John's post is brief but touches on a number of important questions. While
wishing to avoid mere definitional disputes, I think it is possible to disagree
John's comments:
1) >Emergence is an observation: Things are more than the sum of their parts.>
I would suggest the view that "Things are more than the sum of their parts" is
better termed "holism" rather than "emergence".
Admittedly some forms of "holism" contain a doctrine of "emergence" (where 'the
whole' emerges from the parts), but others do - in some form of "holism" the
'whole' determines the parts and does not emerge from them as without the
'whole' the 'parts' lack their 'partness'.
Emergence is better viewed as the anti-reductionist view that there are layers
to reality that emerge from preceding layers but which cannot be reduced to
those preceding layers. This view of "emergence" is independent of any
commitment to "holism": e.g. we can claim that mental states emerge from
physical brain states without claiming that there are mental or physical
'wholes'.
As metaphysical views of the relation between distinct entities, neither
"emergence" nor "holism" are derivable from (or testable by) observation.
Admittedly, there are testable theories of a (loosely) holist form - but these
do not validate "holism" in its metaphysical form (and indeed such theories
might usually be better regarded as 'structuralist' rather than "holist", given
that they assert the importance of the structural relations between entities
(and the interaction of entities in terms of structural relations), rather than
rely on the mystical side of "holism" whereby some 'whole' one-sidedly
determines the parts.
2. >It is logically and scientifically phlogiston or, theologically speaking,
God, the unknown to which we refer when other explanations fail.>
This, and some other of John's comments, incline me to think John is offering a
reductivist view of "emergence".
Let us say the emergentist is right and there are irreducible emergent layers
to the universe. This would then not rightly be characterised as a position
"when other explanations fail", particularly when reductionist explanation
fails, but as the correct position. John's comment may be interpreted as
begging the question as to whether there is genuine emergence and as implying
"emergence" is simply a word we reach for
"when other explanations fail" and does not constitute part of a valid
framework of explanation. If so, this greatly underrates the case for
"emergence" as a fact of our creative and evolving universe. If "emergence" is
a fact, it is hardly equivalent in explanatory terms to "phlogiston".
What is true is that "emergence" clashes with the reductionist values and aims
of some thinkers. What is also true is that a successful 'reduction' is a great
explanatory success. What is also true is that aspects of "emergence" almost
inevitably defy or limit explanation.
These facts may incline one to think that reduction and proper explanation go
hand in hand, whereas "emergence" goes hand in hand with no proper explanation
but is simply a confession that explanation is beyond us. But this would be
mistake for several reasons. First, successful reductions are rare. Second,
most explanations are non-reductive. Third, the idea that all explanation will
ultimately be reductive explanation is based on an unwarranted idea of ultimate
explanation. Fourth, the reductionist view quickly becomes implausible when we
throw enough examples at it - how, for example, can we explain the validity of
rules of inference in terms of physics (or physical laws)?
DL
