Abstract
Sydney Shoemaker has recently given an account of emergent properties according to which emergent properties are a special type of structural property and the determination relation holding between emergent properties and their base properties is one of “mere nomological supervenience.” According to Shoemaker, emergent properties are what he calls type-2 microstructural properties, whereas physical properties are type-1 microstructural properties. After highlighting the advantages of viewing emergent properties as a special class of microstructural properties, I show how according to his own causal theory of properties type-2 microstructural properties actually reduce to type-1 microstructural properties, and thus do not truly count as emergent. I then suggest an alternative view according to which emergent properties are actually a third type of microstructural property, one not considered by Shoemaker. I conclude with reflections why we might view the dependence relation between emergent properties and their physical base properties as a causal relation rather than one of mere supervenience.
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Notes
See footnote 4 for examples of some philosophers who have written about the necessary conditions on a property’s qualifying as ontologically emergent.
See for example, Gillett (2002a).
Condition (b) is to allow for “higher-level” emergent properties that might not immediately be determined by the instantiation of some member of SP, but are determined most immediately by the instantiation of another emergent property. The idea, however, is that ultimately these higher-level emergent properties are ultimately dependent on some member of SP via a chain of determination—the chain of determination of all emergent properties must ultimately end in some physical property, i.e., some member of SP.
It should be noted that versions of MOE predicated on different understandings of ontological reduction or causal efficacy could be (and have been) developed, but I will not discuss those here. Perhaps the most interesting is the version developed by Carl Gillett, according to which emergent properties are causally efficacious in virtue of non-causally determining the causal powers of their bases. See Gillett (2002b). Gillett’s interpretation of (c) is somewhat reminiscent of Frank Jackson and Phil Pettit’s (1990) “program explanation” account of causal efficacy.
To keep consistent with a format often used in the literature on emergence, I will be using capital letters to refer to properties, and small letters to refer to property instantiations, which are either events or states of affairs (like S-instantiating-P), or tropes, depending upon you theory of properties.
On page 57 of Shoemaker (2002), he writes “I think it is evident that ultimately the determination [of emergent properties by physical properties] is grounded in the determination in the micro-entities of micro-latent powers by micro-manifest powers.” He goes on to say that this latter determination is one of nomological necessitation of the micro-latent powers by the micro-manifest powers.
Shoemaker (2001, p. 78). He adds the caveat that “and X is not a conjunctive property having Y as a conjunct.”
Shoemaker (2002, p. 56) goes on to say that whatever other emergent properties a system has will be realized in its type-2 microstructural properties.
See Kim (1999, p. 8) where Kim develops this distinction.
Morgan (1923, p. 88). Jaegwon Kim (1999) agrees with this assessment of the brute nature of the supervenience of emergent properties on physical properties on the traditional British Emergentist view. For more on the traditional picture of emergence advocated by the British Emergentists, see McLaughlin (1992).
Shoemaker makes this point in his Shoemaker (2002, p. 57).
This view does raise its own set of questions, though, e.g., why think that there are such microstructural properties at all, and why think that they are causally efficacious? A microstructural property is the property of having such and such parts with such and such causal powers—therefore, does not a microstructural property “compete with” the properties of these parts as the causes of whatever effect it produces? In other words, is not a microstructural property an overdetermining cause of any of the effects it produces? These are all tricky questions and, as I have noted earlier, seem to require buying into an ontological framework that recognizes structural properties roughly in the way elucidated by Armstrong. Some have objected to such a framework, see especially O’Connor (1994), O’Connor and Wong (2005) and Gillett (2002a).
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Shrader, W. Shoemaker on emergence. Philos Stud 150, 285–300 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9413-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9413-7