[mikema63]

For those who don't already know.

Emergence is the properties that arise from the interactions of stuff. I.e. an ant colony is an emergent property of ants, the mind is an emergent property of neurons, and society is an emergent property of human interactions.

Reductionism is the idea that phenomenon can be described wholly in terms of their parts.

I was under the impression that the two idea we're basically the same thing looking in opposite directions but I'm told that there is some level of conflict between the ideas (though they aren't polar opposite ideas.)

Can anyone explain the differences?

[Sivad]

There are two types of emergence, ontic and epistemic. Both are non-reductive.

ontic emergence can't be reduced to a sum of parts

Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing.

epistemic can't be predicted from the interaction of fundamental constituents

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts.

[Paradigm]

For a reductionist, all higher-level functions are reducible to lower-level functions. The higher level has no agency, as it were. For emergentist, there is a two way relationship between whole and part, such that the whole can act upon the part just as the part acts upon the whole. This is what the reductionist denies, claiming that the higher level only supervenes upon the lower level, meaning that it serves as a kind of short-hand description of the sum of all parts.

[Wellsy]

I like this piece that makes a useful distinction between mechanism and reductionism, but also critiques a kind of a mystical anti-reductionism.

Spoiler: show

MATTER AND MOTION - L. Bazhenov

F. Engels, for the first time in the history of philosophical and scientific thought, developed the concept of forms of motion of matter, and worked out the general problems of their interrelations and attempted to bring them under some classification, based on the data of his contemporary science. The key‑idea permeating F. Engels' concept is the recognition of the qualitative distinction of various forms of motion of matter and the discovery of their genetic and structural relations with one another. This fundamental idea did and does have a fundamental methodological significance, and hence, further on, I shall concern myself precisely with it.

The essence of the dialectical solution to the problem of the interrelationship between the higher and lower forms of motion lies in recognizing the unity of the opposites: the qualitative distinction of a higher form, and an unbreakable liaison of a higher with a lower form. The dialectical concept of the forms of motion appears here, (the same as in other similar problem areas), against metaphysically lop‑sided tendencies which absolutize one of the opposites and reject their unity as well. In the problem now being reviewed these metaphysical tendencies are:

1. Denial of the qualitative distinction of the higher form of motion and "reduction" of the higher form to the lower one.

2. Absolutization of the qualitative distinction of the higher form of motion and the latter's alienation from its associated lower forms of motion.

The former tendency became known as Mechanicism or Reductionism (without drawing a distinction between them); the latter as anti‑reductionism. I propose to discriminate between Reductionism and Mechanicism by approaching the latter as the denial of the qualitative distinction of more complex material formations, and a "reduction" of the more complex to simple elements. This occurs when one factually denies the distinction of the more complex, i.e., a "reduction" of the whole to a sum of its component parts, and so on. It is reasonable to distinguish the "reduction" from the theoretical deduction (explanation) of the qualitative specificity of complex formations ("higher forms of motion") on the basis of the fundamental laws of the lower levels ("lower forms of motion"). The doctrine that puts forth a thesis which does not at all deny the qualitative specificity of more complex formations is one that well‑deserves the name of Reductionism.

The distinction of Mechanicism and Reductionism makes necessary a more differential approach to the critique of Mechanicism. In our philosophical literature one often comes across a simplified characteristic of Mechanicism when the tag is hung on any attempt to account for the specific regularities of more complex forms of motion in terms of more simple ones. First of all, this mode of explanation begins to reduce, and to deny the qualitative features to its corresponding higher form. But this point of view comes close to yet another metaphysical tendency, namely, the absolutization. of qualitative specificity, and thus closes the door to the latter's scientific elucidation.

For example, one can read in a philosophical paper: "Smart's Mechanicism," wherein this point is clearly shown by the following contention: "Of course, chemistry is not a fundamental science like physics because we hope to have all chemical laws explained away, eventually, in terms of physics, much like the quantum theory provided an account for the chemical bond." [23] But there is not a shred of Mechanicism seen in Smart's inference cited above. Without rejecting chemical laws, he shows his assurance that they can be explained "in terms of physics." Further, to support his idea, Smart instances the explanation of the chemical bond through the quantum theory. But is it not apparent that this explanation, far from rejecting the chemical bond as a qualitatively specific phenomenon of nature, seeks to explain it, to reveal its inherent character?

The progress of natural science over the past two decades has made very acute the necessity to go a step further. From an oversimplified critique of mechanicism, as a number of our philosophers or natural scientists used to do under the banner of guarding the qualitative distinction of the higher forms of motion, they fall actually into the metaphysical absolutization of this distinction.

I will note also that the opposition to new scientific theories, not infrequently recurrent under the banner of fighting against Mechanicism, engenders among some natural scientists a tendency to reject the dialectical concept of the forms of the motion of matter. So, the further progress of both philosophy and natural science demands a serious analysis into the relationships of the higher and lower forms of the motion of matter.

In order to clarify the point at issue, it is necessary to examine historically Mechanicism and the part it played in the course of the development of knowledge. It should not be forgotten that dialectics is not only opposed to Mechanicism, but also to the other, equally dangerous, metaphysical concept of anti‑reductionism which absolutizes the qualitative distinction of more complex material formations. In the context of animate and inanimate nature, (where both metaphysical extremities come in to their own), this latter concept is known as Vitalism. It postulates that life is so specific that it renders physical and chemical laws totally incapable of shedding any light whatsoever upon vital phenomena, with the result that the latter's essence cannot be fathomed, except through an entirely new system of concepts. Such a system is based on the concept of some vital force which acts against the laws of physics and chemistry.

