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Mechanism, Emergence, and Miscibility: The Autonomy of Evo-Devo

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Functions: selection and mechanisms

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 363))

Abstract

Evolutionary developmental biology shows us that the capacities of organisms play an indispensable role in the explanation of adaptive evolution. In particular, the goal-directed properties of organisms figure in a class of emergent teleological explanations. The role of emergent teleology has heretofore gone ­unnoticed largely because of modern biology’s methodological commitment to mechanism. I outline and defend an alternative to mechanism: explanatory emergence. According to explanatory emergence, every phenomenon has a complete mechanistic explanation, yet some phenomena also have emergent teleological explanations. Mechanistic and emergent teleological explanations of the same ­phenomena are complete, complementary and autonomous. I call this relation ‘­miscibility’. I argue that the miscibility of explanations illuminates the distinctive character of recent evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Evo-devo offers a class of emergent explanations that advert to the unique capacities of organisms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I take the expression ‘thick’ causal concepts from Cartwright (2004).

  2. 2.

    The description dependence of explanations is well documented. Davidson (1967), for example, draws our attention to the fact that while causal contexts sustain the intersubstitution of co-referring descriptions salva veritate, explanatory contexts do not. The reason is that the explanatory content of an explanation is sensitive to the way the relation between explanans and explanandum is described.

  3. 3.

    I leave open the possibility that xc,1 = xc,2. It is, in fact, commonplace that one and the same relation should be susceptible to different explanatory descriptions.

  4. 4.

    Illingworth (2008) offers a nice overview of muscle function.

  5. 5.

    See, for example, Machamer et al. (2000) claim that explanatory properties occur in nested hierarchies. Craver’s (2007) mechanistic anti-fundamentalism and Jackson and Pettit’s (2004) ‘explanatory ecumenism’ are also good examples of an implicit commitment to description relativity.

  6. 6.

    Rosenberg’s (2006) spirited and compelling argument is, in many ways, the definitive defence of reductive mechanism in evolutionary biology.

  7. 7.

    In this I agree with Symons (2008) and Bedau (2008).

  8. 8.

    O’Connor (2000) and Humphreys (1997) attempt to circumvent this problem by arguing that emergent causal properties do not supervene.

  9. 9.

    In the causal modelling literature, ‘intervention’ has a specific technical meaning. One can intervene on xc with respect to xc only if there is a direct causal path from xc to xe (Woodward 2003: 79). I intend to use ‘invariance’ in a less technical sense. There is a change-involving invariance relation between xc and xe just if manipulations on xc are counterfactually related in the right way to the values of xe.

  10. 10.

    Cf. Jackson and Pettit: ‘Explanations of different causal grain are complementary’ (2004: 178).

  11. 11.

    I take it that explanatory autonomy is non-symmetrical. Typically, in a mechanistic reduction the reducing explanation replaces the reduced explanation without explanatory loss but the converse relation does not hold.

  12. 12.

    This distinction between mechanistic and purposive explanations is reminiscent of Bedau’s (1998) distinction between grade 2 and grade 3 teleology. Only in grade 3 (genuine) teleology does the fact that the goal state is a goal appears in the scope of the explanans. Unlike Bedau, however, I do not think that the concept of a goal is inherently normative (2008).

  13. 13.

    I leave open the question whether there are other forms of emergent explanations, although I’m inclined to believe that the argument can be extended to show that there are emergent statistical explanations too.

  14. 14.

    P.W. Anderson’s (1972) famous appeal for emergence is made on the grounds of what I am calling ‘reflexive downward regulation’.

  15. 15.

    It is interesting in this regard that Monod takes his title Chance and Necessity (and his inspiration) from the atomist, Democritus.

  16. 16.

    The original source for the quotation is Eckstein (1980).

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank audiences in Calgary, Edmonton, Vienna and Paris. In particular, I wish to thank Marc Ereshefsky, Fermin Fulda, Jesse Hendrikse, Philippe Huneman Gerd Muller, and Jacob Stegenga for helpful discussion. The bulk of this chapter was written while I was a visiting fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute. I thank all at the KLI for their marvellous hospitality.

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  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Denis M. Walsh

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    Philippe Huneman

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Walsh, D.M. (2013). Mechanism, Emergence, and Miscibility: The Autonomy of Evo-Devo. In: Huneman, P. (eds) Functions: selection and mechanisms. Synthese Library, vol 363. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5304-4_3

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