Downward Causation and Emergent Levels of Reality
Jim studies some of the writings of Claus Emmeche and finds a set of
precise concepts for dealing with aspects of his inquiry into human
freedom.
One thing is clear from reading the writings of
Claus Emmeche. He is
extremely well-informed about the nature of both science and philosophy. Today I
have been studying his article Levels,
Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation, written with Simo
Køppe and Frederik Stjernfelt, and tomorrow I will study the article EXPLAINING
EMERGENCE: towards an ontology of levels by the same authors. Emmeche
is the director of the Center for
the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies at the Niels Bohr
Institute at the University of Copenhagen. This sentence will give you a feeling
for the several researchers working there at the
Center:
"We would like to give the term "philosophy of
nature" a new meaning, signifying the fruitful spirit of critical dialogue that
we have experienced in our teaching, bringing together students, scientists and
scholars from the humanities and science studies, striving to cross disciplinary
boundaries between science and metascience and between the various fields of
metascience, without dissolving important differences of theory, approach, and
research object, but furnishing a more open kind of discourse and hopefully a
deeper understanding."
Sounds like a place where I would have liked to be earlier in my life.
Tonight, I would like to say a few words about this concept of downward causation as explored in this article. The problem is a quite significant one: assuming there are emergent levels of reality—another Emmeche article suggests physical, biological, psychological and sociological processes—in what sense, if any, can phenomena at higher levels of emergence have a causal influence on a lower level process or entity?
Glossing over the many refined arguments in the Emmmeche, et. al. article, here is what I believe to be the core. Often causality is equated with one of Aristotle's four senses of causality, namely efficient causality. Using Aristotle's taxonomy of causation as a springboard, the article defines three types of downward causation, strong, medium and weak.
"The idea of strong downward causality may be briefly described as follows: a given entity or process on a given level may causally inflict changes or effects on entities or processes on a lower level." (p. 18) The authors believe that the main problem with strong downward causality is that it imports the same kind of unsolvable problems into science as did vitalism in biology. The root of the problem meta-conceptually [my word] is that the influence of the cell on its constituent molecules is not a temporal process but rather a logical one. They use the term mereology (a branch of logic) which refers to knowledge of the relation of parts to wholes. Therefore, the cell cannot be an efficient cause of molecular changes because it cannot precede them in time. Rather it emerges as a simultaneous arrangement of molecules that adds an emergent domain governed by laws, to be sure, but not laws that supervene the laws of the molecular domain.
By contrast, medium and weak downward causation center about two conditions, constitutive reductionism and constitutive irreductionism. Both these conditions are a result of a weakening of the requirements of strong downward causality.
"In contrast to strong DC, medium DC does not involve the idea of a strict "efficient" temporal causality from an independent higher level to a lower one, rather, the entities at various levels may enter part-whole relations (e.g., mental phenomena control their component neural and biophysical sub-elements), in which the control of the part by the whole can be seen as a kind of functional (teleological) causation, which is based on efficient, material as well as formal causation in a multinested system of constraints." (p. 25) Medium downward causation does, however, defend the thesis of constitutive irreductionism: "Ontologically or materially, a higher level entity is constituted by the lower level, but even if the lower level entities are a necessary condition for the higher level, this higher level cannot be reduced to the form or organization of the constituents." (p. 16)
In the authors' view, the advantage for a science of emergent phenomena of weak downward causation is that it affirms that the structure, organisation or form of an entity is an objectively existent and irreducible feature of that entity (formal realism of levels), while denying that the higher level adds any substance to the entities of the lower level (constitutive reductionism). The authors model a general approach to the discussion of weak DC by using the phase-space terminology of qualitative dynamics. This approach allows n specified parameters of a system to define the axes of an n-dimensional phase space. Any change in the system will be modeled by a trajectory in the phase space. An attractor is the name of a set of points in the phase space in which trajectories with many different initial conditions end.
The point of their discussion of phase space is to develop a more general concept of an attractor to be used in characterizing weak DC. Thus entities at an emergent level of reality might be thought of as "formal causes of the self-organization of constituents on a lower level." These are relatively rarely occurring but extremely stable patterns of organization of entities on a lower level, e. g. the conditions for the formation and maintenance of life or self-consciousness. The authors are at pains to reassure the reader that there is no spiritual use of the word 'attractor' intended. From a semiotic point of view, however, an attractor functions as a sign for all the initial conditions attracted to it, that is, it is a type, and therefore has an existence in some sense apart from the instantiations of it.
Now a few comments on this work in relationship to mine. I see the value in bringing this perspective to the study of human action. I see that I have not given much thought to the emergence of life itself, and that most of my reflection has been on the emergence of perception, self-consciousness, and meaning (and--Christ consciousness). I have been struggling with how the meaning-bearing linguistic system of a person influences events, and I believe that further study of downward causation will further clarify some of these issues.
