Grounding and Emergence David Chalmers Or: The United Nations of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Grounding and Emergence David Chalmers Or: The United Nations of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Grounding and Emergence David Chalmers Or: The United Nations of Interlevel Relations David Chalmers Or: The Happy Family of Interlevel Relations David Chalmers Or: The High School of Interlevel Relations David Chalmers Or: The Top Ten


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Grounding and Emergence

David Chalmers

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Or: The United Nations of Interlevel Relations

David Chalmers

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Or: The Happy Family of Interlevel Relations

David Chalmers

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Or: The High School of Interlevel Relations

David Chalmers

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Or: The Top Ten List of Interlevel Relations

David Chalmers

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Top Ten List

  • 1. Strong emergence

  • 2. Functional realization

  • 3. Supervenience

  • 4. Weak emergence

  • 5. Grounding

  • 6. Composition

  • 7. Determinate/determinable

  • 8. Reduction

  • 9. Type identity

  • 10. Scrutability
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Jessica’s Top Ten List

  • 1. Subset realization

  • 2. Determinable/determinate

  • 3. Part-whole

  • 4. Composition

  • 5. Constitution

  • 6. Causal emergence

  • 7. Causation

  • 8. Identity

  • 9. Truthmaking

  • 1000. Grounding
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PhilPapers Top Ten List

  • 1. Identity [868]

  • 2. Mereology [848]

  • 3. Reduction [529]

  • 4. Supervenience [496]

  • 5. Truthmaking [459]

  • 6. Emergence [384]

  • 7. Realization [172]

  • 8. Grounding [97]

  • 9. A Priori Entailment [45]

  • 10. Determinate/determinable [44]

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Or: The Political Spectrum

  • f Interlevel Relations

David Chalmers

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Spectrum

  • grounding: conservative
  • emergence: radical
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Spectrum

  • identity
  • grounding: conservative
  • emergence: radical
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Spectrum

  • identity
  • grounding: conservative
  • supervenience
  • emergence: radical
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Spectrum

  • identity
  • grounding: conservative
  • supervenience
  • emergence: radical
  • independence
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Plan

  • 1. Weak Emergence
  • 2. Strong Emergence
  • 3. The Role of Grounding
  • 4. The Epistemology of Grounding
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Grounding vs Emergence

  • What’s the relationship between grounding

and emergence?

  • Weak emergence entails grounding.
  • Strong emergence is incompatible with

grounding.

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What is Weak Emergence?

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Weak Emergence as Surprising Grounding

  • Weak emergence = surprising grounding

(groundee unobvious from grounder, though deducible in principle).

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Weak Emergence and Other Relations

  • Not all grounding is surprising, so not all

grounding is weak emergence.

  • E.g. Determinable/determinate and

composition are never (?) surprising, so are not weak emergence.

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Weak Emergence as Subset Realization

  • Jessica: weak emergence = (a sort of?)

functional realization.

  • functional realization = subset realization:

phi weakly emerges from psi when phi has a subset of psi’s causal powers

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Worry 1

  • I think: many but not all cases of functional

realization are cases of weak emergence

  • unsurprising realization, e.g. billiard ball

from atoms.

  • some cases of weak emergence are not

cases of functional realization

  • surprising nonfunctional grounding, e.g.

spatial structure in crystals.

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Worry 2

  • Potential worry: no case of weak

emergence is a case of subset realization, as subset realization is always unsurprising

  • The subset relation is too immediate to

be surprising.

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Worry 3

  • The subset realization view requires

identity between macro causal powers and micro causal powers.

  • E.g. power to pump blood is identical to a

power to move masses and charges?

  • implausible reductionism about powers?


if so, need a further account of relation between micro and macro powers.

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What is Strong Emergence?

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SE1: Dependence without Grounding

  • Strong emergence: dependence without

grounding? [or: fundamentality with dependence]

  • Worry: m-necessitation without grounding
  • Does {Socrates} emerge from Socrates?
  • Space between grounding and strong

emergence.

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SE2: Nomological Supervenience

  • Strong emergence (van Cleve, Noordhof,

Chalmers): nomological supervenience without metaphysical supervenience.

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Nomological Supervenience: Worries

  • Worry 1: diachronic laws
  • Worry 2: dependence of force on mass
  • Modified: synchronic nomological

supervenience on an appropriately autonomous base

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Nomological Supervenience: Worry 3

  • Worry 3 (Umut): Can’t distinguish causal

powers of base and based

  • Need fine-grained causation.
  • I think: there can be (nomologically

supervenient) emergent properties with

  • r without emergent causal powers
  • Unidirectional or bidirectional laws.
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Nomological Supervenience: Worry 4

  • Worry 4 (Paul): What about strong

emergence on powers/dispositionalist view where all laws are metaphysically necessary?

  • Reply: Understand strong emergence as

synchronic nomologically necessary causal dependence on an appropriate base.

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Emergence and Causation

  • Q: Can Neil’s tools of difference-making to

help understand the micro-macro causation involved in strong emergence?

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SE3: Non-Subset Realization

  • Jessica: phi strongly emerges from psi when

it has causal powers that aren’t causal powers of psi.

  • Worry 1: Only works for strong causal

emergence.

  • Worry 2: Previous worry suggests that

pumping blood is strongly emergent.

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SE5: Partial Without Full Grounding

  • Stephan: strongly emergent properties are

partially but not fully grounded in the base.

  • Worry: excludes cases of

macrofundamentality.

  • Different target: the space between

macrofundamentality and grounding.

  • What about metaphysical supervenience?
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SE5: Fundamentality Without Basicness

  • Tim: strongly emergent properties are

fundamental properties of nonbasic but fundamental objects

  • consistent with nomological view

(zombie worlds where the parts don’t compose a fundamental object?)

