Erica Onnis

Intuitively, what is (ontologically) new differs from everything else and begins to exist at a certain moment in time. An entity is new if it is different from the rest and unprecedented from before. A genuinely new phenomenon can appear when created “from nothing” by a God, when produced by an intentional agent, or when spontaneously emerging from more elementary components. This paper focuses on these last cases, which involve “emergent novelty”. Following the debate about emergence, two interpretations of ontological novelty can be identified: the first one is causal, while the second one can be defined as “qualitative”. The former, prevalent in contemporary philosophical discourse, equates ontological novelty with the emergence of new causal properties such as tendencies, capacities or powers. According to the latter, novelty corresponds to the appearance of new qualities – i.e., properties that do not seem essentially or merely causal. This paper seeks to clarify the latter view by identifying the type of properties involved in qualitative novelty. Furthermore, it advocates integrating the causal and qualitative perspectives to develop a more comprehensive criterion for understanding ontological novelty.

Among metaphysicians, philosophers of science, and scientists, emergent phenomena are usually considered entities that depend on lower-level goings-on while maintaining some autonomy and manifesting some novelty in relation to them. Yet, understanding these features more precisely is an open problem. In this paper, I focus on emergent novelty. In the contemporary debate, this feature has been steadily interpreted in causal terms, and this causal interpretation has often been developed in a power-based framework. Moreover, several authors who played important roles in reintroducing this interpretation in the contemporary debate traced it back to the so-called “British Emergentists”. This paper aims to show that this alleged inheritance should be carefully reassessed. On the one hand, at least some of the early emergentists (John Stuart Mill, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, and Samuel Alexander) did not attach tremendous importance to causal efficacy compared to other forms of emergent novelty that I suggest calling “qualitative”. On the other hand, while contemporary accounts of emergence are prevalently outlined within a non-Humean metaphysical framework in which talk of powers is pertinent, at least some of the early emergentists were prevalently Humean in relation to causality, and explicitly rejected talk of powers or causal properties. Moreover, both Alexander and Lloyd Morgan recognised at least another form of causal efficacy associated with what the former called “Nisus”. This paper suggests that acknowledging and recovering these pluralist views about novelty and causation, besides representing a more accurate reading of early emergentism, would allow for the formulation of better and more comprehensive models of emergence.

Intuitively, what is (ontologically) new differs from everything else and begins to exist at a certain moment in time. An entity is new if it is different from the rest and unprecedented from before. A genuinely new phenomenon can appear when created “from nothing” by a God, when produced by an intentional agent, or when spontaneously emerging from more elementary components. This paper focuses on these last cases, which involve “emergent novelty”. Following the debate about emergence, two interpretations of ontological novelty can be identified: the first one is causal, while the second one can be defined as “qualitative”. The former, prevalent in contemporary philosophical discourse, equates ontological novelty with the emergence of new causal properties such as tendencies, capacities or powers. According to the latter, novelty corresponds to the appearance of new qualities – i.e., properties that do not seem essentially or merely causal. This paper seeks to clarify the latter view by identifying the type of properties involved in qualitative novelty. Furthermore, it advocates integrating the causal and qualitative perspectives to develop a more comprehensive criterion for understanding ontological novelty.

In Metaphysical Emergence, Jessica Wilson recognises the problem of higher-level causation as “the most pressing challenge to taking the appearances of emergent structure as genuine” (2021: 39). Then, Wilson states that there are “two and only two strategies of response to this problem” (2021: 40) that lead to Strong and Weak emergence. In this paper, I suggest that there might be an alternative strategy—not opposite, but different in kind—to approach this difficulty. As noticed by Wilson, the problem of higher-level causation was formulated and made central by Jaegwon Kim. However, Kim’s arguments were grounded on distinct metaphysical principles—including Alexander’s Dictum and its analysis in terms of causal powers. Rather than following Kim’s formulation and responding to the problem he raised in his own terms, a different approach may be to question the pertinence of the metaphysical framework in which these arguments were originally grounded. The problem of higher-level causation, in other words, might be less “pressing” if ontological emergence came with a less strict and univocal view of causal novelty and ontological relevance.

