strong emergence. Thus, a cellular automaton is a weak emergent system, as the arising patterns are unexpected, yet straightforwardly deducible from the rules and initial conditions. Thus, we have a simple criterion of emergence: unexpected and deducible = weak unexpected and not deducible in principle = strong

The vagueness of unexpectedness may be disregarded in further reflections. The key difference here is non-deducibility in principle. Yet is the criterion of non-­ deducibility in principle acceptable? What phenomena can we confidently label as non-deducible in principle given the possibility of their temporary practical non-­ deducibility? If, on the contrary, we were to consider all phenomena as deducible in principle and some of them only temporarily non-deducible, then the distinction between weak and strong emergence would be completely meaningless and

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unexpected phenomena would simply be emergent. The deducibility in principle criterion is therefore problematic. When he discusses the straightforward deducibility (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 245) of the patterns of a cellular automaton, then the deducibility may be linked to the process of the evolution of the system of the cellular automaton. Just as we are able to deduce the consequences of an axiomatic system through derivational transformational rules, we are in principle able to deduce the pattern through a repetition of the individual steps of a system’s temporal development. At this moment it is not decisive whether we are capable of this “with” or “without” sufficiently suitable computational tools. Thus, deducibility suggests that in principle we may reach a given state of the system starting from given initial conditions and “derivational” rules. In contrast, cases of strong emergence are characterized by a lack of such deducibility in principle. Based on initial conditions and “derivational” rules, in such a situation the state of the emergent system may not be deduced. In this sense, however, the question of the difference between the deducibility and realizability of these phenomena arises. In the case of cellular automata this distinction merges, because to deduce a state of an automaton means to realize (simulate) a given number of steps (iterations) of the automaton from initial conditions. But what about the case of natural processes? Take, for example, Laughlin’s aforementioned emergent phenomena in condensed matter physics, characterized as not deducible from the basic equations of quantum theory. In other words, these physical phenomena cannot be deduced from the basic axioms of quantum theory. The equation describing the behaviour of an enormous number of particles in fractional Hall effects had to be discovered and it cannot be deduced from the basic equations of the theory. However, the phenomena are realizable, and can be generated at any time if we achieve the conditions under which they occur. Thus the difference between theoretical deducibility from lower-level truths and their practical realization at a higher level is significant; but it is hard to prove that this type of non-deducibility is a matter of principle. The question remains whether this type of non-deducibility is dependent only on our present knowledge or whether it is non-­ deducible in principle. If the latter, we are dealing with an evident case of strong emergence and the strong-weak distinction may be preserved. Unfortunately, “undeducibility in principle” is more than difficult, and perhaps even quite impossible, to prove. Apart from this necessary proof, there are further circumstances which complicate the reasoning about how strong strong emergence is and how weak weak emergence is. For example, Chalmers is convinced that there is exactly one case of an evidently strong emergent phenomenon, namely consciousness (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 246). On the other hand, he doubts that there might be other cases of strong emergent phenomena, believing there are good reasons to believe there are no others (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 247). I have previously expressed concern about arguments operating with consciousness as an emerging phenomenon. If we are unable to prove that some physical phenomena cannot be deduced from the initial equations of a given physical theory, how can we argue in the case of consciousness, where the relevant theory is missing? Thus, in the case of consciousness, it is much

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more difficult to say that mental states are undeducible from the initial conditions and rules. Despite this, Chalmers considers consciousness a good model of strong emergence. Consciousness as a strong emergent phenomenon is systematically determined by low level facts without being deducible from them. Consciousness naturally, but not logically, supervenes on low level facts (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 247). The reason why Chalmers considers consciousness the only existing strong emergent phenomenon lies in his conviction of the deducibility of all other phenomena. I suppose that despite not discussing proposals to understand certain physical processes and phenomena as emergent (see Anderson, Laughlin, and others), his explanatory strategy would be similar to his approach regarding high-level laws. Given that such laws (e.g. chemical) are not derivable (deducible) from lower-level laws / physical laws6, it could be considered a strong emergent phenomenon. However, Chalmers presumes that although high-level laws are not deducible from low-level laws, it is acceptable that they are deducible from low-level facts. Thus, he assumes that it would be possible, for example, to deduce a complete layout of chemical molecules based on the knowledge of the complete layout of atoms. Hence, every type of emergence is weaker than in the case of consciousness (Chalmers [2002] 2006, 248). However, this Chalmers argument is highly problematic, marked by a mechanicism similar to Searle’s presumptions. The layout of individual atoms in spacetime may only appear to provide the layout of chemical molecules and even then, perhaps only in special cases. Atoms are quantum objects with wave functions and they are entangled just like other particles. Most atoms do not lie still in a given spatiotemporal layout but exist in conditions so changeable and dynamic that the atom perspective cannot lead to the deduction of higher structures, such as molecules (např. Bishop 2010). This is akin to claiming that based on the knowledge of the spatial layout of molecules, we may deduce a cell, or an organ, or even a live organism. We assume that high-level patterns (molecules, cells, organs, organisms and higher structures) can be individualized only from a high-level perspective. On lower levels, the existence of such structures is out of focus and may not be deduced. We shall return to these presumptions in the final chapter. The inconclusiveness of Chalmers’ presumption would also be proven by the concept of dynamic emergence and the fusion emergence. If, in the case of fusion, entities are consumed at the expense of the whole, they cease to exist, so the possibility of deducing the layout of high-level structures from low-level facts is out of the question. Fusion prevents such a deduction. Although we were eventually forced to reject fusion emergentism because fusion turned out to be a very radical and unlikely mechanism, even within dynamic emergence, the inference of high-level 6  As we have observed, in his supervenient conception of emergence, McLaughlin (from the position of reductive materialism) presumes the very opposite as regards the deducibility of chemical laws from the laws of quantum mechanics. He maintains: “One of the crowning achievements of this scientific revolution [quantum mechanics] was the reductive explanation of chemical bonding.” (McLaughlin 1997, 10)

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structures from low-level facts is unlikely. Within dynamic emergence, while the relationship between parts and the whole is not lost, the parts exist in a significantly different way within the whole than they do as isolated entities. Thus, even in this case, it is not be possible to deduce higher-level structures from lower-level facts. Just note that this does not prove non-deducibility in principle, but only non-­ deducibility “from lower level facts” – i.e. the reductionist concept of deducibility. Therefore, I would support the belief that should the distinction between strong and weak emergence have any meaning, there are many stronger emergent phenomena than consciousness alone. Should the existence of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon be privileged in any way, it needs to be through some other specific feature, rather than through the character of that emergence, which is compatible with many other cases. Since the principled non-deducibility of phenomena cannot be conclusively demonstrated, the distinction between strong and weak emergence becomes only apparent, and it is preferable to understand them as different instances of a single emergent mechanism that is invoked in the non-aggregative ordering of parts in wholes.

3.7  Emergence and Agent-Based Modelling There is one final point to clear up which may debase the distinction between weak and strong emergence. Of the above complications, I consider this the most serious. Not only does it involve the diminution of the distinction between weak and strong emergence; it trivializes emergence as such. Before stating the principal objection which needs to be resolved, we need to delineate the nature of the views of its authors, for whom emergence presents something unnecessarily mysterious and mystical. Above all, they are opposed to the rather free use of the term “emergent” and the simplification involved in its being linked to terms such as “surprising” or “unexpected”, which should describe the qualitative newness of patterns or phenomena. “A particularly loose usage of ‘emergent’ simply equates it with ‘surprising’ or ‘unexpected,’ as when researchers are unprepared for the kind of systematic behaviour that emanates from their computers” (Epstein and Axtell 1996, 35). We need not deal with these objections now. It is clear that neither a “surprising” character nor “unexpectedness” can be an objective criterion of emergent phenomena. However, they may be viewed in a sense akin to the first approximation, in which their “surprising” character is a rather subjective feature of their “unusualness” which in turn is a feature of their objective “specificity”. There are surely many more ways of anchoring a “surprising” character or “unexpectedness” in this respect. This, however, is not the principal objection. Epstein and Axtell define emergent phenomena simply as “stable macroscopic patterns arising from the local interaction of agents.” (Epstein and Axtell 1996, 35) In this definition, the authors’ actual intention is quite easily visible. If we say that emergent phenomena are nothing but stable macroscopic patterns arising from local interactions between entities, then we do not attribute any causal consequences

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to macroscopic patterns – they are mere epiphenomenal phenomena with no causal influence whatsoever. The simulation of cellular automata makes such a conception of emergence tempting. Changing patterns are mere macroscopic random phenomena, fully dependent on the binary value of the automaton’s individual cells. From this perspective, the individuality of emergent phenomena is lost. However, the problem is that cellular automata should not be viewed as the only case of emergence; rather, on the contrary, as a simple model example of phenomena on other levels with other property-bearers. In this regard, some authors, e.g. Humphreys, point out that actual phenomena need to be consistently distinguished from computational models intended to represent those phenomena (Humphreys 2016, 63). In relation to his conception of transformational emergence and fusion, he proffers a couple of reasons for methodological caution when comparing a model with reality. (1) The structure of the model’s entities in a given level or domain usually has no impact on the resulting systemic phenomenon. Thus, entities are modelled as fundamental entities with properties but without their finer internal structure. (2) Models do not take into account these entities being transformed into other entities, as presumed by transformational or fusion emergence. For both these reasons, Humphreys ends up very sceptical towards computational models as a possible representation of ontological emergence. He says, with respect to these two objections, that “computational models are not the right place to look for examples of ontological emergence.” (Humphreys 2016, 63) To a degree, this hinders my attempt to present emergence as a universal principle, as this would disqualify a number of computational phenomena and models which are generally considered emergent. Methodological caution in defining models is desirable, but need not only be a reason to criticize the models in question; it can be successfully employed to design models, too. If this is decisive for the model, then the model can be designed so that it respects the internal structure of entities and their potential transformations or fusion. Therefore, we would not use some computational models’ failure to generate systemic phenomena to derive general conclusions either about the suitability of computational models per se, or about ontological emergence. On the contrary, later it shall be shown how a computational model can suitably illustrate some fundamental aspects of emergent phenomena, and as Dennett believes, fundamentally change our habitual intuitions (Dennett 2003, 40). Whether patterns formed on the macrolevel of cellular automata can have direct causal consequences will be the topic of the next part of this book; let us now accept the assumption that they may have such causal consequences under certain circumstances. As a prefiguration of phenomena operating in a similar fashion, they may have direct causal consequences which are not reducible to the causal consequences of their own low-level entities. A further, more detailed discussion of the causal effects of emergent phenomena will follow; for now, we shall consider the principal objection of the opponents of emergence. Let us start from the thesis that “agent-based modeling and classical emergentism are incompatible.” (Epstein 1999, 44) In other words, this denies that in the

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case of cellular automata, being an example of such actor-based models involves (even weak) emergent phenomena! The proof consists in a simple reflection on the relations between generability (G), deducibility (D) and explicability (E). C here stands for classical emergentism, i.e. we may not deduce the characteristics of macrolevel entities from the characteristics of microlevel entities. With the help of these predicates, Epstein forms the following four statements (Epstein 1999, 44): (1) (∀x)(Cx ⊃ ¬Dx) Broad (emergent implies not deducible) (2) (∀x)(Cx ⊃ ¬Ex) Alexander (emergent implies not explainable) (3) (∀x)(¬Gx ⊃ ¬Ex) Generativist Motto (not generated implies not explained) (4) (∀x)(Gx ⊃ Dx) Theorem (generated implies deduced)

Based on (1) and (4), Epstein concludes that if cellular automata are generable, and thus deducible, then they cannot be emergent in the classical sense. Let us, however, have a closer look at theorem (4). Are all generable systems really deducible systems? In the case of the cellular automaton we presumed that this was indeed the case. In these cases, we know exactly the initial conditions (i.e. the initial layout of the binary values in each cell) and the derivational rules. To generate a state of the cellular automaton is to conduct x steps of changes in the automaton’s cells in accordance with the given rules. Deducing a state is thus identical to generating a state, as the character of these processes does not allow us to deduce the state in a shorter way that through real simulation (the principle of incompressibility). Let us now have a different process, such as the aforementioned quantum Hall effects. Unlike the previous processes in the cellular automaton, these physical processes are generable but, as mentioned earlier, are not deducible from the initial equations of quantum theory. Nevertheless, the fact that equations describing the behaviour of quasiparticles may not be deduced from the initial equations of the theory does not imply that we may not presume a deducibility of the type described in relation to the cellular automaton. Also, there is no deducible shortcut here towards the resulting state of the automaton and we need to identify a deduction with generating a state (i.e. its simulation). Thus, could we possibly approach deducibility in a similar way in the case of these physical processes, linking it to the individual steps of generating the physical process? This seems impossible for two reasons. Firstly, there is the problem of initial conditions. In light of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, we can never determine initial conditions as precisely as in the case of the cellular automaton. The system will always contain some uncertainty, which may lead to different states of the system. Secondly, if some form of fusion occurs during these processes, entities setting up the system cease to exist as isolated individuals and new system entities arise, which exist only if the system as a whole exists too. Therefore, we may not proceed in deducing such a process with the initial entities, step by step. This type of process is therefore generable but not deducible, in any of the possible senses of deducibility. Thus, in this case, generate does not imply deduce. This means that theorem (4)

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holds only in specific cases which are termed weak emergent (due to the specific character of deducibility, i.e. only through simulation) and not valid for a wide range of other phenomena, that can be generated by their realization but cannot be generated by simulation. Epstein’s conclusion of the incompatibility of actor-based modelling with classical emergentism may thus be reformulated in relation to three types of deducibility: (1) compressed deducibility  – allows for the deduction of states in a compressed (shortened) manner as opposed to the step-by-step generation of states; (2) simulational deducibility  – allows for deduction only through actual simulation (generating the state); (3) nondeducibility – strong emergent systems which are nondeducible. In this sense, we may then say that “agent-based modelling and classical emergentism are weakly incompatible.” Finally, we may proceed to the most fundamental objection in relation to any form of emergence. Epstein claims that the way in which entities (individuals, actors) form wholes is imaginable without the inaccurate and self-mystifying terminology of “emergence” or “supervenience” (Epstein 1999, 54). He acknowledges most requirements of classical emergentism, e.g. that “wholes may have attributes or qualities which their constituent parts cannot have,” and that “the parts have to be hooked up right—or interact in specific, and perhaps complicated, ways—for the whole to exhibit those attributes.” (Epstein 1999, 54-55) He rejects, however, the notion that if we are unable to explain such phenomena, their explanation could be impossible in principle. Instead he believes that attempts at mathematical modelling or computer simulations of such phenomena prove that these phenomena are explicable based upon the microrules which generate them. (Epstein 1999, 36) I oppose this position in principle. Here, Epstein confuses the problem of actual/ potential explicability and the reductive/nonreductive nature of individual processes. His presupposition is that if the discussed cases of weak emergence have shown that they are deducible and the generativist motto 3 is valid, i.e. generable implies explicable, then we can therefore consider all cases of weak emergence explicable. We may agree with this position, but it does not imply that all effort to generate phenomena does eventually generate the phenomena observed. In the same vein as Epstein criticizes the conclusions regarding emergence as a principial unexplainability, which is proven only by present unexplainability, is it possible to reverse the argument against generability in principle, which is proven only by present generability. The possibility of generating some processes while partially achieving their consequences does not in itself imply that all processes with all consequences can be generated. Moreover, Epstein disregards a fundamental aspect—the present qualitative distinguishability of aggregative and non-aggregative processes. Thus, if emergentists speak about unexplainability (sic) in principle, they do not claim that emergent phenomena are absolutely unexplainable, but merely that they are in principle unexplainable reductively, i.e. in the manner in which another nonemergent class of phenomena is commonly explicable. Thus, they do not derive principial unexplainability from actual unexplainability, but from the qualitative difference between aggregative and emergent phenomena which is currently distinguishable and explicable. A similar intention can be found in an attempt to distinguish

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emergence on the one hand as an “inexplicable brute fact” (Vintiadis 2018, Wyss 2018), which does not mean, on the other hand, that it provides no explanation (Wyss 2018, 214). Epstein’s critique of emergentism is harsh but ungrounded. Epstein presumes that: In its strong classical usages—connoting absolute nondeducibility and absolute unexplainability—“emergentism” is logically confused and antiscientific. In weak level-headed usages—like “arising from local agent interactions”— a special term hardly seems necessary. (Epstein 1999, 55)

I have shown above how the assumption of absolute nondeducibility and inexplicability is unjustified. I am going to show the ineligibility of the second part of the critique, which potentially presupposes the absolute generability of phenomena. Epstein attempts to show that the initial convictions of the advocates of emergentism are mistaken and based on incorrect assumptions. One such example is the emergentists’ belief that the description of an individual entity can never provide the description of the whole in whose formation the given entity participates. As an example, he analyses the classical emergentist claim that “No description of the individual bee can ever explain the emergent phenomenon of the hive.” (Epstein 1999, 55) In his view, the problem lies in the term “description of an individual”. He asks the suggestive question of whether the “description of a bee” may also possibly contain the rules of interactions with other bees. As it seems reasonable to presume that an individual is not formed only of his qualities but also by relations and interactions with other individuals, then a correct description of an individual (entity) should also contain such links and interaction rules. If certain rules of interaction make a bee a bee, an adequate description of a bee must contain them; and if the adequate individual description of a bee does contain them, then in the case of many bees we must also obtain the description of a beehive. In other words, the result of a model based on actors depends upon the rules of interaction which we set up for individual entities within such a model. In Epstein’s view, the terms “emergence” and “supervenience” are indeed magic-like and superfluous. On the level of the whole, we only ever receive the result of the interaction rules which we have included in the characteristics of an individual entity. Generativists are convinced that when modelling complex phenomena based on actors, systemic properties only depend upon the full specification of actors or entities participating in their formation. They refuse to acknowledge that there may exist global limitations playing an important part in the formation of systemic properties, without actors or entities having any share or impact on them. Humphreys terms this presumption “generative atomism”, noting that Generative atomism also lies at the heart of agent-based modeling in the social and ecological sciences. […] A common feature of all such systems is that everything about the compound entities is in some sense already present in the basic units of the system. (Humphreys 2016, 14)

Although I agree, given the gravity of the generativist objection against emergentism being “logically confused and antiscientific” (Epstein 1999, 55), a more detailed argument is required.

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The presumption of generative atomism negates not only any form of weak emergence, as Huneman believes (2008, 604), but also any form of emergence. If we say that the description of any entity including the rules of its interactions must consequently lead to the required states of the whole, then the emergent link is either completely superfluous, or, on the contrary, trivially commonplace. Huneman points out such trivialization (Huneman 2008, 605): A) There is no emergence since the outcomes of any agent-based model—although they are obviously not aggregative—are always proceeding from the behavior of the agents … B) Everything is emergent, since “to emerge from the initial rules and configurations” in an agent-based model means to be “generated,” …

Despite Huneman focusing these conclusions upon the negation of any form of weak emergence, to a certain extent we can eliminate emergence per se in a similar way, if we restate his arguments as follows: A) There is no emergence since the systemic properties (including the non-aggregative ones) must always follow from the behaviour and properties of the constitutive entities. B) Everything is emergent, since “to emerge from the initial rules and configurations of a given level” means to “generate” new properties on a higher level.

Thus, emergence must either be superfluous, if we require individual entities to always be characterized in such a way that all the results of its participation in interactions with other entities are already comprised in its characteristics. Or, on the contrary, emergence is a trivial, commonplace relation between levels and due to this, all cases of a whole/part relation are emergent. This devalued view of emergence seems to be not only the principal but the only reason for Epstein’s objections. He refers to what he calls the “representative example” of emergence given by Johnson, who says, “… put the parts of an aeroplane together in the correct relationship and you get the emergent property of flying, even though none of the parts can fly.” (Johnson 1995, 26) To consider this example representative is misleading. This does not seem to be a case of the emergence of the property of flying as a property of a whole system. In the case of an aircraft, we may hardly speak of a part/whole relation in the constitutive sense. I do not wish to claim that the parts of an aircraft do not form the whole of the aircraft but rather, in this case, to stress the ambivalence of the term “parts”. Which parts form an aircraft in this case? The body, wings, rudder and cockpit? Each of these parts has its specific qualities and as such is not interchangeable with the others. Its place is precisely delimited in the plan of the aircraft and cannot be changed, given the structure of the aircraft as a whole. In such cases, we do not usually have in mind an emergent relationship of the whole and its parts. Rather, we are dealing with a constructional relationship, connecting specialized parts of a whole with regard to its destination and function. If we consider even such qualities emergent, we would have to attribute to all of them constructional wholes, whereby we would devalue an emergent relationship to all common constructional connections.

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On the contrary, we refer to an emergent relationship in the classical sense if many identical entities manifesting properties of a certain kind become parts of a whole through interactions with each other. The whole carries new properties or qualities, not manifested by the constituent parts on their own. In the case of the plane, there are no such entities, and it is therefore inappropriate to consider it a complex emergent system. Likewise, we could hardly prove that in Johnson’s example, parts refer to actually interchangeable entities such as molecules, or even atoms. The aircraft as a structural unit is not formed at the level of molecules or atoms, although it is dependent on atomic and molecular bonds. From the micro-levels of the molecular or atomic point of view an aircraft is unimportant as a macro-object in the hierarchy of levels. It would be bizarre to imagine that an aircraft is a complex system of molecules or atoms arising through molecular or atomic relationships. Let us now go back to Epstein’s objection based on agent models. Epstein claims that we can only obtain the resulting behaviour of the whole if we adequately describe or characterize the individual actor or entity. Is this objection strong enough to make us doubt the legitimacy of emergent phenomena and processes, and to admit that “emergence” is unnecessarily magical or mystical terminology referring to phenomena which are in fact “nothing but” stable patterns formed by correctly characterized entities or actors? Epstein views these phenomena from the viewpoint of a modeller creating models of interacting actors, and if he does not obtain, for example, a beehive as the resulting model in the case of a bee, he knows that his interaction rules in the individual description of the bee were incorrect. Yet is it possible, in principle, to give such characteristics of an entity or actor such that correspond to all possible interactions with the environment and other entities? This question now seems crucial. Is an individual fully determined by internal characteristics, or does it also need to be characterized externally? Epstein does not deny that an actor has no external connections, but he presumes that even these external determinations, such as relations of interaction and relational links to others, can be determined in relation to an isolated actor or entity. He claims: My ‘rules of social interaction’ are, in part, what make me me. And, likewise, the bee’s interaction rules are what make it a bee—and not a lump. When (as a designer of agent objects) you get these rules right—when you get ‘the individual bee’ right—you get the hive, too. (Epstein 1999, 55)

It is difficult to say whether Epstein’s argument is indeed as strong as it first seems. If we claim that for a given actor there are any given external determinations which cannot be characterized regardless of mutual interactions with other actors, or regardless of circumstances, a proponent of Epstein’s position may agree, but still claim that these determinations must play at least some role in the characteristics of the actor, and therefore they must be determinable in relation to the actor itself. In spite of this, I believe that there are two plausible and reasonable objections. (1) Should it be possible to determine the external determinations of a given actor only through its internal part, then this part must have a given form. In actor-­ based modelling, this form is realized through interaction rules. In more general cases it is the fullest possible description of the entity. There may be

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d­ eterminations which cannot be phrased in terms of interaction rules for a given actor in the case of modelling; in more general cases it would then be impossible to include these determinations in the required form into the description of the entity’s behaviour. These are not determinations which are not interactional or unrelated to the entity’s behaviour; these are determinations with significant impact upon interactions or behaviour, yet they cannot be phrased in terms of rules or behaviour in relation to the actor, or generally to the entity. These are determinations which determine the system as a whole and their part does constitute the actor, but which cannot be formulated through individual actor rules. A simple example of such a determination of a system is the global constraints in the example of the parity bit ensemble (Bar-Yam 2004, 20 and Sect. 3.3 in this book). (2) Should it be possible to determine external determinations of a given actor only through its internal part, then this part must have not only a given form, but also it needs to be final. In actor-based modelling, this is a final set of interaction rules; in more general cases, it is a final description of the entity’s behaviour. It seems impossible to state all the rules of interaction, or to provide a final description of the entity’s behaviour, given the infinite number of possible interactions which may occur. The main thing now is not the finality and limitedness of a model in relation to reality, but rather the fact that interaction rules may change in relation to their environment and in a certain holistic perspective, interaction rules themselves are nothing stable and given, but rather a constituted tendency existing only against the backdrop of the global limitations of the whole. To put the above objections in simpler terms, using Epstein’s terminology, we may say, if, as the designer of actors, you determine the global rules correctly—if you characterize the “beehive” correctly—you will get the bee. This conviction is based upon the presumption that there is no symmetry between global and local description. Even the best description of an actor or entity can never provide the result of the whole; but on the other hand, a good-enough description of the whole must also contain the determination of the actor or entity.

3.8  Conclusion Via several examples, we have examined the weaknesses and strengths of the distinction between weak and strong emergence. We can state that the weak-strong distinction is to a certain degree justified, expressing a certain specificity of the mathematical processes within cellular automata. These are incompressible tasks which are non-trivial and whose resulting states of the system as a whole must always be determined only through simulation. However, unlike Bedau, I do not claim that there are only weak emergent phenomena and that strong emergence is a mystical term. On the contrary, strong emergence is considered by condensed

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matter physicists to be the only way to explain many specific physical phenomena, and philosophical reflections upon such phenomena (e.g. Humphreys 2016, Gillett 2016) show that existing tools of philosophical analysis should be omitted if they do not in such a way appropriately reflect ontological phenomena. By leaning toward Gillett’s conclusions regarding strong emergence in scientific emergentism and to Bar-Yam’s assumption that weak emergence is not enough to describe many globally determined phenomena, whether it is a global limitation of the system or its interaction with the environment, I do not, however, insist on an irreconcilable distinction between strong and weak emergence but simply want to understand emergence as a general unifying principle that underlies its individual instances. Thus, this does not mean that cases of emergence are only weakly or strongly emergent; rather, the connections between parts and whole can be emergent and the distinction between weak and strong cases only makes sense in relation to specifically determined conditions. Processes which can be simulated using cellular automata can be viewed as a suitable and illustrative example of emergent behaviour, but not as an exclusive or prevalent case of emergence. I also reject the agent-­ based presumption of the reductionist approach to modelling, and the generalizing idea that an adequate description of an actor is enough for the resulting whole to be systemic. I do not deny that in some simpler cases one can conduct some simulations of actor behaviour in a system; but I believe that there are global limitations which cannot be phrased in the form of rules for an individual actor. This conviction is supported by the many examples of physical emergence which point towards the necessity of re-evaluating the basic presumptions of classical emergentism, deriving the problem of emergence only from a “combinatorial” set-up of parts carrying microqualities into a macrosystem which then displays new qualities. A processual approach to emergence, which is becoming ever more pervasive, leads to a consideration of deeper presumptions, such as, for example, substance/ accident ontology, and to reasoning about the consequences of abandoning these presumptions. Thus, it seems necessary to respect the focus on the process rather than on residual and stable entities and their qualities, and to admit a dynamicity in this approach, as entities of a given level “participate in” constituting a whole, and in some sense participate in constituting the newly arising entities which only exist if the whole exists as well. Such fusing of entities and their qualities in a dynamic approach to emergence can be illustrated by many physical examples; therefore, there is no need to seek support for non-weak approaches to emergence only in the existence of consciousness. Thus, presuming consciousness to be the only strongly emergent phenomenon, as per (Chalmers [2002] 2006), is a very hard view to maintain. Rather, I assume—as suggested earlier—that the weak/strong distinction is not as strong as might be expected. Disregarding specificities such as deducibility and explicability, a single universal emergent principle remains, through which new entities, qualities and relations are formed on manifold and relatively independent contextual levels of the hierarchized reality. I assume that such a universal principle, together with the principle of evolution, must become part of the basic and initial equations or principles from which the form of our universe may be derived, albeit with the essential limitations mentioned in the introductory chapter. In the next

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chapter I shall define a universal principle of emergence and verify its role in the context of the proposed emergent ontology.

References Anderson, Philip W. 1972. More is Different. Science 177: 393–396. Bar-Yam, Yaneer. 2004. A Mathematical Theory of Strong Emergence Using Multiscale Variety. Complexity 9: 15–24. https://doi.org/10.1002/cplx.20029. Bishop, Robert C. 2010. Whence Chemistry? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 41 (2): 171–177. Bishop, Robert C., and Harald Atmanspacher. 2006. Contextual Emergence in the Description of Properties. Foundations of Physics 36 (12): 1753–1777. Bishop, Robert C., and George F.R.  Ellis. 2020. Contextual Emergence of Physical Properties. Foundations of Physics 50 (5, May): 481–510. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-­020-­00333-­9. Buss, S., C. Papadimitriou, and J. Tsisiklis. 1992. On the Predictability of Coupled Automata: An Allegory About Chaos. Complex Systems 5: 525–539. Chalmers, David J. [2002] 2006. Strong and Weak Emergence. Republished in The Re-Emergence of Emergence, ed. P. Clayton and P. Davies, 2006. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dennett, Daniel. C. 2003. Freedom Evolves, Viking, New York. d’Espagnat, Bernard. 1998. Quantum Theory: A Pointer to an Independent Reality. ArXiv:Quant-Ph/9802046, May 10, 1998. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-­ph/9802046. Ellis, G. 2016. How Can Physics Underlie the Mind? New York: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Epstein, Joshua M. 1999. Agent-Based Computational Models and Generative Social Science. Complexity 4(5): 41–60. Reprinted In: Epstein, Joshua M. 2007. Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2007, s. 4–46. Epstein, Joshua M., and Robert Axtell. 1996. Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up. Complex Adaptive Systems. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Falkenburg, Brigitte, and Margaret Morrison. (Eds.). 2015. Why More Is Different: Philosophical Issues in Condensed Matter Physics and Complex Systems. The Frontiers Collection. Berlin: Springer. Fleming, Gordon N. 1988. Lorentz Invariant State Reduction, and Localization. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 112–126. Gillett, Carl. 2016. Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Guay, Alexandre, and Olivier Sartenaer. 2016. A New Look at Emergence. Or When after Is Different. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (2): 297–322. Humphreys, Paul. 1997. Emergence Not Supervenience. Philosophy of Science, vol. 64, Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers, S337–S345. ———. 2008. Synchronic and Diachronic Emergence. Minds & Machines 18: 431–442. ———. 2016. Emergence. New York: Oxford University Press. Huneman, Philippe. 2008. Emergence Made Ontological? Computational Versus Combinatorial Approaches. Philosophy of Science 75: 595–607. Huneman, Philippe, and Paul Humphreys. 2008. Dynamical Emergence and Computation: An Introduction. Minds and Machines 18 (4): 425–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11023-­008-­9124-­4. Hüttemann, Andreas. 2005. Explanation, Emergence, and Quantum Entanglement. Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 114–127.

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Johnson, Jeffrey. 1995. A Language of Structure in the Science of Complexity. Complexity 1 (3): 22–29. https://doi.org/10.1002/cplx.6130010307. Kenyon, Ian R. 2019. Quantum 20/20: Fundamentals, Entanglement, Gauge Fields, Condensates and Topology. 1st ed. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780198808350.001.0001. Kim, Jaegwon. 1993. Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press Kronz, Frederick M., and Justin T. Tiehen. 2002. Emergence and Quantum Mechanics*. Philosophy of Science 69 (2): 324–347. https://doi.org/10.1086/341056. Laughlin, Robert B. 1999. Nobel Lecture: Fractional Quantization. Reviews of Modern Physics, 71(4, July 1): 863–874. https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.71.863. ———. 2005. A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. New  York: Basic Books. Laughlin, Robert, and David Pines. 2000. From the Cover: The Theory of Everything. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97: 28–31. https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.97.1.28. Lederer, P. 2015. The Quantum Hall Effects: Philosophical Approach. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 50: 25–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2015.02.002. Maudlin, Tim. 1998. Part and Whole in Quantum Mechanics. In Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, ed. Elena Castellani, 46–60. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McLaughlin, Brian P. 1997. Emergence and Supervenience. Intellectica 25: 25–43. Morrison, Margaret. 2006. Emergence, Reduction, and Theoretical Principles: Rethinking Fundamentalism, Philosophy of Science, vol. 73(5), Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association, Part II: Symposia Papers, Edited by Miriam Solomon, 876–887. Primas, Hans. 1998. Emergence in Exact Natural Science. Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica Mathematics and Computing Series, 91. Shimony, Abner. 1986. Events and Processes in the Quantum World. In Quantum Concepts in Space and Time, ed. Roger Penrose and C.J. Isham, 182–203. New York: Oxford University Press. Vintiadis, Elly. 2018. There Is Nothing (Really) Wrong with Emergent Brute Facts. In Brute Facts, ed. Elly Vintiadis and Mekios Constantinos, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wong, Hong Yu. 2006. Emergents from Fusion*. Philosophy of Science 73 (3): 345–367. Wyss, Peter. 2018. Emergence: Inexplicable but Explanatory. In Brute Facts, ed. Elly Vintiadis and Mekios Constantinos, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 4

Hierarchical Emergent Ontology (HEO)

Abstract  This chapter is devoted to formulating a universal principle of emergence (UPE) within the hierarchical emergent ontology (HEO) framework and testing the proposed concept in three selected and sufficiently different domains. UPE formulation, in this case, is based upon the solution of four essential distinctions: (1) the distinction between weak and strong emergence; (2) the distinction between emergence and supervenience; (3) the distinction between synchronicity and diachronicity; (4) the distinction between the dependence and autonomy of the base and the emergent. Subsequently, emergence criteria are established, and the nature of multi-­ hierarchical complexity, which takes the form of a multilevel inverse pyramidal structure, is proposed. The explanatory and predictive capabilities of the HEO and UPE are then tested in more detail in three different domains: in computer models of cellular automata; in condensed matter physics using quantum Hall phenomena as an example; and in neural networks of the mind. The aim is to show that such a metaphysical concept of UPE in multilevel HEO has explanatory and predictive power in science and scientific metaphysics.