In order to assess properly the comparative contribution of Mechanicisin and Vitalism in the progress of science, it should be pointed out that at a certain stage of scientific progress the role of Mechanicism was historically progressive. The dialectico‑materialist teaching about the forms of the motion of matter declares that the higher forms of motion of matter, though featuring a qualitative distinction, always contain inside themselves elements of lower forms. With regard to mechanical motion, Engels said bluntly that every higher form of the motion of matter involves a moment of mechanical displacement. And, therefore, this is the first‑priority goal of science but, however, only its first‑priority goal. And there has always been a revelation of this moment of mechanical displacement in more complex areas of nature. Hence, the initial step of genuinely scientific cognition has always consisted and will consist in science seeking to reveal in more complex forms, instead of a purely verbal emphasis of the qualitative distinctions of these formations, those elements of simple forms which are necessarily inherent in them.

Hence, we note the progressive role of Mechanicism compared with Vitalism in the historical progress of science since it demanded an investigation into the physico­chemical fundamentals underlying vital processes. In lieu of the plausible explanation which Vitalism was soon to provide, using the vital force and other similar notions, Mechanicism came forward with a real explanation. However it is true that this explanation failed to comprehend all vital phenomena. Mechanicism erred inasmuch as it pushed forward its explanations as all‑embracing, but yet, it did grasp really rather than fictitiously some actual occurrences which it explained through facts, and not exclusively by words. Therefore, at the early developmental stages of a particular science Mechanicism had, indeed, a progressive role to play, though sooner or later the actual progress of the content of science is bound to enter into a conflict with this constricted point of view, and to lead to a revelation of the qualitative distinction which cannot be fitted into the rigid framework of the mechanistic outlook.

From that moment onward, it is the opposition of Reductionism versus Anti‑Reductionism which comes to the fore. The basic question arising for Reductionism, as I understand it, is not a question about the existence of the qualitative specificity of more complex material formations (the latter's recognition is the point of departure and the initial premise of both Reductionism and Anti‑Reductionism), but rather about the nature of this specificity. It is either something primary, original and inferable from nowhere (Anti‑Reductionism) or else it requires an explanation, and ought to be "reduced," (not in the sense of being dismissed, but in the sense of being theoretically deduced), to the lower and more fundamental levels. Reductionism constitutes the precise doctrine which teaches that the qualitative distinction of complex material formations should not be merely postulated, nor introduced at will on the strength of shallow observations. This position manifests a shallow declaration of the difference of one object area from another. But, this position should be properly understood as a result of the legitimate process whereby more simple material formations add up to complexity, as a result of the dialectical process of change of quantitative into qualitative distinctions.

The successful solution of the problem of relations of the higher and lower forms of motion pre‑supposes a true comprehension of one more proposition not often emphasized enough in our literature. The point at issue is the so‑called principal and subsidiary forms of motion. F. Engels notes in the Dialectics of Nature: ". . . the higher forms of motion simultaneously also produce other forms, and . . . chemical action is not possible without change of temperature and electric changes, organic life without mechanical, molecular, chemical, thermal, electric, etc., changes. But the presence of these subsidiary forms does not exhaust the essence of the main form in each case." [24] This proposition by F. Engels is interpreted by and large in such a way that, for example, the chemical form of motion appears to have principal content independent of the physical form and its regularities, (of the laws of quantum mechanics in the given case). On the other hand, the physical form and its regularities (those of quantum mechanics) possesses some subsidiary content of the chemical form of motion. Again there is a principal content in the biological form of motion which is independent from the physico‑chemical laws, and the latter is some subsidiary element in the vital processes.

Such a stand is signally at odds with the actual content of science. The laws of quantum mechanics by no means constitute the subsidiary content of chemical processes, for it is on the basis of these laws that the latter's distinctions ate to be accounted for. Nor do the physico‑chemical regularities constitute the subsidiary content of vital processes, but again provide the basis for explaining the essence of life.

The approach to the relation of the higher and lower forms of the motion in nature as that of the principal versus subsidiary is contrary to fact, nor does it belong to F. Engels but is in fact a distortion of his actual views. None other but Engels himself, as he revealed the inter‑relationship of chemistry and biology, argued, ". . . chemistry leads to organic life, and it has gone far enough to assure us that it alone will explain to us the dialectical transition to the organism." [25] In my view it is very difficult to interpret Engels' statement as proclaiming that chemical regularities are the subsidiary content of biological processes.

I maintain that the customary interpretation of Engels' thesis about the principal and subsidiary form does not correspond with the actual content of his concept of the forms of motion. There must be two, clearly distinguishable aspects to the relation of the higher and lower forms of motion. Under the first aspect, the lower forms of motion simultaneously appear also as fundamental, and the higher forms as derivative, to be developed from, and explained through, the fundamental forms. This aspect can be called the aspect of fundamentality‑derivation. The conception of the relation of the higher and lower forms of motion in nature (under this aspect) as that of the principal and subsidiary forms will be a profound error. Such a mistake appears as a metaphysical anti‑reductionist absolutization of the qualitative distinction of the higher forms. For the biological form of motion, it will be a mistake which Vitalism makes.

Furthermore, there is another aspect which can be called the aspect of coexistence of the higher and lower forms of motion. It consists, largely, in that the higher form of motion, besides its peculiar actions (making up precisely its chief content), produces also some individual, relatively independent effects characteristic of the corresponding lower forms. These effects, viewed precisely as relatively independent are, of course, subsidiary and "do not cover in full the essence of the chief form in each case under review." Thus, in chemical processes, besides the chief result of producing new substances, there will always be present some relatively independent effects in the form of some thermal changes, e.g., temperature changes, heat emission, etc. and also some mechanical occurrences, volumetric changes, mass transfer, etc.

