Re: BHA: Emergence

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marshall, Tobin, Ruth, all,

I wrote:

>All societies are at
>> the same ontological level in that they belong to the kind, 'society';
>> but that doesn't preclude emergent levels and evolution within that
>> kind. All life-forms are of the same broad kind, but there are emergent
>> life-forms within that kind...

Marshall wrote:

>I think this mixes apples with oranges, or rather synchronic with
>diachronic. Dogs may evolve from wolves, but they don't necessarily react
>back on wolves to affect wolf behavior or evolution. This is entirely
>different than the kind of emergence represented by water -- oxygen +
>hydrogen or society -- individuals.
>
>Ideas may evolve out of other ideas or presuppose them, but this kind of
>diachronic emergence is qualitatively different from the synchronic
>emergence of something like water.

There is no requirement that the emergent level does react back on the
lower level, only that it can do - and life-forms certainly can. I'm not
sure that emergence is not always diachronic as well as synchronic. Even
in your synchronic case of water, I take it that there was a time when
hydrogen and oxygen existed but no water, and before that various gases
and particles, but no hydrogen or oxygen... DPF is clear that both
synchronic and diachronic explanatory reductions of emergent phenomena
are possible, but only after the emergent level has been understood in
its own terms. This entails seeing that it could not have been predicted
(induced or deduced) from the materials out of which it is formed, i.e.
that is has genuinely novel, irreducible causal powers. In my 'society'
example I was thinking, not of the society/person relation, but of the
emergence historically of different types of society, as grasped e.g. by
the concept 'mode of production'. Thus capitalism is diachronically
emergent from feudalism, and certainly capable of reacting back on it
(something still occurring today in relation to feudal remnants).

Tobin:

>> >I don't think one can use explanatory power
>> >as a mark of ontological difference among ideas, because the explanations
>> >concern referents.

Mervyn:

>> But you hold that ideas are not *the same* kind of thing as their
>> referents; further, as Ruth said, belief systems (can) presuppose other
>> belief systems.

Marshall:

>I'm not sure I get the point of this. Can you elaborate on how difference in
>kind between ideas/referents or the presupposing of prior belief systems
>pertains to the issue of using explanatory power to determine ontological
>differences?

Tobin says that explanatory power can't be used to indicate ontological
difference among ideas *because* explanations concern referents. I take
this to be Ruth's point about content. He seems to want to say that
where there are emergent levels it is in the intransitive objects of
ideas, not at the level of ideas themselves. My point to Tobin is that
this seems to reduce ideas to their referents or content (the ontic
fallacy, I think), and is at odds with his insistence on the social
production of knowledge by means of knowledge via the transformation of
pre-existing materials. While the production of knowledge occurs in the
transitive or epistemological dimension, it can of course be
referentially detached and studied as an intransitive object. In which
case, it can be seen to involve the emergence of a new (conceptual)
being (dpf 49) or theory out of the pre-existing materials of the lower
level and possessing powers that are irreducible.

Which is another way of saying that Tobin's own insistence (against his
own reductionism, as above) on the social production of knowledge
provides a beautiful example of conceptual emergence.

>
>To me it seems the very nature of "explanatory power" puts ideas in a
>separate category from most (other) ontological things. While along with H.
>Marcuse, I do not want to abolish ideas from being part of the world, I
>nonetheless think they are a special category and we need to be very careful
>when we refer to their ontological status.

Of course they are in a special or distinct (not separate, because they
emerge from pre-existing materials) category - they are emergent, or at
any rate the product of an emergent power of matter: mind.

Mervyn:

>Marko *means* by social construction the view
>> that everything is within the paradigm, when the paradigm changes the
>> world changes. There is nothing outside the text. Science discovers no
>> truths of the world as it is independently of our theories. - CR is not
>> social constructionist in this sense, so why not agree to that extent?
>> Knowledge is not *just* a social product, because it is constrained by
>> the way the world is independently of our knowledge of it. We couldn't
>> navigate our way successfully around the world if this were not the
>> case, nor communicate transculturally.

