What is Emergence And Why Should You Care
- Slides: 10
What is Emergence? And Why Should You Care? Philip Gorski Yale University Critical Realism Network www. criticalrealismnetwork. org @Engage. CR www. facebook. com/groups/criticalre alismnetwork/
Key Questions • What is emergence? • What are the different types of emergence? • How does social emergence differ from physical and biological emergence? • What are the main arguments for and against emergence? • What does social emergence mean for social theory and social research?
Types of Emergence • Epistemological emergence: qualitative patterns. • Chaotic emergence: new structures. • Ontological emergence: new powers.
Domains of Emergence • Physical emergence: spatial relations between physical parts. • Biological emergence: spatial and temporal relations between physical and functional parts. • Social emergence: spatial, temporal and intentional relations between physical, functional and symbolic parts.
Social Structure: A Generic Definition • Human Persons • Human Symbols • Human Artifacts
Three (BAD) Arguments against Emergence • Skeptical: “Seeing is believing. ” • Reductionist: Methodological Individualism • Epistemological: “Just you wait!”
A (Better) Hermeneutic Argument against Emergence • Ontological: Nature vs. Culture. • Methodological: Observation vs. Interpretation • Epistemological: Objective vs. Subjective. • Constructivist: Mind-Independence vs. Mind. Dependence.
Some Realist Counter-Arguments for Emergence • The hermeneutic description of science is a misleading caricature. • The hermeneutic account of agency is overly romantic. • The hermeneutic vision of social science is insufficiently pluralistic. • The hermeneutic emphasis on perspectivalism is too subjectivistic.
Social Emergence: Practical Implications • Methodological Pluralism: No “gold standards. ” • Social Theory as Social Ontology. • Formal Causation: “Constraining and Enabling. ” • Social Structure: Recovering the Material Dimension.
Summing Up • Emergence: “whole is greater than the parts. ” • A Spectrum: pure aggregativity, qualitative patterns, new structures, new powers. • Social Emergence: spatial, temporal and intentional relations between physical, functional and symbolic parts.