Emergence, reduction and supervenience: a varied landscape

DOI10.1007/S10701-011-9549-0zbMATH Open1226.00035arXiv1106.0704OpenAlexW2108592764MaRDI QIDQ649890FDOQ649890

Authors: Juan-Miguel Gracia 

Publication date: 25 November 2011

Published in: Foundations of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: This is one of two papers about emergence, reduction and supervenience. It expounds these notions and analyses the general relations between them. The companion paper analyses the situation in physics, especially limiting relations between physical theories. I shall take emergence as behaviour that is novel and robust relative to some comparison class. I shall take reduction as deduction using appropriate auxiliary definitions. And I shall take supervenience as a weakening of reduction, viz. to allow infinitely long definitions. The overall claim of this paper will be that emergence is logically independent both of reduction and of supervenience. In particular, one can have emergence with reduction, as well as without it; and emergence without supervenience, as well as with it. Of the subsidiary claims, the four main ones (each shared with some other authors) are: (i): I defend the traditional Nagelian conception of reduction (Section 3); (ii): I deny that the multiple realizability argument causes trouble for reductions, or "reductionism" (Section 4); (iii): I stress the collapse of supervenience into deduction via Beth's theorem (Section 5.1); (iv): I adapt some examples already in the literature to show supervenience without emergence and vice versa (Section 5.2).

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.0704

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zbMATH Keywords

emergencereductionNagelsupervenienceBeth's theoremdefinitional extensionmultiple realisability

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Methodology of mathematics (00A35) Physics (00A79) General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05) Philosophy of mathematics (00A30)

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Cited In (37)

• The causal closure of physics in real world contexts
• Complexity as a contrast between dynamics and phenomenology
• Spacetime is as spacetime does
• Conceptual aspects of gauge/gravity duality
• Emergence in holographic scenarios for gravity
• Hints towards the emergent nature of gravity
• Supervenience: its logic and its inferential role in classical genetics
• Decoherence and its role in the modern measurement problem
• Emergence without limits: the case of phonons
• Becoming large, becoming infinite: the anatomy of thermal physics and phase transitions in finite systems
• Contextual emergence in the description of properties
• Dualities and emergent gravity: Gauge/gravity duality
• A parallel Voronoi-based approach for mesoscale simulations of cell aggregate electropermeabilization
• Editorial: Introduction: Principles of quantum gravity
• Naturalness, Wilsonian renormalization, and ``Fundamental parameters in quantum field theory
• Note on supervenience and definability
• Less is different: emergence and reduction reconciled
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Local reduction in physics
• Deduction and definability in infinite statistical systems
• On broken symmetries and classical systems
• Inter-theory relations in quantum gravity: correspondence, reduction, and emergence
• The asymptotic safety scenario for quantum gravity -- an appraisal
• Emergence and mechanism in the fractional quantum Hall effect
• The geometry of reduction: compound reduction and overlapping state space domains
• From dressed electrons to quasiparticles: the emergence of emergent entities in quantum field theory
• (Re)interpreting \(E=mc^2\)
• Emergence and correspondence for string theory black holes
• Probing novelty at the LHC: heuristic appraisal of disruptive experimentation
• Ontological reduction and molecular structure
• Disappearance and emergence of space and time in quantum gravity
• Ontology, reduction, emergence: A general frame
• Similarity structure and diachronic emergence
• Mass additivity and a priori entailment
• Topological supervenience. A mathematical framework for exploring supervenience
• Supervenience, maximal properties, and model theory
• Decoupling emergence and reduction in physics

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