Assuming "emergentism" (footnote) implies a belief in emergent properties ('the whole is greater than sum of the the parts')together with a willingness to attribute to emergent properties explanatory status, is emergentism comparable to vitalism in biology in the 19th and early 20th centuries, namely, a retarding influence on research and discovery?

Footnote: "Emergentism" is not in either the OED of Websters Unabridged, and in conjunction with a paper I presented at the 1999 meeting of SSPP, I constructed a definition of emergentism from Runes'(Dictionary or Philosophy) definitions of "emergent mentalism," "emergent evolution," and "creative evolution" that resulted in a definition that closely paralleled Runes' definition of vitalism.

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), March 16, 2001

Answers

There are no doubt pernicious forms of emergentism, but I don't think it is fair to compare emergentism *per se* with vitalism. Constrained forms of emergentism remain one of the few explanatory schemes we have, not only in psychology, but in biology as well. I wrote a paper on this a couple years ago -- a critique of one of the classic contemporary "refutations" of emergentism (by Jaegwon Kim). I'll post it on my web site for anyone intersted. Go to http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ and find the "emergentism paper" link at the bottom. The paper is in Word97 for Windows format.

-- Christopher D. Green (christo@yorku.ca), March 16, 2001.

S. J. Gould has a comment on the recent discoveries of the genome project, in which he suggests that "emergentism" will advance, rather than retard, research and discovery in biology. The article is available online at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/opinion/19GOUL.html

-- Nicole B. Barenbaum (nbarenba@sewanee.edu), March 16, 2001.

Here are some papers that I would suggest, two by Rueger and two of my own:

Rueger, A. (2000). Physical Emergence, Diachronic and Synchronic. Synthese, 124, 297-322.

Rueger, A. (2000). Robust Supervenience and Emergence. Philosophy of Science, 67(3), 466-489.

Rueger pursues an epistemological kind of emergence.

My own exploration of these issues has focused on ontological emergence:

http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/emergence.html

published as:

Bickhard, M. H. with D. T. Campbell (2000). Emergence. In P. B. Andersen, C. Emmeche, N. O. Finnemann, P. V. Christiansen (Eds.) Downward Causation. (322-348). Aarhus, Denmark: University of Aarhus Press.

This focuses on Kim's arguments - I claim to find a false premise in them, but a very instructive false premise.

For a focus on Kim's recent book, I have:

http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/physicalemergence.pdf

Mark

-- Mark H. Bickhard (mark.bickhard@lehigh.edu), March 26, 2001.

To add a wee bit by way of comment to my original question, my interest in emergentism is pragmatic. As a psychologist specializing in animal cognition (evolution of, etc.) it troubles me that many of my colleagues in cogtnitive psychology (human and nonhuman)find "explanation" in the conceptual entities they propose (i.e., emergent properties) when they have not exhausted the possibility of finding a more complete and defensible explanation from, say, a material or logical reductionist perspective. Too often when they propose or "discover" emergent properties, they seem ready to cut short the research process on the issue at hand. This seems to be a parallel to what happened vis a vis vitalism in biology 100 years ago.

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), March 27, 2001.

But Roger, why should "material" or "reductionist" explanations *automatically* get precedence? Cognitive science is mostly built on the (eminently reasonable) assumption that it is only an evolutionary accident -- one probably not repeated elsewhere in the universe -- that cognition happened to develop in the peculiar physical systems we call brains. Any number of equally complex systems capable of supporting cognitive functions would have -- indeed, may have -- been equally suitable. If one is interested in cognition *per se*, then it is these functions that are the objects of interest, not the substrate in which they happen to have been instantiated on one lonely planet at the edge of the galaxy. This is not to say that there is no reason to study that substrate -- much of value can be learened by doing so -- but conducting such a study is only a small part of the discipline of cognitive science, not the whole ball of wax.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), March 27, 2001.

