Emergence is constituted as new causally efficacious properties of
higher level organizations. An alternative perspective, however,
construes any alleged new such properties as "merely" the working
out of causal consequences of lower level constituents within that
higher level organization. That is, there are no emergent causal
powers, but only at best novel causal consequences. *All* genuine
causal powers reside in the lowest level of particle interactions. Kim,
in particular, has developed powerful critiques of notions of
emergence using this basic argument. I will argue that such a
deflation of emergence is based on a false metaphysics - a substance
or particle metaphysics - and that when a process metaphysics
consistent with contemporary quantum field theory is examined, it
supports notions of emergence rather than defeating them.
Within such a process metaphysics, a model of the emergence of
representation in particular special kinds of far-from-equilibrium
open systems is outlined. In this model, representation emerges
naturally in the problem of the selection of actions and interactions
by agents - it is an *interactive* model of representation. The
framework for the model is pragmatism, rather than the dominant
representation-as-correspondence framework, in information models
of semantics, for example. Representation-as-correspondence, in
fact, makes the emergence of representation impossible - a point
partially recognized in the literature in such terms as "the empty
symbol problem". Representation-as-correspondence is committed
to the same metaphysics that Kim uses so powerfully to defeat all
notions of emergence. The interactive model of representation,
therefore, is a specific example - important in its own right - of the
general approach to emergence within the process metaphysics that
permits any emergence at all.
Bickhard, M. H. (1993). Representational Content in Humans and
Machines. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial
Intelligence, 5, 285-333.
Bickhard, M. H. (1996). The Emergence of Representation in
Autonomous Embodied Agents. Papers from the 1996 AAAI Fall
Symposium on Embodied Cognition and Action. Chair: Maja
Mataric. Nov 9-11, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Technical Report FS-96-
02. Menlo Park, CA.: AAAI Press.
Bickhard, M. H. (1996). Troubles with Computationalism. In W.
O'Donohue, R. F. Kitchener (Eds.) The Philosophy of Psychology.
(173-183). London: Sage.
Bickhard, M. H. with Campbell, Donald T. (forthcoming).
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P. V. Christiansen (Eds.) Emergence and Downward Causation.
Bickhard, M. H., Terveen, L. (1995). Foundational Issues in
Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science - Impasse and Solution.
Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific.
Kim, J. (1989). The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism.
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Association, 63, 31-47.
Kim, J. (1991). Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation. In D.
M. Rosenthal (Ed.) The Nature of Mind. (257-265). Oxford
University Press.
Kim, J. (1993). Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge University
Press.
Kim, J. (1993). The Non-Reductivist's Troubles with Mental
Causation. In J. Heil, A. Mele (Eds.) Mental Causation. (189-210).
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Kim, J. (1997). What is the Problem of Mental Causation? In
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