Robust Supervenience and Emergence

Abstract

Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structural stability familiar from dynamical systems theory. Robust supervenience, I argue, captures what the non-reductive physicalist wants from supervenience; most importantly, it provides a natural background for reconstructing the notion of (diachronic) property emergence in a way acceptable to physicalists.

Systèmes complexes sociaux et validation empirique

“…Il faut ensuite fournir une correspondance entre la configuration des objets de bas-niveau B et l'état des objets de haut-niveau H,à tout instant ; appelons cette transformation P , de sorte que P (B) = H. 1 Outre cette correspondance entre objets formels et descriptions potentiellement plus qualitatives, un modélisateur pourra vouloir aller jusqu'à proposer une dynamique stylisée β sur B telle que le comportement global du système correspondeà la dynamique originale de H. Ceci doit finalement menerà uneéquivalence entre la dynamique supposée du bas-niveau appréhendéeà travers la transformation P , et la dynamique de haut-niveau originale : formellement, P • β(B) = η e (H), ce qui se traduit par un "diagramme commutatif" (Fig. 1) par ailleurs familier au sein de l'étude des systèmes dynamiques (Nilsson-Jacobi, 2005;Rueger, 2000) :…”

Popper, Laws, and the Exclusion of Biology from Genuine Science

“…55, 70), with its detractors (e.g., Kim 1993, ch. 16;Bechtel and Mundale 1999;Sober 1999) and supporters (e.g., Rueger 2000;Batterman 2000;Clapp 2001;Kim 2002), including the issue of whether multiple realizability leaves room for laws. Shapiro (2000) in particular has an interesting and important discussion on multiple realizability.…”

Reduction and emergence in the physical sciences: Reply to Rueger

“…This conclusion gets supplementary support by the analysesRueger (2000aRueger ( , b, 2001 andBatterman (2000Batterman ( , 2001 have provided elsewhere, of other physical phenomena.6 Batterman interprets the significance of his own analysis of the physical explanation of "emergent" phenomena, which are stable macroscopic features of systems that are independent of microphysical detail in a similar way: "one can have explanation without reduction"(Batterman, 2001, p. 76; cf. also Batterman, 2000, p. 134).…”