Marshall:

>Yeah, but I don't think anyone on this list buys into this kind of
>irrealism. It's a straw man.

Well, Marko has got the impression that they do, and this is what I'm
trying to correct. If people keep intoning that knowledge is a social
production (in the transitive dimension) without pointing out that it
does *not* produce the objects of knowledge in the intransitive
dimension, of which genuine knowledge is possible, it's not going to be
corrected and we pretty inevitably come across as social
constructionists in the above sense.

Mervyn



Marshall Feldman <marsh@xxxxxxx> writes
>A few comments on Mervyn's latest posting:
>
>>
>> Hi Tobin, Ruth, Viren, all
>>
>> >Just to butt in briefly: I think what Ruth is saying -- and
>> certainly what I
>> >would say -- is that ideas qua ideas are all at the *same* ontological
>> >level.  However, they may refer to (real or hypothetical) entities at
>> >different ontological levels.
>>
>> Ruth may well be saying this, but if so I disagree. All societies are at
>> the same ontological level in that they belong to the kind, 'society';
>> but that doesn't preclude emergent levels and evolution within that
>> kind. All life-forms are of the same broad kind, but there are emergent
>> life-forms within that kind...
>
>I think this mixes apples with oranges, or rather synchronic with
>diachronic. Dogs may evolve from wolves, but they don't necessarily react
>back on wolves to affect wolf behavior or evolution. This is entirely
>different than the kind of emergence represented by water -- oxygen +
>hydrogen or society -- individuals.
>
>Ideas may evolve out of other ideas or presuppose them, but this kind of
>diachronic emergence is qualitatively different from the synchronic
>emergence of something like water.
>
>>
>> >I don't think one can use explanatory power
>> >as a mark of ontological difference among ideas, because the explanations
>> >concern referents.
>>
>> But you hold that ideas are not *the same* kind of thing as their
>> referents; further, as Ruth said, belief systems (can) presuppose other
>> belief systems.
>
>
>I'm not sure I get the point of this. Can you elaborate on how difference in
>kind between ideas/referents or the presupposing of prior belief systems
>pertains to the issue of using explanatory power to determine ontological
>differences?
>
>To me it seems the very nature of "explanatory power" puts ideas in a
>separate category from most (other) ontological things. While along with H.
>Marcuse, I do not want to abolish ideas from being part of the world, I
>nonetheless think they are a special category and we need to be very careful
>when we refer to their ontological status.
>
>>
>> >> Of course if evolution is a mere social construction then of course
>> >> anything goes but thankfully science is not a social construction!
>> >
>> >Sigh.  I suppose we'll never get past this.  The objects of
>> science may not
>> >be social constructions, but *knowledge* of those objects *must*
>> be a social
>> >product.  To fail to distinguish between knowledge and the object of
>> >knowledge is the epistemic fallacy.
>>
>> Now you've made me sigh. Marko *means* by social construction the view
>> that everything is within the paradigm, when the paradigm changes the
>> world changes. There is nothing outside the text. Science discovers no
>> truths of the world as it is independently of our theories. - CR is not
>> social constructionist in this sense, so why not agree to that extent?
>> Knowledge is not *just* a social product, because it is constrained by
>> the way the world is independently of our knowledge of it. We couldn't
>> navigate our way successfully around the world if this were not the
>> case, nor communicate transculturally.
>
>Yeah, but I don't think anyone on this list buys into this kind of
>irrealism. It's a straw man. Personally, I don't think RB goes far enough.
>The epistemic fallacy simply establishes the relative autonomy of ideas
>while saving reality. Ian Hacking and Andrew Sayer emphasize practice and
>scientific interventions in the world as presupposing reality outside
>thought. Even Quine's rabbit is still SOMETHING even though our language
>might describe it in different or contradictory ways.
>
>Gotta run to class.
>
>       Marsh Feldman
>       URI
>
>
>
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--
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
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