Certainly, these effects per se fail to reveal the specific character of chemical processes. They are the latter's side‑effects. But it is equally certain that the relation of the principal, specific content and the side‑effects is but one, and not even the non‑principal, aspect in the interrelationships of the higher and lower forms.

It gives me great satisfaction to note the “rehabilitation” of Reductionism now occurring. In addition to the above‑mentioned article of I. V. Kuznetsov, it will be of great interest to consider in this context Academician V.A. Engelgardt's address to the Second All‑Union Conference on the Philosophical Issues of Contemporary Natural Science.

V. A. Engelgardt, in my view, noted quite justly, "Reductionism, at the present time, requires no defense or argumentation to prove its validity. These proofs are given by the entire totality of contemporary biological research which represents, in effect, none other but the triumphant passage of the reductionist principle.” [26]

V. A. Engelgardt goes on to formulate the doctrine of integratism, its foremost goal being “a transition from Reductionism which rests on the dismemberment of the complex and the study of the simplest components, to the knowledge of the regularities of biological organization." [27] It will be pertinent to note here that V. A. Engelgardt never separates Integratism from Reductionism but, on the contrary, emphasizes that "Integratism is to be evolved from Reductionism, proceeding from the latter's results." [28] Nevertheless, it seems doubtless to me that V. A. Engelgardt's usage of the term "Reductionism" operates essentially in two different senses.

Reductionism as the "dismemberment of the complex and the study of the simplest components" is not the reductionist principle whose "triumphant passage" he lauded above. Reductionism as a methodologically fruitful doctrine never confined itself to "the study of the simplest components." In fact, this study constitutes the first step along the road of Reductionism, whereas its chief objective consists in the theoretical reconstruction of a more complex object area on the basis of the previously revealed laws of a more simple area. Reductionism sets out to deduce theoretically the complex from the simple with the result that it simply cannot have its limit in the "study of the simplest components." Whatever is called "Integratism" by V. A. Engelgardt is the necessary (and the staple) proposition of the reductionist doctrine.

Of course, no one can forbid the use of the word "Reductionism" in the narrow sense either, as is the case in V. A. Engelgardt's words which I italicized, but then any talk of its "triumphant passage" would be far‑fetched. Where Reductionism passes triumphantly, it does so as the program of explanation for the most intimate and specific regularities of life, and on the basis of the fundamental physical laws, and not as "the study of the simplest components."

The doctrine of Reductionism, as I attempted to describe it, constitutes the basic, methodological content of the materialist concept of the forms of the motion of matter and is intimately linked with the eternal urge of human knowledge toward unity. Of course, abstractly speaking, there is nothing as impossible as this in the principal non‑uniformity of scientific cognition. However, throughout the entire history of human knowledge there has been in the forefront the ideal of the unity of knowledge; and this ideal has played a highly productive part, methodologically. The doctrine of Reductionism. (if dialectically, not mechanistically understood) is a doctrine, I presume, most consistent with the aspiration toward the unity of scientific knowledge. The anti‑reductionist proposition which recognizes the equal foundation of physics and biology, to my mind, would be hard to dovetail into the trend toward the unity of knowledge.

The issues discussed above lead to some conclusions.

...

3. The dialectico‑materialist concept of the forms of the motion of matter, once it is interpreted, as I have attempted to do here, namely, as the doctrine of dialectically conceived Reductionism, allows one to gain a clear view of the problem of the inter­relationship of physics and biology, a staple of modern natural science, and charts the ways for their further progress that are most consistent with the trend toward the unity of scientific knowledge.

So reductionism, as distinct from mechanism, is progressive to our understanding but it isn't to be confined to the simplest components and thus denying the more complex forms that develop from them.
It isn't fruitful to absolutize on level, but to eventually unify some understanding, we must begin from the 'ground up' and seek to integrate what we learn holistically.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html

In rejecting the so-called summative approach, which mechanistically reduces the whole to the sum of its parts, we should not make a fetish of wholeness and regard it as something with mystical power. The whole does owe its origin to the synthesis of the parts that compose it. At the same time it is the whole that provides the basis for modification of existing parts and the formation and development of new ones, which, having changed the whole, help to develop it. So, in reality, we have a complex interaction between the whole and its parts.

In this though, creates interesting queries in regards to a 'downward causality'
An old but interesting figure in regards to this that might want to check out is American philsopher, Roy Wood Sellars.

In Sellars’ (1973, 160-1) view, science “builds” on common sense, but it develops new concepts based on new instruments and the application of mathematics to experience, and so forth. He rejects the monochrome Newtonian universe in favor of an evolution-generated hierarchy of different levels of emergent causality: Under certain favorable conditions, life emerges from matter and mind from life (See his 1920c; 1922a, Ch. IX; 1924a; 1927a; 1933a; 1944b; 1959a; 1932, 4; 1969d, 64-68; and 1973, 290). He is committed to the emergence of downward causal forces. That is, while the emergence of higher-order entities is causally dependent upon lower-order entities (bottom-up causation), once they emerge, the former may causally influence the latter (top-down causation) in ways not reducible to bottom-up causation (see Roy’s 1970, 38, 44-46 and Meehl and Sellars 1956). Sellars insists that the higher emergent entities are still material systems.

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The particular relationship between things being the difficult task, those that make absolute one level over another are wasting their time in trying to deny the existence of things than understand them.

So I don't think reductionism as interpreted above requires a denial of higher forms of complexity, though mechanism does in making absolute mechanical motion of matter.
And such, it doesn't readily appear to oppose a sense of emergence to emphasize the relationship of the lower forms, though one would have to be sensitive to how one characterizes the relationship.
Because some can whilst in theory seem open, may in practice deny the existence of the more complex forms, like those who seem only to speculate the relationship between a lower scale to a higher one, they don't seem to attempt to illustrate the causal relationship and can seem like denying the higher level.