4.1  Reductive and Nonreductive Supervenience In the section on the non-supervenient concept of emergence (2.2.3), doubts arose regarding Kim’s evidence against supervenience as a non-reductive relation. Kim concluded that supervenience as a non-reductive relation fails and is an entirely reductive relation. If supervenience were not a non-reductive relation, it might be possible to analytically explain the somewhat vague statement that a whole can be more than only a sum of its parts. Thus, supervenience would not only become a logically non-reductive determining relationship in the original sense but could also support an ontological and causal emergent relationship. In this part, I will state the reasons for the defence of supervenience as a non-reductive relation. In his article, Varieties of Supervenience, Robert Stalnaker deals with two intuitive conceptions of supervenience which differ in their view of the reducibility of supervenient entities. The reductive conception of supervenience presumes that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 V. Havlík, Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8_4

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supervenient entities A are “nothing but” a configuration of base entities B, and if A entities have any causal powers, then these powers in turn are “nothing but” the causal effects and abilities of base entities B. The nonreductive conception of supervenience, on the other hand, presumes that supervenient entities A are autonomous and not entirely reducible to base entities B. If they have any causal effects, then this is autonomous and not possessed by any base entity determining the supervenient entity. We may question the philosophical legitimacy of intuitions resulting in such vastly different standpoints, yet I accept Stalnaker’s view that this distinction may lose its sharpness if we subject to a fine-grained analysis the presuppositions upon which the polarized positions of such an interpretation are based. The distinction between two ways of understanding supervenience that I am trying to make is elusive. When one retreats from the traditional, more restrictive versions of reductionism, then it becomes more difficult to distinguish a reductionist conception of supervenience from the view that supervenience is a sui generis metaphysical relation between distinct families of properties. (Stalnaker 1996, 225)

Thus, the role of interpretation in this case may cause us to view the same thing differently. Intuition, like insufficient experience, only highlights or mutes various aspects, resulting in us adopting one of the polarized perspectives. In any case, I have undertaken to examine the alternative, that a particular formulation of the nonreductive view of the supervenience of moral properties upon descriptive and naturalistic properties may be inspiring for emergence as a universal principle. Therefore, I shall now explore this option.

4.1.1  The Supervenience Tradition From the viewpoint of emergence, the original meaning of supervenience has been shown to be promising as a relation between the moral property of “goodness” and a group of properties on which this evaluative concept supervenes. Hare has attempted to show that between the property of goodness and the properties which are the basis for our conception of goodness, there cannot be a dependency enabling us to replace the concept of “goodness” with a list of natural properties which would still present some evidence for an evaluation as “good”, and without which the label “good” would be meaningless. Given emergence, what I have found particularly useful is the fact that in this view, supervenience—as a relation of dependency and determination between property families—would enable us also to define the autonomy of supervenient or emergent entities. We know that any potential form of emergence requires two elementary questions to be answered. (1) How are emergent entities “dependent on” and “determined by” their base? (2) How are emergent entities autonomous in relation to their base? The aim is then to use the relation of supervenience also for the emergent relation, thus proving that both the requirements of dependency and autonomy are met. However, in relation to Kim’s detailed analysis (1978), we have

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had to admit that this definition of supervenience fails, i.e. does not render the expected results. Still, this conclusion is unconvincing, for the following reasons: (1) Moore, Hare and others have shown the reasons for viewing supervenience as a nonreductive relation; (2) the convincing nature of Kim’s reductionist standpoint resulting from his analysis of supervenience directly contradicts Moore’s and Hare’s original intentions, as well as the potential application of a reductionist supervenience to specific examples such as goodness or beauty; (3) although Kim claims to be convinced of the contemporary relevance of supervenience to the Moore-Hare school of thought, he clearly contradicts it. Let us try to show in more detail how Kim arrives at his conclusions and why he believes that a nonreductive supervenience fails. Kim opens his analysis by pointing out the attraction of a dependency relation fulfilling the following conditions: The attraction of the concept of supervenience consists precisely in the prospect of its providing us with a determinative relationship between two families of properties where there are no correlations between the properties in the two families. (Kim 1978, 151)

This delimitation is too strong and does not correspond to Hare’s analysis of the concept of goodness. Hare does not claim that such supervenience is conditioned by the non-existence of any correlation between properties, but merely that not all such correlations exist. Indeed, if all such correlations existed or could be delimited, then for instance the concept of goodness could be identified with exactly those correlations possessed by the entity evaluated as good. Likewise, I take issue with the presupposition that a correlation between property families M (supervenient property family) and N (base property family) should invariably be of the property-to-­ property type, i.e. property-Pi to property-Qi, as used by Kim in a number of cases. For instance, in one of his early texts, in defining supervenience with regard to reducibility and definability, he claims that “the core of both reducibility and definability is the presence of appropriate biconditionals between the two sets of properties” (Kim 1978, 152). Concluding his thorough analysis, he defines supervenience as a very strong relation meeting the following requirements: [S0] (1) if M supervenes on N, there are property-to-property correlations between M and N; (2) every property in M has either a necessary or sufficient condition in N (if a property is not instantiated, then its complement has a sufficient condition in N; so it has a necessary condition in N; (3) if N is finite, every property in M is biconditional-connected with some property in N. (Kim 1978, 153–154)

Defining supervenience thus [S0], it is hardly surprising that such a relation is fully reductivist and definable. If it is defined like this, how can it possibly be in accordance with the requirements of Moore, Hare and others who did not consider the reducibility of supervenient properties possible? A year later, Kim explicitly comments on this in another article, citing their requirements: “while the property of moral goodness and other evaluative properties are not naturalistically definable, they are ‘supervenient’ upon naturalistic properties”. He then goes on to highlight the content of supervenience: “that is to say,

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two things cannot differ in moral or other evaluative properties unless they also differed in some naturalistic characteristic.” (Kim 1979, 41) Evidently, he thus rejects their concept of supervenience, which does not enable the definability of supervenient (value) properties or their reducibility to naturalistic properties. This is in accordance with the critique of Davidson’s anomalous monism, which Kim considers identical with Moore’s and Hare’s efforts in terms of supervenience, claiming that if his (Kim’s) conclusions are correct, then “Davidson’s attempt to retain the dependence of the mental upon the physical while arguing at the same time for the nonexistence of psychophysical laws cannot succeed.” (Kim 1978, 153)

4.1.2  The Functional Conception of Supervenience Kim’s concept of supervenience is thus undoubtedly reductive, although phrased very carefully. Kim emphasizes that in the case of a purely functional concept of supervenience, which is considered by many to be “the core idea of supervenience” (McLaughlin [1995] 2007, 18), the definitions of definability and reducibility have not yet been determined: “supervenience relations by themselves imply nothing directly about such relationships as definability and reducibility” (Kim 1984, 174). However, if we develop the basic idea of supervenience with dependency and the determination of changes between property families, this requires the nature of such dependency and determination to be explained and only a detailed logical analysis of strong supervenience reveals that “one domain can be understood—reduced, defined, explained, etc.—in terms of the other through the discovery of necessary equivalences that assures us must exist.” (Kim 1984, 176) Kim concludes that “strong supervenience is committed to the existence of a necessary coextension in the base family for each supervenient property.” (Kim 1984, 171) This result is formalized as follows: If A strongly supervenes on B, then for each property F in A there is a property G in B such that necessarily (Vx)[G(x) F(x)], that is, every A-property has a necessary coextension in B.” (Kim 1984, 170)

This is a very strong condition, linking strong supervenience with reducibility and definability based on biconditional relations between individual properties. I shall now seek to show that this form of supervenient relation is not and cannot be the supervenience of the evaluative upon the descriptive in the tradition of moral evaluative terms upon naturalistic properties, going on to show that this conclusion is more universal in nature, not limited to the domain of moral properties but, similar to what Kim claims, is also applicable to the relation of the mental and physical, and by extension also to the relation of microprocesses and macrophenomena on any given level of reality.

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4.1.3  Criticism of Kim’s Conception These are not the only objections to have been raised. There have been several attempts to question Kim’s conclusions. Michael Tooley lists some of these in his introduction to Laws of Nature, Causation and Supervenience (1999). None of these attempts takes issue with the logical consequences reached by Kim, as those are evident. What can be questioned are the presumptions used by Kim. Two of them, relevant and directly related to my objections outlined below, shall briefly be discussed. The first relates directly to the concept of “property”. Kim mostly uses the terms “property” and “family of properties”, between which he defines dependency and determination. McLaughlin points out that Kim uses the term “property” in the most liberal philosophical fashion, essentially considering anything a property, including the lack of a property, or a controversial property etc., i.e. any potential meaning predicate. Therefore, McLaughlin proposes his preferred term, “respect”, “to try to avoid the impression that I was speaking of a mode of being.” (McLaughlin [1995] 2007, 21) Undoubtedly, Kim uses the term “property” very liberally, yet this does not imply him giving up the commitment for his conclusions to remain valid in cases when “property” is interpreted in its most common sense, as a characteristic carried or not carried by an entity as a substance. This is testified by Kim’s example cited below, as well as by his remark on the distinction between properties and predicates when it comes to the possibility of infinite conjunction and infinite disjunction (see Kim 1984, 159). The second presumption is closely linked with the first; it relates to the formation of properties. McLaughlin shows that considering the lack of a property, a property should not be taken for granted; he finds similarly questionable and controversial the presumption that infinite conjunctions and infinite disjunctions are operations forming other properties (see McLaughlin [1995] 2007, 28). This objection is highly relevant and I shall seek to develop it further. Indeed, the above objections are generally valid but I shall now present a much more direct and detailed reaction to Kim’s concept of reductive supervenience, as regards its link with its nonreductive concept. Kim’s article (1979) lists two technical definitions of supervenience, differing in perspective. The first definition focusses on the purely functional aspect of supervenience, reflecting the fact that there cannot be a difference between two supervenient (e.g. mental) entities without there being a difference between base (e.g. physical) entities as well: [S1] A family of properties M is supervenient upon a family of properties N with respect to a domain D just in case for any two objects in the domain D if they diverge in the family M then necessarily they diverge in the family N; that is to say, for any x and y in D if x and y are indiscernible with respect to the properties in the family N, then necessarily x and y are indiscernible with respect to the properties in M. (Kim 1979, 41)

This definition highlights only the functional relation between property families, without stressing the dependence of one family on the other and the reducibility and

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definability of mutual property-to-property relations. These consequences result from further reflections and analyses evaluating the presumptions adopted. Eventually, Kim arrives at an alternative definition which “more directly states that each (instantiated) property in the supervenient set has a sufficient condition in the supervenient base set.” (Kim 1979, 42) [S2] A family M of properties is supervenient upon a family N of properties with respect to a domain D just in case necessarily, for each property P in M and each object x in D such that x has P, there exists a property Q in N such that x has Q and any object y in D which has Q also has P. (Kim 1979, 42)

In other words, if something has the base property Q, it also has the supervenient property P.  This definition of supervenience [S2] is considerably different from [S1]. This raises the question of to what extent [S1] is, as a purely functional dependency between properties, bound to [S2], which is strictly reductive and definitional. Base properties certainly determine the nature of supervenient properties, which is not directly implied by the [S1] definition. Yet Kim points out that this alternative definition enables multiple realizability of supervenient properties because “two instances of the same property may not have the same supervenience base property.” (Kim 1979, 42–43) This is an important aspect, given the generally accepted presumptions that many mental states are “multiple realized” in various ways on the base level. Paradoxically, this fact to some degree contradicts Kim’s conclusions about the reductivity and definability of supervenience in [S0].

4.1.4  How to Be Good This contradiction may easily be illustrated by the previously mentioned example of “goodness”, employed by Hare as well as Kim in relation to multiple realizability, aiming to show that the concept of “good” may have different supervenient bases.. Suppose that being a good man supervenes on various character and personality traits and dispositions, such as being generous, being kind, being wise, truthful, courageous, sympathetic, and so on. (Kim 1979, 43)

This starting point seems unsurprising, yet this example of supervenience needs to be confronted with Kim’s conclusions about supervenience as not only a purely functional dependency but also a strongly reductive and definitional relation. My first objection related to the very personality traits upon which the evaluative concept of “goodness” is supposed to supervene. Hare attempts to repeat Moore’s argument against naturalism to show that using the evaluative concept of “good” cannot be replaced by a list of the naturalizing characteristics of the evaluated object. Even if we accepted the existence of such a definitional list, we would need to provide the individual terms with exact delimitations so that they are not used evaluatively in the definition, resulting in the definition no longer being naturalistic (Hare [1952] 2003, 83–85).

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Kim’s presumption fails to meet either of these conditions. Firstly, he presumes the existence of personality traits forming a family of properties on which “good” supervenes; secondly, most if not all such properties are evaluative – therefore the definition cannot be naturalistic or descriptive. As Kim intends to retain this distinction in his concept of supervenience – “that the factual and the descriptive determine the evaluative” (Kim 1979, 44) – this presumption cannot be viewed as acceptable. How can “good” supervene on a family of properties while being a member of that very family? Are not the words “kind” and “truthful” on a par with “good”? What places “good” in the position of supervening on “kind” or “truthful”? It seems that “good” should rather supervene on other, more naturalistically (i.e. factually) or descriptively identifiable characteristics than those listed by Kim. Furthermore, Kim goes on to argue that: Now suppose that St. Francis is a good man in virtue of being generous, sympathetic, and honest; then these three properties would be the supervenience base of St. Francis’s being a good man. Notice that if Socrates is a good man in virtue of, say, being wise, courageous, and truthful, then these properties would be the supervenience base of Socrates’ being a good man. So, although here we have one property, being a good man, its particular instances could have different supervenience bases. (Kim 1979, 43)

Kim does not specify whether or not the above list of properties is finite, but this is not decisive if, as can be seen, there is a finite subset of properties of base B (supervenience base property), limited by the requirement of a minimal set of properties, which then meets the requirements set by Kim’s [S2] definition in that if x has the properties in B then anything else having these properties has P (Kim 1979, 43). Thus the supervenient property of “goodness” may have different supervenient bases. Suppose that we accept the suggested list of properties as a set of characteristics upon which the evaluative concept of “goodness” may supervene, and that this is a sufficiently descriptive list in order to preserve the distinction whereby the factual and the descriptive determines the evaluative. According to Kim, a strong form of reductive and definitional supervenience needs to hold: if every property P in the family of properties M has a nomological equivalent in the family N, that is, there is a biconditional correlation (with a suitable modal force) relating each property in M with some property in N, then M is supervenient upon N. (Kim 1979, 43)

4.1.5  Multiple Realizability: Many Ways to Be Good Let us examine how biconditional correlations are provided for specifically in the above example of “good” supervening, with regard to the potential multiple realization of the supervenient base. Let us have: Property P in M, which supervenes on a list of properties Q in base N. P /s\ Q1, Q2, Q3, …, Qn

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Where, for example, P (good) supervenes on Q1 (generous), Q2 (kind), Q3 (wise), Q4 (truthful), Q5 (courageous), Q6 (sympathetic), Q7 (honest), …, Qn, and /s\ is “supervening on”. There are minimal supervenience bases – B1, B2, and B3 – which are different realizations of supervenience bases in N, biconditionally determining the relation with the property P in M. F has P /s\ B1 = (Q1 & Q6 & Q7)

Where F stands for St. Francis with property P, supervening on base B1, this base being a conjunction of the properties Q1 (generous), Q6 (sympathetic), and Q7 (honest). S has P /s\ B2 = (Q3 & Q4 & Q5)

Where S is Socrates with property P, supervening on base B2 as a conjunction of properties Q3 (wise), Q5 (courageous), Q4 (truthful). X has P /s\ B3 = (Q1 & Q3 & Q4 & Q5 & Q6 & Q7)

Where X has P, supervening on base B3 as the conjunction of a majority of Q. Y has P /s\ B4 = (Q1 & Q4 & Q6 & Q7)

Where Y has P, supervening on base B4 as the conjunction of the given Q. For bases B, Kim requires base minimality in order to eliminate irrelevant properties from the supervenience bases. However, it is not specified how the base minimality requirement should be determined, except the following requirement: “for if minimality is not included, any superset of a supervenience base of a given event will also be a supervenience base for it.” (Kim 1979, 43) In the case at hand, the minimality of the base corresponds to three Q properties, but in another case “the conjunctive property of being honest and benevolent may constitute a minimal base” (Kim 1984, 165) for the supervenience of “goodness”. We can only guess whether perhaps even a single property may still meet the base minimality. If P supervened exclusively on a base B formed by a single property Q, then this would be a direct biconditional link between one base property Q and one supervenient property P. In general definitions of supervenience, as provided by Kim in a number of cases, such links are not exceptional, there being usually a standard biconditional property-to-property link between M and N. In our case, however, this means that a purely descriptive and naturalistic base property Q is biconditionally linked with an evaluative property in the supervenient level. If only the base determines the supervenient property, it is difficult to understand how a purely descriptive property Q such as “measuring 1 meter” could possibly determine some entity e displaying a property Q in N so that in M, e would carry the property P (“goodness”). This is not to say that the descriptive property (e.g. “measures 1m”) cannot determine the property “to be good”, only then there must be some other (e.g. contextual) properties, under which (or in cooperation with which) the descriptive property can participate in the determination of the higher property “to be good”. What is essential in this

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sense is that the terms “under” or “in cooperation with” cannot be understood as a conjunction of properties. Other cases, where the base is minimalized to two or more Q properties, are no more convincing. Consider the above conjunctions of Q properties in bases B1-B3 for “goodness”. Can a conjunction of properties in B3 imply that X is twice as good as F and S? As we intuitively do not employ evaluative categories in this way, this does not seem likely. Another option is that the number of base properties is not decisive, and the “goodness” category is merely a maxim to which the presence or absence of further base properties is irrelevant. Let us say that the maxim “having P” corresponds to three base properties Q, because evidently, for F it is sufficient to have in its base B1 = (Q1 & Q6 & Q7) for F to have P. If then X also has P based on B3 = (Q1 & Q3 & Q4 & Q5 & Q6 & Q7), then X would still have P even if it did not have (Q3, Q4, Q5) in B3, because B1 would suffice for X to have P. Therefore Q3, Q4 and Q5 should have no effect on the supervenience of P. Then, however, S could not have P on the basis of B2 = (Q3 & Q4 & Q5), which is a contradiction. Finally, there would be no difference in P not only with regard to X, F and S, but naturally even Y could not be any different from F in terms of P. The presence or absence of the property Q4 (truthful) in the base would evidently result in significant changes to the base, which raises the question of whether F without Q4 could even be considered to carry P, despite the presence of properties in B1 = (Q1 & Q6 & Q7). In summary, none of the options suggested above seems likely, as the evaluative property of “goodness” is not exactly descriptive or calculable, and for similar reasons it cannot be provided with a minimal required limit of attainability where the presence of other properties, likewise biconditionally linked with “goodness”, would no longer be relevant. This also holds for individual Q properties in the base. Apparently, we cannot claim that, for example, the property Q3 has a 1/3 proportion in base B2, while 1/6  in B3. These conclusions seem absurd, which necessarily demonstrates that the requirement for supervenience to be a strictly reductionist relation based on a biconditional-additive property-to-property or property-to-­ conjunction-­of-properties-in-base link cannot be satisfactorily met.

4.1.6  Token Identity? Apparently, Kim himself felt that the different base properties ensuring the supervenience of “being a good man”, in combination with the requirement of reductionist supervenience and strictly identifiable biconditional correlations between properties, is an extreme requirement. Perhaps for this reason, he seeks a solution in the “token-identities” of the individual carriers of “being a good man”, in order to avoid the failure of the “type-identity” of “goodness”. However, this solution is hardly convincing; rather, it reinforces my aforementioned objections. Ultimately, Kim

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rejects “token-identity”: “I do not believe that talk of ‘token-identity’ is necessarily helpful; generally speaking, talk of ‘kinds’ of identity is often misleading, and it is best, I believe, to speak of supervenience bases rather than token-identity.” (Kim 1979, 44) The unacceptable consequences resulting from this concept of supervenient base and biconditional correlations have been outlined above. A possible objection is that we are working with property conjunctions and disjunctions in an overly mathematical fashion, and that base properties cannot be added up or manipulated as can other countable entities. That is to say that we view biconditional correlations between properties as too isolated, as individual elements which can be subjected to various mathematical operations. In other words, that the basal determination of supervenient properties through conjunction and disjunction of base properties has to be realized differently from this additive fashion, and not every biconditional property-to-property correlation need be isolated from other relations, and some may have some effect over the presence of other relations. I am not opposed to this objection  – on the contrary, this is indeed the point which I aimed to reach through my detailed argumentation. The justifiability of my objection can be demonstrated using the way in which Kim suggests we arrive at the so-called maximal properties within a given base. In accordance with Kim’s detailed example, suppose that in a base of properties B, we have the following options of having or not having properties C, V and H, i.e. courageous (C), benevolent (V), honest (H). Those are then “enclosed” through Boolean operations as follows: B-maximal properties: these are the strongest consistent properties constructible in B, and for our present example there are eight of these: C & V & H, C & V & -H, C & -V & H, …, -C & -V -H. These properties are mutually exclusive, and every object must have just one of these. (Kim 1984, 158) We can see that my extension of Kim’s original example is grounded in the manipulation of properties, and not only are Boolean operations are dubious in this particular case but so too is the other presumption of the base being depleted through a conjunction and disjunction of properties. I necessarily conclude that this approach can only be applied to those entities meeting the presumption, i.e. in effect, to a very limited set of entities, which may be termed mechanical cases, and even then, only to a limited degree. Therefore the result is not only about the evaluative and descriptive properties, but I presume that the conclusion needs to be much more universal. For instance, these presumptions are filled by no particular case of physical entities which are processually defined and capable of forming complex mutual links which in turn determine the resulting behaviour and properties of the whole. Yet do these objections entitle us to presume that we have retained the original attractivity of supervenience, as a determinative relationship between two sets (or families) of properties where there are not (biconditional) correlations between the properties in the two sets (or families)?

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4.1.7  The Heritage of Moore, Hare and Kim Let us examine more closely how Kim interprets Moore’s and Hare’s heritage when he forms the concept of strong and weak supervenience. He cites Moore at length, claiming that Moore discusses a type of dependency between being good and natural properties which requires a stronger dependency than his own weak supervenience, which only requires two entities with the same base of natural properties to also have identical supervenient properties. Thus, weak supervenience accords with honest and kind people not being good. It suffices for this correlation between base and supervenient properties to be maintained. According to Kim, however, this is not the type of dependency which Moore has in mind when he discusses “dependency” in the following terms: if a thing is good (in my sense), then that it is so follows from the fact that it possesses certain natural intrinsic properties, which are such that from the fact that it is good it does not follow conversely that it has those properties. (Moore 1942, 588, cited by Kim 1984, 161)

Thus, Kim believes that Moore requires a modal link between natural properties and a supervenient property which is a necessity in nature, presuming that Moore’s requirements are only met by strong supervenience. By contrast, according to Kim, Hare explains the difference between the concepts of “supervenience” and “entailment” so that this distinction corresponds to Kim’s concepts of “weak” and “strong” supervenience (cf. Kim 1984, 161, note 13). Thence Moore’s concept is supervenience in the strong sense, while Hare’s supervenience is weak. In my view this is a highly interesting aspect, yet results in a difficult problem which cannot be solved. Quoting Moore, Kim highlights only the necessary link between supervenient and base properties, but disregards the requirement stating that base properties cannot follow from supervenient properties. Even if I attempted to explain this through claiming that a supervenient property may have a different base (recalling the multiple realizability of strong supervenience), it remains uncertain whether this would fulfil Moore’s requirement: whatever minimal base realizes base properties, within strong supervenience this base is invariably biconditionally fulfilled, and therefore base properties must follow from the supervenient ones. Apparently, Hare uses a similar distinction between “supervenient” and “entailment”, presupposing that base properties cannot be entailed by supervenient ones and, for example, the meaning of “goodness” cannot be identical to a set of descriptive properties. Overall, both Moore and Hare seem to be against strong supervenience, enabling minimal and maximal bases of properties which are biconditionally linked with supervening properties; instead, both support the non-­ reductive conception of supervenience. Yet this is not all. An important part of the non-reductive conception of supervenience needs to be the autonomous position of supervenient properties: if it is impossible to express meaning through listing base properties, this is because the supervenient property is not part of the base but rather of the supervening system as a whole, where its role is not reducible to the “possibilities” of the base properties.

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If, for example, the category of “goodness” has evaluative sense on the ethical level through being related to moral actions, then naturalized and descriptive base properties cannot be expected to replace this role. The autonomy of “goodness” is outside the scope of expression of the determining base. Later I will discuss the term “scope of expression” in more detail and replace it with a more technical term, much more effective in terms of emergence. Another necessary part of this non-reductive conception of supervenience is the original presumption (from Moore and Hare) that the supervening property is determined by its base, without requiring the existence of all property-to-property correlations in these sets (or families) of properties. Hare makes a convincing point, showing that one may understand the meaning of “goodness” without having the slightest idea of the natural properties of the base, because there is a difference between the meaning of a word and the criteria of its use (see Hare [1952] 2003, 108); at the same time, the supervenient property is not the logical consequence of base properties, nor can it be replaced by a summary of base properties, and they are not identical: it is not the case that there is any conjunction C of descriptive characteristics such that to say that a man has C entails that he is morally good. […] Nevertheless, the judgement that a man is morally good is not logically independent of the judgement that he has certain other characteristics which we may call virtues or good-making characteristics; there is a relation between them, although it is not one of entailment or of identity of meaning. (Hare [1952] 2003, 145)

This directly contradicts the presumptions of Kim’s conception of reductive supervenience, which presumes a reductive correlation between all supervening properties and base properties.

4.1.8  Conclusion My aim is to test whether supervenience, in its original sense of a non-reductive relation, may be a suitable inspiration for the emergent relation as a universal principle. The attraction of non-reductive supervenience lies exactly in its providing a determinative relationship between two families of properties without requiring the existence of all property-to-property correlations in these two families. It seems reasonable that if the autonomy of the supervenient area lies in properties and roles which cannot exist in the base area, then neither can biconditional property-to-­ property relations exist (which could fully express these autonomous roles). It also needs to be borne in mind that the presence or absence of a base property not only determines the supervenient property but also affects other base properties and their determination. Thus, the resulting determination is not an additive conjunction of individual contributions but is established in the complexity of the whole so that the basal determination of the supervenient property is, in fact, subjected to the effect of the whole. From a suitable perspective, this is interpreted as top-down causation,

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without predetermination or causal clashes between the base and the causal autonomy of the supervenient property. The term “suitable perspective” is to be understood here as merely allowing the description of phenomena in such a way that there is a kind of “ontological gap” between the autonomous realm of emergent entities and the autonomous realm of a more fundamental base. Such an ontological gap then leads to the wrong causal and ontological conceptualization. For example, it is thus necessary that the base determine emergent entities through this ontological gap. Simultaneously, through this ontological gap, emergent entities causally influence the base (i.e. top-down causality), etc. I do not support this false ontologically-gapped concept of supervenience: indeed, quite the contrary, for in the next chapter I show how to maintain synchronicity between a base and emergent entities in a consistent, procedural manner, allowing them to merge ontologically and causally, but not the merging of the individual hierarchical ontological levels. I have employed the illustrative example of the category of “goodness” to prove the unacceptability of a reductively conceived supervenience, but similarly to how Kim presumed the strictly reductive supervenient relation to be more universally valid, I now presume non-reductive supervenience to have a more universal scope. Despite the crucial difference that I emphasise non-reductive supervenience, I may adopt the same presumption as Kim: the concept of supervenience as we have developed it here gives a precise expression to what seems to be a very intuitive idea underlying such beliefs as that the micro-processes determine macro-phenomena, that the physical determines the mental, and that the factual and the descriptive determine the evaluative. (Kim 1979, 44)

I agree with Kim regarding the universality of the determination of the supervenient relation. However, I disagree that supervenience is essentially a reductive relation. On the contrary, it is mostly a non-reductive relation. I do not find anything strange in the supervenient relation not being unconditionally reductive or non-reductive. The important thing is that it is a predominantly and primarily non-reductive relation because there are special cases in which this relation has a reductive character. For example, the sound of several individual, differently pitched tones (a chord) has a major or minor mood, something which individual tones lack. We could therefore argue that this characteristic, the mood of a sound, supervenes on the individual tones sounding together. In such a case, however, the supervenient relation would be reductive, because each chord can be defined by the tones that make it up, and there is a biconditional connection between the sound of the chord and the tones of which it is made. However, such exceptional cases do not indicate the predominant nature of supervenience. We have seen that the evaluative property of “being good” cannot be a reductive relation. Similarly, the sound of a chord within the context of a given composition acquires, thanks to this contextual location, something that it does not have in itself. In this case, it is not biconditionally connected with the tones. By analogy, in all other instances in which the supervening entity has properties that the base lacks, a supervening (and possibly emergent) entity depends on the base and

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the base determines its existence. Also, there is a significant difference in the concept of property. In these cases, they are not only properties that the entity may or may not have (i.e. a property in the substantive / accident model), but the property is instead a fundamental “role” that a supervening entity plays at a given ontological level. For example, “being good” plays an evaluative role at the level of moral attitudes and decisions – something that is unattainable for all descriptive/natural qualities. Later, we will refine this “fundamental role” at a given ontological level using the number of degrees of freedom available to the supervening and emergent entity at that level. Demonstrating the possibility of non-reductive supervenience was one of the prerequisites of the universal principle of emergence. Although the relation of supervenience is not identical with emergence, its non-reductive nature is an important assumption for proving that “wholes are more than the sum of their parts” whilst at the same time rejecting the reductionist principle that “wholes are nothing but their parts.” While non-reductive supervenience can still be understood as a primarily functional relation, emergence is not a relation but an ontological process of the creation and persistence of entities. Thus, emergent entities exhibit supervenient relations but supervenient relations do not necessarily have to be ontologically bound to the emergent entity. Another prerequisite for the formulation of a universal principle of emergence is to find a way out of the divergent and mutually incompatible synchronic and diachronic aspects of emergence.

4.2  S  ynchronic and Diachronic Concepts: Escaping the Dichotomy1 In previous chapters, we have seen how the recent philosophical discourse on emergence has developed amidst discussions regarding “weak” and “strong” emergence (e.g., Bedau 1997; Chalmers [2002] 2006). On the one hand with the primary focus upon a detailed analysis of the concept of supervenience (e.g., Kim 1984, 1999; McLaughlin 1997a, b) as a synchronic aspect of emergence and on the other hand as a reaction on synchronicity with a primary focus on diachronic aspects of emergence (Humphreys 1997a, 2008a, b, 2016a; Guay a Sartenaer 2016). The diachronic approach emphasizes the emergence of new phenomena over time, whereas the synchronic approach focuses on “the co-existence of novel ‘higher level’ objects or properties with objects or properties existing at some ‘lower level’” (Humphreys 2008a, 431). It is commonly held that the two concepts are distinct and that a unifying framework which would allow for the unification of both approaches to emergence is not to be found (Humphreys 2008a,b, 2016a). For example, Humphreys explicitly states:  This section is extended version of my article (Havlík 2020).