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Strongly Emergent Objects?

  • Question: Do strongly emergent properties

require strongly emergent objects to bear them?

  • Related question: Must fundamental

properties attach to fundamental objects?

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Substance Dualism and Russellian Monism

  • Substance Dualist:
  • Yes. Fundamental mental

properties are had by fundamental nonphysical objects

  • Panpsychist and Russellian Monist:

Yes. Fundamental (proto)mental properties are had by fundamental physical objects

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Property Dualism

  • (NonRussellian) Property Dualism:

Fundamental mental properties are had by nonfundamental physical objects.

  • Q: Is this coherent or plausible?
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Tim’s Middle Way

  • Tim:
  • Yes. Fundamental mental properties

are had by fundamental physical objects: but these objects are nonbasic, so composed of physical parts.

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Worries

  • Q1: Can object be composed of Xs without

being necessitated by Xs?

  • Q2: What’s the relation between these

fundamental composed objects and the corresponding nonfundamental composed

  • bject that’s present in the zombie world?
  • Q3: Why is this better than substance

dualism?

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Grounding

  • Jessica: Grounding (and emergence?) are

too abstract: the work is done by specific grounding (and emergence?) relations.

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Concepts and Cells

  • Reminiscent of Machery, Doing

Without Concepts: science doesn’t need to appeal to concepts since all the work is done by specific kinds: exemplars, prototypes, etc

  • Cf: biology needn’t appeal to cells since all

the work is done by X cells, Y cells, etc.

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Generic Kinds

  • Intermediate view: science uses generic

(genus) kinds (concept, cell) as well as specific (species) kinds (prototype, X cell), even though specific kinds do the primary work.

  • Specific kinds ground generic kinds.
  • Generic kinds unify specific kinds.
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Grounding as Generic Relation

  • Taking this line: grounding is a generic

relation, individual grounding relations are specific relations.

  • We can theorize about grounding as well as

about the specific relations.

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Grounding Grounding

  • Further: the specific relations ground the

generic relations.

  • So e.g. subset realization doesn’t replace

grounding: it grounds grounding!

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Grounding and Supervenience

  • On this approach: grounding is in no way in

competition with specific relations.

  • Rather, it’s in competition with (and maybe

replaces) supervenience, for the role of the generic relation than unifies the specific relations.

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Epistemology of Grounding

  • Chalmers (1996): there’s an epistemological

condition on supervenience.

  • Metaphysical supervenience on the physical

requires scrutability (a priori entailment) from the physical. (No brute necessities!)

  • Q: Is there a corresponding epistemological

condition on grounding?

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Weak Condition

  • Grounding (arguably) entails supervenience.
  • So if scrutability is required for

supervenient, it is required for grounding.

  • Likewise: if consciousness is not scrutable

from the physical, it’s not grounded in the physical.

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Strong Condition

  • Q: Is there a stronger epistemological

condition that stands to grounding as scrutability stands to supervenience?
 
 a priori entailment: supervenience X: grounding

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Hypothesis

  • Hypothesis: Analytic entailment is required

for grounding.
 
 a priori entailment: supervenience analytic entailment: grounding

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Two-Dimensional Analysis

  • Of course there are a posteriori necessities

(e.g. ‘water = H2O’), so there’s supervenience without scrutability

  • But these always involve expressions with

nontrivial 2D structure: primary intension distinct from secondary intension
 primary: watery stuff is H2O
 secondary: H2O is H2O


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Twin-Earthability

  • Rough rule: a posteriori necessities always

involve Twin-Earthable expressions: those subject to Putnam-style twin scenarios

  • Oscar: ‘water’ refers to H2O
  • Twin Oscar: ‘water’ refers to XYZ
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Non-Twin-Earthability

  • Non-Twin-Earthable expressions: ‘cause’,

‘conscious’, ‘believe’, ‘philosopher’, ‘zero’, ‘plus’, ‘square’, ‘time’?

  • Underlying phenomenon: epistemic rigidity:

same referent in every epistemically possible world.

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Twin-Earthability and Supervenience

  • Thesis: When S is non-Twin-Earthable, S is a

priori iff S is necessary.

  • Apply to ‘If P

, then M’ (P is micro, M is macro).

  • When P and M are non-Twin-Earthable, M

is supervenient on P iff M is a priori scrutable from P .

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Twin-Earthability and Grounding

  • Thesis: When S is non-Twin-Earthable, S is

analytic iff S is metaphysically trivial.

  • Apply to ‘If P

, then M’

  • When P and M are non-Twin-Earthable, M

is grounded in P iff M is analytically entailed by P .

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Analyticity

  • Analyticity = cognitive insignificance =

epistemological condition on grounding

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Supervenience Without Grounding

  • Plausible cases of supervenience without

grounding (mathematics, normativity) are all cases of non-analytic scrutability.

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Grounding Without Analyticity

  • The most plausible cases of grounding

without analytic entailment all involve Twin- Earthable expressions (e.g. water/H2O, mass, etc).

  • Others can be explained away/excluded.
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Bold Hypothesis

  • Bold rationalist hypothesis: necessity is

grounded in airports

  • Likewise, metaphysical triviality is grounded

in analyticity.

  • Metaphysical grounding is grounded in

conceptual grounding.

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Reverse Hypothesis

  • Reverse rationalist hypothesis: apriority is

grounded in necessity

  • Likewise, analyticity is grounded in

metaphysical triviality.

  • Conceptual grounding is grounded in

metaphysical grounding.

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Triple-Barrelled Conclusion

  • Either way: grounding grounds grounding!
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Twin-Earthability and Grounding