The concept of emergence

ly possible. Postponing (with Pepper) the question as to what could be meant by "emergent law," the dichotomy "emergent quality" -"emergent law" yields a trichotomy of emergent theories: (a) theories of emergent qualities without emergent laws; (b) theories of emergent qualities with emergent laws; (c) theories of emergent laws without emergent qualities. Now we have already suggested that of these three only the first is "palpably" committed to epiphenomenalism (unless, that is, a theory of emergent qualities is "epiphenomenalistic" merely by virtue of the fact that it recognizes that emergent qualities have necessary-and-sufficient conditions). We now notice that to make this first alternative consistent with determinism (which is not in question in this paper) we must either refuse to call the regularities between emergent qualities and the contexts in which they emerge "laws," or, calling them "laws," we must deny that they are "emergent." Pepper, in effect, by drawing his distinction between "shifts" and "superveniencies" takes the former alternative. In these terms, the regularities in diagram (A) between Φ0 and Φ1, and between Φ1 and Φ2 would be shifts, whereas that between Φ1 and H would be a regularity of supervenience. And in these terms, the three alternatives above become (a') theories of emergent qualities without emergent shifts; (b') theories of emergent qualities with emergent shifts; (c') theories of emergent shifts without emergent qualities. But from the standpoint of one whose concern is with the question "Does emergence involve epiphenomenalism?" and who is convinced that emergent qualities must as such be epiphenomenal, this trichotomy reduces to this dichotomy: theories without emergent shifts -theories with emergent shifts. And from this standpoint, and in these terms, the issue would be "Do emergent shifts involve epiphenomenalism?" But this is not how Pepper sets up his problem. In his first formulation, as we have seen, he makes use of the general notion of law, and sees his purpose as that of showing that "a theory of emergent laws . . . must be [a theory of epiphenomena] or else cease to be a theory of emergence." Then, after drawing a distinction between laws and the regularities they describe, he reformulates his task as that of showing that "all natural regularities are shifts." At first sight this is puzzling indeed, for as the term "shift" was introduced, it amounts to the task of showing that no natural regularities are regularities in which "certain characteristics supervene upon other characteristics." And since the understood context is "under pain of epiphenomenalism," this amounts, in turn. to the task of showing that supervening characteristics must be epiphenomena. But at first sight this is only verbally different from the task of showing that emergent qualities are epiphenomena -and this, for Pepper, is no task, since the demonstrandum is "palpably" true. Now the key to the resolution of this difficulty is the philosophical virtuosity of the term "characteristic." Often used in the sense of property, frequently used to cover both properties and relations, it is here being used in so broad a sense that even regularities become characteristics. Pepper, indeed, is thinking of an emergent law as a supervening regularity -as, so to speak, a regularity which rides piggy-back on a lower level regularity. It is little wonder that, approaching it with this mental set, he finds the notion of an emergent law absurd. As he sees it, the emergentist who speaks of emergent laws is able to swallow this absurdity because he mistakes a "whole hierarchy of different laws" -each of which, according to Pepper, describes "the same natural regularities" -for a "ladder of cosmic regularities." Pepper does not develop this point. However, in terms of contemporary controversy, the initial mistake of the emergentist, according to Pepper, is to be so fascinated by the difference between one framework of concepts and laws (e.g., Page 4 of 11 THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCE 12/15/2006 http://www.ditext.com/sellars/ce.html biology) and the proximate lower level framework of concepts and laws (e.g., organic chemistry) that he finds it difficult to believe that the one could be reducible to the other. What is not clear is whether Pepper believes that the denial (in principle) of reducibility involves the absurdities he finds in the notion of emergent laws.