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Reconciling Ontic Structural Realism and Ontological Emergence

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Abstract

While ontic structural realism (OSR) has been a central topic in contemporary philosophy of science, the relation between OSR and the concept of emergence has received little attention. We will argue that OSR is fully compatible with emergentism. The denial of ontological emergence requires additional assumptions that, strictly speaking, go beyond OSR. We call these physicalist closure assumptions. We will explain these assumptions and show that they are independent of the central commitments of OSR and inconsistent with its core goals. Recognizing the compatibility of OSR and ontological emergence may contribute to the solution of ontological puzzles in physics while offering new ways to achieve the goals that advocates of OSR set for their view.

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Notes

  1. This is an observation that dates back at least to Poincaré (1905: 160) as John Worrall notes (1989: 109) but of course it came to prominence with the work of Thomas Kuhn (1962) and Norwood Russell Hanson (1958).

  2. See Cao, 2010 pp. 223–225 for further discussion of the importance of causal and non-causally interpreted structures.

  3. Frigg and Votsis (2011) provide a reliable taxonomy of kinds of OSR, classifying them according to different ways of conceiving the ontological relationship of relations and objects.

  4. Quantum statistics or permutation symmetry raise the question of whether quantum objects are discernible and, therefore of whether they possess individuality–for the received view of quantum non-individuality (See e.g. French & Krause, 2006; French, 2014; Arenhart & Krause, 2014, Arenhart, 2015. See also Saunders, 2006 (weak discernibility), Dorato and Morganti, 2013 (identity taken as primitive) for criticism of the received view.

  5. See Saunders, S. (2006), “Are quantum particles objects?”, Analysis, 66: 52–63;

  6. Ladyman and Ross dismiss this last possibility since—according to them—Bohmian Mechanics is often rejected by Physicists and Philosophers (Ladyman and Ross: 181) because of its alleged ad hocness, lack of simplicity and incompatibility with relativity theory.

  7. Focus on levels can distract from the radical nature of flat ontology. Arguments against levels-talk in philosophy of science are rarely intended to entail that there are no metaphysically relevant differences of kind in nature. Notice that the emergentist is committed to the idea that over the course of natural history, novel differences in kind can appear. Notice, for example, that one could imagine an emergentist who questioned the standard hierarchical organization of the sciences into levels. It is important to recognize that full-blown anti-emergentism is not simply a criticism of levels-talk. Rather it is a denial that metaphysically relevant differences in kind ever emerge. This is a much more radical claim than the anti-levels talk argument which is usually restricted to a criticism of the hierarchical structure of nature rather than the idea that there are no emergent differences of kind.

  8. For a discussion of the relationship between brute facts and emergence see Symons, 2018a.

  9. Ladyman and Ross seem also to admit that matter (in the classical sense of the term) is ontologically emergent: “matter in the sense of extended stuff is an emergent phenomenon that has no counterpart in fundamental ontology” (Ladyman & Ross, 2007: 20).

  10. It is notable that once the possibility of causation enters the picture above the purely physical level, there is room for accounts of strong emergence of the kind offered for example in Jessica Wilson’s recent book Metaphysical Emergence (2021). Her discussion of the role of causal powers in the characterization of emergence emphasizes the non-physical aspects of the causal powers of emergent causal powers. For another perspective on the relationship between causation and emergence see Symons (2002).

  11. Cao (1998, Part 1) has an extensive discussion of the limitations of the strong geometrical program in the context of the general theory of relativity. For example, black holes pose a special challenge to the success of a strong geometrical program for reasons Cao explains.

  12. For a discussion of the philosophical implications of quantum tunneling in computer engineering see Symons, 2019: 19.

  13. Cited by Cian Dorr (2010).

  14. Ladyman and Ross are critical of the idea that patterns at different scales could be regarded as emergent. For instance, they say: “Thus, Batterman’s ‘emergentism’—which we endorse while considering its label semantically unwise—is a special case of scale relativity of ontology” (Ladyman & Ross, 2007: 24). Note that Batterman’s (2001) account of asymptotic emergence focuses on the kinds of singularities that mark the limits of models in one level of theoretical representation and mark the need for another kind of representation, for example in the case of phase transitions. It is striking that, as with the failure of the strong geometrical program in GTR (described by Cao in his 1998) the structural realist must take account of singularities in their geometrical representations in ways that force them beyond merely structural questions.

  15. The long-standing issue with Bohmian Mechanics is the problem of what is the role of the wave-function within the configuration space. At this point, the PO approach is decisive. It detaches the theory’s Ontology from its formalism and therefore allows that the wave-function may be considered as a non-primitive element.

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Acknowledgements

João Cordovil acknowledges the financial support of FCT, ‘Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.’ (Stimulus of Scientific Employment, Norma Transitória: DL57/2016/CP1479/CT0065). Gil Santos acknowledges the financial support of FCT, ‘Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.’ (Stimulus of Scientific Employment, Individual Support 2017: CEECIND/03316/2017). Finally, we would like to thank the referees for their constructive comments and suggestions. This work is part of the FCT Project ‘Emergence in the Natural Sciences: Towards a New Paradigm’ (PTDC/FERHFC/30,665/2017).

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  1. Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisbon, Portugal

    João L. Cordovil & Gil C. Santos

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas, Wescoe Hall 1445 Jayhawk Blvd, 66045-7590, Lawrence, KS, USA

    John Symons

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  1. João L. Cordovil
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Correspondence to João L. Cordovil.

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Cordovil, J.L., Santos, G.C. & Symons, J. Reconciling Ontic Structural Realism and Ontological Emergence. Found Sci 28, 1–20 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-021-09828-8

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