I am glad that I said that my interest was "pragmatic!" Evolutionary accident or not, so far any "cognitive functions" about which we know anything are based on our particular "physical systems we call brains," and until we have studied brain functions carefully, thoroughly, and without reliance on prematurely postulated "emergent properties," that should be psychology's pragmatic priority. When biologists established a comparable priority regarding vitalism, that is when biology made significant progress. Biology may have reached the point now where it can relax its attitude about emergent processes, etc. However, some eminent thinkers (e.g., Bateson, 1972; Koch, 1999) have said that psychology has accomplished little of fundamental value, and if so, that may be because we have been too stuck in our own version of vitalism. On the point of "logical reduction," I may have used a poor choice of words. What I have in "mind" is something akin to Morgan's canon. To paraphrase, ‘do not based an explanation on higher psychological processes when a lower psychological process explanation will suffice.' Now, before someone says, ‘why should lower processes be preferred over higher ones,' they should not be preferred, unless one has clear evidence that confirms the lower process explanation but fails to confirm the higher. There have been many discarded attempts to define lower and higher psychological processes on dimensions such as "intelligence," "learning ability," or "cognitive ability," but naturally I think my own feeble attempt to construct a rank ordering of such processes suggests that for present pragmatic purposes, it is feasible to do so (e.g., Cognitive Brain Science, 1996, v. 3, 157-166).

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), March 28, 2001.

Roger, I suspect that at this point no one is reading us but us, so I'll make this short.

(1) If your analogy between psychological emergentism and biological vitalism is false, and I believe it is, then what did or did happen to biology as a result of the rejection of vitalism is irrelevant.

(2) If the neurological level is the wonrg level to study in order to find out about certain higher cognitive functions -- as, say, the atomic level no doubt is -- then a "study of brain function," no matter how careful, may be beside the point (or at least, not the optimal way to approach the problem).

(3) I am afraid you really stepped in it with the invocation of "Morgan's canon" because Morgan was, of course, the leading emergentist of his day! :-)

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), March 28, 2001.

Yes, I "think" we are talking by each other. I wanted to give you the last word, but I must say, Morgan was not right about everything.

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), March 28, 2001.

While I think that some approaches msy slow down understanding and progress in a field, I am also concerned that too few strategies or perspectives can also slow achievements. Also, while I am often frustrated by the slow progress in psychology, I still see many achievements and am optimistic about the future of psychology. P.S. I fould Gould's article on emergentism interesting and probably will think about the issue some more. Paul

-- paul kleinginna (prklein@gsvms2.cc.gasou.edu), April 06, 2001.

I've been reading this page, and I would like to point out a couple of things that you may find of interest. 1. Non-locality has been proven, so all quanta stay in contact with each other no matter how much space-time is between them. 2. Non-locality and quantum indeterminacy may very well play a role in -or even be essential to our understanding of- cognition, free will, and memory. To say that it is wrong to study cognition at the atomic level is, if I may be so bold as to say so, a bit naive. On the issue of emergentism, I tend to agree that using emergent properties to explain cognition is a dangerous simplification. However, it is pretty apparent that no single brain cell contains a thought, a memory, or even a thought process. So, in at least that sense, it can be said that our thoughts are emergent properties of the interaction of all the billions of neurons in our brains. Remember that things are not always black and white, and that this is especially true in the field of psychology. Have a nice day, gentlemen.

-- Michael Martini (Demon197@hotmail.com), February 01, 2002.

More on physics, emergentism, and psychology:

I believe that the philosophical question about free will and determinism led me to this pattern of thought, some time ago. I shall try to explain it to you: If you will, let me ask a question that will help to illuminate this belief. After an action potential has released neurotransmitters from terminal vessicles, some of those neurotransmitters drift away to be eliminated. What are ALL the causes of this drift? The neuron which loses a neurotransmitter will have a new transmitter to replace the lost one. But the process of cellular protein generation is not a fast-paced process. If all the neurotransmitter particles drift away from the terminal vessicles of a neuron, and only half are reabsorbed in the re-uptake process, the action potentials of that neuron will result in the release of a lessened amount of neurotransmitter, thereby raising the post-synaptic threshold and possibly (dare I say probably?) lowering the frequency of action potentials within a whole node of neurons. If it can be shown that neurotransmitters drift indeterminately, it would be a very significant finding. (If it has already been proven, I do not know it and I'm merely revealing my own ignorance). Have a good day!

