David Sprintzen

Here I seek to be un-mistakenly clear about the nature of that prevailing scientific worldview that I claim is the major philosophical—might I say, metaphysical—challenge confronting modernity. That claim is that ontological reduction is the prevailing interpretation of the world apparently revealed by contemporary science. This means that the laws and principles of each level of theoretical interpretation can be folded into those at a still more fundamental level. Ultimately, this view holds that nature is organized by simple universal laws of physics to which all other laws and principles can eventually be reduced. Thus, the belief in human freedom can only be the expression of inadequate ideas that the further development of science will dispel. It was this mathematical structure of the natural world to which Einstein was alluding when he said that he “believed in the god of Spinoza.” And it is to counter the various and widely held updated versions of that position that my argument is directed.

At the heart of our prevailing scientific worldview resides an apparently unresolved theoretical paradox. That paradox makes it practically impossible to develop coherent social programs, while threatening to rob our life of its moral significance. We believe that we are free and are generally responsible for the choices we make and the life we live. Yet, modern science apparently tells us that causal determinism rules the natural world, leaving no place for human free choice. Meanwhile, the world’s religions do not seem to provide a more scientifically coherent and theoretically constructive alternative perspective with which to guide human living. The challenge of this work will be to show why the doctrine of naturalistic emergence can address the fundamental inadequacies in prevailing scientific and religious worldviews, while also providing a means for coherently addressing the problem of freedom, and its relation to determinism.

Here I suggest how naturalistic emergence can begin to provide a solution to the so far insoluble freedom and determinism conundrum. As a systemic property of the organism, freedom is grounded in the sui generis experience of subjectivity, emerging with the evolutionary development of living organisms by natural selection. I then conclude by summarizing two fundamental theoretical critiques and then suggesting one important theoretical consequence. The critiques are of the scientific role of the linear deductive model of explanation first systematized by Aristotle, and of the Cartesian methodological assumption of the reality of separability—both of which would effectively rule out, in principle, the possibility of ontological emergence. I claim, therefore, that any potentially adequate scientific theory of society will henceforth have to consider the manner in which the subjects “tell their story,” thus scientifically grounding a dramatic and existential interpretation of individual and social life. Such a life can only take form, structure, meaning, and direction within the meaning frame of the ongoing drama of a specific historically institutionalized culture.

Here I explore the metaphysical logic undergirding reductionism. It expresses a linear causal deductivism that seeks to explain events by looking for the elemental causal factors that not only produce but can also completely explain their “emerging” complex properties and powers. The resultant events or structures would have to be nothing but the logical result of the activity of those causal elements, and their behavior would have to be completely explainable by the laws that govern their constituent elements. I claim that this view is essentially the Cartesian program that framed the Seventeenth Century’s Scientific Revolution, which is “nothing but” the mathematization of the Aristotelian deductive logic that has provided the explanatory ideal of scientific inquiry since the fourth century BCE. But why should we assume the real-world adequacy of the Cartesian reduction—or Aristotelian deductive logic, for that matter? Our problem with this logic is not only its inability to address the mind-body problem. It is the more generic problem of explaining the relative autonomy of numerous realms of being from the most “primitive” to the most complex, for which I offer several examples in this chapter.

How can intelligent thought and action emerge from the essentially physical, and become practically efficacious? Here I elucidate the meaning of emergence, and provide criteria for its determination. I explain emergent phenomena as systems of structured networks of relationships with properties quite different from those of their “discrete constituent elements.” Their properties, powers, and modes of operation (a) are not possessed by their constituent elements, and (b) cannot be completely explained by, or reduced to, the properties and causal powers of those elements and their explanatory theoretical framework. They operate systemically in accordance with a causal logic that is particular to the emergent structures, requiring the use of concepts and principles not entirely replaceable by description of the behavior of their constituent elements. The emergent’s systemic properties and causal powers will usually have consequences that can actually determine the behavior of the elements that compose it. I then detail three apparently distinct, though perhaps overlapping, types of emergent phenomena: one which Paul Humphreys calls “fusion emergence”; a second, that might be called transformational emergence; and a third, which might be called structural, relational, or synchronic emergence.

ABSTRACT This article develops the ontological doctrine of naturalistic emergence, detailing three distinct but related types of emergent structures. It thus provides a coherent framework for making sense of the reality of human freedom, consistent with the operative determinism of natural science. This possibility emerges from taking seriously the implications of the reality of non-separability and decoherence, the significance of conservation laws, and the causal significance of systemic properties. The metaphysics of ontological emergence that is thus suggested reveals the ontological limitations of Aristotelian logic, Cartesian reduction, and their modern epigoni. Specific attention is paid to the formulations of scientific reductionism by E. O. Wilson with his theory of “consilience,” and to Jaegwon Kim’s critique of the doctrine of emergence.

After 350 years of continual social transformations under the push of industrialization, capitalism, world-wide social revolutions, and the development of modern science, what reasonably remains of the traditional faith in divine transcendence and providential design except a deep-felt, almost 'ontological' yearning for transcendence? Torn between outmoded religious traditions and an ascendant secular world, the contemporary celebration of individuality only makes more poignant the need for precisely that religious consolation that public life increasingly denies. People must now confront the meaning of their lives without the assured aid of transcendent purpose and direction. The resulting sense of absence profoundly marks the contemporary world. Confronted with the theoretical problems posed by the absence of absolute values, and the historical problems posed by contemporary social movements, Camus dramatized the urgency of developing guides to humane conduct in a world without transcendence. He continued to believe that only when the dignity of the worker and the respect for intelligence are accorded their rightful place can human existence hope to realize its highest ideals, and our life find the collective meaning and purpose that alone can truly sustain us in the face of an infinite and indifferent universe.

If you were a serious student at Queens College in the 1960s or 1970s, you probably took Philosophy 10 at some time in your academic career regardless of your major. You almost certainly had heard of that course, and of the pressure of students seeking to squeeze into the classroom, even if they were unable to register for it. This was John McDermott's class on Aesthetics. It was a Queens College cultural event of the first order. Not only would all of the chairs have been occupied, but students could have been found seated on the floor in all the aisles, and even a few sitting on the windowsills, or standing by the door. As the class unfolded, the blackboard would increasingly take on the appearance of a Jackson...