Emergence and Levels of Fundamentality

Abstract While claims of emergence are often articulated with a background assumption that reality consists of higher and lower levels, it has recently been argued, for instance by Elizabeth Barnes, that emergentists should reconsider—and possibly abandon—this assumption. Accordingly, claims of emergence can be articulated more plausibly within a one-level ontology, because the main obstacle to the plausibility of emergence is that emergent causation implies ‘downward causation’. Since downward causation is often found problematic, if emergence is articulated within a one-level ontology (and with no downward causation), it gains more plausibility. This chapter argues that if there is a problem with emergent causation, that problem has nothing to do with the downward nature of emergent causation. Opponents typically find emergent causation problematic because it violates the causal closure of the physical, involving non-physical causes that interfere with the physical domain. But this goes to show that the real problem—if there is one—is that emergent properties are irreducibly non-physical properties. If this is right, locating such irreducibly non-physical properties within a one-level ontology does not solve the alleged problem of emergent causation.