The origin of things with a degree of causal autonomy from the existing causal level from which they arose. Causal autonomy prevents the emergent entities from being reducible to that from which they emerged. The properties of an emergent thing are not predictable from properties at the lower level (SRHE 104). For example, social properties in general can only be explained in terms of other social properties. There may be laws about biology that are not reducible to laws of physics. This does not require some special mental or spiritual substance which has properties over and above physical properties. It requires merely that biological entities have properties that cannot be entirely reduced to mechanical properties, nor to electromagnetic properties, nor to gravitational properties, etc., but are formed from complex interactions of these. All these physical phenomena can interfere with the effects of the others, as when a magnet prevents something from falling. Biological entities may be able to exploit real possibilities in nature that are not available to entities subject to mechanics alone, or to electromagnetics alone, etc. The complex properties from all the separate physical phenomena may collude in a way that transcends the effects of any one or several of them without having to posit any other mysterious force.
Emergent properties exploit possibilities in nature that were not being exploited at the lower level from which these properties emerged. In the same way, atomic structure involves the actualization of forces of nature (the weak and strong forces in the nucleus) that were not involved in the component protons and neutrons prior to the formation of atoms. New powers that emerge are only possible in virtue of the higher level of organization of matter that evolves (DPF 51).
A transcendental argument from our experience shows this to be correct in regard to the irreducibility of social activity. It is the condition for the existence of our social products that we be causal agents whose reasons are autonomous causes. The origins of human actions can be explained only by reference to social forms; the effects of human actions can be explained only by reference to the causal effects of beliefs.
Note that reductionism here is not the same as determinism: reduction turns on which level of causal mechanisms (physical, biological, etc.) are operative, while determinism turns on whether those mechanisms operate in open or closed systems (RR 114). Emergence is consistent with a diachronic causal account of how the emergent entity develops from a pre-emergent level of the world. The rise of social reality can be traced in a causal chain from the pre-existing non-social reality, but once it exists, social reality cannot be synchronously reduced to the non-social part of reality (SRHE 113). Autonomy is exemplified by the fact that explanation of certain physical states (namely, ones that are the result of intentional human activity) requires irreducible reference to beliefs (SRHE 117).
Copyright © 1997 Louis Irwin
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