Spoiler: show

https://www.docdroid.net/uOmptrL/asc287-connell-raewyn-gender-differences-and-bodies-pp28-52.pdf#page=25

The idea of natural differences runs into difficulties on several fronts. Sociobiological explanations of human kinship, for instance, foundered when the predictions from genetics failed to match the realities of kinship systems actually documented by anthropologists (Sahlins 1977). It seems that social logic works independently of genetic logic. The explanation of gender hierarchy by a hormonal "aggression advantage' founders when it is discovered that higher testosterone levels follow from social dominance as much as they precede it (Kemper 1990)

Geary's argument, being recent and sophisticated, is particularly worth attention. Geary's account of sexual selection is based on individuals making choices that maximize their genetic payoff, very like firms in a free market maximizing their utilities in neo-classical ecnomic models. Geary can't really 'see' society as a reality, so his arguments don't have any place for institutionalized gender arrangements. For instance, in discussing the higher levels of violence among men than among women, all he can see is male vs male competition for reproductive resources; he cannot see military institutions, collective struggles, gendered interests and cultural definitions of manhood and womanhood. it is characteristic of this literature that Geary speaks constantly of 'males' and 'females', not 'men' and 'women'.

Lacking any account of social process, Geary constantly falls back on evolutionary speculation to explain the facts of social life. it comes as a slight shock, after reading this 400-page monograph calling on the name of science and published by so august an institution as the American Psychological Association, to realize that the entire argument is speculation. Not one sex difference in psychological characteristics has actually been shown to result from evolutionary mechanisms.

Theordore Kemper (1990) argues that we need to replace the idea of natural difference with a more complex chain of social-biologica-socail causation. Body-machine models of gender assume that the machine runs by itself: that biological causation is independent of society. But there have been no human (or even hominid) bodies outside society for a very long time. Social processes can be traced for 2.5 million years, give or take a few weeks. (This is the approximate age of the earliest hand-tool cultures so far discovered by archaeologists (Semaw 2000). The discovery of such industries proves the social transmission of specific techniques for making stone tools, over this length of time.)

[Victoribus Spolia]

My exposure has primarily been in the philosophy of mind, so I will explain the difference on that level.

Consciousness has been a big problem in the philosophy of mind as reductionist theories (like behaviorism, mind-brain identity theory, and even functionalism) have all had a hard time explaining the subjective first-person aspects (conscious-content) via physical properties which are always third-person descriptors of physical phenomena.

The emergence theory of the mind argues that consciousness is not physically reducible (that we know of), thus acknowledging that consciousness is, in a sense, non-physical in-itself; however, they would argue that the emergence of such is necessarily connected with the alignment of certain physical phenomena. Hence, if the physical conditions of a brain are met, consciousness will emerge, even if the consciousness itself is not physically reducible.

I reject physical reduction and myself advocate for a mental reduction of that which is commonly called physical, and my critique of the emergence theory is two-fold.

1. If emergence is claiming that given certain physical conditions, that consciousness will necessarily arise (causation), then they are guilty of the fallacy cum hoc/post hoc as they cannot infer from the correlated events (the physical brain existing, and consciousness emerging) that any causal relationship exists, and if they did, this position would essentially itself reduce to physical reduction.

2. However, if those who hold to emergence only say that these people who have brains happen to also be conscious, and we cannot physically reduce consciousness, they are basically positing nothing new that everyone doesn't already know in the philosophy of mind. They are just stating an observation of the problem, they are merely acknowledging that there is an elephant in the room in cognitive studies and the philosophy of mind.

They fail to posit any explanation of how emergence works, why it should work, and what actual causal conditions are at play. They simply cannot answer these things.

Its a half-ass dualism that doesn't want to be a dualism.

[Wellsy]

Another issue is the lack of content in the concept of emergence which simply hides the ignorance of any specifics on how a thing 'emerged' into something more complex. Because we assert there is some continuity between one thing and another, but we still have to find what that is.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Teleology.pdf

‘Emergence’
‘Emergence’ is the idea used by atheists to fill the gaps which religion fills with God – “I don’t know how this property of some complex organism is produced, it emerged naturally.” Emergence is a category of processes which includes a wide variety of intelligible processes which have little in common with each other, other than not being explicable solely in terms of causality. It is generally associated with processes which only occur when the number of individual components, causal iterations or level of complexity passes a critical level. It is then often falsely concluded that this complexity functions as the cause of the phenomenon concerned, being an efficient explanation for its occurrence under the relevant conditions. It should be noted that causality is not synonymous with intelligibility. In this sense, part of the role of ‘emergence’ is to restore ‘causality’ to its hegemonic role in positivist science. Another motivation is the problem in Analytical Philosophy as to how a collection of objects can exhibit a property which is not present in any one of the component objects individually, or in the precursor collections. For example, evolution proceeds for millions of years without any organism exhibiting consciousness, and suddenly homo sapiens ‘emerges’. Did God inject consciousness into Man, or did it ‘emerge’ naturally? Obviously the latter. However, to say that consciousness emerged at a certain point in evolution no more explains consciousness than does Divine intervention.

‘Emergence’ is also intended to counter the reductionist refusal to grant relative independence to sciences which rest on ‘emergent’ forms of motion. ‘Emergence’ means that ‘mental phenomena’ can be described and explained without any reference to ‘physical phenomena’ or explanation of the phenomena in physical terms. It is here that the concept of emergence acts specifically as a barrier to science because it functions to sanction the idea that there is no intelligible explanation for the ‘emergence’ since ‘emergence’ itself functions as such an explanation.

