Franklin, Alexander and Robertson, Katie (2021) Emerging into the Rainforest: Emergence and Special Science Ontology. [Preprint]
|
Text
FranklinRobertson_Emerging.pdf Download (381kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Many philosophers of science are ontologically committed to a lush rainforest of special science entities (Ross (2000)), but are often reticent about the criteria that determine which entities count as real. On the other hand, the metaphysics literature is much more forthcoming about such criteria, but often links ontological commitment to irreducibility. We argue that the irreducibility criteria are in tension with scientific realism: for example, they would exclude viruses, which are plausibly theoretically reducible and yet play a sufficiently important role in scientific accounts of the world that they should be included in our ontology.
In this paper, we show how the inhabitants of the rainforest can be inoculated against the eliminative threat of reduction: by demonstrating that they are emergent. According to our account, emergence involves a screening off condition as well as novelty. We go on to demonstrate that this account of emergence, which is compatible with theoretical reducibility, satisfies common intuitions concerning what should and shouldn't count as real: viruses are emergent, as are trouts and turkeys, but philosophically gerrymandered objects like trout-turkeys do not qualify.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
|||||||||
| Keywords: | Emergence Reduction Ontology Rainforest Screening Off Autonomy Novelty | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Natural Kinds Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Reductionism/Holism Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
|||||||||
| Depositing User: | Dr Alexander Franklin | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2021 04:54 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2021 04:54 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 19912 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Natural Kinds Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Reductionism/Holism Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
|||||||||
| Date: | November 2021 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19912 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}