Antje Jackelén, “Emergence Everywhere?! Reflections on Philip Clayton’s Mind and Emergence,” Zygon, vol. 41, no. 3 (September 2006), 623-632.
To a large extent, emergence hinges on the concept of levels and hierarchies in nature. The preferred metaphor for emergence is that of a ladder. Given the tendency of concepts like emergence to build ideology, a careful analysis of language and metaphor is called for, however. Jackelén argues that the preference for the ladder metaphor does not do justice to the differentiated relationality that is a distinct mark of emergence.
Jackelén states that emergence has a pleasant and attractive appeal, because it keeps novelty and predictability in balance—enough surprise to keep boredom away and enough orderliness to keep chaos at bay.[1] Moreover, emergence suggests that significant things can emerge from insignificant starts, and in the end the whole is so much more than the initial components. Emergence is, in the words of Goodenough and Deacon, “something more from nothing but.”[2]
Emergence allows us to gain victory over reductionism and to tread the treacherous path between physicalism and dualism which may be the perfect solution to the debates that have troubled philosophers, scientists, and theologians for centuries.[3]
The concept of downward causation in emergence deserves a separate discussion because of the implicit opposition between active causation and spontaneous emergence.[4]
It is important to realize that Clayton’s form of emergence is predominantly bottom-up, as opposed to top-down. However, Clayton’s God is not entirely stripped of divine power and divine alterity by immanent within the causal structure of the world, it must be noted. Clayton defines emergence as “the theory that cosmic evolution repeatedly includes unpredictable, irreducible, and novel appearances.”[5]
The words ladder, level, and hierarchy are all important to emergence theory.[6]
Clayton defines downward causation as the most important characteristic of emergence, especially of strong emergence, that is, the process whereby some whole has an active nonadditive causal influence on its parts.[7] Clayton’s argument is strongly reminiscent of Polanyi’s. Michael Polanyi developed the idea that complex hierarchical systems are composed of interfaces that mutually constrain one another (or interfaces of dual-level control). These interfaces of mutual constraint are found in many important classes of systems, and he wanted to explain the limitations of both bottom-up and top-down approaches.[8] As such, Polanyi’s Principle stated the following two maxims: In many hierarchically structured systems, adjacent levels mutually constrain but do not determine one another; In hierarchically structured systems, usually the upper levels of control (usually upper levels) harness the lower levels and cause them to carry out behaviors that the lower levels, left to themselves, would not do.[9]
Simon Conway Morris has argued that Homo sapiens may be the product of evolution, but they have the ability to transcend their biological origins.[10] This implies that DNA is not the sole determining factor of human distinctiveness; it exists, rather, in interaction with the spectrum of restrained possibilities provided by the laws of physics.
[1] Antje Jackelén, “Emergence Everywhere?! Reflections on Philip Clayton’s Mind and Emergence,” Zygon, vol. 41, no. 3 (September 2006), 624.
[2] Ursula Goodenough, and Terrence W. Deacon., “From Biology to Consciousness to Morality,” Zygon 38, no. 4 (December, 2003): 802.
[3] Antje Jackelén, “Emergence Everywhere?! Reflections on Philip Clayton’s Mind and Emergence,” Zygon, vol. 41, no. 3 (September 2006), 625.
[4] Antje Jackelén, “Emergence Everywhere?! Reflections on Philip Clayton’s Mind and Emergence,” Zygon, vol. 41, no. 3 (September 2006), 625.
[5] Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 39.
[6] Antje Jackelén, “Emergence Everywhere?! Reflections on Philip Clayton’s Mind and Emergence,” Zygon, vol. 41, no. 3 (September 2006), 630.
[7] Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 49.
[8] Michael Polanyi, “Life’s Irreducible Structure,” in Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 225–239.
[9] Michael Polanyi, “Life’s Irreducible Structure,” in Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 225f.
[10] See Simon Conway Morris, The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals, (New York: Oxford University, 1998), and Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, (New York: CambridgeUniversity, 2003).