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Although I remain optimistic that we shall eventually find a unifying framework that explains why synchronic and diachronic emergence both count as emergence in some more general sense, the two kinds of emergence at present remain conceptually distinct. (Humphreys 2008a, 431)

It is evident that he emphasizes a conceptual distinction and not ontologically different processes of emergence. Although he notes, “it is possible to have both diachronic emergence and synchronic emergence occurring in a single process” (Humphreys 2016a, 43), this does not mean that there is such a unifying conceptual framework. Rather, it seems he is convinced that we have to set aside the synchronic concept of emergence, which in many ways is problematic, and consider the diachronic concept of origin to be the sole correct view. This can be seen where he evaluates both conceptions: The sparse position on emergence seems plausible, I believe, because it tends to focus almost exclusively on synchronic emergence. If weak emergence and other forms of diachronic, computational emergence are legitimate kinds of emergence, then examples of purely diachronic weak emergence will be quite common and the sparse position correspondingly false. (Humphreys 2008a, 593, my italics)

I want to stress here the terms exclusively and purely, which are signs of the conceptual distinctness of diachronic and synchronic emergence. Similarly, elsewhere this conviction about the conceptually separate nature of the types of emergence is claimed concerning the role of temporal processes: “This historical element is not a trivial consequence of the fact that temporal processes are involved, but evidence for the conceptually separate nature of diachronic and synchronic emergence.” (Humphreys 2016a, 151) Lastly, there is Humphreys’ stated aim for his book, which emphasizes solely diachronic processes as a source of emergence at the expense of synchronic emergence. “A principal theme of this book is that in many cases it is diachronic processes that produce emergence and that the philosophical emphasis on synchronic emergence is a distraction.” (Humphreys 2016a, Preamble XIX) Even though I have, on the one hand, sympathy for criticism of the supervenient conception of emergence and I believe that emergence is not primarily a supervenient relation of higher-level to lower-level, on the other hand I am convinced we ought not entirely abandon the synchronic or vertical relation of levels. Although, as shall be shown, Humphreys admits that “in the contemporary literature, some types of diachronic emergence (Bedau 1997) are compatible with synchronic ontological reduction” (Humphreys 2016a, 763), it is not only in these cases that both synchronic and diachronic attributes are important traits of emergence, being instead general and fundamental components of a suitable and viable philosophical conception of emergence. In short, if there has been a mainstream focus on emergence as an exclusive supervenience relation from the philosophical point of view, whereas subsequently the contrary view has prevailed, mostly emphasizing only the diachronic nature of emergence in many physical processes at the expense of its synchronicity, my aim is to argue for a “hybrid conception” of emergence. A similar idea about the relationship that exists between its synchronic and diachronic declinations of emergence is presented in Sartenaer (2015) in which he proves that we

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have good reasons to believe that non-ontological versions of synchronic and diachronic emergence are entailed. I seek to demonstrate, through an elementary example of pattern emergence, that the diachronic and synchronic concepts are not mutually exclusive and that pattern emergence, as the paradigmatic case of the emergent mechanism, can prove the fallacy of belief that “the two kinds of emergence at present remain conceptually distinct” (Humphreys 2008a, 431). The reason for such a claim is ontological and the aim is not only to show that all cases of diachronic emergence require a synchronic aspect but rather that ontological processes which are interesting from the emergent perspective must necessarily have both synchronic and diachronic aspects. I do not want to say that there cannot be a synchronic or diachronic relation alone (e.g. epistemologically) but I want to maintain that if there is ontological emergent change then this kind of change is processual and necessarily must have both synchronic and diachronic aspects. For these purposes, I accept Humphreys’ view that conceptual and ontological approaches are not mutually exclusive (Humphreys 2016a, 42) and thus that there is a relation between ontological processes and their conceptual analysis. I shall demonstrate what we believe to be the unifying perspective of emergence in the CA models which is, in my view, extendable to other examples of ontological emergence, e.g., physical cases of emergence (e.g., Rueger 2000, 2006; Thalos 2006; Morrison 2006, 2012; Kirchhoff 2014).

4.2.1  T  he Core Issue Separating the Synchronic and the Diachronic Humphreys divides the various approaches to emergence into two broad categories, namely diachronic and synchronic emergence. In the case of synchronic emergence, “the emergent entity and the things from which it emerges are contemporaneous;” in the case of diachronic emergence, “the emergent entity develops over time from earlier entities” (Humphreys 2016b, 762–763). The core issue between the synchronic and the diachronic conceptions lies in the types of relation between an emergent entity and its constituents over the passage of time. Briefly, the orientation of these relations can be visualized as horizontal or vertical. Horizontally-diachronic emergence would be linked to the passage of time, to the moments during which no emergent entities exist and then to the moments in which these entities already exist, persist for a while and once again disappear. From this diachronic point of view, the main question for emergence is, “What would be the fundamental change causing the transfer from one state of the micro-­ constituents’ behaviour at some time T—where there is no macro-entity—to the later time T’, where there is a new macro-entity?” Time is, therefore, fundamental in this conception.

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Vertically-synchronic emergence would then be linked to the hierarchy of levels (e.g., from micro to macro) in which the entities and their properties at a given level create/constitute/generate the entities and the properties of higher levels. From this point of view, time is irrelevant because in every instant there is the state of a macro-­ entity and the state of its micro-constituents and they are contemporaneous. In this case this vertical relationship is a basic question for emergence. Therefore while the passage of time seems so crucial to the horizontally-diachronic emergence, it appears that vertically-synchronic emergence can be analysed outside of time, because the dominance of higher-level entities and properties over lower-level entities and characteristics is performed at the same point, i.e., synchronically. However, as a rule Humphreys is sceptical about the emergent character of synchronic relations: This relational aspect explains why we count neither synchronically fundamental entities as examples of synchronic emergence nor the spontaneous appearance of something from nothing as an example of diachronic emergence, because neither emerges from anything. (Humphreys 2016a, 28)

This view sharpens the difference between synchronic and diachronic aspects and it is the first obstacle to the practical unity of these concepts. I can entirely accept that the appearance of something from nothing is problematic, but must differ with the claim it is similar to a synchronic relation between components and the wholes and their participation in the emergence of an emergent-entity. The second obstacle is the change in preferences from specifically synchronic aspects to predominantly diachronic aspects at the expense of synchronicity. Presumably this results from the predominant philosophical research of the nineties, which preferred only a synchronic conception of emergence and was fully focussed upon explaining supervenient properties such as mind and mental states (Kim 1984, 1999; Van Cleve 1990; O’Connor 1994; McLaughlin 1997a, b; Chalmers [2002] 2006). Because the gap between the neurophysical and the mental is still so wide, it is not easy to characterize the fundamental relations between them, and when we postulate that they are emergent, it is not easy to say more than that they supervene as a higher property of mind on the lower properties of a neurophysical base. The first remarkable departure from this tradition is Humphreys’ statement, Emergence, Not Supervenience (1997b), subsequently supported by Crane (2001), O’Connor (2000), O’Connor and Jacobs (2003) and O’Connor and Wong (2005). Therein these authors prove two important points: (1) emergence is not a supervenient relation – a point to be discussed below; (2) there are many physical examples of emergent properties which are more clearly understandable than those which are probably, in terms of complexity, the highest properties in this world, i.e., mental properties. In this context, I agree with Humphreys that “genuinely novel objects and properties emerge even within the domain of physics” (Humphreys 2016a, XVI-XVII) and that demonstrating emergent phenomena in models is preferable “because the algorithms that underlie them are explicitly given, thus avoiding the speculative mist that surrounds many discussions of emergence in the philosophy of mind.” (Humphreys 2008a, 432–433) To demonstrate the unity of the synchronic

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and diachronic aspects of emergence, I will use a proven computer model of the cellular automaton (CA), Conway’s Game of Life (see Sect. 2.3.3), which has become a standard tool for demonstrating emergence (e.g., Bedau 1997, 2002; Imbert 2007; Huneman 2008; Humphreys 2008a; Abbott 2006). I see CA as helpful in the following two regards: (1) The mechanism of CA is relatively simple and there is straightforward evidence for the appearance and persistence of emergent entities. Both the following perspectives are easily recognizable – the perspective of lower level “parts” (cells) and the perspective of higher level “wholes” (patterns). (2) The universality of this emergent mechanism is dependent upon complexity and is sufficiently illustrative for many other instances in other fields of emergent phenomena. The role of this paradigmatic example is methodological – an appropriate interpretation can explain the core mechanism of emergence and is one of many instances of such changes. In a similar vein, in The Search for Ontological Emergence Silberstein and McGeever claim: Complexity theorists (often) reject part-whole reductionism, but they hold that there are fundamental laws of the universe which pertain not only to all of the physical, chemical and biological systems in the universe, but also to all systems (such as the economy and other social systems) that reach a certain degree of ‘complexity’. These ‘meta-laws’ or ‘power-­ laws’ govern the emergence or evolution of a system’s behaviour in the world, much as the rules of the cellular automaton game called ‘Life’ govern what happens in that computer universe. (Silberstein and McGeever 1999, 190–191)

It is at this point that I see support for various cases of ontologically occurring phenomena, and the fact that the predominant interpretation of CA focuses only on weak emergence does not refute the universality of these “organisational meta-­ laws” or principles as possible analyses of the emergent mechanism. In addition, I have shown (see Sect. 3.6), that even weak and strong emergence are just different instances of one universal mechanism.

4.2.2  The Hierarchy of Levels Vertical-synchronic emergence as an ontological doctrine requires a key assumption about the existence of qualitatively different levels of reality, in which “the phenomena of this world are organized into autonomous emergent levels” (Kim 1999, 5). As we saw in diachronic approaches to emergence (3.2) there is a tendency to formulate emergent change without the support of the traditional conception of levels of nature (e.g., Humphreys 1997a, 2016a; Guay and Sartenaer 2016). The key reason lies in an endeavour to resolve the problems of the standard supervenient view, which is closely connected with the problems of downward causation, causal exclusion and causal overdetermination. One of Humphreys’ presuppositions is that this problem can be solved by replacing levels with domains. As we will see below, this strategy is tightly connected with a preference for the exclusively diachronic character of emergent change and does not inherently solve problems.

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Irrespective of this, our unitary conception of the synchronic and diachronic aspects of ontological emergent change requires a hierarchical view of nature. This applies not only to epistemological needs, for our theories deal with different entities on different levels, but also to ontological needs because there are ontological relations between different things which can be differentiated as wholes or parts. The fact that individuals change fundamentally when participating in wholes does not imply that the original level and its laws are destroyed altogether. These facts are enough for one to take the terms “levels of nature” and “scales of nature” seriously.2 Thus, if I insist on a hierarchy of levels and synchronicity for a proper understanding of emergent change, it is necessary to say what synchronicity commits us to if it is to be maintained as a necessary aspect of emergent change. Synchronicity is a relation between two levels with regard to the presence of phenomena and some dependence of these phenomena between lower-level and higher-level. We can call the lower-level L (micro-level) and the higher-level H (macro-level). Synchronicity then generally means that: It is true that for any given state of lower-level L (micro-­ level), there are necessary consequences C on a higher-level H (macro-level) and should state L occur, then C on a higher-level must also necessarily occur. The relation of dependence or determinacy between levels is similarly expressed in mereological supervenience which Kim expects most emergentists to accept in the following form: [Mereological supervenience] Systems with an identical total microstructural property have all other properties in common. Equivalently, all properties of a physical system supervene on, or are determined by, its total microstructural property. (Kim 1999, 7)

I am afraid that Kim's form of mereological supervenience is defined in a strictly reductionist way, so it is unacceptable to most emergentists in this form. The microstructural determination here is too strong and in fact does not allow for the emergence of any other macrostructural property that would be causally productive. In contrast, emergentists usually point to the failure of mereological supervenience. There is, however, a way out: it is sufficient if we understand the first part of Kim's definition in terms of only necessary microstructural properties, while in the second part of the definition we understand the total microstructural property as both necessary and sufficient properties of the physical system. This will allow us to preserve the synchronic determination of the whole, which in my view is necessary for emergent change, without committing ourselves to reductionism. The following aspect is a fundamental distinction between a causal relation and this type of synchronically considered supervenient relation. Causation is 2  Our presupposition is that we can define the terms “levels of nature” and “scales of nature” in relation to the one identical content. The important role in this kind of ontology is played by “entities” and their relative autonomy (see Batterman 2015). If there are distinguishable and relatively stable entities with relatively stable properties that are moving according to relatively persistent laws then there is sufficient reason to regard this part or domain as a level of nature. In addition, another important reason is that there are relationships with and between such other levels. Levels as “scales” are then an expression of the important fact that levels are not some mechanical hierarchy resting on each other but that all levels belong to the one compound.

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paradigmatically diachronic in contrast with other metaphysical building-relations such as composition, constitution and supervenience (Bennett 2011, 93–94). If emergence is based on supervenience the vertical-synchronic concept of emergence means that there are higher-level entities (objects, properties and relationships) which exist synchronically upon a base of lower-level entities. Such coexistence means that the supervenient relation is valid at every moment in time. If the supervenience relation is valid in a vertical direction, between levels, time becomes insignificant to this relation. The vertical relation between levels is timeless and binds supervenient states on their lower-level base. How could these claims be verified in a Game of Life? We can easily see that if some pattern is formed inside the space of the CA and moves across the space as an autonomous entity, it is clear that such an entity as something that emerges is nothing more than the sum of cells which create this pattern. In this case, in every step of a CA, one is given the state of lower-level L by the number of life and death cells and the necessary consequences of higher-level C by the shape of a given pattern. The resulting pattern’s simplicity well illustrates the mereological supervenience, but it is very tricky to interpret. For example, David Lewis approaches supervenience via a similar example with an image created from the full and empty points of a matrix. He says that such an image has some global properties (such as symmetry) which, however, “are nothing but patterns in the dots. They supervene: no two pictures could differ in their global properties without differing, somewhere, in whether there is or isn’t a dot.” (Lewis [1986] 2001, 14) Why, then, do we consider shapes to be emergent at all when it is evident that “they are nothing but the sum of full and empty points”? The insidiousness of the interpretation lies in the fact that Lewis illustrates the supervenience by means of a static shape, the image supervening on the static distribution of the individual points from which it is created. However, the CA matrix changes dynamically over time. How significantly does this fact affect our interpretation? We already know (Sect. 2.3) that we have reasons to consider CA states to be weak emergent. Therefore, I shall start with weak and pattern emergence to show how significantly the interpretations of static and dynamic supervenience must ultimately differ.

4.2.3  Weak and Pattern Emergence Humphreys uses the term “pattern emergence” for all phenomena which involve the formation of new structures in a system during its development over time. His “pattern emergence” is close to Bedau’s definition of “weak emergence”: Assume that P is a nominally emergent property possessed by some locally reducible system S. Then P is weakly emergent if and only if P is derivable from all of S’s micro facts but only by simulation. (Bedau 2002, 15)

In this case, the difference between the static distribution of points in the matrix and their gradual dynamical transformation in CA cells is obvious. States are weakly

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emergent because they cannot be derived in any compressible way, but only by simulation. Because pattern emergence corresponds to weak emergence at the elementary CA level, Humphreys must accept another objection to this definition of weak emergence. Imbert argues “that this definition is not complete because it fails to eliminate trivial cases” (Imbert 2007, 1). It does not contain any limitations on the final states of the system which may appear in the simulation and considers all states of the system to be incompressible and therefore weakly emergent. Such system states thus do not meet the novelty criteria for emergent phenomena. For this reason, Humphreys defines pattern emergence as a special form of weak emergence and adds the following clause to the definition of weak emergence, thus meeting the novelty criterion: “P is a non-random property of the system S that is distinct from any property possessed by the initial state of S.” (Humphreys 2008a, 437) However, if all subsequent states in CA are the result of a gradual iteration of full or empty cell calculations and as such are fully deterministic, then it is difficult to determine the ontological difference between random and non-random properties of system S. Thus, the randomness of the system’s properties can only be an epistemological criterion if, for example, an ordered state relative to the initial chaotic state occurs. The question of whether a property or pattern in CA is random or non-­ random is crucial for pattern emergence. However, in this case it only shifts the original criterion from emergence to randomness. Humphreys adds only a logical condition to the definition of weak emergence, not an accurate tool for evaluating the randomness of a given pattern. Such a criterion is therefore insufficient from an ontological point of view. A reliable criterion of pattern emergence must include the rules according to which the iterations of the automaton take place. In the case of a CA, it is the collective and global constraints (Bar-Yam 2004; see Sect. 3.3 in this book) that determine in which type of behaviour the type of CA is located. From the emergentists’ point of view, those CAs that move along the border of chaos are objectively interesting because they create persisting structures in an unpredictable way (see Kauffman 1990, Wolfram 2002 and Sect. 4.4.3 for more details). We will see later that it will again be an important question in connection with the history of the pattern’s creation process because “type-token” emergence must also be considered fit to differentiate emergent patterns. This is another difference between a static pattern and its dynamical version.

4.2.4  Type and Token Emergence If supervenience is the base of emergence then there is an assumption which is commonly held as true: “If a given property is emergent in any of its instances, it is emergent in all of its instances.” (Humphreys 2008a, 435) However, Humphreys demonstrates that this common assumption about an emergent property is wrong. If synchronicity is based on a supervenient relationship—that is, any identical base L gives rise to the identical necessary consequences C (supervenient features)—then

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it is not possible to distinguish between two different instances (tokens) of the same pattern (type), for example, a “blinking pattern”3 in CA and the same static pattern which can arise by printing this “blinking” pattern (compare Humphreys 2008a; Huneman 2008). According to the computational view it is never the pattern as itself that is emergent (since patterns b and b’ are identical), but emergence is a feature of the whole agent-based simulation process–otherwise there would be no difference between blinking patterns b and [print] b’. (Huneman 2008, 601)

Thus the diachronic concept is based on pattern emergence, on specific instances of forms (tokens), and not on types of pattern (types). For these reasons, Humphreys is convinced that no synchronic account of emergence has the ability to distinguish between two different instances of the same pattern. This is but one more reason for the incompatibility of the synchronic and diachronic conceptions of emergence (Humphreys 2008a, 435). Huneman and Humphreys illustrate a really important point about emergence – that it is a fundamentally processual entity. The computational view and the case of pattern emergence very easily show that the route taken to the result is crucial for the status of the result. Pattern emergence is essentially a historical phenomenon because it determines whether the instance of a pattern is emergent or not. Without taking into account the evolution process of a pattern, it is thus impossible to determine whether it is an emergent pattern. The synchronic relation between the pattern and the distribution of cells cannot alone be a determining factor. “… the historical development of a pattern is essential to its status as an emergent entity.” (Humphreys 2008a, 434). At this point, we can see why Humphreys is convinced that the diachronic aspects of emergence are more important than the synchronic. Synchronicity leads to a false conception of emergence and notwithstanding the detailed analyses of supervenience there is no suitable way to operate with emergence on a synchronic base. That concept of emergence is questionable. If we use it on higher levels of nature then it leads to false results and emergence as a principle can easily be criticized as an empty non-causal mechanism based on the exclusion argument (Kim 1993, 1998, 1999) and elegantly disproved. Evidently, if emergence should be a viable principle, it has to change from the merely synchronic scheme, and the diachronic aspect is crucial for that. However, in this context I am not convinced that acceptance of the diachronic aspect has to occur at the expense of all synchronic aspects. For the following reasons, I suspect not.

3  A “blinking pattern” is a periodically changing pattern which remains the same after some steps of generation of CA. In a simple example, there is one pattern in time t, another pattern in t+1 and this sequence repeats ad infinitum.

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4.2.5  W  hat Is Emergent from the Computational Point of View? We have seen above that pattern emergence is a fundamentally procedural phenomenon and must be judged according to its developmental history. Is it possible to take history as a sufficient condition for determining whether the instance of a pattern is emergent or not? Probably not, because this depends upon what we count as history. If we ask, “How long a history of development is sufficient to identify a pattern as emergent?” then we have to face a dilemma: either any state of the CA must be emergent or, conversely, no state in itself is emergent. This conclusion is parallel to the discussion on agent-based modelling (Huneman 2008; Epstein 1999). Analogically we can have: 1. No state is emergent if we relate emergence to a single static pattern in the CA without taking into account the history of its development. 2. All states are emergent because each pattern that is established in the CA has its own developmental history, even if this development consists of only a single step taken from one state to the next.

These might seem like extreme positions for determining between an emergent and non-emergent pattern, but the question is, in which sense are we talking about the history of a pattern? From the emergent point of view, some histories are not of interest, but others are very important. For example, there is the history of a stable pattern which is moving across the grid of a CA, and there is another example, where many randomly moving cells suddenly create a new complex and stable pattern. Whilst there is an evident distinction between these two types of possible histories, it is not easy to formulate exact criteria for them. One possibility is on the basis of “computational mechanics attempts to discover and characterize the typical patterns occurring in a given CA” (Hanson and Crutchfield 1997, 170) and thus establish “types of elementary processes, which will allow us to define classes of emergent processes.” (Huneman 2008, 604) In this way we can “get an objective, non-epistemological meaning of emergence in CA” (Huneman 2008, 604). This is one reason why the CA developmental history of a pattern alone is insufficient as a decisive criterion for emergence; we need more criteria for evaluating a pattern as an emergent entity in CA. Allow me again to stress, “the focus on processes rather than properties” (Huneman 2008, 606) is an important aspect of emergence and is to be applied in the unifying view of the diachronicity and synchronicity concepts. If we focus on emergence as a dynamical process then diachronicity and synchronicity are mutually conditional. To this end it is useful to go deeper into the distinction between appearance and persistence as aspects of a processual view of emergence.

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4.2.6  Appearance and Persistence In the detailed analysis of processes in CA Humphreys distinguishes two broad types of pattern: the micro-stable pattern and the micro-dynamic pattern. “We thus have two quite distinct roles that the dynamics of micro-processes play in pattern formation and persistence.” (Humphreys 2008a, 438) For simplicity and better recognizability, I shall call pattern formation either appearance or, in contrast, persistence: 1. Appearance: The pure diachronic emergence of pattern formation – the initial formation of an emergent pattern. 2. Persistence: The existence of an emergent pattern across time – the continual re-creation of an emergent pattern.

For the persistence of a pattern in this context, Humphreys admits that it seems to require both concepts of emergence although he believes it is neither adequate nor necessary to the explanation of the pattern (Humphreys 2008a, 437). I believe the contrary – that this role of the micro-dynamic in CA is not only proof that the synchronic approach is important in cases of pattern emergence, but that it clearly shows how closely the synchronic and diachronic concepts of emergence are connected in general. On the one hand, it is unreasonable to consider synchronic relations to be insignificant and unnecessary; and on the other hand, it is inadvisable to use only diachronic relations for both the appearance of a pattern at a certain time interval and the persistence of a pattern over time. First, a synchronic relationship is necessary if we need to preserve the division of reality into hierarchical levels. Second, not only diachronic relations are responsible for creation and existence of emergent entities. Whereas there is a significant difference between the characteristics of processes that lead to the creation of some entity in a specified time (appearance) and the following existence of this entity during next time flow (persistence), these are not only diachronic relations. Before the existence of an entity, there is no synchronicity for the pattern of the entity, but when an entity starts to exist, there is an instant synchronicity of its pattern from that time. This is supported by other examples, from the analysis of quantum mechanical systems to the self-organizing complex dynamical systems in nonlinear dynamics. In quantum physics there are phenomena, such as superpositions and entangled states, which are required to explain the phase transitions (patterns of behaviour) that give rise to superconductivity, superfluidity, paramagnetism, ferromagnetism (e.g. Anderson 1972; Silberstein 2002; Thalos 2006; Falkenburg and Morrison 2015). Thus, it turns out that the characteristic features of the macro-level behaviour of these systems are synchronized with the micro-level relations between constituents and wholes, as long as a given “pattern” is maintained over time. the fact that phenomena as different as liquids and magnets exhibit the same critical behaviour and share the same values for critical exponents is not going to be explained by a more comprehensive micro theory. ...we need to focus on the ontological aspects of these

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p­ henomena to understand not only the basis for their similarity but also the stability of their behaviour patterns. (Morrison 2015, 113)

Similarly, in nonlinear dynamics there are patterns of agents formation: Such spontaneous pattern formation is exactly what we mean by self-organization: the system organizes itself, but there is no “self,” no agent inside the system doing the organizing. […] It is this coherent pattern that is described by the order parameter and it is the order parameter dynamics that characterizes how patterns form and evolve over time. (Kelso 1995, 7–8)

For detailed analysis, see Kirchhoff (2014), where he seeks to demonstrate that “Kim is wrong to insist that supervenience is necessary for emergence” (Kirchhoff 2014, 94) and that these types of physical processes are fundamentally diachronic and non-supervenient. I accept his view that diachronicity is fundamental in these processes and that a change in supervenient character is needed for the downward causation of emergents. Yet unlike him, I am not sure whether this means that synchronicity need be sacrificed as well. If there are some ontologically important relations between constituents and wholes there must be some cases of constitutive building relations which are synchronic between levels. The crux of the matter is that many theoreticians think that in these cases the ontologically relevant relations can only be diachronic causal relations and by no means synchronic. The worry is that when we admit something like that, we return to the problems of the supervenient empire. The general strategy is to evade this situation and offer a conception which eliminates the synchronic relation entirely. In Sect. 3.2 we critically discussed “fusion” and “transformational emergence” (e.g. Humphreys 1997a, 2016a; Guay and Sartenaer 2016). This strategy of solving the problems of emergence is not generally acceptable; in fact, it does not solve problems but only conceptually removes them. The real ontological process and its becoming is hidden somewhere between times T and T’. It is not a real (e.g. physical) becoming of things and this type of becoming cannot only be captured through a diachronic relation. Hong Yu Wong calls this undesirable consequence of fusion emergence “the collapse of structural properties” (Wong 2006). From the emergent point of view these physical patterns, which spontaneously form and evolve over time in nonlinear dynamical systems, are essentially similar to pattern emergence in CA.  Although in these cases there are different parameters which order the dynamics of patterns, the emergent mechanism is the same. The building relations in these cases are not consistent with mereological supervenience but they are fundamentally dynamical in time (diachronicity) and still synchronic between levels (synchronicity). Let us start with some presuppositions regarding the concept of this kind of synchronicity. I will try to show this with a simple example of the ontological role of patterns in CA.

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4.2.7  The Ontological Role of Patterns In Conway’s “Game of Life” (GOL) as a special case of CA, there is the smallest moving elementary entity, a pattern called the Glider, which during its movement is capable of exhibiting stability, identity, and autonomy of shape. Briefly, these characteristics should be considered necessary for any entity at a given ontological level. Stability refers to the robustness of an entity and the extent to which it can sustain itself over time. Identity is related to the persistence of its properties over time, and autonomy expresses its independence from the environment and its ability to undergo environmental change in an autonomous form. Because the analysed example of emerging and persistent patterns in CA is very elementary, it may seem that in this case they merge or overlap or are too abstract for a mere arrangement of a shape from individual occupied and unoccupied cells to exhibit such characteristics. However, let us not forget that these are general and universal criteria for any entity at any given hierarchical level. Therefore, it can be assumed that the difference between the criteria will be much more distinct in other cases, such as that of a mental state. Later these criteria shall be developed and expanded as elements in the hierarchical emergent ontology. A Glider exhibits the above criteria during a Period 4, which means its shape is repeated after four, stepped iterations in the CA. Four states of the distribution of cells in the CA space are therefore necessary for a transfer of this pattern as a whole. What is important from the philosophical point of view is under which condition we can speak about these four distributions of cells as being a moving entity (a Glider). It is an abstract shape as a united macro-state entity which starts to play a new ontological role. Again, it may seem excessive to attribute unity and an ontological role to an elementary form consisting of several repeating cells, but therein lies the magic of the philosophical perspective of the unifying view. Given the higher internal complexity of entities and the diversity of their properties, it would be more difficult to recognize such criteria in the non-CA world, whereas in this elementary case we benefit from simplicity. We have seen that the proposed criteria of incompressibility (Bedau) and non-­ randomness (Humphreys) were, for various reasons, insufficient to convincingly score the pattern as emergent. The design of such a criterion must therefore be much more complex. The criterion must be able to reveal the autonomy and possibility of causal effect of the given pattern. These are general requirements for emergent entities and should be met in this case for such an elementary entity to prove that it is an emergent entity. To demonstrate autonomy and possible causal effects, we need the criterion of the non-randomness of the pattern itself. I am not satisfied with unusualness, novelty, or surprise, due to their low objectivity. The unusualness, novelty or surprise of a created or persistent pattern are only the results of such objective facts as must be detectable. The recognition of the appearance, persistence, and extinction conditions are considered signs of emergence. Note that we are now talking about the Glider, the

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elementary entity in CA, but these features can be applied generally to any emergent entity. The conditions for the appearance, persistence, and extinction of an entity are associated with that entity’s aforementioned characteristics, i.e., its stability, identity, and autonomy. These conditions then allow us not only to recognize the entity in relation to its surroundings, but also to transmit and process information. The transmission and processing of information are the causal forces of an entity by which the entity acts causally at a given level. The autonomous ontological status of entities in CA and their causal forces will be discussed in more detail in connection with the design of a hierarchical emergent ontology. I find some support for the intended interpretation of Game of Life ontology in the inspirational work of Russ Abbott. However, the epiphenomenal terminology he uses to describe entities and their status in CA must not fool us. Abbott calls such a phenomenon an epiphenomenon because we observe and describe a phenomenon— e.g., the motion of visible inorganic macro-particles in the case of Brownian motion or patterns in the Game of Life—without knowing what brought them about. He defines it thus: “Epiphenomenon: A phenomenon that can be described independently of the underlying phenomena that bring it about.” (Abbott 2006, 15) Abbott shows that on the one hand there is no new force of epiphenomenon and things happen only as a result of the lowest level forces of nature, or rules in this case, but on the other hand these epiphenomena (in this case patterns and their interactions) do real work. During their moving and interactions, they behave as carriers of information and as generators of new regularities. This ontological status of patterns inside CA was accepted when it was proved that CA, within the rules of the Game of Life, is a form of universal Turing machine (Berlekamp et al. [1982] 1985). In Abbott’s detailed analysis (2006) he shows that if the rules for Glider interactions are not contained in Game of Life rules, then these are emergent and have a causal effect in the “higher level” of causality. Abbott nicely shows the way in which we should understand the epiphenomena and their behaviour: when nature implements an abstraction, the epiphenomena described by that abstraction become just as real any other phenomena, and the abstraction that describes them is just as valid a description of that aspect of nature as any other description of any other aspect of nature. (Abbott 2006, 21)

I agree with Abbott’s perspective regarding abstract epiphenomena and emergent ontology, which lead to the different domains in the world where emergent nomological regularities are running and “grand reductionism fails” (Abbott 2006, 21). However, Abbott quite unreasonably assumes causal action only at the fundamental level, and he understands all the higher levels of macro events only as epiphenomenal abstractions. The objects and laws of Newtonian physics are similarly epiphenomenal, because Newton’s theory is only an approximation of quantum theory. Thus, if a Glider is an epiphenomenon, then all objects in the macroworld are also epiphenomenal. Abbott defines “emergent as synonymous with epiphenomenal” (Abbott 2006, 15). Such a position is hard to understand due to the traditional significance of epiphenomena because they are deprived of causal forces and auton-

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omous existence and only supervene on the genuinely fundamental entities. I believe that it is impossible to consistently maintain such an ambivalent concept of the existence of new emergent levels governed by emerging laws and at the same time to assume their epiphenomenality. However, many of Abbott’s conceptions of the roles of CA entities are inspiring and his discoveries regarding their roles, information transfer, and work may comfortably be interpreted in other ways. I believe that such a picture, gleaned from the simple case of CA with nothing but elementary rules of operation, may serve as a paradigm for emergent behaviour above and beyond this elementary model. In common with Abbott’s analysis, one must again emphasize that from a micro-perspective—from the state of individual cells—the smallest moving elementary entity (a Glider) loses its identity and its significance. It makes sense to talk of such an emergent entity and its diagonal transfer only from a macro-perspective. Similarly, there are many other patterns or structures which exhibit their autonomy over different periods. Their identity is spread over larger time scales, such as the Gosper Glider Gun and the Breeder.4 However, the variability of patterns is not philosophically important in this case: what certainly is of philosophical significance is the same mechanism which enables the recognition of these different macro-entities within different periods. It is easy to see a unity of four states in the case of a Glider pattern, but it is not so easy to see the unity of a pattern within a period, e.g., 100, i.e., of one hundred states of CA. Yet in both cases there is the same mechanism, one which constitutes the pattern with any long period of states. We can say that all patterns are therefore full-time structures that cannot be recognizable when looking at single static states of the automaton’s developmental history. They are processual macro-entities which are at each state of CA synchronized with the microstates of each individual cell which take part in the compositional creation of these patterns. What, therefore, is the role of synchronicity and diachronicity in that process of pattern generation? One can to say that only diachronicity plays a role—but only from within one domain of description, looking on these cells either from micro-­ perspective, as in the results of the Game of Life rules, or from a macro-perspective, on the pattern of an Abbott’s “epiphenomenon” which exhibits specific types of interactions that have ensuing causal consequences and play an important role in concrete implementation (e.g. a Turing machine inside a GOL). From the first perspective we can see only the changing values of many cells; from the second we can see a pattern as a whole (e.g., the appearance of this pattern, its persistence,

4  The Gosper Glider Gun or Breeder, specific examples of patterns different from the Glider, are more complicated patterns and they need more steps of CA to repeat their pattern integrity. They spread in a dynamical sense over larger time periods than the Glider. Specifically, the Glider needs 4 steps or periods, the Gosper Glider Gun 30 periods, the Breeder 64 periods. There are many types of Breeder, which is generally a pattern that exhibits quadratic growth by generating multiple copies of a secondary pattern (e.g. Glider Gun), each of which then generates multiple copies of a tertiary pattern (e.g. Gun).

