Dear Sebastian,

Thanks for this paper. Your model of emergence is interesting and I think I see how it avoids Kim's exclusion problem.

I have a question about your notion of approximative emergence and how this can be described as a form of ontological rather than epistemological emergence. We usually think of approximations as restating the same facts in a less accurate way, rather than a way of describing additional or "novel" facts. But you must be thinking of approximation in some other way - is there an example you have in mind that might let me see the kind of relationship between theories you describe as approximation as more clearly pointing to additional facts as opposed to old facts described in less accurate terms?

Best,

Alyssa

Dear Alyssa,

Thank you for your comments and for your question. Yes, the notion of approximation I am thinking of is more than mere 'coarse graining'. It usually involves either considering a sequence of similar physical systems, or changing the theory in some other non-trivial way. A well-known example is the hbar --> 0 limit of quantum theories. Since hbar is a dimensionful quantity, taking this limit means that one must also take other quantities in the theory to a certain limit (usually, one takes large action): and so, since the limit compares systems with different numerical values of the action, one is really changing the physical system. Another example is Malament's discussion of the relation between GR and geometrized Cartan gravity, where c --> infty. Again here, this limit must be taken relative to the speeds of all the particles in the theory, and so taking the limit means comparing different physical situations.

In my case, the ontological nature of emergence comes not from the approximation itself, but from the interplay between approximation and interpretation, which sometimes forces one to 'change system', as in the above examples.

I hope this helps.

By the way, I have had a lot of fun teaching metaphysics from your book--I like it very much, it is very clear.

Best,

Sebastian

14 days later

Dear Sebastian,

I found your essay really interesting. It offers a much more detailed account of some ideas that I barely managed to sketch roughly in my own entry: the notions of relativity of levels, and in particular the way you showed the latter to be a p.o. - something which I find entirely plausible but couldn't substantiate. So, I should certainly look up your recent papers!

One aspect that I liked is that you represent the relation between theories and that between domains differently (approximation versus emergence). Your notion of approximation seems to be a rather broad one, including limits and idealizations. This invites the question what happens at the domain side: maybe distinctions among notions of emergence would naturally fit those, too?

What I'm not convinced about - or at least not yet - is the ontological import of your proposal. I think the proposal is interesting even if this part fails, but as I assume it is important for you, I'll try to explain my reservations. The reason is that you use "domains in the world", but this seems question-begging (cf. positivism): we can at best use a model that intends to capture those. (In this specific regard, I would recommend Jochen Szangolies's entry as a possible antidote; paraphrasing: the tree in our model is not the tree in the world and what Whitehead called "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness".)

Regarding the text itself, a minor drawback is that there is no wrap-up; it just stops. :)

This leaves intact the main thing I took away from your proposal, which is the analysis for why degrees of fundamentalness are not totally ordered: because they are related across different dimensions of the (relevant) bottom theory.

Best wishes,

Sylvia - Seek Fundamentality, and Distrust It

Dear Sylvia,

Thank you for reading my essay and for commenting on it.

The answer to your worry is in the last page of the essay, point (C): namely, in the distinction between Quine's and Aristotle's ontological projects. I quote from the essay: 'the worlds that I have been describing are not to be (naively, and wrongly!) identified with the world as it is in itself--whatever that might be taken to mean.'

Working out the ontology of scientific theories, the way they are interconnected, and their logical structure, is a different project from explicating the way in which the elements of that ontology exist in our world--which is Quine's project not Aristotle's. Aristotle's project about 'being' differs from Quine's project about 'existence', in that the former allows for things, and categories, to appear in our ontology, that we may one day come to reject as literal parts of our world. Those things are, in some sense: even if they do not exist in the literal sense in which the theory would say they do.

This is how my framework avoids Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Whitehead also says something else in that first masterly chapter of Process and Reality: namely, that the accurate expression of the final generalities is the goal of the discussion and not its origin. This is the spirit in which I have undertaken this ontological project: for it aims to investigate how things are, according to our best scientific theories, rather than explicating their existence in our world. That second, more ambitious, Quinean project needs to be undertaken, for sure: but I believe that one should be not too hasty about the latter. For there are some important questions about the ontology of emergence and reduction that need to be addressed before that more ambitious project can be undertaken. This is what I have done in this essay.

Best,

Sebastian

    A side comment: one sometimes hears that positivists (or, more realistically today, constructive empiricists) are not committed to ontology, and that all they need to care about is epistemology. This would not be a problem if it were true, for then the ontology of scientific theories would then simply collapse to an epistemology and still be fruitful. But I very much doubt that the statement can be true. For even the empiricist has to admit that any interpreted scientific theory necessarily assumes certain ontological facts about the world: even if a world only of phenomena, whose ontological commitments the empiricist takes to be minimal. In other words, even the empiricist assumption that all that our theories describe are regularities, rests on some ontological assumptions: such as that there are regularities in the world for our scientific theories to describe, and that those regularities do not point to any deeper ontological structure.

    Dear Sebastian,

    My apologies for missing that important part on my first reading. Thank you for this clarification, it helps a lot!

    Best wishes,

    Sylvia

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