Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
5 . Summary and Conclusions
Do we need emergence ? One might reasonably conclude that emergence in
the traditional sense is not a very useful concept .
5.1 Physical Emergence
In most cases , ( traditional ) emergence involves a difference in mass — either more or less — between a phenomenon and its constituents . Understood this way , emergence is purely physical . That seems to me the simplest and best way to think about it .
5.2 Conceptual Emergence
The distinction between the conceptual emergence and the physical emergence plays a central role in how the term emergence has traditionally been used . Properties that are said to be emergent are necessarily conceptual — since by definition properties are conceptual . The implementation / realization of properties is almost always physical . 18 Linking conceptual properties to their physical implementation or realization requires a mind . This is not to say that were it not for our making that link the implementations or realizations would not have ( or would not approximate ) the properties attributed to them . Hearts pump blood whether or not we think of hearts as pumps .
The point , though , is that characterizing emergence as the creation of new properties is more a matter of describing how we think — by mapping between conceptual properties and physical realizations — than a matter of characterizing nature . Emergence in this sense becomes mysterious when we attempt to understand it as describing how nature works .
To the extent , we want to continue to think of emergence in terms of properties , I recommend that we think about it as a relationship between specifications and implementations or between models and realizations . Perhaps more important is , we must remain vigilant about the distinction between the conceptual emergence ( i . e ., specifications and scientific models ) and the physical emergence ( i . e ., implementations and material reality ).
5.3 Symbolic Emergence Symbolic emergence depends on the existence of a symbol-processing system .
18 Software and mathematical model theory are notable exceptions .
104