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disappearance and causal consequences in interactions with other patterns). The point is that we cannot connect these two perspectives without some correlations between them. These correlations are synchronic because they connect all states of the pattern in CA, which are distributed sequentially in time to one whole pattern. The synchronicity in this case plays an important role because it is what gives these patterns their identity, autonomy and new rules of interactions. The fact that this autonomy is not timeless, being spread across time, is a reason that mereological supervenience is useless and leads us to false conclusions regarding patterns. For these reasons, we need in this case to understand the concept of synchronicity more dynamically as a synchronicity which is diachronically realized.

4.2.8  Diachronically Realized Synchronicity The concept of diachronically realized synchronicity reflects the fact that, on the one hand, things are identical and exhibit their own autonomy over time; but on the other hand, they are processes in the deep sense of the word. This fact is more evident in contributions from physics and complexity theory, where we can directly analyse the types of complex behaviour that are responsible for emergent entities. “In cases of diachronic emergence, the relata are common processes; and for processes to be what they are, they depend on spatiotemporal or causal continuity.” (Kirchhoff 2014, 6) Similarly, other proponents of ontological emergence support the view that emergent entities as higher-level properties “will come into being as a function of the unfolding of the more fundamental dynamical process” (Silberstein 2012, 630). Similar to the CA model under discussion, there are dynamical lower-level processes upon which the existence of patterns depends. That dynamic is unseen, running an algorithm that calculates whether the cell is full or empty (alive or dead) and without these continuous algorithmic changes there are no patterns, including static. It seems reasonable to claim that “the standard philosophical account of emergence based on mereological supervenience misses entirely the dynamics of how higher-­ level emergent phenomena arise and are maintained over time” (Kirchhoff 2014, 7). On the lower base levels, there is no autonomy but there are continuous constitutive changes. It is not possible to stop all these processes and analyse the higher-level entity using the conceptual apparatus of the supervenient relation between levels. However, from this point of view neither is it evident that for the sake of preserving processual and unfolding dynamicity we have to entirely abandon ontological synchronicity. In emergence, if the relation between lower-level processes, Xs, and the higher-level emergent feature, Y, is diachronic (ontologically), then the relation of emergence is not ontologically synchronic – that is, it is not present in its entirety within a single time slice. (Kirchhoff 2014, 6)

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Diachronically realized synchronicity does not lead us to such a dilemma between ontological diachronicity and synchronicity. The ontological evolution of an entity is not only the diachronic flow of time nor the sequence of static time slices. We can think of dynamic synchronicity as a conceptual hybrid approach to emergence which appropriately reflects the ontological nature of emergent processes. Diachronically realized synchronicity does not postulate a macro-entity on the one hand and its micro-constituents on the other. We do not have two independent entities open for the examination of any possible logical relations between them. There can be no situation in which the whole exists independently of its constituents; however, the constituents do not necessarily always exist in the whole. Diachronically realized synchronicity surrenders the strong difference between a macro-entity and its micro-constituents because there is no such thing. Micro-constituents are the macro-entity, and the macro-entity is the unity of the micro-constituents. The supervenient approach renders the difference between macro and micro too strong, giving the appearance of some mystical relation between different types of things – but this is not the case. The relation between levels is dynamical in the processual constitution of a macro-entity through the unity of its micro-constituents. From the philosophical point of view, it is irrelevant whether it is valid for the calculable properties of patterns in the special case of CA or the general type of physical system properties (e.g., thermodynamically non-equilibrated systems) or maybe for such systems as a mental property of mind. This processual kind of change is indescribable in terms of the traditional concept of supervenience (e.g., Kim 1999) and detailed analyses have led some proponents of emergence to adapt the traditional concept of supervenience, proposing, for example, robust supervenience (Rueger 2000), or to the elimination of supervenient properties from emergence (Humphreys 1997a, 2016a) or an approach similar to the non-supervenient, dynamical emergence (O’Connor and Wong 2005). If supervenience is conceptualized traditionally as a timeless relation between levels, then we have precisely these possible means to escape such undesired results of the emergent-­supervenient relation in conceptual analysis. However, I can see another possibility, which takes into account both sides of one coin in the unity of the diachronic and synchronic aspects. Synchronicity does not mean only the supervenient timeless relation between levels, some caricature of a connection between physics and higher-level entities, but must mean a relation which contains the higher-level entity’s inherent process of becoming. I believe that in this sense one can find concrete analogies in open physical systems that are non-equilibrated thermodynamically and which maintain their autonomy by means of energy flow, with material and information consumed to maintain their dynamic structures. In this sense, it is a metaphysical reflection of the persistence of things and an attempt to describe not only the appearance and disappearance of entities (the diachronic concept of emergence) but also their persistence.

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4.2.9  Conclusion and Unifying Framework I have sought to demonstrate that synchronicity cannot be overlooked in those processes underlying the dynamic establishment of entities on higher levels of complexity. Consequently, this process tightly and dynamically binds the synchronic and diachronic concepts of emergence. The concept of emergence has to be compatible with the creation of new entities over time (the purely diachronic aspect) and with their persistence over time (which has not only a diachronic but also a synchronic character). Emergent entities are not just appearances and disappearances but also persistences which dynamically maintain their identity. This result is metaphysically general and is potentially applicable to different fields of philosophical research, not just the preeminent problem of higher-level hierarchy—the mind and consciousness—but as a general approach to emergent reality. In this sense, it does not matter whether we are talking about model cases of cellular automata or emergents of physical, chemical, biological, social or cultural reality. The pattern emergence in this elementary model case is, in essence, similar to emergent phenomena in different domains. This accords with Abbott’s claim that “abstractions and the theories built on them are new and creative constructs and are not derivable as consequences of the properties of the platform on which they are implemented.” (Abbott 2006, 21) Hence I cannot agree with the Humphreys quote with which we started, his claim that in many cases only diachronic processes produce emergence and that “the philosophical emphasis on synchronic emergence is a distraction.” (Humphreys 2016a, Preamble XIX) The developed philosophical account of emergence needs both sides of this specific process as emergence is both diachronic and synchronic. However, it is true that synchronicity as merely mereological supervenience should be abandoned: it would be more appropriate to understand synchronicity as a relation which is diachronically realized because this conceptual unity responds to the ontological characteristics of these processes. The diachronic and synchronic aspects in the processual becoming of complex entities allow for a more general unifying framework for emergence. Escaping the dichotomy of synchronic and diachronic aspects of emergence was one of the key prerequisites for the formulation of a universal principle of emergence. In the next chapter I establish how this principle may be presupposed, having first explained the roles of emergent criteria and hierarchical emergent ontology.

4.3  Criteria of Emergence and HEO Another problem regards the criteria of emergence which need be satisfied in order for a particular phenomenon or action to be considered emergent. Delimiting such criteria entails two main problems. Firstly, the criteria depend on emergence taxonomies. For example, Humphreys distinguishes three types of emergence:

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inferential, conceptual and ontological. Secondly, even within a single taxonomy, there are numerous alternative ways of formulating such criteria and dividing them into different types. For instance, let us take Humphreys’ effort to formulate the criteria of ontological emergence in two different ways. This critical analysis aims to help formulate the ontological criteria of emergence as sufficiently general and universal principles. Humphreys’ example criteria are convenient as they reflect the development of various view of emergence ranging from the late 90s until recently, and their authors’ contributions on emergence are crucial to the contemporary modern approach to emergence. In his 1997 version, Humphreys formulates six different criteria. The degree to which they are mandatory, however, is rather subverted by his following presumption: “I do not suggest that any emergent phenomenon must satisfy all of these criteria, for there is a wide variety of ways in which emergence can occur.” (Humphreys 1997b, S342) I have sought above to show that the diversity and variability of emergent phenomena are no reason for any ambiguity in determining criteria, nor for the impossibility of generalizing the universal principles of emergence. Excessive tolerance in meeting whichever criteria for distinguishing between emergent and nonemergent phenomena or processes poses the question of whether it is enough for, let us say, only one or two criteria to be satisfied, and by extension which combinations of all possible criteria would be required, etc. Evidently, if a criterion is viewed as a distinguishing feature to determine, for example, x as E, then C is a criterion only if the elementary requirement is met that C decides whether x ∈ E or x ∉ E. A combination of multiple criteria is indeed possible, but it needs to be determinable with an equivalent discriminatory power as regards x ∈ E or x ∉ E. However, Humphreys’ “criteria” are more or less arbitrary as, for example, for quantum entanglements the following should hold: This sort of emergence directly satisfies our fifth and sixth criteria above, and when it is the basis for macroscopic phenomena such as superconductivity and superfluidity, it will satisfy at least criteria one, two, and four as well. (Whether it satisfies the third criterion depends upon how the levels are determined). (Humphreys 1997b, S342)

Even without listing those criteria explicitly, these ambiguous requirements are too arbitrary and thus unacceptable given my intention to formulate emergence as a universal principle. What, then, are the criteria? In the broader version from 1997a, Humphreys works with six potential criteria of emergence:5 (1) novelty, (2) quality, (3) complexity, (4) new laws, (5) essential interactions, (6) holism (see Humphreys 1997b, S341-S342). In the narrower 2016 version, Humphreys limits the set to four criteria, considering this version much more compact. Emergent phenomena (1) result from something else, (2) are novel, (3) are autonomous, and (4) are holistic. Yet even here, these do not function as real criteria. The first two criteria are necessary in all cases, while the third and fourth are only satisfied in some cases, neither of the latter two being necessary. Again, given the abundance of approaches and contexts in which the term emergence is used, Humphreys claims it is not possible  The criteria are paraphrased here in brief: Humphreys does not list them in this way.

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even in broad terms to say whether all four conditions are sufficient for an entity to be emergent (see Humphreys 2016a, 26–27). In this case Humphreys views the problem of emergence criteria more as the reasons for the conceptual diversity of approaches, not as the criteria of ontological emergence. To try to unify all possible approaches and contexts in which the term emergence occurs is likely an impossible task. However, the potential conceptual diversity cannot prevent the formulation of the ontological criteria of emergence, universally valid and deciding whether a given y is or is not E. Before we attempt to delineate such criteria, let us review Humphreys’ versions of the suggested criteria more critically. The shift from the 1997 to 2016 suggestions lies primarily in Humphreys more or less finally abandoning the traditional hierarchical schedule of ontological levels and instead adopting the presumption of domains which are not organized hierarchically. He rejects the traditional philosophical emergence research, which tends towards the idea that “there is an ontology that is divided into an ordered hierarchy of levels, with the more fundamental entities occurring toward the bottom of that hierarchy.” (Humphreys 2016a, 8) At the same time he rejects all philosophical tools of conceptual analysis employing the notion of synchronicity between the ontological hierarchy of levels. Thus, he claims that “these synchronic approaches have misrepresented what lies at the core of emergence, and that they should be deemphasized in favour of diachronic approaches that give priority to the temporal evolution of the system.” (Humphreys 2016a, 8) I cannot accept this one-sidedly diachronic strategy and shall list reasons for the adoption of a less radical conception. However, it is this radical break with synchronicity which has caused the changes to emergence criteria. One of its consequences is that there is no longer any need to stress criterion (3), the degree of complexity, conceived by Humphreys as follows: an emergent property “could not be possessed at a lower level” (Humphreys 1997b, S342); nor criterion (5), the formation of an emergent entity from the base interactions of its constituents’ properties. Both of these criteria are now replaced by criterion (1), emergence is relational (emergent entities must result from something else), where Humphreys mainly stresses the relational aspect. This criterion is also decisive in the elimination of cases which we normally do not consider emergent, such as a “spontaneous formation out of nowhere” or the purely synchronic relation between fundamental entities and emergents. This, too, is a consequence of rejecting synchronicity, as the traditional synchronic relation between fundamental entities on a lower level and emergent entities on a higher level is no longer considered emergent by Humphreys. He prefers only the form of diachronic emergence, thus demanding at least a minimal previous (and therefore diachronic) relation between the emergent and the more basic entities out of which the emergent is formed over time. This meets the first criterion precisely because of the relational aspect of “formation based on something else”. Below I present the reasons why this requirement should be linked with the synchronic relation, rather than being viewed as strictly diachronic.

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The second criterion of the “novelty” of an emergent entity can be defined in various ways. Humphreys lists five possibilities which I paraphrase:6 (i) unpredictability, (ii) unexplainability, (iii) supervenience, (iv) failure of causal closure, (v) different laws. These five options are alternative ways of defining the novelty of an entity, again without requiring any given one of them to be more binding than another, or even necessary. These are merely ways of defining novelty. For this reason, supervenience is listed as an option, despite being unrelated to the preferred diachronic conception of emergence. Humphreys refers to McLaughlin (1997a) and Kim (1998) and to the logical analysis of supervenience as a relation where an emergent “entity is novel with respect to a base set of entities if and only if a specified kind of dependency does not exist between that entity and entities in the base set.” (Humphreys 2016a, 30) These suggestions have been discussed in detail in Sect. 2.2. Novelty, being one of the two necessary criteria for any emergent phenomenon—beside the relation criterion of “result from something else”—again raises the problematic question of a general and ontologically binding delineation of the novelty criterion. Humphreys argues that “it is difficult to capture that additional aspect with any generality.” (Humphreys 2016a, 32) Here, too, in terms of generality this criterion of emergence proves problematic, and given this ambiguity it could not serve as a criterion for a universal principle of emergence. The remaining criteria are autonomy and holism. Neither of these, according to Humphreys, are necessary for an entity to be termed emergent. The criterion of autonomy is not necessary due to the potential loss of autonomy in the case of a logical or conceptual dependency: If A logically or conceptually depends on B, A is not logically or conceptually autonomous from B. In contrast, when A is causally dependent upon B, A can be conceptually autonomous from B. (Humphreys 2016a, 33)

We need to note that Humphreys is again combining conceptual, logical and ontological (causal) criteria, and therefore it is difficult to accept such a criterion as necessarily and sufficiently generally binding. Again it seems that this approach, trying to take into account all possible contexts, cannot produce a sufficiently consistent and unified criterion. The rejection of the necessity of the second, holistic criterion of emergence seems similarly unconvincing. Although it is predominantly part of synchronic approaches to emergence, this is no reason for it not to be required as a necessary criterion. Humphreys admits that in some cases it may also be used in diachronic approaches, yet he believes that even so it is “insufficient for emergence because holistic properties can be possessed by systems that do not display emergent features.” (Humphreys 2016a, 37) This is because Humphreys considers even a purely aggregative collection of entities forming a whole to be a holistic property. “The number of objects in a finite collection of discrete entities is a property of the entire

 Paraphrased to provide a clear overview.

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collection, rather than of the individuals that compose it, but this is no emergent property.” (Humphreys 2016a, 37) This bears a close resemblance to nominal emergence (see Bedau 1997) in which emergent properties are exchangeable with merely resultant macro-properties, such as the property of being a circle not being the property of the points forming a circle yet this still not being an emergent property. What are such criteria good for? Why should logical or conceptual analyses take precedence over ontological or causal contexts when setting emergent phenomena criteria? Emergence as a problem requires philosophical attention precisely because it reflects the given point of departure as a paradox of sorts, such as by stating that an emergent entity is indeed dependent on its base, but at the same time also autonomous, and searching for explanations acceptable in terms of science and philosophy. Then it is easy to understand the effort to establish criteria of sufficient generality and universality, so that we may obtain corresponding descriptive tools to evaluate further cases and decisions regarding their belonging to this or that type of phenomenon. However, by singling out only two criteria as necessary, i.e. formation from something else, and novelty, in one of its senses discussed above, Humphreys weakens the original sense of emergent changes and phenomena to the extent that emergent change can no longer be distinguished from mere qualitative transformation. Any given process is emergent provided that its state S2 has been the outcome of a distinguishable previous state S1 while S2 meets the novelty criterion stated in at least one of the five options above. Evidently, this is hardly enough to result in sufficiently clear emergence criteria. Consequently, first I must outline those ontological criteria which I consider necessary for the establishment of emergent phenomena. However, this list is not, in itself, sufficient: the criteria need to be anchored ontologically, and whether their discriminatory power can be applied to any particular cases needs to be demonstrated, ideally so that such cases cover a broad enough scope between the micro, meso and macro worlds.

4.3.1  Hierarchy All of the above five aspects through which an emergent entity’s novelty may be defined from a variety of viewpoints are linked by one shared characteristic: the emergent entity is never in any sense placed “next to” or “together with” its constituents. The avoidance of the term “level” is intentional, because Humphreys rejects the hierarchical ontology of levels, replacing it with domains, in order to preserve some degree of ontological distance between emergents and constituents. By contrast, I hold hierarchy to be an indispensable and necessary aspect of the criteria of emergent ontology, without which the desired generality cannot be achieved: rejecting the hierarchy of ontological levels does not bring about the expected advantages, but the converse, for it forces us to replace levels with domains,

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whose status is not entirely clear in this case, and which are not sufficiently ontologically fixed to refer to areas of phenomena of any given breadth. The terms level and domain are not equally suitable or employable in cases where hierarchy is, in fact, decisive – hierarchy is implicit in terms of levels and would need to be explicitly introduced between domains. Thus, it is more advantageous to favour a term which implicitly contains hierarchy as its defining property, and thus can be sufficiently ontologically fixed. How this ontological fixing of hierarchy is conceived needs to be shown in greater detail. The notion of domains, on the other hand, can be applied to extensive areas of phenomena which cannot be delimited by emergent ontology. For instance, we do not presume the area of biological phenomena to overlap with any hierarchical level traditionally placed in the naïve and simplistic distinction of the physical, chemical and biological levels. On the contrary, we would place these areas (e.g. physical, chemical and biological) in domains, where there is no need to insist on an exact hierarchy and they can be expected to merge and/or overlap. For a hierarchical set-up of levels, however, we require a precise delimitation. Later I shall suggest how this could be done. The first criterion, thus, is hierarchy, bearing in mind that it is always more suitable to present such a criterion in terms of its distinctive features. The first crucial distinction is that between the hierarchy of levels and the overlap of domains, the former being primary.

4.3.2  Autonomy Another necessary requirement is the autonomy of emergent entities. Autonomy is often viewed in the narrow sense, that is, only in the sense of causal autonomy. Thus it becomes reduced to the question of whether emergent entities have causal powers of their own, or whether they are able to exercise these powers not only on their own level (horizontally) but also top-down onto their base constituents (vertically). I reject the traditional issue of supposed causal paradoxes, which arises due to an exclusively synchronous approach: instead it is necessary to take into account the unity of the synchronous and diachronic aspects of emergent processes (see Sect. 4.2), and the ontic nature of emergent processes rather than sometimes misleading logical analyses. In this case I understand autonomy in much broader terms, as self-­ identification against the background of the non-autonomous, as order emerging from chaos, reaching some degree of independence and defining itself in relation to its environment. It is difficult to imagine why we should—within any ontological schedule—deal with something which would not manifest sufficient autonomy or distinctiveness. Among other things, autonomy means creating one’s own laws and remaining distinctive over time. Thus, we do not view this as a question of to what extent autonomy should or should not be a necessary criterion, but rather as a question about the way in which autonomy is manifested by emergent entities, and how it is grounded ontologically. The crucial distinction for this criterion in this case is that of autonomy vs. dependency, with autonomy being primary.

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4.3.3  Holism If within the adopted ontological schedule we distinguish between components and system, or parts and wholes, then an emergent entity is invariably part of a whole on a higher ontological level, not of the properties of its components on the given hierarchical level. This shows the advantage of a hierarchical approach, as even emergents can become components of higher wholes on a higher level, and thus also of higher entities in terms of emergence (objects, properties, relations, laws, etc.) in a non-aggregative inverted-pyramidal7 complexity schema. Thus, emergent is an implicitly hierarchical term, since it refers to the lower ontological level of its components. However, this does not mean that it is merely a relational term in relation to a particular level. If something is emergent, then it is generally emergent regardless of hierarchy; because if something is uncompounded and non-fundamental8, then it has to be generally emergent. This proves this approach to criteria to be convenient and robust, as individual criteria are not merely the classifying or non-­ classifying characteristics of an entity; they are mutually interlinked in such a way that they presuppose each other. A holistically complete whole of individuals on a particular level becomes an individual per se on a higher ontological level, thanks to its holistic unity and autonomy, and in turn it can become—together with other individuals of this level—components of higher emergent wholes. Thus, part and whole are also emphatically contextual, hierarchy-dependent terms. At the same time, holism presupposes a strong correlation, coordination or cooperation among entities, but also correlation in relation to the environment in which it preserves its autonomy. Only through such coordinated internal and external dynamics can an autonomous whole become differentiated from a non-­ autonomous one. An essential distinction where holism is required as a primary criterion is holism vs. individualism.

4.3.4  Persistence The last, most important and also most overlooked criterion of emergent entities is persistence. None of the attempts to establish the criteria of emergence discussed thus far has explicitly formulated this criterion,9 yet the persistence of an entity  The concept of an “inverted pyramidal scheme” will be established later.  The concepts of distinction between “compounded  – fundamental  – emergent” will be established later. 9  Humphreys does not list persistence as a criterion of emergence, but despite rejecting synchronicity and a supervenient conception of emergence in favour of a diachronic concept, he still refers to persistence as an important aspect of pattern emergence, stating that this is the only reason for not rejecting synchronicity altogether (see Humphreys 2008a, 438). Dennett (2003, 43) uses “persistence” to mean Wagensberg’s (2000, 504) term “keeping of identity”, as an aspect of his analysis of environmental complexity, from which the “independence” of entities is separated in various ways. 7 8

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throughout its duration is one of the fundamental questions of philosophy. In this case, however, its delineation is specific and much more concrete. An emergent entity, being an autonomous entity, persists over time and cannot be viewed either purely diachronically as a new state of a system appearing after other previous states, or merely synchronically as a relation between base entities and that emergent in a timeless slice of the emergent’s dependency on its base. An emergent entity is a fundamentally processual entity which not only appears as a novel phenomenon in the history of the development of a system, and not only is synchronically established on its base, but also persists. An emergent’s persistence is often a complicated dynamic process, subject to its autonomy in each and every following moment of its happening, and only from such a dynamic perspective does it adopt the position of an entity in an ontologically organized hierarchy of levels. The distinction wherein we present the criterion of persistence is that of appearance vs. persistence, of which persistence is primary. Thus, appearance is as important as the beginning in diachronic history, but at the moment of the appearance of an emergent entity, persistence is much more important. The retained autonomy enables the existence of new laws of behaviour which govern emergents on the given level, while also enabling them to carry properties which they have gained as emergents.

4.3.5  Hierarchical Emergent Ontology (HEO) In relation to his first criterion of “resulting from something else”, Humphreys requires that thanks to the relational criterion, the description “X is emergent” should be consistently replaced with “X is emergent with respect to Y”. Within our conception of emergent ontology, however, there is no need to specify in relation to what X is emergent. If we retain the unity of synchronic and diachronic aspects, then the relation of X towards anything else is irrelevant. The claim that “X is emergent”, by contrast, is of interest, and it is perfectly clear in what sense this claim is stated if we specify the triplet of fundamental – compounded – emergent. Let us try to formulate the basic principles of the suggested emergent ontology: (1) “Entity” is an abstract term for the description of a relatively stable formation in the broadest sense: most often it is an object, property, relation, regulation or law. (2) Entities can only exist as fundamental, compounded or emergent. (3) A fundamental entity on a given level is a basic entity in the sense that its behaviour is governed by the laws of the ontological level upon which the entity manifests its autonomy, identity and duration over time, while the description, prediction and explanation of its behaviour do not necessarily require revealing its internal structure and nature. (4) A fundamental entity may therefore be compounded or emergent. The triplet of fundamental, compounded, or emergent are not all relational terms related only

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to the given ontological level. Only fundamental relates to the given ontological level, and the question of the existence of truly fundamental entities in the absolute sense of the word is not relevant in the present schedule. On the other hand, if a thing is compounded or emergent, it is so not only in relation to the given level, but absolutely. (5) Compounded entities are either aggregative or organismic; their properties depend on the parts of the compounded entity. Aggregative entities form wholes of parts similar to themselves and manifest properties similar to those of the whole. Organismic entities form wholes of varied parts: they do not manifest properties similar to those of the whole, but they cooperate constructionally or symbiotically, resulting in the whole’s properties being derivable. The same is true of quantitatively borderline actions, pointing to the limits of aggregativity or organisation which, however, result only in the disruption of formerly cohesively aggregative or organized growth. (6) Emergent entities are not compounded entities and their properties depend on the entity as a whole. Emergent entities form wholes of parts similar to themselves, the entity’s parts not manifesting all the properties of the whole. On the other hand, the whole manifests some properties which the parts cannot have. The properties of the whole are thus nonderivable from the properties of its parts. This is true, above all, of qualitatively borderline actions, revealing the limits of the whole’s behaviour, resulting in an entirely novel behaviour of the system as a whole. Thus, if we state that “X is emergent”, this implies that “X is not composed aggregatively or organismically”, and “X is not fundamental” on a lower ontological level, but may be fundamental on the current ontological level, if it is involved as an entity in the emergent formation of a higher emergent whole. In other words, we may say that “X is emergent, not compounded; and an X creating components similar to itself is to be found on a lower ontological level”.

4.3.6  Level Hierarchy We have considered the distinction between level hierarchy as opposed to domain overlap. Whilst a domain may be specified based on a sufficiently general property of phenomena and may comprise variously narrow or broad classes of phenomena evaluated as such, the term level has a much more specific sense. All the doubt associated with the critical discussions of the meaning of ontological level hierarchy is probably due to confusing domain with level. Reality is not built in layers of which the lower would be the basis for the higher, thus forming a simple pyramidal schema of the world. Attempts to create such interdependent levels have been insufficiently robust and we can find examples which this suggested level structure cannot encompass.

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One of the reasons for this is the non-unilateral growth of complexity. For instance, Oppenheim and Putnam’s (1958) suggested structure of hierarchical levels containing elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms and social reality, tries to follow the rule of composition whereby the base entities of a level are invariably the components of higher level entities. This structure fails because, among other reasons, it does not manage to include, based on this rule, extraplanetary structures such as galaxies, galaxy clusters or more extensive space structures which also represent specifically ontological entities in terms of the rule of composition. It also fails to include in a simple manner the mind and brain in the increasing complexity of levels, brain being the most complex organ: a social level cannot be compared with the complexity of that organ. Recent attempts at simple hierarchization face similar limitations, although they distinguish between the growths of complexity separately for inanimate and for living matter (e.g. Ellis 2016, 6). A compositional approach needs to abandon mental phenomena as well as the hierarchy and complexity of the mental realm, as these are beyond the scope of the composition rule, or at least not as intuitive: “While the ‘composition’ intuition seems to capture the paradigm cases of chemistry and biology, it fails to explain why it is not intuitively obvious that mental properties are ‘composed’ of neurophysiological properties.” (Wong 2006, 363)

In a similar compositional manner, the multiple hierarchy of levels are construed by Lycan, with the warranted belief that reality cannot be reduced to the physical-­ chemical and “functional” level, but instead that reality which is a multiple hierarchy of levels of nature, each level marked by nexus of nomic generalizations and supervenient on all those levels below it on the continuum. […] items are themselves systems of yet smaller, still cooperating constituents. […] Organisms, for that matter, collect themselves into organized (organ-ized) groups. (Lycan 1987, 38)

However, Lycan views the layered nature rather aggregatively, and apparently also presumes a reductively explanatory top-down process, since he argues that “Corresponding to this bottom-up aggregative picture of the hierarchical organization of Nature is the familiar top-down explanatory strategy.” (Lycan 1987, 38) In a similar vein, Wimsatt understands levels as “a class of perspectives that map compositionally to one another so that their entities are related without cross-cutting overlaps in a hierarchical manner” (Wimsatt 2007, 229); he goes on to presume the entities/components in individual parts to be robust enough. Generally speaking, a broader class of so-called perspectives cannot be organized mutually compositionally, because perspectives are, in a sense, subjective and intersecting levels of “view”. The objects or parts of one perspective cannot be compositionally formed by the objects or parts of another perspective (Wimsatt 2007, 231). Thus, perspectives enable us to structure reality in a much more complex manner, not as a simple hierarchy of compositional levels, but as a mutually intertwined structure of intersecting perspectives. This flexibility takes its toll on a rather unclear terminology, employing a number of alternative terms such as perspectives, fate maps, cross-­ section, angle views, causal thickets, etc.

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However, current views on the concepts of “levels of nature” or “levels of organization” are not uniform and are the subject of diverse discussions, a detailed analysis of which would take us too far from the stated task, so let us take a brief overview. It has become increasingly apparent that the traditional conception of a “hierarchy of levels”—layered, mereological, or compositional—is problematic for many reasons, whether in physics (Rueger and McGivern 2010), or in biology and philosophy (Potochnik and McGill 2012; Potochnik 2021); yet the concept is defended due to its heuristics in biology (Brooks and Eronen 2018), possibly being modified or even replaced by other concepts such as “temporal or spatial scales”, “networks”, “causal complexity”, etc. (see Potochnik 2021). Thus, attempts to eliminate a hierarchy of levels come not only from proponents of the diachronic emergence concept, as repeatedly mentioned above, but also from more methodologically general doubts about the heuristic value and use of this concept. Ultimately, Angela Potochnik (2021) puts it most explicitly: “Why should I believe that the levels heuristic is apt – that our world, or significant swaths of our world, is hierarchically structured?”

4.3.7  Degrees of Freedom However, the hierarchy of levels I propose here has a somewhat different meaning. It does not altogether surrender the compositional sense because it is possible that such a compositional nature of parts and wholes is in some cases the best way to describe hierarchy, although this does not mean that the hierarchy is governed by compositionality as a primary key or index. Similarly, it rejects neither temporal nor spatial scales: as we shall see in some of the cases discussed, these are crucial to hierarchization. Of course, the proposed hierarchy of levels assumes a role for networks and causal complexity, as we shall most particularly see in the case of neural networks of the mind (NNM). The proposed concept of hierarchical levels is a dynamic concept that does not favour a single criterion as crucial for hierarchization. Rather, it assumes that not only such possible temporal and spatial aspects as rhythmicity, correlation, mirroring, non-mereological constitution, etc., but also representation, symbolization, signification, communication, and other higher causes are involved in hierarchization. The fact that the proposed hierarchy can encompass all the possible causes of increased complexity can be seen negatively, as a trick to integrate into the “hierarchization of levels” concept everything that is offered as a suitable reason for their separation. Such an objection would be acceptable if there were not a unifying criterion that decides the separation of levels in itself. I shall propose a hierarchy that is made up of an increasing number of “degrees of freedom” at each higher ontological level. The hierarchy of levels discussed here has a rather different sense. It does not abandon the compositional sense altogether, since in some cases the compositionality of parts and wholes may well be the best way of describing the hierarchy. Yet this

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does not mean that hierarchy should be governed by compositionality as its primary key or index, for I am sketching a hierarchy based on an increasing number of “degrees of freedom” on each higher ontological level. Degrees of freedom may be defined in accordance with physics and statistics as referring to mutually independent quantities which determine the state of a system. In mechanics, an object in space has six degrees of freedom, or 6DoF (translation along axes x, y, z and rotation along axes x, y, z); a point in space has only three degrees of freedom, or 3DoF (translation along axes x, y, z; rotation makes no sense for a point); and a point on a plane only has two degrees of freedom, or 2DoF (translation along x, y). Broadly speaking, parameters can have any given sense, provided that they are mutually independent and determine the state of a system. Therefore, if parameters are clearly definable, then it is possible to determine the number of degrees of freedom for a given system. In those abstract cases to which we shall refer it will probably be difficult to clearly identify parameters and their independence such that we may precisely determine the number of degrees of freedom. However, I shall seek to demonstrate that in the cases at hand, the indeterminacy of the number of degrees of freedom will not be fatal, as their number will evidently be increasing, fully sufficient for us to suggest a methodological hierarchization of individual levels.