Darwin would hardly be remembered as a founder of modern biology if The Origin of Species had simply proclaimed that new species ‘emerged’ because biological processes were ‘complex’. He is remembered because he observed that off-spring resemble their parents, and formulated the idea of natural selection of variations in inherited characteristics. Even though it is evidently ‘directional’ in that it tends to produce more and more elaborate organisms, evolution is not teleological, because it does not act through consciousness. But nor is evolution causal, in that it relies on the random nature of variations and the accidental impact on survival of each mutation. For example, as many mutations made the necks of okapis shorter as made their neck longer, but on average, only those whose necks got longer were ‘selected’ in the competition for treetop foliage and led to the evolution of giraffes.
This arbitrariness of the mutations is essential to the efficacy of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a specific form of movement, which is distinctly different from causality because each incremental change in the phenotype is not the effect of an external being, but is internal to the life form in itself. Emergent processes are therefore generally ‘spontaneous’ and ‘autonomous’ or ‘autopoietic’, but again, like ‘emergent’, these concepts are not explanatory, but merely descriptive.
The business cycle could be described as an emergent process of market relations, but in this case the randomness of response is not the key to the phenomenon, though the independence of responses is essential. On the other hand, the emergence of trade unions and cartels is precisely not reliant on the independence of responses. Each ‘emergent’ process demands a unique explanation if it is to be intelligible.

[quetzalcoatl]

Another issue is the lack of content in the concept of emergence which simply hides the ignorance of any specifics on how a thing 'emerged' into something more complex. Because we assert there is some continuity between one thing and another, but we still have to find what that is.

This is a specific instance of the knowledge gaps (and conceptual gaps) that plague the various scientific disciplines. There is no obvious or smooth continuity between particle physics (for example) and biochemistry. Certain disciplines, like economics, only have a notional connection with reality.

In our limited understanding, we choose a small subset of the world to study and then cut it up into smaller chunks, until it seems to make some kind of sense. The borders of these knowledge 'islands' seem fuzzy and ill-defined. Worse, our maps of understanding are tailored to the specific area of study and aren't usually transferable in any useful sense.

@Victoribus Spolia has a valid critique of emergence, but the critique applies equally to using religion to fill in the knowledge gaps. The two forms of knowledge don't intersect in helpful ways. It's just religious handwaving to replace that scientific handwaving of emergence - nothing is gained.

It's also more than a little disingenuous to criticize emergence on the basis of a lack of reductive mechanism. Causation, even at a reductive level, is fully as illusory and ill-defined as emergence.

[Wellsy]

This is a specific instance of the knowledge gaps (and conceptual gaps) that plague the various scientific disciplines. There is no obvious or smooth continuity between particle physics (for example) and biochemistry. Certain disciplines, like economics, only have a notional connection with reality.

In our limited understanding, we choose a small subset of the world to study and then cut it up into smaller chunks, until it seems to make some kind of sense. The borders of these knowledge 'islands' seem fuzzy and ill-defined. Worse, our maps of understanding are tailored to the specific area of study and aren't usually transferable in any useful sense.

@Victoribus Spolia has a valid critique of emergence, but the critique applies equally to using religion to fill in the knowledge gaps. The two forms of knowledge don't intersect in helpful ways. It's just religious handwaving to replace that scientific handwaving of emergence - nothing is gained.

It's also more than a little disingenuous to criticize emergence on the basis of a lack of reductive mechanism. Causation, even at a reductive level, is fully as illusory and ill-defined as emergence.

It is a significant crisis of the sciences that they have become so fragmented into so many specialized fields that they do stand unintegrated and independent of one another.

Spoiler: show

https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/les-treilles-talk.htm

1. I think the problem which we have discussed about the unsatisfactory nature of the concept of ‘levels’ is the same question which arises from the ethical consideration of the place of neuroscience: it is not ‘levels’ inscribed in objective reality which separate the sciences, but rather the limits to the efficacy of the forms of practice which characterise each of the sciences. We ascribe the laws inherent in these forms of practice to the nature of the specific kind of things which we cognise through these forms of practice.

It seems that human beings all have a healthy disposition to regard the objects of experience as objectively existing things or entities. People are not born epistemological relativists or constructivists, we are born realists. But Fichte had a point; in the beginning there is just activity and the constraints that the world places on that activity. We learn to recognise these limits on our own activity as other people and objects. But the kind of things populating our world depend on how we ‘operationalise’ the concepts and questions presented to us within the terms of our own discipline. However, what happens is that rather than operationalising a concept to give it a precise meaning within a given system of activity, we reify our activity as objectively existing things. So to any given form of practice there corresponds a class of objectively existing things of which the world is deemed to be composed. So long as we recall that practice (activity) is both objective and subjective, individual and social, then there is nothing subjectivist or relativist in this observation.

We are all human beings and we talk to one another, we breath the same air and rely on each other in the same world economy; so our worlds are not mutually exclusive like in some relativist nightmare. As ordinary human beings we share most of our activity and agree on the identity and nature of most of the objectively existing things that populate our world. However, the division of labour, such as the division of the sciences, reflects itself as belief in different kinds of things populating the world.

We rationalise this disagreement about the nature of the things populating our world by means of the concept of ‘levels’, and the correlative concept of ‘emergence’. The underlying objective basis for this division of the world into different levels is the division of labour. This does not negate the fact that emergence is a valid concept, but it is a concept which can mislead; like God, emergence may act as a cover for lacunas in our understanding. Consciousness is not an ‘emergent property’ of neuronal networks, but arises on separate bases, only one precondition for which is a functioning human brain.

