Abstract
I discuss here a number of different kinds of diachronic emergence, noting that they differ in important ways from synchronic conceptions. I argue that Bedau’s weak emergence has an essentially historical aspect, in that there can be two indistinguishable states, one of which is weakly emergent, the other of which is not. As a consequence, weak emergence is about tokens, not types, of states. I conclude by examining the question of whether the concept of weak emergence is too weak and note that there is at present no unifying account of diachronic and synchronic concepts of emergence.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For some criteria shared by different accounts of emergence, see Humphreys (2006).
Finite grids can emulate infinite grids by using periodic (wrap around) boundary conditions.
Using all eight immediate neighbors gives the Moore neighborhood. Von Neumann neighborhoods, in which the four diagonal neighbors do not influence the active cell, are not essentially different. I do not consider here sequential cellular automata in which the states of the cells are updated sequentially, rather than simultaneously.
Cellular automata have the philosophically interesting feature that they serve as models for humean worlds. The state of each cell is an intrinsic property of that cell, the cells and their states are, within the discrete space and time of CAs, point-like, and the rules are all local. Whether these humean worlds are also worlds satisfying the conditions for humean supervenience is not an issue I shall pursue here.
If the response is that the pattern emerges from the causal interaction between the rubber stamp, the ink, and the paper , this will lead to admitting most cases of causal interaction as producing emergent entities, a position which would make emergence a very common phenomenon and hence would count for most people against that position. See also footnote 8.
Self organization is almost always a statistical property of a system. In many models, unusual initial conditions will prevent the structures from emerging.
One interpretation of Wimsatt (2007) is that it is a sustained argument for emergence not being a dichotomous property.
A commonly voiced opinion is that in order to be acceptable, a definition of emergence should not make emergent phenomena too common. I have some sympathy for that view, but it requires more than an appeal to intuitions. The requirement that the pattern be non-random is sometimes motivated by the belief that emergent phenomena occur in the region intermediate between completely random behavior and completely structured behavior, a region including the much publicized ‘edge of chaos’. I shall not consider that motivation here.
In addition to Bedau (2003), this autonomy of emergent phenomena has been emphasized in Wimsatt (1994) and Batterman (2002). For example, Wimsatt (1994, p. 250) suggests that `the dynamical autonomy of upper-level causal variables and causal relations—their apparent independence of exactly what happens at the micro-level—serves as a criterion for a new ontological level.
There is a fourth kind of stability that I shall not discuss here, in which the pattern is stable under external perturbations. This is a feature that is characteristic of, for example, Reynold’s boid models of the flocking behavior of birds. For details of the boid algorithms see http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/.
I am grateful to Mark Bedau for pointing out that my original definition was too loose because it allowed a uniformly black field of cells to contain multiple examples of the relation B. Although one might argue that this is acceptable, it is better to use the more complicated definition given here.
An especially interesting recent attempt in information theory is Li et al. (2004). The kinds of patterns that occur in state space and that are treated in dynamical systems theory occur at a much higher level of abstraction than the geometrical patterns discussed here. For an interesting treatment of how such patterns are related to diachronic emergence, see Rueger (2000a, 2000b); also Strogatz (1994).
References
Batterman, R. (2002). The devil in the details. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bedau, M. (1997). Weak emergence. In J. Tomberlin (Ed.), Philosophical perspectives: Mind, causation, and world (Vol. 11, pp. 375–399). Malden: Blackwell.
Bedau, M. (2003). Downward causation and the autonomy of weak emergence. Principia Revista Internacional de Epistemologica, 6, 5–50.
Dennett, D. (1991). Real Patterns. Journal of Philosophy, 27–51.
Humphreys, P. (2006): Emergence. In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2nd ed.). London: MacMillan.
Imbert, C. (2007). Why diachronically emergent properties must also be salient. In C. Gershenson, D. Aerts, & B. Edmonds (Eds.), Worldviews, science, and us: Philosophy and complexity (pp. 99–116). Singapore: World Scientific.
Li, M., Chen, X., Li, X., Ma, B., & Vitanyi, P. M. B. (2004). The similarity metric. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 50, 3250–3264.
McLaughlin, B. (1997). Emergence and supervenience. Intellectica, 25, 25–43.
Rueger, A. (2000a). Physical emergence diachronic and synchronic. Synthese, 124, 297–322.
Rueger, A. (2000b). Robust supervenience and emergence. Philosophy of Science, 67, 466–489.
Strogatz, S. (1994). Nonlinear dynamics and chaos. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
van Cleve, J. (1990). Mind-dust or magic? Panpsychism versus emergentism. Philosophical Perspectives, 4, 215–226.
Wimsatt, W. (1994). The ontology of complex systems. In M. Matthen & R. Ware (Eds.), Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume (Vol. 20, pp. 207–274). Canada: University of Calgary Press.
Wimsatt, W. (2007). Emergence as non-aggregativity and the biases of reductionisms. In Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: Piecewise approximations to reality (pp. 274–312) Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Anouk Barberousse, Mark Bedau, Jean-Paul Delahaye, Jacques Dubucs, Serge Galam, Philippe Huneman, Cyrille Imbert, and Sara Franceschelli for helpful discussions on this topic. Thanks also to audiences at the June 2004 IHPST conference on the dynamics of emergence, Yale University, the April 2005 Rutgers philosophy of physics conference, and the 2005 APA Central Division meetings for pushing me to present some of the points more clearly.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Humphreys, P. Synchronic and Diachronic Emergence. Minds & Machines 18, 431–442 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-008-9125-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-008-9125-3