4.3.8  Inverted Pyramid Schema The hierarchization of ontological levels comes in the unusual shape of an inverted pyramid. It is rooted in the assumption that the fundamental ontological level contains fundamental entities with the fewest degrees of freedom. Remember, “fundamental” in this case is a relative notion, because any given entity can play the fundamental entity role on a given level if it is autonomous and persistent enough to enter complex relations with entities similar to itself. Examples of such could be an electron, a cell in a cellular automaton, or a neuron. Each hierarchically higher level in turn has a greater number of degrees of freedom, enabling the formation of behaviours which fundamental entities did not have at their disposal. The higher the level in the inverted pyramid, the greater the variety of properties, variability of behaviours and complexity of appearing entities (objects, properties, laws etc.). Thus, the inverted pyramids of emergent ontology may erupt from different places in the traditional micro-meso-macro structure of reality and are not intended to replace the reductionist vision of stratification from the most fundamental level with fundamental entities through hierarchically higher and higher levels with units arising from lower level entities, etc. More precisely such an idea of a simple hierarchy is misleading and fails in many cases. Thus, there is no simple schema of ontological levels from the most fundamental to the increasingly complex, but on the contrary it is possible to identify entities with different degrees of internal complexity in different parts of the world structure as “fundamental entities” at a given ontological level. They have to express their identity and autonomy in the desired

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way and enclose their internal complexity in a relatively simple entity with given behavioural possibilities. If there are more such entities and if they are able to interact with each other, then we can identify at this level a new, bottom-most starting point to the inverted pyramid, whose hierarchically higher ontological levels will increase with an increasing number of degrees of freedom. From the point of view of hierarchical emergent ontology, at any given level it is therefore important neither what the internal mechanisms are nor the nature of the internal structure of an entity that is involved in the emergent process. The bottom-­ most point of the inverted pyramid of the inverted pyramid can be identified in any entity that is sufficiently rigid or robust to exhibit some minimal activity and enter into relationships with similar entities. For example, a neuron as a neural cell has a complex biological structure and many different processes ensure its persistence and functionality. However, this internal complexity may remain hidden as long as it does not significantly interfere with mechanisms at a higher ontological level. At any given level, the neuron thus retains its autonomy as an entity capable of activating and transmitting an electrical signal. If the other entities do not differ in this basic functionality, then they can be identified as fundamental at the initial level of the inverted pyramid of hierarchically arranged ontological levels with an increasing number of “degrees of freedom” on each next level.

4.3.9  Presuppositions to the UPE Unlike complex entities, i.e., aggregative or organismic, I have characterized emergent entities as units that arise from mutually similar parts, while parts of the whole do not exhibit all the properties of the whole. On the contrary, the whole exhibits some properties that the parts cannot exhibit. This fulfils the requirement that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” and at the same time, the hypothesis that “the whole is nothing but its parts” does not apply. These claims are among the standard commitments of emergentists and are therefore unsurprising. However, we are left seeking the mechanism by which components can sometimes only aggregate and form complex entities, whilst at other times their participation in the whole has led to the emergence of new entities with new properties or causal forces. How can it be that the properties of the whole are non-derivable from the properties of its parts? Is it true that they are often related to qualitatively limiting events, when the whole reacts to the achievement of some limiting conditions by taking a new constellation and breaking out into new behaviour? I have sought to show how, for the formulation of a universal principle of emergence, it is necessary to reconsider several essential distinctions associated with emergent events: ( 1) Distinction of weak and strong emergence (2) Distinction of emergence and supervenience (3) Distinction of synchronicity and diachronicity (4) Distinction of dependence and autonomy

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I will briefly summarize the conclusions of previous analyses: (1) In (Sect. 3.6) I showed that the distinction between weak and strong emergence is only apparent or contextual and that it is just different instances of the universal principle of emergence. Weak emergence is not so weak as to lead to the emergence of autonomous entities. In contrast, strong emergence is not so strong as to be scientifically unacceptable within a monistic ontology. The fact that it is contrary to physical micro-reductionism must be understood as a necessary step that has broad support both in the special sciences “above” micro-physics, and in physics itself. (2) In (Sect. 4.1) I showed that Kim’s original assumption about the reductivity of supervenience cannot generally be valid, as he mistakenly assumed, and that supervenience is primarily a non-reductive relation. In that case, there is no necessity to escape the problems of supervenient approaches to emergence by completely rejecting supervenience as an inappropriate relation. On the contrary, it is possible to show how supervenient entities are generated at higher levels without being reducible to those entities upon which they supervene. Supervenience is thus only a functional relation, whereas emergence is the ontological process of the creation and persistence of entities. (3) In (Sect. 4.2) I showed that the solution to many problems inherent in the originally exclusively synchronic concept of emergence does not lie in the complete rejection of synchronicity and the understanding of emergence as an exclusively diachronic relation. Although many physical examples clearly demonstrate the need to respect the diachronicity of emergence, this does not mean that it is necessary to replace one extreme with the opposite extreme. The starting point lies in understanding emergence as the ontological process of entity formation and its persistence over time. Emergent entities’ autonomy is neither only synchronic nor only diachronic but consists in a persisting autonomy over time. (4) In many examples in this book I look for a way to describe and understand the dependence and autonomy of emerging entities without being forced to make inconsistent claims, abandon logic, or admit dualism or other inappropriate and unconvincing strategies. I will therefore propose a concept that is in line with the previous three points: (1) it must be a universal mechanism for the mereological arrangement of parts as a whole; (2) it must be distinguished from the supervenient relation (even if it is a non-reductive relation) between the base and the supervenient entity in that it is an ontological phenomenon and not just its functional description; (3) the core of this ontological process is an autonomous identity, which is realized in its persistence in time as a unity of its synchronic and diachronic aspects. The method of the mereological arrangement of parts in the whole is crucial for the formulation of a universal principle of emergence. I consider Gillett’s concept of mutualism an inspiration when determining the principle of the mereological arrangement of parts as a whole, allowing the reservations discussed in (Sect. 3.4). However, the starting point of mutualism in the analysis of specific physical processes is a sufficient guarantee and protection against the seduction of various metaphysical constructions which complicate the understanding of these processes or

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unjustifiably expose them to criteria and demands developed for other purposes (Gillett 2016). Yet I am not convinced that Gillett’s strategy can always be used to justify criticism. Therefore, I fully support the first part of the thesis, which obliges us to respect the ontology of physical processes as the primary and decisive cause of how the emergent principle is to be reconstructed. However, in as much as “functionalism” is an example of an inappropriate metaphysical concept for analysing these phenomena, I prefer its modification because there is nothing in the functional relationship that would prevent its application to these kinds of phenomena. I have shown that Kim’s original assumption about the reductive nature of supervenience is generally unfounded, and I have offered a possibile explanation of how supervenient and non-reducible entities can supervene “above” a comprehensively cooperating basis. However, if we ontologize the supervenient relation as a relation between the base and the emergent, then we get two different entities, the base and the emergent, and we have to face, for example, certain well-researched problems of causality. One must not, therefore, replace a specific ontological process with its proposed functional description. However, the emphasis on “mutuality” between base and emergent aids in understanding emergence within Gillett’s mutualism. Gillett thus argues that mutually determining, and interdependent, composed and component entities can make it true that ‘Parts behave differently in wholes’ […] Emergent composed entities non-­ productively determine new behaviors and powers of their components (Gillett 2016, 201)

It is an attempt to emphasize the mutual ontological connection between base and emergent and their “unification.” The whole machretically determines its parts via unproductive forces mediated by the productive forces of parts. The problem of this somewhat complicated explanation of how the whole determines its parts without being an autonomous causal determination somewhat weakens Gillett’s solution. According to some reactions, Gillett still has to face the objection of the transitivity of causality, even though he tries to avoid it through the non-productivity and non-­ causality of machretic determination. My view is that the primary motivation for constituting the ontological connection between base and emergent, which occur together and uniformly, is correct. However, Gillett is too afraid of anti-physicalism to ascribe productive and causal autonomy to emergent entities. Also, it is necessary to specify the conditions under which interdependence and determination occur, thus separating the contributions and roles of parts and the whole to mutual determination. If everything is only the work of the productive forces of parts, as Gillett suggests, then wholes, like mere intermediaries of a machretic non-productive relation, are more or less useless. If everything is only the work of the productive forces of parts, as Gillett suggests, then wholes, like mere intermediaries of a machretic unproductive relation, are more or less useless. The parts in the emergent whole should be understood as constituents which actively participate in the whole in a constitutive way, to the extent that the whole allows. Not only the interconnections of the constituents within the whole, but also the interconnection of the whole to the surrounding conditions of its existence seem

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to be essential in this respect. Thus, the individual constituent parts enter into suddenly established mutual bonds, which are produced as a whole and must therefore respect the distribution of forces in the whole. The whole is thus not only the product of the individual contributions of its constituents but, thanks to the external conditions of its existence, it has a causal and productive influence on the ways in which the constituents participate in the whole. There is absolutely nothing non-­ physical about this, only these conditions of existence, which are of a different type, cannot be inferred microphysically. For example, information about the macro-­properties of different spatio-temporal arrangements of the micro-particles cannot be included in each micro-particle. At the same time, the notion that “parts behave differently in wholes” is somewhat misleading in that it understands the existence of parts outside wholes as standard, and their participation in wholes as exceptional. Instead, it should be claimed that “parts behave differently outside wholes” because the existence of wholes is a legitimate consequence of the properties of particles and various external constraints (e.g., spacetime, energy, symmetry). Thus, constituents reside as parts of wholes rather than as free, separate, unconnected parts. The following three cases are sufficiently different to enable the verification and further elaboration both of the principle of emergence under consideration and of its role in the hierarchical emergent ontology.

4.4  HEO and the Cellular Automaton (GOL) Let us start with the cellular automaton model, the Game of Life, which has been discussed in detail in several previous examples, and which is often employed as an elementary tool to demonstrate some aspects of emergence (see Bedau, Dennett, and Humphreys, among others). Bedau, who has used it to demonstrate weak emergence, presumed all complexity in the model to be invariably reducible to the individual cells of the automaton. In spite of this, he finally arrived at the conclusion that form emergence in the automaton’s microlevel is not only an epistemological matter pertaining to our explanation, but that instead there must be a link between explanation autonomy and the ontological level. Thus, although any complex emergent patterns formed through simulation in the model are “nothing but combinations” of full and empty cells, they still have some degree of ontological autonomy (Bedau [2002] 2008, 182–183). If Bedau, despite his reductionist standpoint, is ultimately forced to admit that the macrolevel, where autonomous patterns emerge in the cellular automaton, has some ontological relevance outside the microlevel of individual cells, then this gives rise to the question of whether we are dealing only with base (micro) and emergent (macro) levels. In other words, would not the reductionist level of the automaton’s cells allow for the presumed existence of several ontological levels in a hierarchy?

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4.4.1  Level Hierarchy in GOL If we—like consistent reductionists—not only insisted on reducing everything which appears in the cellular automaton, but furthermore used it to question reality and the ontological autonomy of those patterns and forms, then this would deny us the view that this automaton also includes other ontological levels which are as real as the initial one, but have more degrees of freedom. So far the cellular automaton alone has been discussed in detail because it is a highly illustrative example of what I intend to demonstrate. (This choice is made on the presumption that more or less the same would be true of any other cases of existing ontological levels.) How, then, should we understand the hierarchy of levels in a cellular automaton? On the initial ontological level there is only a network of cells, each of the cells being static and only able to assume one of two values, which may be represented as empty/full, dead/alive, 0/1, or ON/OFF. As per emergent ontology, a cell needs to be viewed as a fundamental entity. It is stable over time, manifests its autonomy, and is subjected to laws which considerably limit its possibilities and variability. The number of degrees of freedom may be expressed as degree 0 or 1.10 Bedau terms this level the microlevel, to suggest a parallel with the microphysical world behind macrophenomena. The macrolevel in turn contains as fundamental entities such formations of cells which are preserved in further iterations of the automaton. They can be static, or move in space with a particular speed, change their shape over various periods, and may appear or disappear, etc. This indeed changes nothing about the initial perspective of cells which only turn on or off, but from the perspective of changing shape, we suddenly enter a new world, gaining dynamics, motion in space, and the appearance and disappearance of patterns and their causal influence. Daniel Dennett terms these ontological levels “physical” and “design”: There has been a distinct ontological shift as we move between levels; whereas at the physical level there is no motion, and the only individuals, cells, are defined by their fixed spatial location, at this design level we have the motion of persisting objects. (Dennett 1991, 39)

Similarly: The underlying physics is the same for all Life configurations, but some of them, in virtue of nothing but their shape, have powers that other configurations lack. This is the fundamental fact of the design level. (Dennett 2003, 42)

Thus, Dennett evidently assumes different multi-ontological levels. Yet he only focuses on the “physical”, “design” and “intentional” levels, in accordance with his conception of the physical, the design and the intentional stance. He aims to prove the reality of these levels containing shapes and patterns, so that he may provide  Normally, degrees of freedom are not defined for a cellular automaton. Therefore all depends on the consensus adopted to establish them. Either the initial degree of freedom is 0 (if degrees of freedom are defined as the possibility of independent motion); or 1 (if defined as independent states in which an entity may occur). For the cellular automaton type discussed here, it is more convenient to define degrees of freedom in relation to the independent states of a level, not in relation to the independent motion possibilities of individual patterns.

10

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ontological reasons for the reality of our beliefs (Dennett 1991), or prove the possibility of evolving freedom in a deterministic world (Dennett 2003). In both cases Dennett follows, so to speak, more strategic aims, nevertheless using partial tactics with which I agree. For our purposes, “physical” and “design” levels are too coarsely defined. In this case it is more convenient to work with a “static” and “dynamic” ontological level, as this is what conspicuously sets them apart. Let us now examine degrees of freedom in the case of the dynamic level. In the cellular automaton, the number of degrees of freedom cannot be derived analogously from the independency of the movements of an object or point in space. The cellular automaton under consideration is still 2D and shapes cannot easily rotate. Their motion does not change direction without interacting with other shapes, so that they are more or less forced only in the initial direction. Therefore, it is more suitable to try to determine the independence of parameters not only in relation to individual shapes but in relation to the given ontological level. If the physical level only enables the cell to switch on and off, let it have 1 degree of freedom (appearance and disappearance). If the dynamic level enables, apart from the appearance and disappearance of shapes, also their motion in space in a particular direction, then it evidently has a larger number of degrees of freedom than the physical level. Even though this will be unattainable for some shapes, we establish the degrees of freedom in relation to the level, which in this case enables motion along the horizontal or vertical axis (or their combination), i.e. 2. Thus the dynamic level has a total of 3 degrees of freedom. We earlier assumed (see Sect. 4.2.7) that entities formed in a cellular automaton have causal effects under some circumstances. Dennett claims that they have powers which other configurations lack. Indeed, shapes or patterns have causal powers, however hyperbolic or metaphorical this may at first appear; yet evidently, if for example a Glider (an elementary Game of Life structure) persists in its autonomy through diagonal motion in the automaton space, and interacts with another pattern, this needs to be interpreted as a causal effect, since a detectable change takes place. Once there are entities in the automaton which appear, disappear and/or persist within the dynamic level, and which move through space, it is possible to transmit information, detect it and process it further. Quanta of information are represented by mobile objects that travel in the space. Trajectories of the objects can be seen as wires. The objects change their trajectories or states when smashed to other objects. Thus, information is transformed and computation is implemented. (Adamatzky 2002, V)

Acknowledging that these shape configurations in a cellular automaton have causal powers is a necessary requirement if we are to avoid the trap of supposed fundamentality, i.e. searching for real causal entities in ever deeper and deeper levels of reality. If, for example, we deny a glider its causation, how, then, is it any different from the causation of an atom? Both an atom and a glider are autonomous enough, manifesting properties which their constituents do not have, and entering causal relations with other entities. What, if not causation, should we call the effects transmitted in a given space which influence and cause the appearance and disappearance of other

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structures? Perhaps an atom is, after all, a much more ephemeral entity than a CA glider, and it is only our unwarranted imagination of an atom as an anthropomorphic sovereign entity that prevents us from accepting this causal perspective. It is not only the critics of emergence who may still insist that this is only a seemingly causal effect, as in principle it is nothing but full and empty cells, coming alive and dying in the automaton’s base level as per an established algorithm of continuously repeated simple rules. A reductionist may repeat that this is only an “illusion” of motion, because in his view this impression arises through the contents of cells changing from dead to alive, or vice versa, at the right time. This is undoubtedly true, but the claim that the perspective of persistent shapes on the “design” level has no other ontological relevance is not justifiable. Despite his admittedly original approach to the interpretation of the causal effects of shapes in a cellular automaton, Russ Abbott claims—in accordance with many reductionists—that “Gliders may be emergent, but they do not represent a new force of nature in the Game of Life universe.” (Abbott 2006, 19) According to this view, a glider is a mere epiphenomenon, and therefore has no causal powers. This results in a paradox because the causal impotence of epiphenomena still leads to real causal effects arising from their action if we include them as elements in computational operations (Abbott 2006, 19). This inconsistency is symptomatic and results in the conclusion (see Sect. 4.2.7) that all higher physics, such as “both Newton’s laws and the solid state of matter are abstractions that nature implements under certain conditions.” (Abbott 2006, 20) In some sense Abbott’s conception is productive because it places all higher physical laws (not to mention other laws) on the same ontological level as the abstractions formed in a Game of Life type of CA. His conception of reality is only seemingly robust, however; he presumes that in a CA all that is real is the physical level (i.e. the network of cells), which, regardless of how it is realized, is ultimately an abstraction just like Newtonian physics or the solid state of matter. The trap of the most fundamental level has closed, and we can no longer convincingly tell what is truly real and what truly has causal effects. Hierarchical emergent ontology gives up the fictitiousness of the most fundamental level which would stake a claim for exclusive reality. However, it is not concerned only with the reality of micro and macrolevels (the physical and dynamic levels), but with the hierarchy of further, equally real ontological levels, as shall be further proven. Where can other ontological levels be found, hierarchically placed above the “static” and the “dynamic”? At this point, Dennett’s “design” level becomes more suitable as it enables much more than mere dynamics and the motion of patterns and shapes. To borrow Dennett’s conception of the “design” and “intentional stance”, it enables us to use the dynamic level for the intentional motion of shapes, information transfer and detection. Its elementary demonstration is the realization of the basic logic gates (AND, OR, NOT) in terms of our GOL-type automaton (see Berlekamp et al. [1982] 1985). Put simply, in the present type of automaton this happens through the use of several different generated streams of fundamental entities (gliders) and their mutual interruptions and restorations based on collisions, so

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that the result is the required function of the logic gate. The result of the logical operation is then displayed through similar means at the logic gate’s output, and may be employed in further and more complex logical operations. Given the speed of physical processors, this is not a very efficient way of realizing logical operations because the simulation is extremely time-consuming; yet there is compensation in the instructive and illustrative display of how and where to search for another ontological level. This type of ontological level thus requires not only the existence of moving entities, their appearance and disappearance, but also the establishment of a general dynamics with which basic logical operations can be designed. Yet this ontological level considerably outgrows the previous in terms of degrees of freedom, as it allows not only the motion of entities within the dynamic level but also movement in “logical space”. This dimension is markedly beyond the scope of a mere bidimensional space delineated for the motion of entities (patterns and shapes), and uses these as tools for a sort of “motion” in a new logical dimension. We may also determine the degrees of freedom for this level, as follows. Using the above basic logic gates (AND, OR, NOT) we may realize any given Boolean circuit. As AND and OR with the help of NOT are complementary, any Boolean circuit may be implemented using only two logic gates (such as AND and NOT, or OR and NOT). Thus we add two degrees of freedom, as they can be viewed as independent parameters within this level, giving a total of 5 degrees of freedom on this level. From there we may easily distinguish further possible ontological levels. Cellular automata are a type of universal automaton (like a Turing machine), 11 so that they are able to solve any algorithmizable problem. Dennett (1991) worked with the idea—still hypothetical at the time—that a Turing machine could theoretically be constructed based on a Game of Life type cellular automaton, which was proven several years later both in theory and practice (Rendell 2002). Dennett presumes that if a Turing machine can compute any computable function, it can, for example, play chess (Dennett 1991, 41), and Dennett’s favourite “intentional attitude” can then try to predict the automaton’s moves. Dennett is certainly right not only when it comes to intentionality but also about the reality of ontological levels. He does not speak directly of their multiplicity and hierarchical set-up, nor degrees of freedom, but there is no reason to doubt that this does not undermine his conception in any way. If a Turing machine can really solve any algorithmizable problem, then the degrees of freedom of other possible ontological levels must increase as a function of the number of independent parameters of each problem presented to the Turing machine discussed here. The existence of the construction of a Turing machine within a GOL-type cellular automaton is an important prerequisite for generalizing the computational options of cellular automata, as well as the hierarchy of ontological levels. Yet the

 The Game of Life cellular automaton is the first formal model proven to be collision-computationally universal (Berlekamp, Conway, Guy [1982] 1985; Adamatzky 2002).

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construction of a Turing machine within a CA is in itself not a prerequisite for these conclusions. As this type of CA can implement the aforementioned logic gates, it can implement any logic circuit. For instance, there exists a rather bizarre, yet fascinating implementation of a Game of Life (GOL2) in the environment of a Game of Life (GOL1). Individual cells and their states within GOL2 are represented by large enough squares of GOL1 cells, preserving the rules for the changes of their states. One step of the iteration of GOL2 thus takes n steps of the iteration of GOL1, but from a sufficient perspective, the GOL1 mechanisms disappear, leaving only readily discernible GOL2 cells. If the implementation of GOL2 in GOL1 is possible, then so is the implementation of GOLn in GOLn-1. The number of degrees of freedom as well as the number of ontological levels in a given hierarchy can thus be infinite.

4.4.2  Base and Emergent in GOL I have dedicated considerable space to a detailed explanation of the hierarchical ontology of levels because this is important for emergent ontology. Now I shall highlight the differences between the synchronic and diachronic distinction of base and emergent, and the conception of base and emergent in emergent hierarchical ontology. The synchronically supervenient conception of base and emergent faces the traditional problems of the downward causation, causal exclusion and causal overdetermination of emergent entities, due to the widespread belief that the causal effect of the base is enough, and the base tends to be perceived as causally privileged. In other words, in an exclusively synchronic conception of emergence, base and emergent end up in causal conflict (see Sect. 2.2). However, the diachronic approach aims to avoid all such conceptual difficulties by pointing to the fact that the base ceases to exist through a contiguous transition into the emergent, eliminating the risk of causal overdetermination; thus, there is only a diachronic distinction between what was earlier the base and what is now the emergent. This prevents the causal clash between base and emergent as there is now no need to synchronize their respective causal effects. However, new problems arise. The transformation and disappearance of entities and base properties may also cause the disappearance of the structural properties of entities which are necessary for the existence of the emergent as such, and if the emergent is transformed back into the original entities and base properties, this needs to be viewed as their re-creation, although it may seem more reasonable to presume the contrary: that the entities have been preserved within the emergent and their transformation was not absolute (see Wong 2006). Among other consequences, we need to bear in mind that this reduces the diachronic conception of emergence to a common changeability of phenomena, not requiring a constant tension between autonomy and dependency, and not being exclusively holistic (see Sect. 3.2.2). How, then, is the distinction between base and emergent conceived in hierarchical emergent ontology?

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Our departure point here is the unified framework of synchronic and diachronic aspects necessary for an adequate explanation of the processes under way (see Sect. 4.2). In other words, both synchronic and diachronic aspects are only distinguishable locally and under specific circumstances, that is, when we idealize situations so that they are analysable only diachronically or synchronically. In synchronic links, we idealize situations by analysing only timeless sections and create tension between the causal links joining base entities and the emergent, while in diachronic links we analyse only the state of base entities before and after the formation of the emergent, with the transformation – without providing a more detailed explanation of such a transformation mechanism – eliminating any relation between base entities and the emergent. An elementary example to illustrate the base-emergent relation may be found in the glider as the fundamental entity/pattern. Does this pattern meet our suggested criteria of hierarchy, autonomy, holism and persistence? It is undoubtedly a hierarchical entity because its persistent form is preserved only on levels higher than the initial static level. It persists on a given level as an autonomous entity, as it is subjected to the rules of the automaton’s iterations and manifests its identity through them. Finally, it is a holistic entity because it has properties not carried by any of its constituents (cells). It is an absolutely minimalistic, yet suitable example of elementary emergence. In (Sect. 4.2) I showed that neither a purely synchronic, nor a purely diachronic base-emergent relation makes sense. Above all, an emergent persists; in the case of a glider, four automaton iterations are needed for the form to manifest its identity and thus its autonomy on a dynamic ontological level. However, its form is constantly synchronized in relation to individual cells on the static ontological level; thus this persisting synchronicity is a necessary part of the emergent. Its diachronicity cannot be reduced merely to the state of a system before its appearance (S1) and after (S2), but as the form is constantly established over time, diachronicity is a special, persistent characteristic of emergents. The analysis of causal competences between base and emergent in this case is very illustrative. Is the existence of the pattern of a glider the consequence of the causal powers of the automaton’s cells, or is the consequence of the causal powers of the glider as a whole the fact that other cells in its environs are influenced so that the form persists? Or does some sort of causal rivalry arise between base (cells forming the pattern of a glider) and the glider pattern as a whole? These questions cannot make any sense as the form of a glider, including iteration rules, is what causally determines the future states of the automaton. Iteration rules and the initial set-up of cell values (1/0) are “holistic organization principles” determining causal effects at a given ontological level. Such questions about the causal contributions of base or emergent are irrelevant if we pose them from global positions. They may functional locally if, for example, on the dynamic level we link the glider’s causality with information transfer in the given part of the automaton; yet from a global viewpoint, causality is derivable only in relation to the highest existing ontological levels and to the fixation of the pattern in them.

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Regarding base and emergent, what is important is that no causal rivalry arises between the respective causal powers of the base and the emergent. At the same time, there is no transformation or fusion of the base into the emergent which would result in the constituents disappearing; on the contrary, base entities are part and parcel of the emergent.

4.4.3  Autonomy and Persistence in GOL The GOL cellular automaton is an exemplar of emergent processes which can be generalized through a hierarchical emergent ontology. Autonomy and persistence are evident in the ongoing operations in GOL. For persistent forms, we can predict their trajectories, “plan” and “use” their causal roles within the whole and through them solve logical and perhaps even metalogical problems. It would not be possible without the continued autonomy of the individual entities. I have proposed a unified synchronic-diachronic framework for emergent phenomena based upon a detailed analysis of the persistence of individual patterns in GOL and their mutual interactions (see Sect. 4.2). Most considerations of emergent phenomena within GOL work with the thesis of weak emergence (Bedau 1997). The absence of any analytical derivation of future states of the automaton and their achievement only through their “simulation” or “realization” is the reason behind the assertion of the weak form of emergence (Bedau, Humphreys, Chalmers) with which we dealt in Sect. 2.3. However, the rules governing cellular automaton iterations have not been sufficiently taken into account in these discussions. The argument concerned only the patterns that may appear in the GOL and their epistemological-ontological status. However, the operation of cellular automata is generally dependent upon the rules that govern each step of the iteration and according to which the value for each individual cell is evaluated. Therefore, the autonomy and persistence of patterns can be much more general if it is not directed only to a specific GOL universe but is raised in terms of all possible types of cellular automata. It includes one, two and possibly multidimensional cellular automata, including the form of all possible rules. Thanks to Stephen Wolfram’s research, we now know that the arising of such steady and autonomous patterns depends significantly upon the rules regarding whether or not some stable, autonomous structures can be created in a given “universe” of the automaton. In general, the behaviour of cellular automata based on random initial conditions can be classified into four basic classes: (1) simple uniform behaviour tends rapidly to one final uniform state; (2) several different final states, but all of the simple structures either repeat or remain the same; (3) complicated random behaviour, but structures are always at some level seen; (4) structures move between order and randomness and interact with each other in a complex way (see Wolfram 2002, 231–235). In terms of the activity of shape autonomy and persistence, the fourth class of automata is the most interesting because not only does it allow the formation of

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complex autonomous structures but their persistence is not uniform and repetitive, instead leading to complex interactions. Its behaviour falls between classes 2 and 3 and represents a random combination of repetitions of simple inhomogeneities and structurings of shapes. Perhaps we could say that the behaviour of type 4 automata oscillates between types 2 and 3. Wolfram proves that this is true not only for 1D and 2D cellular automata (one of the GOL instances) but also for a broad class of continuous automata. Yet why some of the rules are more interesting than others, and why it is impossible to recognize from mere rules the automaton’s future behaviour, are completely different questions from whether the states in a given automaton (e.g. in GOL) can be understood as autonomous. Wolfram also examines the sensitivity of individual automata (i.e., setting rules) with respect to minor changes in initial conditions (e.g. cell distribution). The results, in this case, are similar to previous conclusions about shape activity: (1) information about initial conditions disappears quickly; (2) the information is stored only locally; (3) the information spreads non-locally over a long distance; (4) as in the first case, the information can be spread over a long distance (long-range), but this is not always the case. Thus, the fourth class of automata seems to be exceptional in terms of complex behaviour. Wolfram shows how, after a long sequence of rules the gradual transformation of which has no effect on the richness of the development of randomly distributed cells and always leads to some similar steady-state (attractor), a rule suddenly appears, leading to surprisingly rich behaviour and complexity. Thus, if we look at cellular automata from a much more distant perspective, as the existence of all possible types of rules in all dimensions, then there are exceptional cases of rules that allow persistent structures in a non-trivial way, thus collectively leading to the most diverse behaviours. Let us summarize the specifics of this particular class of cellular automata: (1) moving structures necessarily appear in them (Wolfram 2002, 287); (2) they simulate the behaviour of other classes under suitable initial conditions; (3) complex structures and diverse behaviour occur in them under elementary rules; (4) the interaction between structures can lead to enormous complexity (Wolfram 2002, 291). From the perspective of HEO, it is essential that “a crucial feature of any class 4 systems is that there must always be certain structures that can persist forever in it” (Wolfram 2002, 281). Why some types of automata present complex behaviour based on simple rules could be explained by the fact that they are systems that move along the border of order and chaos. Wolfram argues, “The greatest complexity lies between these extremes – in systems that neither stabilize completely, nor exhibit close to uniform randomness forever” (Wolfram 2002, 228). The development of such an automaton cannot be dependent upon initial conditions. Complex structures are not only created under special initial conditions but also under completely arbitrary random ones. The cellular automaton quickly organizes itself into a set of definite localized structures. Yet now these structures do not just remain fixed, but instead move around and interact with each other in complicated ways. (Wolfram 2002, 228)

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Such complexity appears in a similar way in other systems on the border of order and chaos, as shown by Stuart A. Kauffman at the birth of the sciences of complexity: Complex molecular regulatory networks inherently behave in two broad regimes separated by a third phase transition regime: The two broad regimes are chaotic and ordered. The phase transition zone between these two comprises a narrow third complex regime poised on the boundary of chaos. (Kauffman 1990, 300)

Let us now think of cellular automata as being adapted to influence their rules of iteration. Depending upon some given state of the automaton (and even these parameters could eventually be subject to change over the whole spectrum of possibilities), the automaton would change some of its rules so that all possible rules are finally examined. The rules would thus become dependent upon the iteration of the states of the automaton, and if there was any feedback regarding the preservation of the most successful rules in terms of the richness of the automaton’s behaviour, then we could talk about the evolution of the system as a whole. Even such established rules, which would bind the form of the rules by which the machine is governed, would be rules in the sense of meta-rules which could themselves be subject to change. This leads, inter alia, to the rather remarkable consequence that the more universal the rules we consider, the further they stray beyond the boundaries of the system, away from the given state of the automaton. Suppose, for example, that a connection between the state of the automaton and its rules is allowed. A GOL automaton iterates its states gradually, and the glider travels through the automaton’s space. In such a case, we cannot know whether or not the glider’s current autonomy participates globally in some ontologically higher structures (such as the best move of a chess machine in a given position), nor whether the rules of the iterations themselves will or will not change. This leads us again to the aforementioned and thus far somewhat vague conclusion that universality is not locally graspable and recognizable, but requires global reflection and is therefore at the boundaries of the system as such, and not within it. Finally, the notion of weak emergence within the GOL, due to incompatibility and the need for simulation, applies only to random initial conditions (i.e., a random distribution of individual cell values). However, suppose that the initial conditions are determined by the cellular automaton simulating a chess automaton: in such a case, the positions that can occur within the chess game are finite. Subject to the rules of chess, we assume the regular development of automaton states, realized in the lower ontological level by GOL rules. Such a system is predictable and compressible. Its development is decided only by individual patterns’ autonomy and persistence, governed at different levels by different rules. A potential objection is that this example is too simplified and will not work in other emergent processes. Thus, let us apply hierarchical emergent ontology (HEO) to areas other than the GOL cellular automaton, such as in another archetypal region of emergence, the quantum phenomena associated with the motion of electrons in a strong magnetic field and at very low temperatures.