I also note that there may be a limitation to the helpfulness of this perspective. The authors seem to be completely rejecting any appearance of magic, which, given their basic logic of science approach, makes sense. However, I have also written extensively in this blog about synchronicity, and wish to give a meaningful account of this aspect of my experience, too. It remains to be seen how helpful the approach currently being discussed is for this purpose. I see some possibility in extending their notion of formal causation more clearly into the area of sign systems. We'll just have to keep reading.
Sounds like a place where I would have liked to be earlier in my life.
Tonight, I would like to say a few words about this concept of downward causation as explored in this article. The problem is a quite significant one: assuming there are emergent levels of reality—another Emmeche article suggests physical, biological, psychological and sociological processes—in what sense, if any, can phenomena at higher levels of emergence have a causal influence on a lower level process or entity?
Glossing over the many refined arguments in the Emmmeche, et. al. article, here is what I believe to be the core. Often causality is equated with one of Aristotle's four senses of causality, namely efficient causality. Using Aristotle's taxonomy of causation as a springboard, the article defines three types of downward causation, strong, medium and weak.
"The idea of strong downward causality may be briefly described as follows: a given entity or process on a given level may causally inflict changes or effects on entities or processes on a lower level." (p. 18) The authors believe that the main problem with strong downward causality is that it imports the same kind of unsolvable problems into science as did vitalism in biology. The root of the problem meta-conceptually [my word] is that the influence of the cell on its constituent molecules is not a temporal process but rather a logical one. They use the term mereology (a branch of logic) which refers to knowledge of the relation of parts to wholes. Therefore, the cell cannot be an efficient cause of molecular changes because it cannot precede them in time. Rather it emerges as a simultaneous arrangement of molecules that adds an emergent domain governed by laws, to be sure, but not laws that supervene the laws of the molecular domain.
By contrast, medium and weak downward causation center about two conditions, constitutive reductionism and constitutive irreductionism. Both these conditions are a result of a weakening of the requirements of strong downward causality.
"In contrast to strong DC, medium DC does not involve the idea of a strict "efficient" temporal causality from an independent higher level to a lower one, rather, the entities at various levels may enter part-whole relations (e.g., mental phenomena control their component neural and biophysical sub-elements), in which the control of the part by the whole can be seen as a kind of functional (teleological) causation, which is based on efficient, material as well as formal causation in a multinested system of constraints." (p. 25) Medium downward causation does, however, defend the thesis of constitutive irreductionism: "Ontologically or materially, a higher level entity is constituted by the lower level, but even if the lower level entities are a necessary condition for the higher level, this higher level cannot be reduced to the form or organization of the constituents." (p. 16)
In the authors' view, the advantage for a science of emergent phenomena of weak downward causation is that it affirms that the structure, organisation or form of an entity is an objectively existent and irreducible feature of that entity (formal realism of levels), while denying that the higher level adds any substance to the entities of the lower level (constitutive reductionism). The authors model a general approach to the discussion of weak DC by using the phase-space terminology of qualitative dynamics. This approach allows n specified parameters of a system to define the axes of an n-dimensional phase space. Any change in the system will be modeled by a trajectory in the phase space. An attractor is the name of a set of points in the phase space in which trajectories with many different initial conditions end.
The point of their discussion of phase space is to develop a more general concept of an attractor to be used in characterizing weak DC. Thus entities at an emergent level of reality might be thought of as "formal causes of the self-organization of constituents on a lower level." These are relatively rarely occurring but extremely stable patterns of organization of entities on a lower level, e. g. the conditions for the formation and maintenance of life or self-consciousness. The authors are at pains to reassure the reader that there is no spiritual use of the word 'attractor' intended. From a semiotic point of view, however, an attractor functions as a sign for all the initial conditions attracted to it, that is, it is a type, and therefore has an existence in some sense apart from the instantiations of it.
Now a few comments on this work in relationship to mine. I see the value in bringing this perspective to the study of human action. I see that I have not given much thought to the emergence of life itself, and that most of my reflection has been on the emergence of perception, self-consciousness, and meaning (and--Christ consciousness). I have been struggling with how the meaning-bearing linguistic system of a person influences events, and I believe that further study of downward causation will further clarify some of these issues.
I also note that there may be a limitation to the helpfulness of this perspective. The authors seem to be completely rejecting any appearance of magic, which, given their basic logic of science approach, makes sense. However, I have also written extensively in this blog about synchronicity, and wish to give a meaningful account of this aspect of my experience, too. It remains to be seen how helpful the approach currently being discussed is for this purpose. I see some possibility in extending their notion of formal causation more clearly into the area of sign systems. We'll just have to keep reading.
Posted: Mon - July 3, 2006 at 07:52 PM
Quick Links
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
My Websites
Jim Andris' Personal Website
Jim Andris' Genealogy
Of Course It's Boring, Idiot
Friends of Scott Joplin
Grapevine
Zander's Zecrets
Jim Andris' Genealogy
Of Course It's Boring, Idiot
Friends of Scott Joplin
Grapevine
Zander's Zecrets
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Oct 22, 2008 01:32 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Oct 22, 2008 01:32 PM