If we are interested in overcoming this rupture of our shared world into mutually exclusive ‘levels’, with an inexplicable ‘emergence’ covering over the gaps, then we have to go to the underlying division of labour and the opportunities for practical collaboration across its boundaries.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s04.html

To artificially isolate the specialised sciences from philosophy amounts to condemning scientists to finding for themselves world-view and methodological guidelines for their researches. Ignorance of philosophical culture is bound to have a negative effect on any general theoretical conclusions from a given set of scientific facts. One cannot achieve any real theoretical comprehension, particularly of the global problems of a specialised science, without a broad grasp of inter-disciplinary and philosophical views. The specialised scientists who ignore philosophical problems sometimes turn out to be in thrall to completely obsolete or makeshift philosophical ideas without even knowing it themselves. The desire to ignore philosophy is particularly characteristic of such a trend in bourgeois thought as positivism, whose advocates have claimed that science has no need of philosophy. Their ill-considered principle is that "science is in itself philosophy". They work on the assumption that scientific knowledge has developed widely enough to provide answers to all philosophical problems without resorting to any actual philosophical system. But the "cunning" of philosophy lies in the fact that any form of contempt for it, any rejection of philosophy is in itself a kind of philosophy. It is as impossible to get rid of philosophy as it is to rid oneself of all convictions. Philosophy is the regulative nucleus of the theoretically-minded individual. Philosophy takes its revenge on those who dissociate themselves from it. This can be seen from the example of a number of scientists who after maintaining the positions of crude empiricism and scorning philosophy have eventually fallen into mysticism. So, calls for freedom from any philosophical assumptions are a sign of intellectual narrowness. The positivists, while denying philosophy in words, actually preach the flawed philosophy of agnosticism and deny the possibility of knowing the laws of existence, particularly those of the development of society. This is also a philosophy, but one that is totally misguided and also socially harmful.

It may appear to some scientists that they are using the logical and methodological means evolved strictly within the framework of their particular speciality. But this is a profound delusion. In reality every scientist, whether he realises it or not, even in simple acts of theoretical thought, makes use of the overall results of the development of mankind's cognitive activity enshrined mainly in the philosophical categories, which we absorb as we are absorbing our own natural that no man can put together any theoretical statement language, and later, the special language of theoretical thought. Oversimplifying the question a little, one may say without such concepts as property, cause, law or accident. But these are, in fact, philosophical categories evolved by the whole history of human thought and particularly in the system of philosophical, logical culture based on the experience of all fields of knowledge and practice.

Knowledge of the course and results of the historical development of cognition, of the philosophical views that have been held at various times of the world's universal objective connections is also essential for theoretical thinking because it gives the scientist a reliable yardstick for assessing the hypotheses and theories that he himself produces. Everything is known through comparison. Philosophy plays a tremendous integrating role in scientific knowledge, particular ly in the present age, when knowledge has formed an extremely ramified system. Suffice it to say, for example, that medicine alone comprises some 300 specialised branches. Medicine has "scalpelled" man into hundreds of little parts, which have become the targets of independent investigation and treatment.

It results in incredibly smart yet stupid people, because they have great content of knowledge in one area which then shapes their speculative attempts to understand other areas not by their own content but by generalizing the methods which are valid in the limit of their discipline.
Where people in one discipline are afraid to step beyond the artificial bounds drawn by that discipline and tend towards speculation despite the knowledge being available.

Spoiler: show

https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Brandom.pdf

But a theory of concepts which pays no attention to the social and psychological existence of concepts is untenable. But this is exactly what Brandom does. He laments, in the final section of “Reason in Philosophy,” that cognitive psychology has not investigated whether the development of concepts in children replicates his hierarchy of the complexity of concepts. Well, why not spend an afternoon with a child psychologist and ask? The development of concepts in children has been studied, and not only do children not replicate Brandom’s schema, but there are very highly developed theories of the development of concepts which demonstrate different genetic processes. If Brandom thinks there is reason to believe that the development of conceptuse in children should mirror the structure of their semantic complexity, perhaps the way concept-use actually develops would give him cause to reconsider the significance he attaches to this hierarchy of conceptual complexity? Would it give him cause to reconsider his whole theory of concepts? He says that it is ignorance on the part of psychologists that they have not investigated the basis for his philosophy in psychology, but isn’t it more reasonable to look to ignorance on his own part that he has developed a schema for the development of concepts without taking the trouble to enquire as to how it actually happens?

The problem of the origin of concepts in social formations and Brandom’s lack of interest in investigating this origin is even worse than his lack of an active interest in ontogenetic development. In “Articulating Reasons” there is one line in the whole book touching on the societal origin of concepts. In the context of pointing out that virtually every sentence is unique, he says: “The linguistic community determines the correct use of some sentences, ...”. How? He does not seem to realise what a problematic statement this is. There is a vast literature on the topic of the social origin of ideas, and the social conflicts tied up with the process of meaning-determination. But Brandom is either uninterested or unaware of these issues, systematically taking “society” to be a homogeneous and integral whole. And on the basis of his own failure to enquire into the origins of meaning, he simply takes concepts as given data.

As noted in the first quotation, the solution is how one integrates the different fields that come so close to touching one another so often but don't.
It's clearly not that the world is reflective of this analytical division and independence of levels as much as it simply reflects the way we've organized the intellectual division of labour to investigate the properties and nature of reality.
The analytical approach is a wealth of empirical content and understanding, but it binds itself up in the inability to necessarily synthesize itself beyond certain limits. Where I don't think the distinction between doing say biology and psychology should be erased, that is something we've gained thanks to analytical thought. But we may end up with pseudo-problems that abstract pieces from the whole and then wonders how they relate to one another when at our theoretical foundations we presuppose their separation.
Like a cartesian dualism of a souless body and a bodyless soul, or universals existing independently of being instantiated in individuals.
The problem itself being the result of forgetting the forest and seeing only the trees.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/phylogeny.htm

Neuroscience already knows that the numerous components of a scenario are processed by distinct neuronal structures which transform various kinds of material interactions and experiences into neuronal form, and has posed for itself the various ‘binding problems’ of how these diverse components of a scenario are ‘put back together’ in a single perception. And yet perception of the whole ‘gestalt’ is evolutionarily prior to the perception of the individual ‘components’ (such as colour, movement, shape, spatial distribution, etc.). In fact, perception of ‘gestalts’ precedes self-consciousness in evolution; animals perceive episodes without those perceptions being ‘brought together’ and presented to any kind of self-consciousness. So even though the posing of the problem as one of binding is intuitively compelling to us self-conscious individuals, it would appear that it is more a problem of differentiation, of how the brain is able to differentiate the various aspects of a scenario from the whole. And of course the explanation for the various processes of differentiation is well-known: the brain has a known variety of specialised structures which make these differentiations possible.