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4.5  HEO and Quantum Hall effects (QHE) Whilst avoiding an excessively detailed history of research in this field, I shall at least outline the basic facts and research tendencies, including the current theoretical consensus. The effects in question pertain to the motion of an electron in a magnetic field, while its kinetic energy is quantized into Landau levels. These levels are not contiguous but divided by gaps resulting from quantum mechanical principles. For QHE to be observed, what is relevant is the organization of electrons in a 2D layer (a semiconductor) in a strong magnetic field perpendicular to the 2D layer, and very low temperatures, close to absolute zero. Measuring the 2D semiconductor’s resistance in a direction perpendicular to the transmission of the current through the conductor, i.e. Hall resistance, then reveals a non-linear dependency on the magnetic field’s intensity, giving rise to a characteristic graph shape, illustrating the very precisely defined plateau dependency of Hall resistance. Integer quantum Hall effects (IQHE 1980) were discovered on the base energetic level; they result from the quantization of electrons’ kinetic energy. These effects may be explained through the motion of electrons as free particles. Later, fractional quantum Hall effects were discovered (FQHE 1982). These are surprising in that they result in the formation of new autonomous particles through the excitation of a whole system of electrons with specific fractional values (e.g. charges 1e/3, 2e/3). Let us recapitulate that an electron carries an electric charge, which was considered elementary; only in quarks a fractional charge (such as 1e/3) could be considered. However, quarks are strongly bound particles, generally presumed not to occur individually. Particles carrying fractional charges are thus highly exceptional. Even in FQHE the discoveries were made at the lowest Landau level (LLL). In FQHE the quantization of a single electron no longer provides sufficient explanation as there is a complex system consisting of a large number of particles, and “the quantization of the Hall resistance is that it is a universal property of a complex, macroscopic system, independent of materials details.” (Jain 2007, 1) Approximately 15 years of further research led to the conclusion that these fractional quantum effects in LLL are not manifested identically at higher energetic levels, revealing an entirely new physics (Eisenstein et al. 2000). Composite fermion theory (see Jain 2007) was introduced in an effort to provide a comprehensive explanation of all these discoveries, explaining highly complex physics even beyond the initial discoveries, encompassing IQHE within FQHE as it allows for IQHE to be deduced as a special case of the more general FQHE. “Many facets of the FQHE physics, as well as numerous related phenomena, follow directly from a single unifying principle: the formation of ‘composite fermions.’” (Jain 2007, 5) Composite fermions (CF) are a novel class of particle, formed through an electron bond with an even number of quantized vortices of magnetic flux (2,4,6). Thus, even for physicists, composite fermions are rather bizarre particles, having the extraordinary characteristics of being collective, topological and quantum. We need

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to stress that this is not merely a theoretical-mathematical model: composite fermions have been directly observed in a number of experiments and their consequences have been verified through many tests (see Jain 2007, 6). There have been multiple attempts to theoretically unify the description through virtual particles, yet the “Jain–Laughlin sequence of MFCF states (with n a positive integer) is the most robust set of fractional quantum Hall states observed experimentally.” (Shashikant et al. 2018, 2–3) Therefore I shall limit this discussion to an approach using CF. The facts are considered relevant to our discussion of ontological levels, degrees of freedom and the base-emergent relation. However, this is only part of the story. Most FQHE have been explained through free composite fermions with no mutual interactions, but for some specific situations weak interactions between CF also had to be included. Put simply, these are already states where even higher Landau levels are partially filled. New states occur here, unprecedented on the base Landau level, showing the need for a more universal and general description of FQHE. This is the Parton Paradigm for the Second Landau Level. Unlike the conventional interpretation working with free composite fermions, in this case electrons are divided into parts forming internal links (i.e. correlations). Compared with the classic interpretation, the degrees of freedom increase in number and further excitations occur – quasiparticles, quasiholes, excitons. These FQH states “depend on CF–CF interaction and their description involves extensions such as CF pair-ing/condensation [3] or additional CF degrees of freedom (‘partitions’).” (Kuśmierz et al. 2016) Thus, this is a generalized model of free composite fermions and Parton theory encompasses CF theory, producing more general topological structures than CF theory (see Jain 2019). The latest theoretical challenges include the explanation of similar phenomena observed in two thin conductive layers divided by an insulator (graphene), preventing electron tunnelling between layers. In this experimental setup we need to take into account electron interactions within layers but also between layers, given the mutual proximity of layers. What is relevant to us is that (1) the observed state sequences confirm theoretical presumptions calculated based on the composite fermion model; (2) further fractional sequences have appeared, not explicable through a simple composite fermion model; their pairing and interactions between composite fermions thus need to be included. This is a novel type of the correlated basic state, unique to graphene and the two-layer setup, not describable by a conventional CF model (Li et al. 2019). Quantum Hall effects, together with analogous effects in solid and condensed matter physics, are considered to some extent an archetype of physical emergence (Anderson 1972; Humphreys 1997a; Laughlin 1999; Lederer 2015; Falkenburg and Morrison 2015; Guay a Sartenaer 2016, among others). The crucial factor here is the number of particles (such as electrons) and their two-dimensional setup in the presence of a perpendicular strong magnetic field and extremely low temperatures. Generally speaking, the system’s behaviour is determined by the conflict between the electrons’ kinetic and interactional energy, as this system’s balance depends on a minimum energy being reached.

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When interactions dominate, each particle becomes an obstacle to the motion of all others; the hopefully simple limit of infinite interactions is in general one with a ground state which has a formidable degeneracy, and there is no intuitive way to guess how this degeneracy may be lifted when interactions become finite. A whole new world of symmetry breaking possibilities opens up, and the reductionist point of view is of little help: the properties of the whole may differ qualitatively from that of its parts. This is at the basis of the so-called emergent properties. (Lederer 2015, 27)

In a number of cases in physics, a spontaneous disruption of symmetry thus results in unusual phenomena and in characteristics of wholes which cannot be derived from the characteristics of the components directly involved in forming the wholes (e.g. superconductivity, superfluidity, ferromagnetism etc.).

4.5.1  Level Hierarchy in QHE I propose to argue in favour of the existence of hierarchical ontological levels in QHE. Admittedly, for three reasons this is a complex task: (1) degrees of freedom are difficult to determine in this area of physical phenomena; (2) there are multiple models which aim to explain the complicated behaviour of bosons or fermions in these specific cases of solid and condensed matters; (3) fractional quantum Hall effect physics is continually evolving, new discoveries are being made regarding electron correlated states, and many questions are still yet to be satisfactorily answered. Therefore I shall highlight the crucial ideas which may be represented differently in different models but the general characteristics of which should be preserved. In relation to the aforementioned cellular automaton example, it is remarkable that in quantum Hall effects we are likewise limited by 2D space; as we could observe earlier, this does not present a simplification, but limiting the electron motion to two dimensions is a fundamental aspect conditioning these physical phenomena. In this respect it is crucial that virtual particles can be understood as former fermions or bosons, acquiring “new” degrees of freedom on the new ontological level. Furthermore it can be rigorously proven that parastatistics cannot be realized in a non-­ trivial way within a local theory for D>2. More simply this means that particles obeying parastatistics and having local interactions can be described as ordinary bosons or fermions with new degrees of freedom. (Lerda 1992, 14)

Over time, this idea has become even more complex and multifaceted upon the revelation that virtual particles also form on “higher ontological levels”, whether they are composite fermions or other quasiparticles formed through their interactions, termed CF-quasiparticles, such as charged excitations, excitons, rotons, bi-­ rotons, skyrmions, spin-flip excitations, cyclotron resonance, flavour-altering excitations, etc. This mechanism may be described in more general terms as entities’ mutual interactions being forced by external (physical) conditions, and results in the formation of emergent entities carrying unusual properties not carried by their

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constituents, and also gaining new degrees of freedom on this ontological level (e.g. composite fermions behaving as free particles), while creating space for mutual interactions based on residual energy. A consequence of the formation of composite fermions is a dynamical generation of a new energy scale. Two energy scales emerge out of one. The Coulomb interaction energy of electrons splits into a “large” effective cyclotron energy and a “small” residual inter-CF interaction. (Jain 2007, 136)

Thus, new energy levels occur, which may be disregarded in the first approximation. These levels gain new levels of freedom; or, more tentatively, “something along the lines of” a new degree of freedom. This is to respect the fact that some authors use the term pseudovortex (Murthy and Shankar 2003), in order “to stress that it is an unphysical degree of freedom; however, the pseudovortex is expected to turn into a real vortex after projection into the physical sector.” (Jain 2007, 165 note 27) It is difficult to judge individual physicists’ intuitions regarding the introduction of suitable terms into their theoretical approaches, and this is not the place to decide whether or not a given theoretical model is viable. However, this situation may be analogous to the introduction of the term virtual particle, or perhaps the result of an overly instrumental interpretation of mathematical formalism: if virtual particles are interpreted as unreal entities when compared with real particles such as electrons (e.g. Gelfert 2003), we must not let so-called “home truths” (Hacking) affect us. We need to try to differentiate between physical and metaphysical “home truths”, since philosophical “truths” rooted in traditional metaphysics are “slippery and delusive” (Falkenburg 2015, 249) in this case. Likewise, we should be cautious in the other scenario, if we understand virtual particles as abstract mathematical operations leading to the correct results yet without any ontological grounding. As emphasized above, we need to bear in mind that “[c]omposite fermions have been directly observed in many experiments and their numerous consequences have been verified in repeated tests over the last decade and a half.” (Jain 2007, 6) Thus, the essence of virtual particles is their collective nature (i.e. collective excitation), not their unrealness or pseudoexistence. On the other hand, composite fermions are not the only viable solution to describe electron correlations in a strong magnetic field. Magnetic flux is quantized, and we are aware of the crucial notion that there can be particles in 2D which, once replaced, manifest a phase change – i.e. fermions or bosons. In the CF conception, an electron is bound not with magnetic flux but instead with a vortex. A key point here is that the term “vortex” or “pseudovortex” refers in this instance to a collective excitation of the whole electron system. With physical truths outweighing metaphysical ones, “the vortex is a collective, topological, quantum object. It is not a degree of freedom in the Hamiltonian but an emergent state of all electrons.” (Jain 2007, 6) Ultimately, the term “pseudo-degree of freedom” could be employed to denote the above “something along the lines of” a degree of freedom. The question of hierarchical ontological levels and increasing degrees of freedom is crucial to emergent ontology, and therefore warrants a more detailed discussion. I believe that the vortex discussion ultimately arrives at the conclusion that no matter how much the role of the vortex in the Hamiltonian may differ from a conventional degree of freedom, we

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are still entitled to view this occurrence as an increase in “freedom” in our sense, on this ontological level, as explained below. Jain first agrees with Murthy and Shankar (2003) that the vortex is not a degree of freedom as it does not have the role of a standard degree of freedom parameter in Hamilton’s equation of motion. For this reason, Murthy and Shankar use the term pseudovortex: “the vortex to emphasize its similarity to the vortices in the wave functions and the pseudo to emphasize its differences.” (Murthy and Shankar 2003, 1120) Similarly, in the degree of freedom the vortex per se is not a degree of freedom, but a quantum object which “corresponds to an excitation that can be created by inserting 2s flux quanta into the Hall system.” (Murthy and Shankar 2003, 1120) However, this does not prevent the bound state of the electron and magnetic flux in a composite fermion from acquiring properties which we may now term another pseudo-degree of freedom. This is because a composite fermion moves more or less as a free particle. Again we are forced to resort to the approximation of “along the lines of freedom”, to be specified later. Murthy and Shankar claim that we need to precisely and correctly interpret the widely accepted fact that “magnetic phenomena at T=0 can be described (to excellent accuracy) by free fermions of mass mp.” (Murthy and Shankar 2003, 1135) They believe that composite fermions cannot be free particles. This does not pose a problem for our conception of increasing pseudo degrees of freedom either, as Murthy and Shankar conclude: Composite fermions are not free fermions but are like Landau quasiparticles in a Fermi liquid. These objects, too, are labeled by free-particle quantum numbers and are long-lived. (Murthy and Shankar 2003, 1135)

We have seen that in neither case are we concerned with fundamental differences but rather with physical specifications for the purposes of the particular case. It seems evident that if a “virtual particle” as a collective particle excitation acquires freedom of motion, this is indeed “freedom” (or pseudofreedom, to continue in a similar vein), which is at the same time a dependency on the collective excitation of all entities participating in its existence. In this respect, virtual particles are exemplars of an emergent entity. They are holistic, resulting from a collective coordination of all system particles. They are autonomous, persisting as sovereign entities on a non-autonomous background, and having powers not possessed by their constituents. They are hierarchical, appearing and disappearing on an ontological level as the result of a coordinated whole, but on higher ontological levels they relapse into the initial fundamental entities, capable of their own mutual interactions and forming further wholes on higher ontological levels. This virtual particle’s autonomy persists only through coordinating the whole system’s interactions; remarkably, in this case the whole does not contain its parts, as may be required by a metaphysical “home truth”. Broadly speaking, the examples cited above from the history of QHE research all show that, to date, experimentally attested phenomena have always proven more complex than the available theoretical predictions, and the effort to explain them has required broadening the theoretical frameworks so that they can produce a wider or more diverse range of phenomena. Further, the first examination concerned the

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lowest Landau level (L0), only later considering the dependencies while filling the next level (L1). Essentially, the progress towards explaining further phenomena is closely linked to an increase in degrees of freedom, there being a difference between the degrees of freedom of particles or electron-whole pairs, those of composite fermions (that is, electrons bound to an even state of magnetic vortices), and those of other virtual particles formed on the basis of interacting composite fermions (CF-­ CF). The resulting virtual particles on ontologically higher levels manifest properties not present in their constituents, thus being exemplary emergent entities, showing the possibility of overcoming lowest-level limitations on higher ontological levels. This can be attested through the following properties of virtual particles: (a) Even a single composite fermion is a collective bound state of all electrons. It is surprising that composite fermions behave as almost free, ordinary particles to a great extent. (b) The quantum mechanical phases associated with the vortex give the composite fermion an inherently quantum mechanical character. […] (c) All fluids of composite fermions are topological quantum fluids. […] The emergence of such a complex particle is a testament to the genuinely collective character of this quantum fluid. (Jain 2007, 6)

If composite fermions behave like almost free regular particles, this comes very close to the “freedom” of a moving glider in a Game of Life type of CA. However, there are major differences: a glider is a moving cell pattern and does not have a quantum nature like a composite fermion. Yet this is not relevant if we focus on general emergent characteristics. Both of these occur on an ontologically higher level; both acquire properties which result from the collective contribution of all entities, not manifested by any one of the constituent entities. These facts suggest that more and more phenomena are occurring here on hierarchical energetic levels, controlled by the “organizing principles” of a given level and not dependent purely on the entities whose organization is governed by them. They are general principles of the whole, independent of entity type. The fundamental idea is the existence of virtual particles as excitations of the whole which prove the existence of this type of emergent phenomenon. Individual level hierarchy is then responsible for the breadth of the phenomenon class we are able to describe given particular organizing principles. Again, we can observe the absurdity of the “generativist” requirement (see Sect. 3.7), presuming that one can arrive at the whole (beehive) by correctly defining the entity (bee). Evidently it is impossible to decipher the rules for composite fermion formation from each individual electron, just as we cannot, even in principle, decipher the behaviour of the whole beehive from each individual bee.

4.5.2  Base and Emergent in QHE Considerably more entities (N→∞) are involved in forming an emergent phenomenon here than in a simple glider pattern. Even in this case there are reasons to reject both a purely synchronic and a purely diachronic conception of emergence. This

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again directly contradicts the requirements of fusion or transformational emergence, but not a synchronic-diachronic conception. The synchronic facet does not force us to create a spatial “chasm” between electrons as base and whole properties, since electrons are that whole on certain ontological levels. On the other hand, although their behaviour is strongly energetically bound through mutual interactions, low temperatures and a strong magnetic field, so that we cannot consider electrons to be free particles, still from the diachronic point of view there is no need to expect them to disappear through transformation or fusion into the emergent. Similar to the glider, electrons instead persist in a particular physical state, which—given the interactions—results in various disruptions of symmetry and a range of unusual physical phenomena such as integer (IQHE) or fractional quantum Hall effects (FQHE). Note that while the emergent phenomenon persists—being both synchronized in relation to the whole consisting of all participating electrons, and diachronically established over time—the structural properties of an electron gas as a whole are not lost. Consequently, new particles appear with highly unusual physical properties, such as fractional electron charges. Electrons directly participate in their existence, being forced to disrupt symmetries due to energetic “compromises”. However, the phenomena disappear instantly if the external physical effects on electrons as a whole disappear (cf. Anderson 1972, Laughlin 1999). These broadly defined viewpoints now need to be supported in more detail. An important part of my synchronic-diachronic conception is the presumption that constitutive entities persist within the whole, not being fused or transformed so as to cause the whole/constituents relation to disappear. On the contrary, the persistence of this internal whole/constituents relation (holism) is one of the generally discussed and required criteria of emergence. In this respect I rely on a crucial yet unusual remark by Margaret Morrison, that “microphysical entities and properties remain intact and autonomous,” which she deduces from the fact that physical “emergent phenomena are independent of any specific configuration of their microphysical base.” (Morrison 2012, 148) Let us shed more light on this issue. This does not imply that a microphysical state is quite irrelevant to the realization of an emergent phenomenon; instead, it means that the realization of the emergent properties of the whole depends on the same set of critical exponents which are more or less independent of the type of microphysical base. In solid and condensed matter physics, this is termed “universality”, expressing the fact that the properties of a system’s phase transitions do not depend on the microscopic details (“matter” or “material”) which are the source of emergent phenomena. The thermodynamic properties of a system near a phase transition depend only on a small number of features, such as dimensionality and symmetry, and are insensitive to the underlying microphysics. (Morrison 2012, 142)

Worthy of emphasis is the idea of universality, that is, that a number of different systems undergo phase changes and manifest phenomena governed by universal macroscopic principles. “Universality refers to the fact that phase transitions arising in different systems often possess the same set of critical exponents.” (Morrison

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2012, 142). I refer to universality because “[m]any different systems with completely different ‘micro’ details will exhibit the identical behaviour.” (Batterman 2002, 13) Therefore “the microscopically distinct systems can be grouped into distinct universality classes depending on the macroscopic phenomenology they exhibit.” (Batterman 2002, 43) This has two crucial implications: entity autonomy and the holistic, critical parameters of phenomena. We will discuss holistic parameters later, for now focussing on the autonomy of base and emergent.

4.5.3  Autonomy and Persistence in QHE The notion that emergent phenomena arise with the participation of their constituents, while the constituents’ autonomy is left unaffected (see Morrison 2012, 148) starkly contradicts the ideas of the proponents of fusion and transformation emergence (Humphreys 1997a, 2016a; Guay and Sartenaer 2016). On the other hand, it is in absolute accordance with my proposed approach to emergent ontology. If such phenomena are, as I shall show, independent of constituent type, depending only on the general principles of their organization, then the presumption of their fusion as a necessary step towards the emergent is redundant. If fusion were to be a necessary prerequisite for emergent processes, as presumed by transformation emergence proponents, then we would have to prove either the quantum nature of all types of emergent processes or discover some non-quantum fusion types for non-quantum entities. Moreover, fusion implies that the fused constituents need to resurface, being “recreated” from the emergent, if external influences should cease to operate (e.g. a strong magnetic field and temperatures close to absolute zero in QHE). In QHE the part-whole relation is extremely complex and we cannot simply commit to the claim that electrons remain within the whole, or that they are fully transformed into it. Perhaps these questions do not fit the case. We believe nevertheless that the suggested theoretical models to describe Hall effects do not in any way imply that the parts of the electron system should cease to exist within the whole altogether and would then be recreated from it should the physical conditions required by the whole disappear. Evidently, electrons do not exist within the whole as free particles but this alone does not imply their transformation into the emergent so that their relation as a constituent within the emergent whole would disappear. Electrons, as do other virtual particles such as CF and their excitations, continually persist in particular conditions within the emergent whole, and their causal effect, including the causal effects of their bound states with vortices in composite fermions, are then decisive with regard to the phenomena. We need to abandon misleading intuitions posing questions such as: how could an electron exist at the same time as an electron, as a bound state of an electron and magnetic field vortices, as a composite fermion, and also as a composite fermion weakly interacting with another composite fermion, and perhaps hypothetically also as another, as yet undiscovered excitation? In the GOL type of cellular automaton,

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we have seen that there are hierarchically existing ontological levels, yet they are not manifested locally. A similar conclusion may be revealed for QHE. The CF theory thus tells us how nature takes advantage of the enormous degeneracy to produce new nonperturbative structures. The fundamental effect of the repulsive interaction between electrons is to produce composite fermions; the interaction between composite fermions themselves is much weaker and can be neglected altogether to a good first approximation. (Jain 2007, 135)

Nature provides answers to questions which we pose. If in the first approximation we disregard the much weaker interactions between composite fermions, we consequently receive a corresponding answer. However, if we search for a more fine-­ grained structure, then these weaker interactions must be taken into consideration. However, this is not to say that they exist or do not exist depending on our questions; rather, it shows what is decisive for the level at hand. Thus, on a given level weaker interactions may not be relevant at all; yet this does not mean that they do not exist on another level. Fractal structures behave in a similar fashion. A locally extant electron thus cannot explain the existence of a freely moving composite fermion – that is, a collective particle, a product of the whole. Still, the particular electron must participate in this particle’s existence as a constituent. The same is true of higher ontological levels in interactions between individual CFs. Synchronicity is preserved in any given moment through the whole being synchronized in relation to the existence of the collective particle (i.e. the CF), while diachronicity is retained through the persistence of the CF on the background of all electrons as a whole. Also, collective synchronicity does not result in similar questions about the causal competence of the base or emergent. The presumption of a division of base and emergent as well as of their competence causalities is fallacious. Not only the previously mentioned CA, but also the 2D system of an electron correlation gas is a case in point of how we should view the synchronic/diachronic autonomy of base and whole in emergent ontology. Therefore, there is no need to attempt to use fusion or a similar type of transformation to eliminate the problems of the traditional conception of supervenient emergence. This allows for a formulation of critical parameters independent of the micro-constituent type, thus leading towards universal mechanisms of emergent phenomena.

4.5.4  Holism and Higher Organizing Principles If there are criteria determining the macro-behaviour of a system of a particular class, independent of the type of micro-constituents of that system, these can be termed “higher organizing principles” (Laughlin and Pines 2000), governing the emergent behaviour of the system as a whole. Solid matter physicists thus presume that there are various areas of matter organization, “levels of reality” (Kadanoff

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1986) or “protectorates” (Laughlin and Pines 2000), inert towards base level changes and only governed by these higher organizing principles. The crystalline state is the simplest known example of a quantum protectorate, a stable state of matter whose generic low-energy properties are determined by a higher organizing principle and nothing else. (Laughlin and Pines 2000, 29)

The “higher organizing principles” organizing individual ontological levels (or “protectorates”) are undoubtedly holistic characteristics with a profound effect upon those entities which form the system. In physical systems, their consequence is, in metaphorical terms, a “search of energetic compromise” within the organization of the whole system. Therefore these principles are not directly dependent upon the system’s micro-constituents, but rather on its overall organization, which is identical across the particular class or ontological level. In CA, such powerful “global constraints” (Bar-Yam 2004) are determined by the automaton’s initial conditions and iteration rules, i.e. the distribution of values for individual cells and the rules governing their further development. Here, these determine the future development of values in all other cells and may be viewed similarly to the “higher organizing principles” determining the whole system. Consequently, in higher ontological CA levels, processes are taking place which are not and cannot be locally distinguishable, yet still they have crucial causal effects over the whole system, similar to the critical parameters governing individual areas (i.e. protectorates) in condensed matter physics.

4.5.5  Emergent Dependency Both examples GOL and QHE are sufficiently different to warrant the discussion of another facet they share, namely their strong dependency on external conditions, in both cases fixing the emergent on a particular level. If a glider moves through automaton space, in local terms its persistence in all ontological levels remains the same as on the lowest dynamic level, where it may have appeared randomly, as the result of a chaotic setup of cell states, disappearing shortly after through collision with other cells. In global terms, however, on higher levels the glider is much more strongly fixed as an emergent. It is fixed in the boundary initial conditions of the states of all neighbouring cells—i.e., in fact, the automaton’s programming—and then by the external conditions of strong emergence which are locally undeducible. This is not merely a weak form of emergence, as the higher ontological level principles are not derivable in lower levels. They are not derivable through simulation either, as the automaton simulates, for example, the activity of a deterministic Turing machine, which can solve any given algorithmizable problem. Thus, an emergent and its behaviour are not only fixed through local automaton rules (weak emergence), but also through strong system-external conditions which in themselves are fixed by the computation problem rules.

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For instance, if a Turing machine construed in a CA plays a game of chess, as discussed by Dennett (1991, 41), then the motion of an individual glider is locally indistinguishable from the motion of a glider formed spontaneously in a random cell distribution; yet globally its motion is part of a much more extensive structure searching for the best move in the given position. That is why it is moving in a particular part of the automaton and not elsewhere. Both perspectives, local and global, are not only a way of envisaging the transformation of the automaton’s states, but also real ontological actions which are, in fact, taking place. For example, locally a glider moves through space towards another stream of gliders, colliding with them and interrupting this stream. This transmits information which is recorded as a gap in another persisting glider stream. On a higher ontological level, as a result of this a much more complex and sophisticated setup of cells, e.g. the logic gate AND, records an output value which would not have appeared otherwise. Finally, on a still higher ontological level, a pattern simulating a chess automaton is caused to send a glider chain representing the most advantageous move in the given chess position. Thus, we cannot claim that it is only the glider’s motion, or even only the activity of individual cells on a static level which is real, while the other levels are virtual. They all take place over time and are all equally real, ontologically speaking. Thus emergents are hierarchical entities distributed across ontological levels. Similarly, we can also consider electrons in quantum Hall effects (both IQHE and FQHE). Here the reflections are more hypothetical since the individual entities’ motion is not as clearly visible as in CA, and to make any claims about individual electrons’ local motion may be rather misleading. In this case CA present a suitable illustrative example for reflections upon QHE.  It seems justified to presume that local electron interactions are no more real than the physical characteristics of composite electrons or of the total sum of particles which act as a united whole in relation to external conditions, disrupted symmetries resulting from the search for whole-system energetic equilibrium. We may therefore argue that no electron is directly locally involved in the existence of virtual particles with fractional charge values; and at the same time that globally virtual particles exist in the electron medium in given conditions, being just as real as electrons, any doubts about their reality have been refuted in (Sect. 3.1.1).

4.6  HEO and the Neural Networks of the Mind (NNM) Finally, let us apply to the mind and brain the emergent ontology outlined above. As the fields of neurophysiological research, cognitive science, psychology and neurology – i.e. neuroscience – are extremely broad, we shall consider only a selected set of relevant findings which have either been sufficiently accepted by the scientific community or are at the centre of current debate. Even as regards the latter, the aim is to apply the hierarchical emergent ontology of individual emergence levels and criteria in order to test whether the suggested structure is flexible enough for the

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purposes of explanation even in the complex environment of brain structure, and the ephemeral domain of mental states. The two previously discussed examples, namely (1) GOL-type cellular automata and (2) quantum Hall effects in electron gas (QHE), are strikingly different from the neurophysiological brain structure. The environment in which both of these occur is limited to two spatial dimensions (2D), and the entities forming complex phenomena in these cases are identical on the initial ontological level. From this perspective, however, brain structure is significantly different. The brain as an evolved biological organ is incomparable to any other organ or artefact in terms of its structural and functional complexity, and its fundamental structure is a network of mutual synapses between cell structures – neurons. Therefore, I shall be referring to the neural network of the mind (NNM) because the structure of mutual neuron connections can be considered relevant in physiological, functional, and probably also mental terms. I use neural network to mean exclusively this general model of the “biological” brain, not specific computer models of neural networks. However, it is to be noted that neural network does not mean a particular network linked in neuroscience to the empirical discoveries of various types of networks, such as a default mode network (DMN), central executive network (CEN) and other types of large-scale brain network (LSBN). These network types vary in their extent, encompassing a large number of functionally linked brain areas, and are defined through their functions. They may share identical physiological parts of the brain, overlap, have causal influence over each other, mutually negatively correlate (if one network is activated, the other’s activity decreases), and if needed, they may also activate or “recruit” other parts of the NNM. Unlike this, neural network is understood as a physiological structure of bonds which “hosts” the individual activities of neurons, neuron groups and populations, extensive individual networks etc. Despite the vast importance of individual discoveries of the parts of this structure and functionality, let us now abstract from these individualities towards a metaphysically idealized complex organ, viewing the neural network of the mind in its entirety. It is a 3D structure composed of various components of various sizes, each specializing in a different topological structure of the brain in order to fulfil various functions but at the same time capable of mutual coordination and cooperation. A key fact is that the connections on the lower levels of these components are not fixed but instead they dynamically transform, depending on various causes. For as long as it survives a brain is known to preserve synaptic plasticity—to various degrees of intensity depending on age—which enables the formation of new synaptic connections and the discarding of those which are unnecessary or infrequently used. As a result, even some partial functionalities of the network may in some cases be replaced or moved to other brain parts, such as in the case of brain injury. Likewise, the interaction between individual computational brain components is not of a single type: it is a combination of electrical and chemical interactions enabling the modulation of individual parts as well as of the whole network; thus, the resulting complexity of interaction coordinated in this way is incomparable to the two previous examples. Considering that there is no entity known to manifest a higher

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complexity in terms of its structure and functionality than the human brain, the effort to test emergent ontology in such a case is understandable. I shall show how this verification leads not only to the consistency or inconsistency of HEO with the NNM, but may also lead to some testable predictions. The following section focuses in some detail on how the neural network functions, as this may be relevant to some later conclusions, drawing upon published information regarding its structure and emphasizing both the well-known and some less frequently discussed facts which are vital to its functionality.

4.6.1  The Neuron as a Fundamental Entity in NNM Since we need to demonstrate how the number of degrees of freedom increases towards the top of the inverted pyramid of ontological levels, we need to establish a basic entity robust enough to preserve its identity on a particular ontological level. Regarding information transfer within the brain, this fundamental entity is the neuron, connecting to form more complex wholes; in the various levels, the connections between various numbers of neurons create sub-networks, activated in specialized activities. Morphologically speaking, there are estimated to be at least around fifty neuron types (see Edelman and Tononi 2001, 38), differing both in shape and placement in the brain; yet functionally, all neurons are identical, and can be characterized as having very limited options for communication with other neurons. As regards the transfer of information towards another neuron upon neuron activation, essentially neurons communicate through an electric discharge of fixed value when they are activated, sending this impulse to connected neurons; otherwise, the neuron’s activity is subdued and there is no activation. In sum, they communicate digitally: excitation or inhibition (1/0). In this sense, the functionality of the basic entity is identical to the possibilities of entities in the previous two examples. In a cellular automaton, a cell is metaphorically speaking either alive or dead (1/0); in electron gas, a given position contains either an electron or a hole (1/0). Given the diversity of phenomena occurring on the higher ontological levels of all the discussed cases, this initial minimalism of options on the initial ontological level is truly remarkable. However, a neuron does not merely repeat a signal which it receives and forwards. Owing to its connections to a number of other neurons, it is a place where a “decision” is made about sending or not sending a further signal. It is not entirely clear how a neuron “assesses” activity at the input and how it “calculates” its further activity based upon it, but presumably this result is to a large degree dependent upon the “sum” of the activities of individual pre-synaptic terminals, terminating the axons of hundreds to thousands of other neurons connected to the neuron at hand. As regards information transfer between neurons at this ontological level, the basis of synapses is irrelevant, yet it should be mentioned, since due to the various types of receptors on the part of the postsynaptic neuron, so-called postsynaptic potential can be modulated either through excitation (EPSP) or inhibition (IPSP). Consequently, the electric signal is transferred to a particular type of chemical

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signal, which in turn opens ionic channels to either increase or decrease the postsynaptic potential, thus increasing or decreasing the probability of the following neuron’s action potential, i.e. whether or not this neuron will forward the signal through its axon. Thus, postsynaptic potential differs from action potential in three aspects: (1) it is gradual and decreases with distance and time; the resulting combination or “sum” of individual contributions is therefore dependent on the distance between connected synapses and the postsynaptic neuron, as well as on the time frame within which the activity in individual synapses occurs; (2) postsynaptic potential (0.5–5 mV) is much lower than the action potential (threshold value -55mV), so that the activity of a single synapse is not enough to create a postsynaptic potential which would cause the target neuron to reach the threshold value for action potential; the individual contributions of the postsynaptic potential may be excitational or inhibitional, so that the activity of connected neurons is combined in various ways to the probability of reaching the action potential threshold value (see Banich and Compton 2011, 36). As we will see, what is crucial in this mechanism is that it is mostly the inhibitory relations which have the decisive role, being the source of the complex behaviour of the entire neural network. Thus, active neurons can not only activate other neurons, but also inhibit them, so that they are not involved in a particular pattern. We can see that the description of neuron activity as a digital system is correct, as the action potential of individual neurons remains identical and cannot increase or decrease with distance;12 yet the interlude during which it is decided whether a particular neuron will reach the threshold value (-55 mV) is an extremely complex process including the calculation of hundreds or thousands of synaptic connections with their excitational and inhibitional contributions at various distances and times from a specific part of the neuron cell (the axon hillock), where the neuron’s action potential is formed.