Despite the various criteria presented in the literature, most authors engaged in the debate about emergence agree on a fundamental distinction between strong/ontologically robust cases of emergence and weak/metaphysically innocent ones. The former typically involve entities that exhibit new causal capacities, while the latter are primarily associated with deductive unpredictability, conceptual novelty, and other qualities that highlight our epistemic limitations in understanding them. In this paper, I initially examine a paradigmatic example of weak emergence, namely the higher-level patterns generated by virtual Cellular Automata (CAs) as analysed by Mark Bedau. Then, I demonstrate that the same mechanism can be observed in real biological systems, such as the dynamics governing the pigmentation ontogeny of the ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus). Unlike virtual CAs, however, real CAs produce patterns that seem to perform non-reducible functions. Therefore, I propose that despite the similarities between virtual and real CAs, the pigmentation pattern of the ocellated lizard should be regarded as a case of strong emergence. Moreover, I suggest that this analysis may shed light on the nature of biological emergent entities in general. Finally, the paper includes an Addendum introducing an issue that, while not exhaustively addressed here, is highly relevant: how to metaphysically conceptualise the causal efficacy exhibited by the pigmentation patterns.

Cultured Meat, Climate Mitigation, and Collective Narratives: The Italian Case The climate crisis has revealed the connections between some practices considered harmless or inconsequential on a global scale and the dramatic changes affecting the climate and environment. This paper explores the different impacts of certain dietary patterns (carnism, vegetarianism, and veganism), potential mitigation scenarios, and the collective narratives about food and our relationship with it that hinder the shift towards more sustainable eating habits. Specifically, the case of the ban on the production and consumption of cultured meat in Italy is examined, with an analysis of the narratives supporting it.

L’articolo propone un’interpretazione critica dei processi di urbanizzazione cibernetica mettendo in evidenza, da un lato, il rapporto stringente tra Smart City e neoliberismo municipale, e da un altro, l'idiosincrasia tra determinismo tecnologico e complessità dei sistemi urbani. Nella prima parte la Smart City è descritta come una strategia di accumulazione finanziaria, uno strumento di governamentalità politica e una retorica della modernizzazione ecologica. In questa visione, la città si configura come un apparato socio-tecnico e simbolico finalizzato a rafforzare i processi di commodification della città, a diffondere un’etica competitiva nella governance politica e a proporre una correlazione ideologica tra tecnologie dell’informazione e sostenibilità ambientale. Nella seconda parte è utilizzata l’analogia esplicativa dei city building simulators (CBS) per criticare la mentalità prevalente nel design della Smart City, dove è presente una visione riduzionista del mutamento sociale, e la complessità propria dei sistemi urbani è semplificata in un’idea del governo-demiurgo e della cittadinanza passiva. Nelle conclusioni è evidenziata l’esigenza di un approccio empirico che abbracci la Smart City nelle sue fenomenologie quotidiane, in grado di cogliere come la digitalizzazione a livello urbano stia producendo nuove dinamiche di alienazione, ma anche di appropriazione dello spazio sociale.

Despite the common use of the concept of emergence, no uncontroversial theoretical framework has been yet formulated in this regard. In this paper, I examine what this circumstance suggests about the significance and usefulness of this concept. I first trace a brief history of the notion of emergence from its first formulation among the British Emergentists to its contemporary uses. Then, I outline its most common features and examine three examples of emergent phenomena, namely particle decay, free will, and division of labour in ant colonies. These three cases of emergence exhibit different features and imply criteria which only partially overlap. I then suggest that the multiplicity of features and criteria recognised as defining emergence, rather than being a threat to the tenability of the concept, should encourage the assumption of a pluralist attitude that is consistent with both the employment of this idea in different sciences and the recognition of emergent phenomena across different levels of organisation. Finally, I propose that emergence can be approached in a similar way to how Richard Boyd approached the problem of natural kinds, namely by identifying an open cluster of properties, rather than a set of necessary and sufficient conditions.

Feeding is a fundamental physiological need that falls within the realm of what we consider natural. However, throughout history, human beings have developed and employed several techniques to produce and manipulate food. Therefore, if the classical metaphysical distinction between natural and artefactual entities must be accepted, our food seems to predominantly fall into the latter category. Yet, discussions of artefacts do not typically involve organisms but rather material objects that cannot be found “in nature”. Thus, food may appear as a sui generis artefact. This paper, after an analysis of the relationships holding between food and human beings, suggests that the former, rather than being an unusual artifact is the quintessential artifact, one that seems to reflect better than any other the complex connections between Homo sapiens and its environment.