Starting from individuals to the abstract which don't contain in them the particularly of what is universal, instead operating with pseudo-concepts/abstract universals rather than concrete ones.
https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Roots_of_CHAT_in_Hegel.pdf

Hegel differentiated his idea of ‘concept’ from the abstract generality of formal, metaphysical thinking as follows:

(1) The concept is generally associated in our minds with abstract generality, and on that account it is often described as a general conception. We speak, accordingly, of the notions of color, plant, animal, etc. They are supposed to be arrived at by neglecting the particular features which distinguish the different colors, plants, and animals from each other, and by retaining those common to them all. This is the aspect of the notion which is familiar to understanding; and feeling is in the right when it stigmatizes such hollow and empty notions as mere phantoms and shadows.

But the universal of the notion is not a mere sum of features common to several things, confronted by a particular which enjoys an existence of its own. It is, on the contrary, self-particularizing or self-specifying, and with undimmed clearness finds itself at home in its antithesis. For the sake both of cognition and of our practical conduct, it is of the utmost importance that the real universal should not be confused with what is merely held in common. ...

The universal in its true and comprehensive meaning is a thought which, as we know, cost thousands of years to make it enter into the consciousness of men. ...

The distinction referred to above between what is merely in common, and what is truly universal, is strikingly expressed by Rousseau in his famous Contrat social, when he says that the laws of a state must spring from the universal will (volonte generale), but need not on that account be the will of all (volonte de tous). Rousseau would have made a sounder contribution towards a theory of the state, if he had always kept this distinction in sight. The general will is the concept of the will: and the laws are the special clauses of this will and based upon the notion of it. (Hegel, 1830/1867, §163n, S. 507-509)

...
The ‘abstract generality’ referred to above by Hegel, Vygotsky aptly called a ‘pseudoconcept’ - a form of abstract generalization, uniting objects by shared common features, which resembles conceptual thinking because, within a limited domain of experience, they subsume the same objects and situations as the true concept indicated by the same word.

The world isn't so fragmented, but if we're careless in our means of abstracting from it, then unconscious to our own thinking, we will fall into limitations and errors for a lack of self-aware logical thought.
And it is indeed the case that to arbitrarily transcribe one schema and knowledge outside it's context is a dangerous endeavor and is the error of many who make their discipline's methodological means a metaphysical position/world view.
To be so careless with the origins of a concept can lead to illusions on the nature of some object, a dissonance between form and content.
Although this is sometimes necessary that we don't yet have the adequate form for the content and must grasp things with our inadequate conception of it before we finally develop a new one, an abstract notion from which the new stage of a science can reinterpret its empirical facts in light of it (ie Einstein's theory of relativity sublating Newtownian physics).

To which causality isn't a particularly necessary concept to making things intelligible in that the height of causality is reciprocity.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/determinism.htm

Hegel showed that causality is extremely limited in its explanatory capacity, because the invocation of causation leads to an infinite regress. Efficient causes are always of interest, but a phenomenon is only understood when it is grasped as a cause of itself (a causa sui), that is, the relevant process is seen to create and recreate the conditions for its own existence. But even then, explanation often takes the form of Reciprocity of cause and effect. Hegel (1831) grants that “to make the manners of the Spartans the cause of their constitution and their constitution conversely the cause of their manners, may no doubt be in a way correct,” but still explains nothing. But Reciprocity is as far as Causality can go. The understanding of a process as a cause sui means grasping it as a concept and usually incorporates an investigation of its origins and development. Vygotsky has pioneered such an approach to Psychology.

I've experienced this a few times myself, where I unconsciously tried to place something as a primary cause and the other as an effect, leading to an infinite regress in which each one was both cause and effect upon one another. If one is too attached to the concept then we end up in an infinite regress or an infinite loop.
As stated, emergence as being a simple observation that things seem to get more complex as no more insightful than saying God created something in such a way is of course just a limitation of understanding much of the time. It's a place holder until it is known, God of the gaps and that, but it shouldn't be mistaken for having any content in itself that does explain a thing. To actually ask the specifics of a concept always reveals whether someone has any actual content in mind or whether it's just an empty stand in for not knowing.

[Victoribus Spolia]

@Victoribus Spolia has a valid critique of emergence

That is correct.

...but the critique applies equally to using religion to fill in the knowledge gaps.

Agree, good thing this critique would not apply to me or my view of religion.

The two forms of knowledge don't intersect in helpful ways. It's just religious handwaving to replace that scientific handwaving of emergence - nothing is gained.

No handwaving, the critique I gave of Emergence is valid because its own claims reduce either to a fallacious form of physicalism (though I know of no non-fallacious forms of such) or to a trivial redundancy in simply restating the hard problem of consciousness in the philosophy of mind.

It's also more than a little disingenuous to criticize emergence on the basis of a lack of reductive mechanism. Causation, even at a reductive level, is fully as illusory and ill-defined as emergence.

