What shall we do with emergence? A survey of a fundamental issue in the metaphysics and epistemology of science

Abstract

A survey of some recent literature on the concept of emergence provides a case study of an important issue in the general metaphysics and epistemology of science. Emergentism has often been motivated by the desire to avoid excessive reductionism in the philosophy of mind and culture and in the respective fields of the philosophy of science—philosophy of psychology and of the human and social sciences. Philosophers employing the concept of emergence usually argue that there are several ‘levels’ of reality and that the entities and properties of the ‘higher’ levels (e.g., mentality) emerge from those of the ‘lower’ ones (e.g., the physical universe). The standard division between ontological and epistemological approaches to this concept is shown to be inadequate through a critical discussion of emergence from the perspective of a pragmatist philosophy of science. It is argued that emergence should be conceived of both ontologically and epistemologically, because there is no humanly possible point of view for ontologizing about the way the world is structured in itself, entirely independently of our epistemic standpoints. Emergence thus turns out to be an example of the way in which the ‘pre-critical’ dispute between dogmatic metaphysics and skeptical reactions to it (which Kant famously wanted to overcome) still dominates philosophy of science. Hence, the problems of emergence and realism are observed to be intimately connected.