4.6.2  Intensity in NNM Neurons are able to code the intensity which they “sum up” on postsynaptic potential, and transfer information on the intensity of this stimulus. Since action potential always remains the same, they employ the frequency of occurrence of repeated action potential within a unit of time. The information on stimulus intensity is thus transferred to other neurons. Measurements have indicated that a typical neuron is reactivated 5–50 times per second, (upper limit is generally about 200 times per second; see Banich and Compton 2011, 38), apparently in relation to the degree of stimulus or through autoactivation. Although our idea of a neuron communicating

 The phases of the action potential of the cycle of an activated neuron remains identical: -70 mV, -55 mV, +40 mV, -80 mV, -70 mV.

12

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digitally (1/0) remains correct, there seems to be another way of transferring information about the value of the original stimulus. Note that at the level of information transfer 0/1, a neuron is unable to control the frequency of discharge of its action potential. Therefore, we need a broader temporal frame reflecting this frequency. Another important fact is that there is an upper limit imposed on this frequency: a neuron is presumed to be able to spike a maximum of approximately 200 times per second. This limit is due to the type of chemical processes necessary for the reactivation of postsynaptic connections. There are sophisticated mechanisms for accelerating the reactivation and preparing synapses for further activity (see Banich and Compton 2011, 38), but the upper limit to the frequency of potential activity per second cannot be overcome. This is important as it implies that the digital nature of information transfer in a network cannot be disrupted—such as through a permanent connection in the event of a connection being overloaded—and at the same time this determines the ultimate velocity of sequential information transfer.

4.6.3  Synaptic Connection Types in NNM The logic underlying the connection of the brain’s neural network cannot be idealized through the synaptic connection of the axon-dendrite type (i.e. the axodendritic synapse). In fact, presynaptic terminals are connected not only to dendrites but some of them also to neuron bodies (via an axo-somatic synapse), or even to their axons (the axo-axonic synapse). In other words, the axon-dendrite synaptic connections are considered the norm but virtually any combination of synaptic connections is possible: dendrite-dendrite, axon-axon, dendrite-axon. From the viewpoint of calculating the threshold value of individual neurons’ action potential, this may seem to make little sense; however, later I shall explain the efficiency of such links. Another remarkable component in terms of their chemical synapses are the electric synapses (which utilise the “gap junction”). These connect nearby cell bodies through channels, enabling virtually immediate change to electric potential, and function bidirectionally. They were formerly presumed to be more prevalent in the nervous systems of invertebrates and lower animals than in mammals. Recently, however, they have been found to play an important role in establishing and maintaining neural circuits and amplifying signals during their motion across the cerebral cortex (Pereda 2014; Dong et al. 2018). Even this kind of bidirectional electric synapse is relevant to the functionality of higher ontological levels, where cyclical co-ordinations are employed and immediate electric potential change is required. As regards HEO this element may be understood as an independent degree of freedom, without whose causal effect on the entire network more complex behaviours could not be attained. Another unusual connection type is the autapse, a synaptic connection which is still underexamined. “Autapse is an unfamiliar synapse, which happens between the axon and soma of the same neuron, and forms a time-delayed self-feedback

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mechanism.” (Yilmaz et al. 2016) This is not the only case of such a connection: in some brain parts (the neocortex specifically) this synapse type is formed by >80% of neurons (Yilmaz et al. 2016). This connection may seem slightly counterintuitive at first sight, yet it endows the brain’s neural network with functions which it could never otherwise obtain. Generally speaking, an autapse as a feedback connection has inhibitory or excitational effects on the neuron, with varying efficiency depending on the type of chemical or electrical bond. Experiments on computer models of neural networks have shown autapses to influence the behaviour of both individual neurons and whole network segments, such as enabling a precise tuning of the timing of inhibitory interneurons, affecting resting, periodic and chaotic states of network areas of various sizes, and ultimately resulting in “the emergence of multiple CR (MCR) phenomena induced by information transmission delay.” (Yilmaz et al. 2016) Yilmaz and colleagues have examined the effect of autapses in computer models of neural networks and found that the above coherent resonances did not occur without autaptic connections in the network. This is a finding of major importance since the autapse is revealed to be an element which has substantial impact upon network behaviour at higher ontological levels, and from the viewpoint of HEO, autapses need to be viewed as another degree of freedom and hence a source of more complex system behaviour. However, in the model example only one modelled chemical autapse was used for each neuron, while actually a neuron can have multiple autapses of different kinds (chemical and electrical); consequently the researchers stated their intention for their future research to take into account of the impact of hybrid synapses in each neuron. Autapses turn out to be the source of non-linear network behaviour (that is, of both the brain neural network and its partial computer models), thus resulting in phenomena similar to phase transitions in physics. Often in recent research of this type, what has been tested is the idea that states of consciousness and unconsciousness may be linked to a particular type of non-linear behaviour in the brain’s neural network, consciousness resulting from phase transitions similar to those known in physics (see. e.g. Werner 2013; Fontenele et al. 2019). This finding is highly relevant to us, as shall become clear. The tripartite synapse is another type of neural network connection which integrates the influence of glia, cells which were long considered to be merely part of the brain’s neural network support system. Since the 1990s, however, it has been known that “experimental evidence suggests that some glial cells also interact closely with neurons and participate in the regulation of synaptic neurotransmission” (Araque et al. 1999, 208). This can result in bidirectional communication between neurons and glial cells, e.g. astrocytes, neurotransmitters released from synapses able to activate astrocyte receptors (i.e. neuron-astrocyte signalling). Next, the increased chemical concentration spreads wave-like among astrocytes (i.e. astrocyte-astrocyte signalling). Astrocytes are closely linked with synapses and in this case they act as modulation components (see Araque et al. 1999, 213). This overview of the fundamental units and their basic communication methods in a neural network has turned out greatly more diverse than readers may have

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anticipated. One of the reasons for this brief introduction is that it should convince us that similar to cellular automata and electron gas in 2D, we have fairly good knowledge of the qualities of the individual entities and potential connections between them. Still, it is unimaginable that there could be a way of deriving, deducing or calculating the resulting behaviour of the brain’s neural network as a complex whole based on these comparatively simple principles. In the case of the brain, we might object that the functionality of a system consisting of roughly 100 billion neuron cells, of which 30 billion neurons and 1 million billion synapses are to be found in the cerebral cortex alone (Edelman and Tononi 2001, 38), cannot be calculated or deduced, given the frequency of neurons and synapses, although the quantity of entities and their synapses as such is not what prevents the deduction or derivation in principle: despite possessing detailed knowledge of the individual entities’ functionalities, we cannot, even in principle, deduce, derive or calculate the resulting behaviour of the whole network. To illustrate why, let us examine a small neural network (around 30 neurons) in a lobster’s stomatogastric ganglion, directing two functionally different types of movement in its stomach. Even in this simple network it has been necessary to employ computer simulations in order to understand the properties of the network as a whole, since one part of the system was found not to have a group of endogenous oscillatory cells as its primary drive “but instead develops its rhythm as an emergent property of the network as a whole” (Selverston et al. 1976, 286). Thus, the main factor is not the frequency of neurons and their synapses but rather the nature of the interconnections of the whole network, which given a certain degree of complexity result in unpredictable behaviour. Again, similar to quantum Hall effects, this is a form of “higher organizational principles” governing the whole network, which are not derivable or calculable from the network’s components alone. For this reason, in an autapse (i.e. a synapse in which a neuron’s axon is connected back to the neuron’s body) we may presume that as a feedback it will either mute or amplify the neuron’s resulting output, but there is no way at the current state of maths and biophysics to calculate this effect in terms of a more extensive and non-trivially interconnected network. Thus, most experimental research is conducted on model computer-simulated networks, which are considerably simpler and smaller, thus allowing us to verify the properties of the whole network and examine the parameters upon which its behaviour depends, but failing to explain how such a complex system can be formed in the first place in order to attain the required behaviour.

4.6.4  Brain as the Home of NNM Presuming that the brain, like any other organ, is the product of evolution, the solution seems fairly simple. The brain’s neural network is formed at different speeds within different stages of evolution, but in contrast to prior presumptions it has

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recently been confirmed that it retains sufficient plasticity throughout and remains able to react to a number of different influences. Owing to this evolutionary mechanism we may presume that the basic structure is formed according to a genetically predetermined plan but with particular individual connections forming more or less randomly at the preliminary stage and, due to the dynamics of neuroplasticity and brain reorganization, only verified and functional structures are preserved (e.g. Dehaene 2014; Berkes et al. 2011). From this perspective, then, the brain is a highly dynamic structure, adjusting evolutionarily, reactively, adaptively, as well as through repair, on all levels ranging from synaptic through modular to multimodular (cf. Ramachandran 2011). The structure of synaptic connections may resemble programmes developed through evolution (genetic algorithms and genetic programming), which ultimately do what they are supposed to do, but their code structure is not entirely optimized; they may contain various duplicities, repeats and loops, i.e. functionally superfluous steps, as the residue of their trial-and-error evolution. In a similar vein, Churchland and Sejnowski claim that “the computational solutions evolved by Nature may be quite unlike those that an intelligent human would invent, and they may well be neither optimal nor predictable from orthodox engineering assumptions.” (Churchland and Sejnowski 1992, 8) However, neural Darwinism  – i.e. the thesis that “the brain is a selective system more akin in its working to evolution than to computation or information processing” (Edelman 1987, 25) – does not contradict brain efficiency in the case of information processing. Thus, we may presume that the details of the connections are not decisive, and in principle individual synapses do not make any difference. What matters is the resulting functionality of the greater part of the neural structures and their mutual cooperation. Regarding the structural and functional organization of the brain and the property of consciousness, our starting point is those theories of contemporary neurobiology which present an essentially equivocal and synthesizing approach to the brain as a complex set of specialized unconscious networks, among which consciousness arises in a globalized workspace which places its temporary content at the disposal of cooperating and competing sub-networks, while subsequently integrating these sub-networks. This is a very general outline of the principles of the “Global Workspace Theory” (Baars 1988; Baars and Franklin 2003), or “Neuronal Global Workspace” (Dehaene et al. 2001; Dehaene et al. 2003), or “The Brainweb” (Varela et al. 2001), the further development of which uses various mathematical models, ranging from renormalization theory of phase transitions to network theory (e.g. Wallace 2005); structurally it emphasizes “levels of organization” (micro-meso-­ macro) (e.g. Churchland and Sejnowski 1992) while functionally it emphasizes the rhythmicity and multiplicity of neural oscillations (Buzsáki 2006; Le Van Quyen 2011). In accordance with these empirical-theoretical approaches we shall now apply the principles of emergent ontology to this field.

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4.6.5  Level Hierarchy in NNM At the initial ontological level our starting point is the 3D neural network structure as outlined above, formed at a given ontological level by fundamental13 entities, i.e. neurons and their connections. The complexity of synaptic connections as well as their chemical and electrical operation can be disregarded at this stage, given that their role is one of modulation, enabling the network to attain a remarkable degree of synchronization and coordination. Focussing solely on neurons and their activations/excitations and deactivations/inhibitions, we obtain a certain pattern, located in the three-dimensional space of the brain’s neural network. Our idealized notion of the brain as an intricately interconnected 3D network illustrates the differences between the resulting states of this network as follows: some of the billions of neurons are gradually activated and deactivated, forming various 3D patterns of active and inactive cells. Significantly, it is not only the active neurons which are relevant to information transfer. Dehaene emphasizes this primarily in relation to conscious content, but we may presume this to be true for unconscious states of the brain network as well: It is crucial to understand that, in this sort of coding scheme, the silent neurons, which do not fire, also encode information. Their muteness implicitly signals to others that their preferred feature is not present or is irrelevant to the current mental scene. A conscious content is defined just as much by its silent neurons as by its active ones. (Dehaene 2014, 179)

No less crucially, it is inhibitory neurons which play a decisive role in the behaviour of the neural network, inhibition being the source of non-linear phenomena in the network, which are difficult to predict: “inhibition introduces ‘hard-to-predict’ nonlinearity in cortical circuits” (Buzsáki 2006, 62). The inhibitory function is therefore essential for the emergence of the network’s diverse behaviour. Employing activational neurons only would result in constantly identical activity patterns for all active neurons, while employing inhibitory circuits causes oscillations, correlations and nonlinear behaviour in the network. Sudden changes to network behaviour have the characteristics of phase transitions, similar to a broad category of second order phase transitions in solid and condensed matter physics (superconductivity, superfluidity, ferromagnetism etc.), which, as we have seen, are also involved in the formation of fractional quantum Hall effects. If we wish to outline the brain neural network as a set of changeable 3D patterns, formed through the gradual activation and deactivation of individual neurons, we need to stress the dynamic nature of this changeability. We also need to take into account the time frame within which the patterns arise. What are the options for this dynamic determined by the physiological properties of individual neural network components? We know that in dendrites, inputs are gradually assessed; that usually a neuron is repeatedly activated (i.e. “spikes“) roughly 5–50 times per second; the inhibitions of  Please note the emergent ontology principles mentioned above, which imply that a fundamental entity in a particular ontological level may itself be an emergent entity, or a compounded entity.

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individual neurons are equally as important as excitations (Dehaene 2014; Buzsáki 2006); to the common types of synapses we must add autapses as feedback-­ correlating elements allowing for non-linear behaviour within the network. Extensive network areas may become mutually correlated and sudden bifurcation changes may occur, i.e. step changes between individual patterns of active and inactive neurons. This is a type of phase change transforming the persisting pattern into another, whereby the brain’s neural network becomes able to attain dynamic correlation between individual, specialized brain parts. What time frames and scales are important with regard to neuron activations and deactivations, and thus sequential changes in 3D patterns in a network? Detailed empirical research shows that the following facts are important for time frames within which individual patterns are established in the global workspace. The brain has a time lag of at least one-third of a second behind reality (e.g. Dehaene 2014); at the microlevel, a neuron spikes within the range of 1ms – 10ms; at the mesolevel of local neural subnetworks, between 10 ms–200 ms; and at the macrolevel of the global workspace, >100ms – 500ms (e.g. Le Van Quyen 2011, 58). The P3 wave of brain activity, whose peak occurs after roughly 300ms in each conscious perception or introspection, is considered one of the neural correlates of consciousness (Dehaene 2014). From a computational perspective, the brain is a comparatively “slow” tool, operating within milliseconds (10−3), while common electronic computers operate within nanoseconds (10−9). Worthy of note is that the patterns established through neuron excitations and inhibitions cannot be viewed statically; the dynamic of transforming patterns is necessary. Individual specialized subnetworks, such as the aforementioned stomatogastric ganglion, form oscillations through which they are able to govern regularly repeated actions, to correlate with other networks, etc. From the viewpoint of emergent ontology, we are dealing with a fundamental ontological level of neurons with their digital functionality, the “degree of freedom” of this particular level being relatively low. A neuron can either “spike” (1) or “be silent” (0). With regard to the number of degrees of freedom in CA and in QHE, this level of the brain’s neural network is identical. At a higher ontological level, taking into account connectivity and the timing of neuron activation and inhibition, we attain many more degrees of freedom since the properties of the whole network are manifested, having a profound holistic effect. The decisive factor here is the modulations of mutual correlations between network parts, leading to various types of activity in individual circuits, which in turn are employed by other neurons, such as to control skeletal or smooth muscles. So far we have only discussed the elementary capacities of a limited number of mutually connected neurons which have been examined in connection with the physiological, unconscious functions of organisms. As regards the conscious and cognitive functions of the brain, further ontological hierarchy levels need to be involved, where largescale brain dynamics are decisive. The increasing number of degrees of freedom at the higher levels of brain ontological levels is linked to how “each of these levels is a complex function of its lower level constituents and, at the

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same time, is embedded in a large-scale organization.” (Buzsáki 2006, 57) Thus, information is included in various oscillations, coexisting on many different spatial and temporal scales. We can see that the hierarchy is not merely structural and spatial (micro-meso-macro) but likewise functional and temporal: based on a single neuron’s activity we cannot derive or specify all the oscillations of the network which result in the network’s behaviour. How does the number of degrees of freedom increase in these ontological levels? As previously stated, ontological levels are not identifiable merely by the spatial setup of the microlevel, mesolevel and macrolevel. If we focus on the microlevel and the activation or inhibition of neurons, there is one degree of freedom. If we extend the temporal scale to one second, we can accordingly extend the number of degrees of freedom by the “intensity” of neuron activation (roughly 1–200). Moving on to the mesolevel, where variously extensive, local and specialized networks are employed (e.g. the stomatogastric ganglion, networks governing movement, sensory perception etc.), we need to take into account the mutual effects of network parts, with spontaneous neuron activations in this case driving the network activity. This is correlated and governed by the network for the required oscillations and allows, for example, for switching between various modes or cycles. As noted above, even in these relatively simple networks (c. 30 neurons) holistic network effects may occur which are not in principle predictable from the reductionist perspective. Thus, even these simple networks are characterized by the manifestation of “higher organizing principles”, which are emergent, meeting the criteria of holism, hierarchy, autonomy and persistence. They serve as proof of the holistic parameters of the network as a whole, occurring on a higher ontological level than their constituents, being autonomous and retaining this autonomy within time periods. This can be verified by ongoing research based on advanced visualization methods, allowing us to observe how wide-scale dynamic patterns of neural activities are responsible for complex states of behaviour. For instance, a recent study proved that dissociative agents elicited a 1–3 Hz rhythm in layer 5 neurons of the retrosplenial cortex. An unusual and distinctive rhythm of a part of the network and its simultaneous disconnection from most other brain areas, including a notable inverse correlation with frontally projecting thalamic nuclei, can be considered a convincing causal link with the mental macrostates at hand (Vesuna et al. 2020). “Higher organizing principles” are thus able to organize the network in dynamic temporal rhythms, causing unusual mental manifestations at higher ontological levels, such as disrupting the integrity of inner experience and causing sensations of out-of-body existence. Verification of the causal link with such states can be conducted chemically (e.g. using ketamine) or by light-activating neurons, as was the case in the study described. The rhythmicity of the particular network area is therefore a verifiable cause and one of the independent parameters of an increasing number of degrees of freedom.

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4.6.6  Base and Emergent in NNM Here again we may demonstrate the relationship between base and emergent. In terms of a single neuron’s functionality there is no change: the neuron does not fuse with other neurons into an emergent whole but on the contrary preserves the structural properties of a neuron as a cell, requiring at this lower ontological level the complexity of other biological processes which help preserve its structural and functional identity (i.e. keep it alive). In this case, however, there are no emergent processes ensuring the cell’s existence as the cell is a symbiotic organism; in terms of emergent ontology, it is a compounded organic entity whose individual and various components closely cooperate. For emergent ontology, the nature of the mechanisms and the structure of the entity involved in the emergent process at a given level are both irrelevant. The downward-pointing tip of the inverted pyramid can be identified in any given entity which is sufficiently rigid or robust to manifest some minimal activity and enter into relations with entities similar to itself. In other words, a cell – in this case, a neuron  – preserves its autonomy in a particular ontological level. On a higher level, however, it is simultaneously part of forming patterns which manifest highly characteristic features over time, and can transform either cyclically or subject to other inputs and co-ordinations with other network parts.

4.6.7  Autonomy and Persistence in NNM Similarly, we may also consider autonomy and persistence. The patterns forming dynamically in the NNM need to manifest sufficient autonomy and persistence in order not to disappear and to remain robust enough. The contemporary approach to brain activity rejects the idea of the brain as a purely reactive organ, reacting mainly to external stimuli; in relation to the recent discovery of autonomous neural subnetworks (e.g. Default Mode Network DMN, Raichle et al. 2001) it instead emphasizes the spontaneous persistent activity of the brain which generates its own random activity patterns. In this regard, “[a]utonomy is the primary property of the nervous system.” (Dehaene 2014, 189) Autonomy not only concerns spontaneous internal activity but it also provides a special status to individual network parts and individual cells. It is the inhibitory system which ensures the cooperation between interneurons at the same level, enabling the individual parts of the structure to perform various basic functions, such as pattern completion and pattern separation, in addition to functions related to the concepts of integration and differentiation. The “‘goal’ of inhibition is to provide the required spatiotemporal autonomy (segregation) for groups of pyramidal cells to execute a given function.” (Buzsáki 2006, 65–69) This implies the existence of hierarchized autonomies not only dependent upon the spatial setup of individual specialized subnetworks but also the existence of

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autonomies which are interwoven with the time scales of individual embedded oscillations. Large-scale integration then presumes that integration occurs through a reciprocal connection of networks based on phase synchronization, through bottom­up and top-down activities integrating endogenous and internal effects (Varela et al. 2001). Phase synchronization thus presumes effects in both directions (top-down and bottom-up), resulting in ontologically autonomous (i.e. holistically emergent) network behaviour which cannot be explained at the microscopic level solely through individual neuron behaviour. Phase synchronization is also a way of overcoming the philosophically “artificial” problem of downward causality. The point is that “upward and downward causations cannot be defined independently of each other; they are co-determined.” (Le Van Quyen 2011, 59) This can present a valuable lesson for many metaphysical conceptions of causality since causal autonomy in this case is not attributed only to an emergent entity or only to the base, but to the co-determined autonomy of the state of the whole network. A holistic approach to the network emphasizes the integrity of phase synchronization of causal contributions by individual specialized subnetworks which are integrated with the causal effect of external stimuli on a wide scale. It would be peculiar to insist that intuitive metaphysical “home truths” tell us that there must be causal conflicts between the causal powers of the base (bottom-up) and autonomous causal powers of the emergent (top-down), or similarly, that the phase synchronized state of the network is overdetermined because the current state of the network should be causally affected not only by the base but also by the emergent, i.e. the whole network. Such an idea is due to reductionist conceptions, where each part of the whole brings its partial causal influence, and only their sum and nothing else leads to the resulting phenomena at the level of the whole. I have previously remarked that there may be strong systemic restrictions which are not derivable from individual parts, and only in accordance with these restrictions can a part participate in the whole. These “boundary conditions”, “global restrictions”, or “higher organizing principles” may vary in their nature but their function is essentially identical in that they “negotiate” the causal integrity of the whole and its parts. Here again each element of the network, be it an individual neuron, locally specialized set of neurons, or even higher, the structural wholes of networks, may contribute its bottom-up causation only through being in accordance with causal integrity of the whole network in which it participates. One of these mechanisms is the phase synchronization of large-scale integration, through which such co-determined accordance is attained. The function of consciousness in this structured unity of the brain is derived by scholars from partial individual autonomies of unconscious neural units which link individual information sources and become interconnected within Global Workspace through a sudden phase transition. Phase transition causes the transformation of these autonomies and a new Global Workspace autonomy appears. Thanks to the global neuronal workspace, information can be shared freely across the modular processors of our brain. This global availability of information is precisely what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.” (Dehaene 2014, 168)

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In understanding the network interactions between neural units we may also see an opportunity to understand the neural representations of objects and abstract phenomena including language, and how these are transformed and shared within the network. Again, an autonomous intraregional dynamic is presumed here, developing autonomously without interregional interactions and later is mediated through the dynamic of interregional interactions (Ju and Bassett 2020). Not only autonomy but also the persistence of states and patterns is necessary within such coordinated neural network dynamics. Through the mechanism of phase transitions, the neural system evolves dynamically in its configurative space; the authors list three observed types of neural system behaviour: attracting dynamics, complex trajectories and hierarchical dynamics (Ju and Bassett 2020). Attractors are linked with the idea that neural representation and memory are dependent on the persistence of representations. Neural representations need a certain degree of stability in order to be stored in the memory. Complex trajectories arise as temporal sequences of phase state transitions, thus being dynamic representations which change over time. Their persistence, during which they remain autonomous, is thus decisive in enabling them to be placed in a given sequence. Finally, dynamic representations also have a hierarchical structure, ranging between several neurons, multiple representations—formed by sequences persisting over time—and the hierarchy of dynamic representations (see references to individual studies in Review Ju and Bassett 2020).

4.7  HEO and Consciousness Hierarchical emergent ontology (HEO) has been applied to three domains – cellular automata (CA), quantum Hall effects (QHE) and the neural network of the mind (NNM) – in order to test and prove its universal nature. However, showing that sufficiently general statements are in accordance with particular empirical phenomena is only part of the story; we may also try to use this as the basis for predictions which could be empirically verified. Indeed, it is rare for a metaphysical conception—such as HEO—to seek to predict empirically verifiable consequences, thus venturing into the territory of scientific hypotheses or theories. However, this view, nurtured by the continuous dichotomy between science and metaphysics, is no longer sustainable and we may happily subsume it under the “home truths” mentioned above. A present-day metaphysician can no longer rely on the intuitions of supposed profound truths about the world, cherishing the impression that these very intuitions are able to protect science from error: therefore, we first need to set some well-grounded limits to scientific practice. Current metaphysics, which has a naturalistic focus and develops in close cooperation with science, is instead characterized as a search for a shared perspective, through which the highly differentiated and specialized ventures of each specific science may be viewed. To some extent, then, this is the well-known search for

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scientific unity, but conducted in a vastly different manner. To date, most attempts have been reductive, presuming the need for a unifying criterion to be applied easily to some sciences, less easily to others, but more or less in an identically unifying way. I work on the basis that nature is subject to certain types of universal regulations whose instances are unique to particular fields yet remain generally recognizable and easily grasped, and can be employed as universal principles. One of these identifiable principles is the principle of evolution, which cannot be viewed as a purely biological mechanism only to be analogically employed in other areas; instead, it needs to be viewed as a universal principle and hence applied in all cases in which the required conditions are met. Evolution in biology is therefore only one of many instantiations of this universal principle. Another similar principle is that of emergence; HEO views it as an equally universal principle. In summary, evolution and emergence are two types of mechanism resulting in the formation of complex structures in the world, and without them we are unable to explain the existence and functioning of many natural phenomena. With regard to the relationship of mind and brain, HEO presumes a much finer hierarchy between base and emergent than is usually thought to be the case. Most theories of consciousness suppose the base to be represented merely by the physical-­ chemical neural system of the brain, whose emergence is supposed to be a supervenient mental phenomenon of a non-physical nature. The chasm thus formed between base and emergent is too deep to be bridged in any acceptable way. If there is only activation potential in individual neurons and their potential distribution in a network, it is hardly convincing to claim that even billions of neurons and trillions of their synapses could possibly, through a magical connection of some sort, form something other than merely billions of activation potentials, active in trillions of synapses. Most theories of consciousness and mind aim to answer the question of the boundary between the conscious and unconscious through searching for correlates of conscious experience, and by extension empirically verifiable processes and those places in the brain’s neural structure which are responsible for consciousness. I have stated that the neural Global Workspace hypothesis is based on empirically trustworthy data and measurements which indicate how global neocortex areas are activated while information enters consciousness. Conscious states are thus accompanied by characteristic processes which are identifiable in the brain. The fact that they are global in nature—since they connect a vast range of brain areas through neuron activity waves—is explained by the fact that information there becomes widely accessible to individual brain parts which are located far apart. The end result is a brain web of synchronized areas whose various facets provide us with many signatures of consciousness: distributed activation, particularly in the frontal and parietal lobes, a P3 wave, gammaband amplification, and massive long-distance synchrony. (Dehaene 2014, 140)

Although Dehaene’s research does not aim to solve the hard problem of consciousness but merely to identify the processes present in states referred to as conscious, it is legitimate to ask whether it is only the accompanying traits of conscious states

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which differentiate them from unconscious ones. If so, why are they reflected in such a way that we are convinced of their unsharability and profound subjectivity? The fact of activating the neuronal global workspace with all the aforementioned characteristics of active and inactive neurons cannot be enough to bridge the gap between electrochemical potentials and the perceived conscious mental state. In this case, not even applying HEO can provide a miraculous solution to the problem of consciousness. Yet it can attempt to show whether our erroneous intuitive presumptions may be the reason why the “hard problem of consciousness” seems so hard. It can try to point to the roots of the current gap between the physiological and the mental, such roots being much easier to overcome, or in other words, much less clear-cut. In these roots, common distinctions which are currently difficult to unify become fuzzy, and our usual intuitions fail. Ultimately, this may be a convenient route towards a solution to the hard problem of consciousness. In the previous chapter we saw how the suggested HEO criteria of hierarchy, autonomy, holism and persistence are realized in the organized structure of the neural network. The perspective about to be outlined through HEO will be to some extent predictive, exemplifying the formulation of modern metaphysical conceptions in a falsifiable way. I propose that we start with the hypothesis of the inverted pyramid, which begins with the elementary signalling of information transfer in a simple stimulus-reaction cycle, through gradually increasing degrees of freedom at higher ontological levels, towards conscious states. This is an idealized and fictitious construction of a pyramid of hierarchical ontological levels with a gradually increasing number of independent parameters; at each higher level, due to the increasing number of degrees of freedom, the complexity of phenomena increases accordingly. Although it might not prove possible to record each individual ontological level step by step, I shall seek to postulate at least those crucial to consciousness from this perspective and thereby demonstrate the possible implications of HEO for consciousness as a functional aspect of the brain’s neural network. Let us begin with the combination of the above forms of neural network functions, the network’s structure and the evolutionary stages involved in the development of the biological brain. Here the foundations lie not on the ontological level of individual neurons as fundamental entities: the base of this inverted pyramid of hierarchical ontological levels is placed on the level of elementary signals spread through the nerve fibres of the neural network. At present, neuron connectivity and brain structure are to be found at the top of evolutionary complexity. Evidently proto-signalling or proto-information transfer is present in evolutionary predecessors, e.g. viruses and bacteria, where it is mediated through voltage-gated channels. The evolutionary origin of synapses can thus be traced far back to our common ancestors and their related contemporaries (see review Burkhardt and Sprecher 2017). Analogically to proto-signalling being the beginning of a much later and more sophisticated information transfer in synapses, we need to reveal the beginnings of other subsequent, sophisticated phenomena, including consciousness, and thereby outline the potential proto-properties as the embryonic forms of the current, greatly

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more sophisticated properties, abilities or phenomena which are growing further and further apart from their origins due to an ever-increasing sophistication and complexity which expands with the countless levels of the inverted, ontological pyramid. Let us illustrate this through several examples. Elementary information transfer may be pictured as a reaction to an external stimulus. The external stimulus (e.g. pain) is registered in the associated part of the brain; as a response—reaction to the stimulus—another part of the neural network is activated, causing an appropriate reaction (e.g. contraction of certain muscles and elongation of others). This elementary feedback loop is the basis for many unconscious and unrealized functions of organisms interacting with their environment. In this elementary form we may generalize the basic fundamental information transfer in a given cycle. The fundamental entity of this ontological level is the stimulus-reaction cycle, while this functionality may result in any given internal or external stimulus and the appropriate reaction to it. This ontological level has a minimal degree of freedom as the stimulus-reaction cycle is unconscious and automatic. Based on this, simple automata have been constructed, simulating the simple behaviour of organisms, such as seeking shelter from the sun, etc. For simplicity’s sake, let us postulate an automaton or organism and in our idealized case let this entity be termed an auto-organism capable of simple behaviour. If the auto-organism is found in direct sunlight (stimulus), it reacts with an activation of its locomotive apparatus as long as the stimulus persists and until reaching the shade (reaction). We can disregard the internal organization of both locomotive and visual centres for the time being but they can be presumed to be based upon the same stimulus-reaction principle. Generally, the interaction of the organism or automaton (i.e. the auto-organism) with its surroundings is the basic condition for possible adaptation and evolution. Without this dynamic cooperation, no new ontological level, with more degrees of freedom, is possible. There may be several degrees of freedom but let us choose one option: let our model auto-organism be able to read the intensity with which it receives the stimulus, and use the intensity with which it responds to the stimulus. We already know that this is part of neural communication, as neurons are able to “translate” intensity into the frequency of their excitations per unit of time. Consequently, our photophobic auto-organism now reacts to light intensity by moving faster (i.e. more intensely) towards the shade. Again, this is merely an elementary stimulus-reaction type signalling but at this level it has an additional degree of freedom since there is one more independent parameter added for the auto-­ organism’s motion. Moving towards an even higher ontological level, we need further independent parameters influencing its motion. As one of the most important effects in a neural network is inhibition, we can supplement the stimulus-reaction circuit with another circuit suppressing the original automatic performance of the reaction to a stimulus. This may then involve the reaction being delayed or even entirely suppressed, depending on another (e.g. visual) parameter. The possibilities are endless. Even here, we are still dealing with an automatized and unconscious stimulus-reaction

