Emergence in Dynamical Systems
Emergence in Dynamical Systems

Summary/Abstract: Emergence is a term used in many contexts in current science; it has become fashionable. It has a traditional usage in philosophy that started in 1875 and was expanded by J. S. Mill (earlier, under a different term) and C. D. Broad. It is this form of emergence that I am concerned with here. I distinguish it from uses like ‘computational emergence,’ which can be reduced to combinations of program steps, or its application to merely surprising new features that appear in complex combinations of parts. I will be concerned specifically with ontological emergence that has the logical properties required by Mill and Broad (though there might be some quibbling about the details of their views). I restrict myself to dynamical systems that are embodied in processes. Everything that we can interact with through sensation or action is either dynamical or can be understood in dynamical terms, so this covers all comprehensible forms of emergence in the strong (nonreducible) sense I use. I will give general dynamical conditions that underlie the logical conditions traditionally assigned to emergence in nature.The advantage of this is that, though we cannot test logical conditions directly, we can test dynamical conditions. This gives us an empirical and realistic form of emergence, contrary those who say it is a matter of perspective.

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