What is Emergence? And Why Should You Care?

Philip GorskiYale University

Critical Realism Network

www.criticalrealismnetwork.org

www.facebook.com/groups/criticalrealismnetwork/

@EngageCR

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.