Abstract
The concept of levels of organization, despite its widespread scientific currency, has recently been criticized by a number of philosophers of science. This paper diagnoses the main source of problems facing theories of levels. On this basis, the problems with the usual criteria for distinguishing levels are evaluated: compositional relations, organizational types, and spatial scales. Drawing on some work on hierarchies in ecology, I argue in favor of an alternative conception of levels defined by the criterion of rates or time scales of processes.
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Notes
In discussions of levels of organization, it has become customary since Hull (1980) to differentiate biological entities as “interactors” or “replicators,” with interactors forming an “ecological hierarchy” and replicators forming a “genealogical hierarchy” (see Eldredge and Salthe 1984; Salthe 1985). The notion of levels of organization to be treated here is concerned with causal interaction in general rather than replication in particular, thus it is more similar to the ecological hierarchy. Unlike in Hull’s framework, however, it is not restricted to interactors conceived as units of selection—i.e. entities that interact with the environment “in such a way that replication is differential” (Hull 1980, 318).
Note that with this formulation Craver offers only a “partial answer” (2007, 192) to the question of when two items are at the same level, in the form of a necessary condition (“only if”). However, other remarks seem to require there to be a sufficient condition as well. For example, it is said that like Wimsatt’s (2007) levels of organization, “Levels of mechanisms are also loci of stable generalizations, and consequently can be seen as local maxima of regularity and predictability. This is because parts of the mechanism that make an intelligible (that is, regular and predictable) contribution to the behavior of the mechanism as a whole are identified at levels” (Craver 2007, 190; see also ibid., 195). It is unclear how one could generalize over levels in this way without there being some sufficient condition for two parts to be at the same level. Since no sufficient condition is given elsewhere, it seems justifiable to examine the stated definition as if it comprised more than a partial account of the intralevel relation—as a potential necessary and sufficient condition. This interpretation fits with Bechtel’s (2008, 146 ff.) remarks on the intralevel relation.
A partition is a level-like separation of a single part and its encompassing whole. I use the term “partition” here as an alternative to “level,” because whether partitions can successfully define levels is what is at issue. In the above symbolism, the partitions would include <M, C1, and S1> or <M, C2, and S2>—not <M, C1 and C2, and S1 and S2.>.
The idea that an ontological account of higher levels is normatively constrained by what would be recognizable to the sciences indicates that the two kinds of hierarchy distinguished earlier—ontological hierarchies and hierarchies of the sciences—might not be so independent after all. In particular, the presence of functions and functionally individuated entities is an important differentiating factor between the physical sciences, on the one hand, and the biological and social sciences, on the other hand, and it often correlates with differences of level in ontological hierarchies. It may be useful in some contexts to trace this difference between sciences as a difference of “level,” reflecting different investigatory practices, interests, and/or different “levels of explanation.” Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
Of course, the mechanistic account does not attempt to define a concept of level that can be used for systems like entire organisms, populations, or ecosystems, and probably none of its proponents would claim that such systems are mechanisms. The question, then, is whether there is some causal structure that should be captured by an account of levels but that is not accessible through the concept of mechanism.
In documenting an evolutionary trend toward increased hierarchical structure in organisms, McShea (2001) usefully distinguishes between at least 10 organizational types based on their degree of internal nestedness and individualization (e.g., solitary prokaryotic cell, aggregate of prokaryotic cells, solitary eukaryotic cell, solitary metazoan, metazoan colony, etc.). Applied in the present context, McShea’s typology is limited by two factors: (1) it does not include types for symbiotic associations between organisms having different internal hierarchical structures (ibid., 412), and (2) it is restricted to entities that are homologous to organisms in a free-living state (408). As a result of (2), the entities referred to by these different types are not composed of each another—for example, “higher-level” solitary metazoans are not composed of “lower-level” solitary prokaryotes. McShea’s types are therefore not vertically arranged types in the same compositional hierarchy, but are organizational types for the organism level in different compositional hierarchies.
The type-token distinction could also be applied to the members of mechanistic levels: in describing the mechanism of long-term potentiation one may be interested in the mechanism type or in a specific mechanism token. However, more recently, Craver (2015, 18) has suggested that only tokens are members of mechanistic levels. In general, token hierarchies face fewer consistency problems but sacrifice inferential and explanatory scope. Note also that allowing members of levels to be types does not imply that types are being used as the levels-criterion. The specific problems raised in 4.2 with using organizational types as a levels-criterion therefore do not affect compositional hierarchies of mechanism types or time scale hierarchies of process types.
The individuation of processes is also discussed in the epistemological debate surrounding reliabilism. Reliabilism holds that a belief is epistemically justified iff it is the product of a reliable belief-forming process. A core problem, with several proposed solutions but no general consensus, concerns how to individuate “reliable belief-forming processes” (see Connee and Feldman 1998).
For an argument against the categorial reducibility of certain thermodynamic processes to changes in the states of objects, see Needham (2013).
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Markus I. Eronen, Andreas De Block, Daniel S. Brooks, Jan Heylen, Jonathan Sholl, Stephan Güttinger, two anonymous referees, and the audience of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research at EASPLS 2014 for valuable input on earlier drafts of this paper.
Funding
This work was supported by an individual grant from the Scientific Research Fund—Flanders (FWO), and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research.
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DiFrisco, J. Time Scales and Levels of Organization. Erkenn 82, 795–818 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9844-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9844-4