An odd claim given that any system of dialectial materialism presupposes material causation, thus if "causation" is illusory, so is Marxism.

That being said;

A causal relationship, in the enlightenment usage, is a necessary relationship. That is, it describes a relationship which is universal and absolute, required as by inference.

For instance, a conclusion necessarily follows from two valid premises in one specific way; the relationship is necessary; that is, it could not be otherwise.

What is the necessary condition of consciousness? The hard problem (also known as the explanatory gap) is that consciousness has not been reduced; or demonstrated to have been caused (necessarily) by physical antecedents and/or explained in terms of other physical properties in a satisfactory manner given the definition of consciousness itself.

The hard problem is hard because the subjective/experiential element aspects of the definition omit of any physical reduction (in terms of explaining in third-person properies---i.e."physical properties"..)) and any claim of "causation" has hereby been fallaciously conceived.

Now, if you feel that under such conditions no explanation in terms of observed correlates could obtain at all because all claims as to empirically derived causes would fall under the same fallacies....then I would agree. I would argue that physicalism is impossible.

This of course if where your remarks about "religion" are misguided. My position is derived from axioms and the epistemologically undeniable. My "religion" is compatible with my arguments, and my arguments were inspired by my "religion" and great intellectuals of human history (like St. Augustine, or Anselm, Ockam, or Jonathan Edwards, or George Berkeley, Cornelius Van Til, John Foster, Frank Jackson, Thomas Nagel, Masao Abe, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and Hans-Herman Hoppe).

If you want to know my position regarding the philosophy of mind;
I am a Trinitarian Phenomenal Idealist and Maintain A Non-Cartesian Dualism of the Mind and Body where their distinctions is based on perceived v. perceiving rather than physical v. non-physical.

I solve the problem of other minds with my argument for God's existence (based on Berkeley's proof, St. Augustine's psychological analogy, among other influences) and Hoppe's proof for natural rights from discourse ethics (his argumentation ethics)

Feel free to test their validity.

[Rancid]

I was under the impression that the two idea we're basically the same thing looking in opposite directions

This is exactly what I thought too. I always assumed that Emergence is the word we use when the system we are reducing is too complex for us to understand.

[quetzalcoatl]

This is exactly what I thought too. I always assumed that Emergence is the word we use when the system we are reducing is too complex for us to understand.

Perhaps this is how it should be used. In practice, emergence is advanced as an explanation for phenomena that emerge at a certain level of complexity. I.e, it doesn't explain anything, it just points it out.

...My position is derived from axioms and the epistemologically undeniable...

Undeniable in what sense? These concepts are, by definition, concepts. Their legitimacy can only be demonstrated within a particular intellectual construct within which the concept is situated.* My counter-critique is that any philosophical conclusion is legitimate to the extent you accept the axiom structure - or, stated another way, it is circular in its reasoning in precisely the same respect as "emergence."

* For example, Euclidean axioms (and their deductive structure) are perfectly valid within the Euclidean intellectual construct. However, Euclid's construct doesn't map onto reality perfectly. It diverges from experimental results made with precise measuring tools.

Euclidean geometry (like all human intellectual systems) is almost right, and that's the big joke God plays on us poor humans.

[annatar1914]

Now, if you feel that under such conditions no explanation in terms of observed correlates could obtain at all because all claims as to empirically derived causes would fall under the same fallacies....then I would agree. I would argue that physicalism is impossible.

This of course if where your remarks about "religion" are misguided. My position is derived from axioms and the epistemologically undeniable. My "religion" is compatible with my arguments, and my arguments were inspired by my "religion" and great intellectuals of human history (like St. Augustine, or Anselm, Ockam, or Jonathan Edwards, or George Berkeley, Cornelius Van Til, John Foster, Frank Jackson, Thomas Nagel, Masao Abe, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and Hans-Herman Hoppe).

If you want to know my position regarding the philosophy of mind;
I am a Trinitarian Phenomenal Idealist and Maintain A Non-Cartesian Dualism of the Mind and Body where their distinctions is based on perceived v. perceiving rather than physical v. non-physical.

I solve the problem of other minds with my argument for God's existence (based on Berkeley's proof, St. Augustine's psychological analogy, among other influences) and Hoppe's proof for natural rights from discourse ethics (his argumentation ethics)

Feel free to test their validity.

@Victoribus Spolia ;

I have to admit my friend, George Berkeley is almost impossible to refute, with centuries of people trying. H.H. Hoppe, not quite so much, lol. Looking forwards to your opinions on a number of things when you've fully returned here.

[late]

1) It is a significant crisis of the sciences that they have become so fragmented into so many specialized fields that they do stand unintegrated and independent of one another.



2) It results in incredibly smart yet stupid people, because they have great content of knowledge in one area which then shapes their speculative attempts to understand other areas not by their own content but by generalizing the methods which are valid in the limit of their discipline.

3) Where people in one discipline are afraid to step beyond the artificial bounds drawn by that discipline and tend towards speculation despite the knowledge being available.

4)As noted in the first quotation, the solution is how one integrates the different fields that come so close to touching one another so often but don't.

5) But we may end up with pseudo-problems that abstract pieces from the whole and then wonders how they relate to one another when at our theoretical foundations we presuppose their separation.

1) Not a crisis, just the way things are.

2) If you mean there ought to be a single, standard language, that's been tried. Didn't work. It may be the only comedic moment in philosophy when the Positivists blew themselves up.

3) If you want to move into another discipline, you need to learn the way they do things. It happens often, but it's a lot of work.

4) Like I said, it's been tried. Turns out that simply isn't possible.

5) That sort of thing drives physicists crazy. It's part of why we started seeing physicists doing Philosophy of Science. Try Ronald N Giere.