Emergence and Downward Causation

Emergence and downward causation are best understood in light of one another. Downward causation would occur when a whole, which includes various parts, influences the behavior of those parts. A whole, or a property of a whole, is emergent when it is capable of exercising downward causation. Although ‘emergence’ is by no means univocal, this would be one way to distinguish ‘weak’ or explanatory emergence from robust ‘ontological emergence’. The intelligibility of emergence in this sense is questioned, and it is noted that proponents of emergence appear to be committed ill-advisedly to a corpuscularian universe. This chapter foreshadows a theme running through the remaining chapters: the Aristotelian picture of objects interacting and influencing one another could turn out to be best suited to the manifest image.

Approaching Nonhuman Ontologies: Trees, Communication, and Qualitative Inquiry

Consideration of trees has historically been confined to disciplinary, quantitative perspectives embedded in botany, earth sciences, resource management, environmental sustainability, and sustainable development wherein trees are largely viewed as senseless, bio-mechanical matter to be controlled and used for human consumption and economic gain. In this article, I reflect selectively on methodologies and methods I used in a broader, interdisciplinary project to study the sentient, intelligent relationality of trees as agentic, conscious, innovative entities embedded in unique, community-based lifeways. My research framework integrated Indigenous research methodologies, public ethnography, ontological emergence theory, plant science, philosophies of plant and nonhuman knowing, interspecies communication, and filmmaking. Herein, I focus on how perspectives and approaches based on qualitative, ethnographic inquiry and Indigenous epistemologies support and broaden research, (re)presentation, and engagement with trees and other nonhumans. Methods I discuss include the practices of cultivating tree/human communication and fostering human sensitivity and embodied knowing.

Being in the Hidden Third: Insights into Transdisciplinary Ontology

This paper reflects two transdisciplinary (TD) scholars’ attempts to glean deeper insights into Nicolescu’s transdisciplinary ontology (i.e., multiple Levels of Reality and the Hidden Third). Respecting that Nicolescu’s Hidden Third represents the convergence of quantum physics, philosophy, and inner experiences, one TD scholar explored ‘What is it like to be in the Hidden Third?’ by expanding on Nicolescu’s constructs of cyber-space-time and transhumanism, which are grounded in quantum physics. The other TD scholar tendered philosophical insights by offering the idea of ontological emergence and the act of becoming as informed by the transcendentals. The intent was to understand ‘the being of being’ or perhaps ‘the being of becoming.’ The richness of Nicolescu’s ontological thinking offers a range of interpretation and we are grateful for the opportunity to feed off his methodological genius to respectively flourish through questions, clarification and truth seeking.

Emergence and the Failure of Reduction

This chapter explores the different ways in which the reductive method of explanation might fail, and asks what such failures might tell us about the world. In particular, the chapter investigates possible situations in which one or more of the assumptions identified in previous chapters fails. It is argued that the failure of one of these assumptions will give rise to something that is recognizable in the traditional notion of ‘ontological’ or ‘strong’ emergence. This understanding is then used to defend the conceptual possibility of such ontological emergence against the influential arguments of Jaegwon Kim. It is further argued that the failure of a different assumption gives rise to a relatively unrecognized form of ontological emergence related to the way that causal influences combine. Thus, an understanding of the reductive method gives us a way to grasp the notoriously slippery metaphysical concept of emergence.

Computational and Conceptual Emergence

A sixfold taxonomy for emergence is presented into which a variety of contemporary accounts of emergence fit. The first dimension of the taxonomy consists of inferential, conceptual, and ontological emergence; the second dimension consists of diachronic and synchronic versions of each of these types of emergence. The adequacy of weak emergence, a specifically computational form of inferential emergence, is then examined, and its relationship to conceptual emergence and ontological emergence is detailed. Arguments are given assessing whether the end state of a weakly emergent process has to satisfy a novelty condition and new argumet is provided for the conclusion that diachronic emergence involves tokens of states.

Platforms as Emergence

This chapter discusses the concept of the platform, which is an increasingly prominent way of understanding the functioning of media technologies. It traces the philosophical, disciplinary, and ideological implications of theoretical and critical works that characterize aspects of media technology, at varying scales, as platforms, in particular in the developing subdiscipline of “platform studies.” It challenges the ways that the concept of the platform naturalizes the functioning of media. It shows how the concept of the platform relates to the idea of ontological emergence. It argues that the platform would be more useful in describing epistemological emergence. This chapter argues that an understanding of the platform in terms of ontological emergence erects unnecessary divisions among media, media technologies, and users. It challenges the idea that platforms must necessarily be computational or even technological.

Emergence, Downward Causation, and No Brute Facts in Biological Systems

This chapter explains emergence in biological organizations through a conception of ontological emergence according to which certain types of dynamical organizations possess irreducible properties that are nevertheless derivable from the substrate. The authors concentrate on the ontological dimension of emergence as the irreducibly causal configuration exhibited by all organizations that manifest persistence and stability in their environment. This is a conception of ontological emergence where the locus of novel causal powers is the configuration of constituents into stable dynamic organizations. There is nothing brute to be explained in the emergence of causal properties in a biological organization; all that is needed is the consideration of its organizational characteristics in terms of same-level and inter-level causal interactions, the type of which is of formal causation for interactions among the constituents of the organization and of efficient causation for interactions among the constituents and the micro-properties of their surrounding emergence base.