As highlighted by the last IPCC report on climate change (IPCC 2022), in addition to mitigation strategies relying on technological innovation and national and international policies, a relevant way to deal with the climate crisis is through personal behaviours such as shifting to sustainable diets. Despite being described as strategies relying on individual choices, however, the need for a global dietary change is hindered by some common narratives about food that have a relevant social dimension. Among them, the most entrenched and troublesome are those related to the idea of «freedom of choice» or «consumer autonomy» (Korthals 2004; Kaplan 2019), which have at their core the idea that humans should always be free to choose their foods. The realisation of a shift from the actual diets, which in developed countries has an extremely high environmental impact, to more sustainable ones, helpful in reaching mitigation targets, seems therefore to require an examination and change in the collective stories we tell about food and, especially, an adjustment of those “freedom narratives” about our relationships with it. In this paper I first suggest that freedom narratives are misleading because the right to food choice is conflated with the right to adequate (quantity and quality of) food. Then, I show that freedom narratives are too narrow because they imply a too narrow view of human rights and lack contextual depth. Novel narratives about food should therefore be broader and should offer deeper knowledge about the relationships between humans, food and the environment. In the frame of these novel, wider stories about food, individual shifts toward sustainable lifestyles will be easier, and these achievements might be able to benefit both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Emergent phenomena can be weak or strong. The former reflect epistemic limits and are ontologically innocent. The latter instantiate properties and powers not had by their components, and they are genuine, novel entities of the world. In this paper, I first show that this view rests upon two metaphysical assumptions: the Eleatic principle, and a power-based view of causation. Then, I suggest that these assumptions should be discussed, rather than passively accepted, and this for three reasons at least: British Emergentism did not require them; they pave the way to relevant objections against the autonomy of emergent phenomena; they provide a too narrow metaphysical frame for emergence.

Wang Guangyi, one of the stars of the new wave of Chinese art, has artistically addressed major philosophical trends in Western philosophy while drawing on Taoism, Marxism and Maoism. By bringing together a team of experts in the philosophy of art to discuss his work, The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi presents the first philosophical exploration of Wang's art, his thought and his analysis of Chinese society. From his use of words in images to his reference to the classics of Western painting, contributors set Wang's work against key questions in contemporary art. As well as answering what makes the language of pop art successful, they examine whether art and its history have come to an end, as Hegel posited, and if it is possible or even necessary to rework a new narrative for the history of contemporary art. The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi marks an important contribution to understanding the background, work and ideas of a 21st-century political artist outside the West.

En este artículo analizaré el modelo de emergencia propuesto por Maurizio Ferraris en 2016, investigando sus raíces teóricas en su doctrina de la huella (icnología). Después de una revisión dedicada al debate emergentista clásico y contemporáneo, mostraré que la noción de emergencia desarrollada por Ferraris es ontológica y diacrónica. Este emergentismo, que se basa en los conceptos de huella y registro, también se configura como un concepto clave dentro del pensamiento de Ferraris, ya que representa la piedra angular de una visión de la realidad que podemos definir como textualismo metafísico y que se expresa por primera vez en el texto Emergenza de 2016.

Negli ultimi anni, il richiamo al concetto di emergenza si è fatto sempre più diffuso in molte aree della filosofia e della scienza. Il termine viene usato per riferirsi alla circostanza in cui un sistema (fisico, chimico, biologico, ma anche sociale) manifesta delle proprietà e dei comportamenti che sembrano nuovi rispetto a quelli delle sue parti più semplici. Questo libro si propone di chiarire questo fenomeno, tenendo conto, da un lato, che le discipline coinvolte nel dibattito sono molte, quindi un approccio univoco all'emergenza potrebbe non bastare e, dall'altro, che per comprendere cosa sia l'emergenza è necessario delinearne le relazioni con altre questioni filosofiche di primaria importanza come quelle che coinvolgono la fondamentalità, la complessità e la causalità.

The complex and long genesis of the Daodejing is widely known. Whether it was originally composed by a single author, the legendary Laozi, or whether it emerged over time as a sort of collective anthology ancient sayings, the text underwent countless changes made by copyists and commentators over the centuries, and the Daodejing extensively published today is clearly something different from its first (and second) versions. For this reason, as well as for the nature of Chinese thought itself, it seems inappropriate to search for a philosophical “system” in the Daodejing. Nonetheless, the text can shed light on the view of nature permeating classical China. The paper will focus on three issues. The first is the ontological non-individualization of the Dao, which is the counterpart to the epistemological individualization of the human and social world. The second is the kind of metaphysics that can frame these features: a metaphysics of diachronic events, processes, and emergences, rather than a synchronic metaphysics of objects, substances, and monadic properties. The third, finally, is the fragmenting power of language, which through naming and knowledge creates that individualization that splits the undivided unity of the Dao.