Appearance and Persistence as the Unity of Diachronic and Synchronic Concepts of Emergence
- PDF / 596,755 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 178 Views
Appearance and Persistence as the Unity of Diachronic and Synchronic Concepts of Emergence Vladimír Havlík1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Recent philosophical discourse on emergence has developed with particular concern for the distinction between weak and strong emergence (e.g., Bedau 1997; Chalmers 2002) and with the primary focus on detailed analysis of the concept of supervenience (e.g., Kim 1984; 1999; McLaughlin 1997). However, in the last decade and as a new departure, attention has been devoted to the distinction between synchronic and diachronic emergence (e.g., Humphreys 2008a, b; Kirchhoff 2014). In this philosophical context, there is an ongoing general belief that these two concepts (diachronic and synchronic) are so different that it is impossible to establish for them a general unifying framework (Humphreys 2016a, b). It is the purpose of this paper to support an alternative view, i.e. that these concepts are different but not mutually exclusive, and that attending to appearance and persistence can, in this context, lead to an acceptable unifying framework for these two, differing concepts of emergence. Keywords Diachronic emergence · Synchronic emergence · Supervenience · Cellular automata
1 Introduction Recent philosophical discourse on emergence has developed amidst discussions regarding “weak” and “strong” emergence (e.g., Bedau 1997; Chalmers 2002) with the primary focus having been upon a detailed analysis of the concept of supervenience (e.g., Kim 1984; 1999; McLaughlin 1997). However, in the last decade the groundswell behind this philosophical status of emergence has tended towards a distinction between synchronic and diachronic emergence (Humphreys 2008a).1 1 Although it was a relatively new aspect in the modern discourse on emergence, the prototype of such a concept was already present in classical British emergentism. This is expressed explicitly primarily in the work of S. Lloyd Morgan, Emergent Evolution (1923), in which both aspects of emergence (synchronic and diachronic) are emphasized.
* Vladimír Havlík [email protected] 1
Institute of Philosophy, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, 11000 Praha 1, Czech Republic
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
V. Havlík
The diachronic approach emphasizes the emergence of new phenomena over time, whereas the synchronic approach focuses on the coexistence of some new “higher level” objects or properties of existing objects or properties on a “lower level” (Humphreys 2008a, 431). It is commonly held that the two concepts are distinct and that a unifying framework which would allow for the unification of both approaches to emergence is not to be found (Humphreys 2008a, b; 2016a). For example, Humphreys explicitly states: Although I remain optimistic that we shall eventually find a unifying framework that explains why synchronic and diachronic emergence both count as emergence in some more general sense, the two kinds of emergence at present remain conceptually distinct (Humphreys 2008a, 431). It is evident that he emphasizes a conceptu
Data Loading...