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cycle, the only difference being that the circuits are suitably combined and coordinated. Out idealized auto-organism has very quickly obtained a fairly complex range of behaviours due to the use of intensity and the subduing of simple individual signals and reactions to them. In order to attain higher ontological levels we need to abandon the behaviour of the auto-organism, which is so far merely a “Darwinian creature” (Dennett 1996), albeit with a relatively wide range of complex behaviours. One of the conditions for higher complexity and integration is the growth of particular structural brain parts, which has occurred during the course of evolution; this has in no way been a deliberate project but a random and gradual evolutionary progression, the likes of which have previously occurred countless times at various evolutionary stages. Let us presume that in our idealized retrospective of an auto-­ organism, we are now equipped with a much vaster structure of neural connections whose extent may correspond to biological brains: what further degrees of freedom can our idealized auto-organism attain through this? As the stimulus-reaction cycle is internally represented through the excitation and inhibition of individual neuronal connections, this representation may be strengthened through frequent repetition, and internally represented or mirrored in another part of the neural network. These representations are highly autonomous since, owing to development history (while all brains develop following similar plans, individual synapses are more or less random) and experience history (every brain has its own history of the strengthening of neural plasticity), every brain is highly unique and autonomous (see, for example, Edelman and Tononi 2001, 47). Once there is a possibility of preserving the internal representation of the autonomous shapes of activations and inhibitions, there is likewise the potential to compare and choose from these internally represented patterns. Again, this may not necessarily be a conscious activity which just mysteriously appears out of nowhere in the idealized plan of hierarchically growing levels. Individual representations of, for example, light and shade as stimuli and motion activities as reactions persist in different parts of the network with varying intensity. Since not all of them can be realized all at once at any given moment, there must automatically be some sort of choice or preference which is not fully conscious. They are forced by the existence of a single possible reaction. The stimulus-reaction connection is gradually conditioned in various ways, becoming dependent on multiple independent parameters. Therefore, the degrees of freedom on this ontological level increase in number. One advantage of this elementary form of memory may be the rapidity and complexity of the reaction to a particular stimulus. For instance, let us imagine a stimulus that is for some reason incomplete, only partial. The internally represented pattern can still be recognized as the most suitable reaction to this incomplete stimulus, which would not be possible without internally represented patterns. This can be interpreted as the prediction of the expected stimulus. Without the auto-organism having to wait for a repeated signal in the form of a full stimulus, thanks to its internal conditioned representation it is able to transmit the relevant reaction beforehand. At this point we are not concerned with potential error; our sole aim is to idealize the gradual increase in degrees of freedom, which at the ontological level obtains

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another independent parameter, and through it also greater complexity of neural network phenomena and correlated behaviour as selected reactions to received stimuli. Surprisingly, the proportion of subjectivity in perception has recently also been proven in crows in controlled experiments, which have confirmed the strong influence of subjective experience on the resulting perception. Generally, “[a] difference between the neuronal activities of one reported perceptual state versus the other for equal visual stimuli is considered to be a ‘neural correlate of visual consciousness’” (Nieder et al. 2020). First, crows learned to react to the presence or absence of a clearly distinguishable stimulus in a particular way, thus establishing a stimulus-­ reaction relation inducible through memory. Later, however, they were supplied with ambiguous, barely perceptible stimuli; then, whether the crows reacted to the same stimulus depended on the activity of the observed group of neurons. Clearly, memory and the subjective experience of perception played a role, which was ultimately even predictable in relation to the activity of a particular group of the observed neurons. “Our results, however, conclusively show that nerve cells at higher processing levels of the crow’s brain are influenced by subjective experience, or more precisely, produce subjective experiences.” (Nieder et al. 2020) Once the auto-organism obtains, in addition to interaction with its surroundings, the possibility of internal representation, the growth of further levels can no longer be prevented. A continuous stream of external stimuli from various sources results in the need for these stimuli to be integrated and coordinated. Individual external sources need to be located in a particular temporal frame and thus begin to form a consistent mapping of their surroundings. The internal activity of neuronal excitations and inhibitions, their repetition over time and their internal representation creates a changing stream of images in which steady patterns appear, based on the activity and inactivity of elements of the connected neurons. An ongoing process and the elementary logic of activity or inactivity leads to repeating patterns that have repeating causal consequences and therefore some degree of autonomy. Due to this activity, autonomous patterns persist, available to all individual network modules yet at the same time integrating and coordinating the neural network as a whole. One presumption of HEO is that the dynamic of hierarchically connected levels—whether GOL-type CAs, 2D electrons in QHE, or even NNM—is based on a unity of diachronic persistence from one state to another, with the persisting synchronization of all their parts at any given moment. This hierarchized synchronic-­ diachronic unity of any neural dynamic is labelled “re-entry” and considered the most specific function of the brain in higher vertebrates (Edelman and Tononi 2001, 48). This is a sort of repetitive establishment of mutual respect and coordination for individual autonomous brain parts which enter through the “re-entry” process with their causal contributions into the unified harmony of the neural whole. At this point there is no need to emphasize that in this multiplying and dynamically connected structure, there cannot occur overdetermination or causal competence between autonomous modules and the whole. The “re-entry” process allows for the unification of perceptions and behaviours which would never be attainable without it.

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Due to the individual stimulus-reaction cycles being conditioned and changeable, we have equipped the auto-organism with the ability to flexibly change originally rigid patterns into a much finer scale of behaviour in a particular environment, and to integrate a wide range of external stimuli. From the perspective of the Dennettian evolution of the mind we could now term our idealized auto-organism a “Skinnerian creature”. How can degrees of freedom increase further in the higher levels of the inverted pyramid of the developing mind? Supposing that previous creatures invented transforming patterns of the stimulus-reaction cycle, then this would have been merely one way of demonstrating the increasing number of degrees of freedom. The level hierarchy can be infinite. However, let us proceed slowly, in accordance with the idealized model. So far we have considered the increasing complexity of individual pyramid levels with regard to the new independent parameters of behaviour on these levels, these not necessarily being conscious states. They could all be highly coordinated, yet unconscious or not realized, such as the cautious automatized progression of a predator while hunting. In terms of HEO it is relevant that all these cases contain emergent phenomena, since these are hierarchical, autonomous, holistic and persistent actions. Emergent patterns established in neural networks are locally autonomous but due to the integration process of re-entry they are not locally distinguishable. Therefore, based on their shapes we cannot obtain an unambiguous idea of their local or global sense and purpose. HEO tells us—similar to the establishing patterns in CA or QHE—that what is relevant is always the peripheral conditions of the whole system, and therefore efficiency, purpose etc. must be found in these peripheral conditions. We shall see the consequences this has on conscious mental states. Yet can we attain these within our idealized pyramid of levels? Where can a conscious state suddenly emerge from the unconscious? As mentioned, internal representations can—to various degrees of intensity—be mirrored in other parts of the neural network. A continuous and coordinated sequence of perceptions is therefore constantly confronted with this mirroring record of experience (i.e. memory). Yet if there is the possibility of memory storage and reading from this memory, there needs to be some neural mechanism differentiating the actual flow of perceptions and integrated perceptions of the surroundings from the actual flow of memory, and this is enough for us to compare one flow with the other and to differentiate perception flow from memory flow.14 This could give  In this context, I add a note proving this originally unjustified hypothesis of the existence of independent processes generated by perception or memory and evaluated by other independent processes. After finishing the book, it turned out that such processes do exist in the brain and can be distinguished empirically by measurement in different parts of the brain. As the authors of the cited article point out, some previous work has suggested that imagination may depend on separate neural networks involved in the construction and evaluation of imagined future events. However, as has now been shown, “This separate modifiability of different subcomponents of the DMN by vividness and valence provides strong evidence for a neurocognitive dissociation between (1) the construction of novel, imagined events from individual components from memory and (2) the evaluation of these constructed events as desirable or undesirable.” (Lee et al. 2021)

14

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us the impression that we first need some sort of “awareness” in order to be able to differentiate and compare. Yet what is stressed here is the very fact that these cases of proto-differentiation and proto-comparison can indeed be viewed as “proto-awareness”. In other words, I have suggested the option of viewing a particular process, on the one hand as a necessary consequence of elementary stimulus-reaction processes which still have fairly limited degrees of freedom, but on the other hand one which also reaches beyond itself through the perspective of increasing complexity. Thus, to first require “awareness” as a condition for differentiating and comparing is ultimately the very same requirement as that of the possibility of differentiating and comparing for “awareness” to develop. However, this does not mean that only these proto-properties later result in conscious states; as shall be shown, this is a suitable case in point to help us understand how imperceptible the boundary between the conscious and unconscious can be. With regard to HEO it is important that “emergent” does not only pertain to conscious states in relation to physical-chemical ones. Several examples have been provided to show how hierarchized ontological levels develop and for HEO, conscious mental states are but another hierarchical level, enriched with an extra degree of freedom. How, then, can a higher ontological level be attained? Again, in accordance with our idealized auto-organism model, let us say that internal representations mirrored in particular brain areas can be re-mirrored into yet other parts of the brain. This multiple storage requires further differentiation between the original memory content and reflected memory storage. For instance, a constantly renewed and developing picture of the surroundings of the auto-­ organism—which is persistently kept in a conscious state—requires the projection of these surroundings in relation to the carrier of this projection. This can be entirely unconscious, only as a central place, a sort of centre of gravity, within which continuous flows of perceptions, behaviour and memory are established. To what extent the prerequisite of “realizing” is necessary here—as something more authentic than the mere model autonomy of the imaginary centre of mass in relation to the flows of representations—is perhaps a superfluous question. Which is more original: the “awareness” or the “differentiating” between surroundings and their picture in relation to the centre from which it is differentiated? Let us term this proto-­differentiation or proto-awareness of self. If our auto-organism is capable of differentiating between a flow of perceptions and the flow of memory with appropriate reactive behaviour with regard to a centre of gravity, this gives rise to a highly coordinated and correlated dynamic within which the auto-organism’s behaviour can be simulated before it is even performed, thus testing the tentative results of individual actions in individual environments as the responses to various stimuli. Thus, our idealized auto-organism has developed into a “Popperian creature” (Dennett 1996), able to test its hypotheses without risking its life. The persisting model of the auto-organism’s surroundings and its role within them is an inherent part of the neural network. The constant coordination of the surroundings model with the coordinated flow of perceptions and corresponding

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reactive behaviour is the basis for what may be termed the auto-organism’s autonomy. Although we have not dared to count the numbers of degrees of freedom at individual levels of the inverted pyramid, evidently the number of independent parameters influencing the auto-organism’s behaviour keeps growing. This extends the imaginary pyramid from the initial elementary signals towards the current coordinated complex behaviour of the auto-organism. In these several initial ontological levels we have seen the formation of the elementary beginnings of the properties which later acquire a much more complex and sophisticated form. Elementary proto-subjectivity in its complexity ultimately becomes so subjectively enclosed that it forgets its inherent origin and from this high ontological level it can no longer reach across all the lower degrees of freedom towards its original proto-form. In its complexity, the elementary differentiation between the flow of perceptions and the flow of their memory images finally becomes a realized self-reflection, so different from its proto-differences that it can no longer perceive these proto-differences as its inherent part. Is such behaviour conscious yet? Does this more detailed method through the extending pyramid, level by level, enable us to overcome at least the primary and intuitive inexplicability of the hard problem of consciousness? Can this progression render subjectivity more understandable or at least less mysterious? I believe so and have shown that at least in some cases, questions which are normally intuitive can turn out misleading. However, we can proceed even further up the hierarchical stages of ontological levels. The persistently renewed, retained “centre of mass” or centre of the individual activities of sensory data flows, compared at each given moment with the mirrored images in various network areas, and the coordinated and tested reactions in the auto-organism’s behaviour, may be influenced by, for example, the varying intensity of the individual images persisting in various network areas during their mirroring. For instance, it may be more advantageous for the auto-organism to prefer more intensive images since this requires less energy overall to reconstruct a detailed image. However, intensity may not be the only factor. The overlapping of various cycle types depending on their inhibitions and activations forms new degrees of freedom in even higher levels. If, since the initial levels, there has been some sort of preference, forced by the realization of only one out of many possible reactions, now there can also occur tension and mutual competition not only between individual images but also between cycles and more complex processes with varying continuity and correlation. Again, trying to claim that any such preferred “choice” requires in advance something along the lines of free will or decision-making appears intuitively erroneous, as this fact alone is the seed of what we habitually refer to as “will” or “decision-making”. This is not to deny any freedom and liberty; on the contrary, it is understanding how freedom is acquired on the higher ontological levels, equipped with many degrees of freedom. The auto-organism has acquired the potential of “choice”, which will be either renewed, based on the persisting images with varying intensity, or will be incorporated into the flow of behaviour or memory. This incorporation may no longer be motivated primarily by the effort to

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choose the optimum option, as was the case in the initial stimulus-reaction patterns; now that we are high enough within the pyramid, even such patterns can be incorporated whose reasons have no sense outside their carrier. We can presume that even these complex actions need to acquire some internal representation if they are multiple-mirrored and persistent. No single part of these intricately stored, renewed and compared images is locally interpretable, and their sense cannot lie only in themselves. On the contrary, sense must be found outside these images, in the global, peripheral conditions of these actions. Those alone are the reason why and how the flow of sensory data is coordinated with memory, presented and tested reactions, and ultimately with the final flow of the auto-organism’s behaviour. The complex dynamics of the individual steps are globally explicable with regard to previous “experience” and the predicted “expectation”. Therefore, we cannot search for subjectivity within the network dynamics, in localised processes or places inside the brain’s neural network; it can only be found outside this network on the periphery of globally peripheral conditions which form the basis for subjectivity and consciousness. This is one of the predictions of hierarchical emergent ontology which can be tested. If our auto-organism includes internal representations of patterns which in peripheral conditions correspond to “preferences” and “volitional” acts, then even these can be expected to be mirrored and internally represented. These multiple representations can reach highly numerous degrees of freedom since the number of independent parameters increases, thus maintaining their existence. This gives rise to highly autonomous sequences of patterns and their representations whose sense can again be found in the peripheral conditions of the whole. Sequences, their repetitions and comparison with sequences stored in other parts of the network forms the auto-organism’s internal experience. As in the previous examples, there is no need to require an ability for internal experience to occur before any proto-­ experience begins. The elementary proto-experience does not require the presence of any property forming such content before the proto-experience comes into existence. The proto-experience occurs automatically on a particular ontological level with the required number of degrees of freedom, gradually increasing in complexity as we proceed towards higher ontological levels. HEO thus presumes that dividing form and content is an additional, subsequent step, only possible once such a process has been instantiated. The distinction (in this case between form and content) is therefore only a post hoc distinguishing of the primary instantiation. Acknowledging this fact in HEO enables the solution of a number of apparently unsolvable dilemmas. The boundary between the represented and non-represented, form and content, physical and mental, conscious and unconscious, are indistinguishable in the first instances; and since they proceed to higher ontological levels with more degrees of freedom, they acquire more clearly delineated positions which are later much more difficult to integrate and unify with their beginnings. However, HEO shows and emphasizes the gradual steps conducting this gradual move away from the initial ontological levels from which these complexities become distinguished, gaining their own autonomous statuses.

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From this perspective, the existence of complex subjective mental states is no mysterious matter. The complex interweaving and coordination of internal representations and their subsequently compared mirroring are—with regard to the history of neural plasticity—a highly autonomous fact which cannot occur in any other environment. The great autonomy and the impossibility of their occurrence elsewhere are nothing but a type of self-reflecting subjectivity. Our hypothetical auto-­ organism has thus attained the highest ontological levels of the inverted pyramid so far, with the greatest number of degrees of freedom. By beginning to reflect its own reflection, it has become distinct from these persisting cycles. Once it has become separated from them, it can start to employ these cycles as its tools, objectifying and symbolizing them. For this reason, Dennett terms these creatures “Gregorian” (Dennett 1996), since they are capable of the intelligent manipulation of tools, including language. However, the auto-organism’s distinction from its autonomous processes, and their objectification and symbolization in the form of language, are only further independent parameters which increase the number of degrees of freedom in the already extremely high levels of the inverted pyramid of consciousness.

4.8  Conclusion As regards the proposed hierarchical emergent ontology (HEO), we have arrived at a testable metaphysical hypothesis of consciousness emerging from the unconscious. The starting point was the elementary signalling of excitations in the neural networks of the mind (NNM), which appear, persist and disappear at this initial ontological level. From the HEO point of view, they are fundamental entities because they sufficiently manifest their autonomy against a background of other phenomena and behave according to recognizable regulators. I have indicated the specificities of the physicochemical mechanisms of the connections in which signalling is realized, the evolutionary origin of the structure, and its synaptic plasticity, as necessary prerequisites for the signalling excitations’ persistent autonomy. By elementary signalling was meant the transmission of excitations by nerve fibres, their processing within the NNM and each elementary reaction as an appropriate response to the excitation. The primary goal was to show whether and possibly how there might be an increase in the number of degrees of freedom accompanying increasing behavioural complexity in the NNM at increasingly higher levels of the inverse generating complexity pyramid. Essential to such a metaphysical notion was that the individual elementary signals did not fuse into higher wholes but remained identical with themselves and persisted at their ontological level in the possibilities given by the degrees of freedom available to them. These are, as demonstrated, very limited. However, the temporal and spatial propagation of the multiple excitations, their mutual correlations, the coherence and rhythmicity of the various oscillations, and at the same time the transformations of these rhythmic oscillations in time and space acquire more and more degrees of freedom in which entities incomparably more complex than the initial signal level

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are realized. Thus, the growth of the different tiers of the inverse pyramid is similar to that of the previous two cases, the GOL cellular automaton and the quantum Hall phenomena QHE. Analysis has shown that the remarkable—and testable—thesis that meaning (however understood) is neither derivable nor observable from local phenomena, whether spatial, temporal or functional, because the existence of such phenomena and their persistence are tied to global boundary conditions, outside of which that meaning is lost. This has been shown true for all three cases  – GOL, QHE and NNM.  In any and each of the individual multiple hierarchical levels, arranged according to increasing degrees of freedom, entities can emerge which, if they acquire persistence due to their dynamic realization relative to their chaotic background, are able to maintain their identity over time and become the starting point for a new inverse pyramid in which complexity again increases with increasing degrees of freedom. My final noteworthy advance has been to demonstrate how qualitatively new properties and phenomena can occur with such an increase in chained complexity. I suggest that the mechanism in question needs to be described and understood in a greatly more continuous conceptual spectrum than our language—without detailed preparation—allows. Thus, if we have at opposite ends of the spectrum the unrepresented and the represented, the inanimate and the animate, the physical and the mental, the unconscious and the conscious, etc., then the spectrum between these boundaries can be very broad and difficult to distinguish in  local areas. I have hypothesized that with increasing levels of degrees of freedom, there is a gradual smoothing and profiling of the farther ends of the spectra. What I have sought to suggest is that the qualities of autonomy, self-reflection, subjectivity, etc. do not need any special ingredients to exist, but appear gradually with increasing complexity, in the higher tiers of the inverse pyramid, without leaving a clearly legible trace between the initial and increasingly distant ends of the spectrum. It is thus difficult to distinguish the origin of the high-profile qualities in the originally elementary signal operations. Thus, for example, the question of when mental states become conscious mental states is so difficult to answer because there is no significant point from which the previous lower tiers of the pyramid belong to the unconscious, while all the higher tiers, with their multiple degrees of freedom, are already conscious. Yet the beginning, with the minimum degree of freedom in simple signalling and resignalling, can be said to be unconscious, while sufficiently high tiers of the pyramid are already conscious. I have thus endeavoured to demonstrate that certain phenomena in the NNM, which we may call a kind of elementary proto-differentiation, proto-comparison, proto-preference or proto-choice, etc., need not require any form of consciousness to enable their realization, but on the contrary, that the simple realization of these proto-properties is, in fact, already the establishment of the beginnings of consciousness. The property of consciousness is, thus, the highest tier with the highest number of degrees of freedom.

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Conclusion: Emergence and the Open Universe

In bringing this book to its close, it is fitting to conclude the project by considering its possible consequences. The open universe is a model in which there is insufficient matter and internal gravitational force to halt its expansion; in another sense, the openness of the universe means that the past is closed and the future is open: these are expressions of the metaphysical belief that what happened cannot be changed yet what happens can be influenced. However, now we can see another way in which the universe may be open, for we can take the universe to be a whole which mutually determines and is determined by its components. What follows from the use of UPE in terms of predicting the properties of the universe? In accordance with our principle we can predict neither the whole’s behaviour nor its properties from a knowledge of its parts. It may seem like a fatal limitation to our species as the rational prospectors of the universe. But not quite. Firstly, recognizing limits that cannot be overcome is of equal value to identifying what lies within them. Secondly, there is one remarkable and nontrivial issue in this rational enterprise—the fact that despite such a diversity of entities, we can unify and differentiate them according to abstract features of which they are not the bearers. Thus the universal principles have a special status as regards their content. They are the shortest recipes for arranging the universe, even though they cannot tell us everything. As shown, UPE is a limiting principle that leaves the universe fundamentally open yet this rationale itself is an inherent part of the universe. As an intrinsic part, it must have an impact upon the whole, and the mutual determination of the whole and its parts may be the key to their recognisability and future destiny. Notwithstanding the initial disproportion of forces, the whole is determined by the parts, even if it defines their acting space. This metaphysical vision has at least two consequences, one of which is ontological or metaphysical and the other, epistemological or theoretical-practical. Firstly, the ontological openness of the universe transcends our imagination; and secondly, there is a key within emergence for the epistemological unification of all theoretical knowledge.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 V. Havlík, Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8

247

Index

A Aaij, R., 27, 30 Abbott, R., 168, 177, 178, 181, 199 Adamatzky, A., 198, 200 Alexander, S., 20, 33, 36–38, 53, 73 Anderson, P.W., ix, 11, 13, 14, 26, 104, 138, 174, 207, 212 Ao, D., 220 Araque, A., 221 Aristotelés, 12 Armstrong, D.M., 84 Atmanspacher, H., 7, 56, 105 Axtell, R., 139 B Baars, B.J., 223 Baker, L.R., 18 Banich, M.T., 219 Bar-Yam, Y., ix, 124–127, 135, 136, 146, 147, 171, 215 Bassett, D.S., 229 Batterman, R.W., 7, 11, 33, 169, 213 Bedau, M.A., viii, 33, 54, 89–99, 124, 164 Bennett, K., 74, 75, 170 Berkes, P., 223 Berlekamp, E.R., 177, 199, 200 Bishop, R.C., 7, 11, 56, 105, 106, 138 Bohm, D., 38, 77 Broad, C.D., 75, 76, 141 Bronfenbrenner, U., 38 Brooks, D.S., 191 Bunge, M., 50 Burge, T., 18

Burkhardt, P., 231 Buss, S.R., 133 Buzsaki, G., 223–227 C Capcarrère, M., 57 Carroll, J.D., 25 Cartwright, N., 6 Chalmers, D.J., viii, 89, 136–138, 147, 164, 167, 203 Chandler, D., 61 Chang, H., 6 Chapman, K., 4 Chibbaro, S., 4, 5, 41 Churchland, P.M., 19, 26 Churchland, P.S., 223 Clayton, P., 58 Compton, R.J., 219 Conway, J.H., 94, 134, 168, 176, 177, 199, 200 Cooper, K.B., 206 Crane, L., vii, viii, 23, 30, 58 Crane, T., 7, 11, 14, 15, 58, 167 Crutchfield, J.P., 173 Cunningham, B., viii, 99 D Davidson, D., vii, 23, 71, 74, 83, 85, 154 Dehaene, S., 223–225, 227, 228, 230 Dennett, D.C., 94, 140, 187, 196–200, 233, 235, 236, 239 d’Espagnat, B., 105

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 V. Havlík, Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98148-8

249

Index

250 Diakonov, D.V., 28 Dyson, F.J., 10, 11 E Earman, J., 11 Edelman, G.M., 218, 222, 223, 233, 234 Einstein, A., 10, 14 Eisenstein, J.P., 206 Ellis, G., ix, 7, 56, 104–106, 190 Epstein, J.M., x, 139–146, 173 Eronen, M.I., 191 Essmann, U., 61 F Falkenburg, B., ix, 174, 207, 209 Fiser, J., 223 Fleming, G.N., 119, 120 Fontenele, A.J., 221 Franklin, S., 223 G Ganeri, J., 53 Gardner, M., 94 Gelfert, A., 209 Gell-Mann, M., 27, 28 Gillett, C., vii–ix, 8–11, 15, 20, 58, 99, 104, 124, 129–132, 146, 194, 195 Grimm, V., 8 Gros, D., 10 Guay, A., ix, 16, 17, 54, 65, 72, 104, 113–117, 164, 168, 175, 207, 213 Guichon, P.A.M., 24 Guy, R.K., 177, 199, 200 H Haken, H., 38 Hanson, J., 173 Hare, R.M., x, 84, 85, 152, 153, 156, 161, 162 Havlík, V., x, 41, 49, 51, 60, 68, 164 Hawking, S., 10, 12 Haydon, P.G., 221 Healey, R.A., 6, 9, 13 Hempel, C.G., 2, 11 Hendry, R.F., 3, 5 Hicks, K., 29 Horgan, T., 38 Humphreys, P., viii, 10, 50, 51, 54, 56, 59, 69, 71, 72, 82–88, 164 Huneman, P., ix, 50, 51, 69, 132–135, 143, 168, 172, 173

Huttemann, A., 14, 120 I Imbert, C., 168, 171 J Jacobs, J.D., 167 Jain, J.K., 206, 207, 209, 211, 214 Jerabek, P., 4 Johnson, J., 23, 144 Ju, H., 229 K Kable, J.W., 235 Kadanoff, L.P., 214 Karliner, M., 29, 30 Kauffman, S.A., 38, 171, 205 Kauvar, I.V., 226 Kelso, S., 175 Kenyon, I.R., 119 Kim, J., vii, 109, 151 King, D.G., 222 Kirchhoff, M., 69, 72, 166, 175, 179 Klee, R.L., 85 Kronz, F.M., ix, 14, 110–112, 114, 118, 123 Kuśmierz, B., 207 L Lachaux, J.-P., 223, 228 Langton, C.G., 38 Laubichler, M.D., 8 Laughlin, R.B., vii, ix, 11, 13, 39, 69, 104, 107, 129, 130, 138, 207, 212, 214 Le Van Quyen, M., 223, 225, 228 Lederer, P., ix, 104, 207, 208 Lee, S., 235 Leggett, A.J., 13 Lengyel, M., 223 Lerda, A., 208 Lewes, G.H., 53 Lewis, D.K., 84, 170 Li, J., 207 Li, M., 41 Li, Y., 220 Lilly, M.P., 206 Limmer, D.T., 61 Lipkin, H.J., 30 Liu, S., 220 Loewer, B., 6, 11, 14 Lorenz, E.N., 38

Index Lycan, W.G., 190 M Mach, E., 41 Martinerie, J., 223, 228 Maudlin, T., 119, 120 McGeever, J., 13, 14, 38, 57, 69, 168 McGill, B., 191 McGivern, P., 191 McLaughlin, B.P., viii, 5, 70, 71, 73–80, 99, 138, 154, 155, 164, 167, 184 Meehl, P.E., 32 Mellor, H.D., 7, 11, 14 Menezes, D.P., 25 Mill, J.S., 52, 62, 65, 92 Miller, J.P., 222 Moore, G.E., x, 85, 153, 156, 161, 162 Morgan, L.C., 40, 53, 71, 73 Morrison, M., ix, 166, 174, 175, 207, 212, 213 Muir, H., 28 Murphy, N., 8, 10 Murthy, G., 209, 210 N Nagel, E., 14 Nakano, T., 30 Nieder, A., 234 O O’Connor, T., viii, 17, 58, 69, 71, 73, 79–82, 93, 99, 167, 180 Oppenheim, P., 2, 10, 11, 40, 190 Orbán, G., 223 P Panda, P.K., 25 Papineau, D., 11 Parpura, V., 221 Parthasarathi, T., 235 Penrose, R., 10 Pepper, S., 33–35 Pereda, A.E., 220 Petrov, V., 28 Pfeiffer, L.N., 206 Pines, D., ix, 39, 69, 104, 214 Polyakov, M.V., 28 Poole, P.H., 61 Potochnik, A., 191 Praszałowicz, M., 28 Prigogine, I., 38, 40

251 Primas, H., 56, 105 Providência, C., 25 Putnam, H., 11, 40, 190 Q Quinn, J.J., 207 R Raichle, M.E., 227 Railsback, S.F., 8 Ramachandran, V.S., 223 Redhead, M., 14 Rendell, P., 200 Richman, E., 226 Rigato, J., 55, 56 Rodriguez, E., 223, 228 Ronald, E.M.A., 57 Rondoni, L., 4, 5, 41 Rosenberg, A., 7, 12, 13, 84 Rueger, A., 166, 180, 191 Russell, D.F., 222 S Saito, K., 25 Sanzgiri, R.P., 221 Sartenaer, O., ix, 16, 17, 54, 65, 72, 104, 113–117, 164, 165, 168, 175, 207, 213 Savellos, E., 83 Scaruffi, P., 60 Scerri, E.R., 3, 5 Scharf, D.C., 9–11 Scheibe, E., 56 Schlick, M., 54 Schmalian, J., 39 Schweber, S.S., 11 Sciortino, F., 61 Searle, J.R, vii, viii, 9, 21–23, 35, 38, 60–70, 92, 99 Sejnowski, T.J., 223 Sellars, W., 32 Selverston, A.I, 222 Shankar, R., 209, 210 Shashikant, M., 207 Shattuck, M., 207 Shi, Q., 207 Shimony, A., 119, 120 Silberstein, M., 13, 14, 38, 57, 69, 168, 174, 179 Sipper, M., 57 Sklar, L., 11 Skwarnicki, T., 29, 30

Index

252 Solomonoff, R.J., 41 Sperry, R.W., vii, 21–23 Sprecher, G.S., 231 Stalnaker, R., 151, 152 Stanley, E.H., 61 Stephan, A., 23 Stojković, B.P., 39 Stoye, E., 4 Strogatz, S.H., 38 T Thalos, M., 166, 174 Thomas, A.W., 25 Tiehen, J.T., ix, 14, 110–112, 114, 118, 123 Tononi, G., 218, 222, 233, 234 Tooley, M., 85, 155 Tsushima, K., 25 V Van Cleve, J., viii, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 79, 99, 167 Van Gulick, R., 18 Varela, F.J., 223, 228 Vesuna, S., 226 Vintiadis, E., 33, 142 Vitányi, P.M.B., 41 Vulpiani, A., 4, 5, 41

W Wagensberg, J., 187 Wagner, G.P., 8 Wallace, R., 223 Weinberg, S., 6, 10, 12, 13, 26 Weisberg, M., 8 Weisskopf, F.C., 10 Werner, G., 221 West, K.W., 206 Wimsatt, W.C., 82, 190 Witten, E., 10 Wittgenstein, L., 36 Wohl, C.G., 29 Wójs, A., 207 Wolfram, S., 38, 171, 203, 204 Wolynes, P., 39 Wong, H.Y., ix, 69, 81, 82, 118, 122, 123, 167, 175, 180, 190, 201 Wu, Y.H., 207 Wyss, P., 142 Y Yalçin, Ü.D., 83 Yao, W.-M., 29 Yilmaz, E., 221 Z Zeng, Y., 207 Zweig, G., 27