-- Michael Martini (Demon197@hotmail.com), February 08, 2002.

Michael Martini's comments are provocative and interesting. Regarding the February 01 comment, elsewhere (http://htpprints.yorku.ca/, enter ID Code number 11) I have distinguished between what I consider to be scientifically acceptable and scientifically unacceptable uses of "emergents." I agree with the comment "...our thoughts are emergent properties of the interaction of all the billions of neurons in our brains," if it means emergent in the scientifically acceptable sense as discussed there. Regarding the February 08 comment, I am not sure that I understand the point, perhaps, because the intention of the first two sentences is unclear to me. However, I will respond as best I can to some of the points raised.

In the Feb 08 comment, it was asked, "After an action potential has released neurotransmitters from terminal vessicles, some of those neurotransmitters drift away to be eliminated. What are ALL the causes of this drift?" Later, it was stated, "If it can be shown that neurotransmitters drift indeterminately, it would be a very significant finding." Probably the two most important causes of the drift are (a) concentration gradients and (b) electrostatic "forces," namely, like charges repel, unlike charges attract. Substances will distribute themselves evenly within the "vessel" that contains them (e.g., extracellular space, inside a neuron, etc.) unless opposed by metabolic events (e.g., "sodium-potassium pump"), electrostatic forces, semipermeable membranes, etc. (This is, of course, over-simplified.) The synaptic space itself is not a vessel but is only a small portion of a larger vessel, the extracellular space. The neurotransmitter (hereafter, NT) "drifting away" may mean no more than that it "seeks equilibrium" within the vessel that contains it (extracellular space) due to concentration gradients and electrostatic forces. Most likely, the NT that is not re-uptaken or attached to a post-synaptic receptor, will not drift very far, certainly it will not "drift indeterminately." It will likely be cleaved by enzymatic deactivation(most likely before reaching another synapse or post-synaptic receptor...it would be, evolutionarily-speaking, mal-adaptive not to do so and would, thus, be selected out). Each NT or class of NTs seem to have their corresponding deactivating enzymes (e.g., acetylcholinesterase). Such cleaving results in molecules that are no longer NTs but are, nevertheless, molecules that can be fairly quickly recombined to form new NT of the same kind. As I understand it, the following speculation would not be likely to happen: "If all the neurotransmitter particles drift away from the terminal vessicles of a neuron, and only half arereabsorbed in the re-uptake process, the action potentials of that neuron will result in the release of a lessened amount of neurotransmitter, thereby raising the post-synaptic threshold and possibly (dare I say probably?) lowering the frequency of action potentials within a whole node of neurons." In addition to what I wrote above, the amount of NT released in a conjunction with a single action potential is minuscule. As I understand it, hundreds of action potentials per second can be sustained for a long time before any significant reduction of available NT would be evident.

Regarding free will and determinism, I believe that determinism is both the valid and the practical way to think scientifically but also, for methodological reasons, that even scientific knowledge can only be probable. That knowledge can only be probable and, thus, never complete, makes room for the appearance of free will.

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), February 08, 2002.

Thank you for the information!

-- Michael Martini (Demon197@hotmail.com), February 11, 2002.

For clarification, and for clarity's sake only, I must ask: Do you mean "appearance of free will" to be an illusion of free-will which emerges from the uncertainty of probability, or if you mean that free will is an actual property that appears because of the uncertainty of probability?

-- Michael Martini (Demon197@hotmail.com), February 20, 2002.

"Appearance" was used in the sense of "illusion" of free will.

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), February 21, 2002.