Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

Put enough chemical compounds together and eventually life emerges. But life is often seen just as a consequence of complexity rather than as a result of strong emergence. It is again, as I’ve suggested, contested partly because of hierarchy. ‘Life’ is just reduced to complexity and not something unique and different from its constituent parts. So too with consciousness. This is an emergent property of life. (Or otherwise just lots more complexity.) And then we could go higher still. What, for instance, are the emergent properties of an eco-system, the bio-sphere, the solar system, the galaxy — even the whole cosmos? At the moment we are not in a position to answer such questions, but it seems likely that there are qualities that will become apparent when we know more about these larger scales.

So, it could be that the combined activities (both physical and mental) of individual beings together form a wholeness, which is more than the sum of its parts. But, bigger types of emergence may have a ‘downwards causation’ on things below them, such as individual creatures. Let me just say, the higher levels have an effect on the lower levels. The universe only has the qualities that it does because of what has emerged within it. This is at least comprehensible, even if, probably, well beyond any means of proof. The most obvious example (perhaps the only example) is that eco-systems have an effect on the individual creatures that are its constituent parts. There is ‘downwards causation’ as well as upwards emergence. But — the most difficult thought — perhaps there is really no difference between upwards emergence and downwards causation. Upwards

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