It seems there are several instances in nature of emergent properties having effects on their base components, something traditional views of causation do not allow for. I’ll be writing my thesis on downward causation, I suspect. So I wonder, what are your views on causation?
would you mind posting some examples?
Alright.
Suppose that a certain type of forest composed of a certain type of tree will not succumb to forest fires if the groupings of the trees, that is how close they are together, does not exceed 60%. Also suppose that if the groupings are not at least 40%, they will not survive. A threshold has been created in which it is possible to survive.
Those properties are emergent properties. If you want me to explain why I can give it a go, but I’ll just assume that is apparent right now to make this post short.
Those properties seem to have causal efficacy in relation to the evolution of forests. Imagine there are 3000 forests of varying densities. Only some will survive, as a result of natural selection. Natural selection is acting through these emergent properties to effect the base components, specifically the individual trees making up the forest and either killing them or burning them up.
I don’t see how your idea is any different than the assumptions that go into the theory of evolution in the first place. What you just said is not new, unique or radical. It is also not contrary to normal, “traditional” views of causation.
i think you might be just talking about the idea of feedback, as well.
Do you think we talk about the media in terms of downward causation? Like saying kids are “desensitized to violence.”
Your base component here is the viewer. Supposedly the viewer decides what will be shown on television, that’s why we study ratings. The viewer consistently wants to watch shows including sex and violence, so the emergent property here would be the sex and violence on television.
If we blame the sex and violence shown for kids being desensitized, then we’re saying the causal efficacy of violent programming is related to kids’ sensitivity to violence. However, remember that the kids’ viewing decisions were the base components here.
It is non-reductive, which is commonly considered counter-science. Causation traditionally is more like mechanics. This dial moves that meter which blah blah blah. Upward it goes, and forward in time, if you have the more traditional view of causation. Traditional might be a bad word here, I think I might mean the position that is more commonly accepted.
No, that’s not really emergence. Sex and violence is one of the base components of the perhaps emergent mass media.
Mass media could be said to be an emergent entity if someone wanted to make that argument, I don’t really want to.
I’ll give another example of downward causation. Consciousness is brought about by some sort of physical states in the brain, misunderstood though they are. Mental activity is therefore the result of complex interactions in the brain, and has causal efficacy on that brain from which it emerged. Now, imagine a time in which you were very angry. Your cheeks might flush, blood pressure rise a bit, all because of mental activity. It certainly will have effects on your brain.
By the way, I said that wrong. I meant that Lewontin makes a case for biology not being reducible to physics. I didn’t mean to say that biological processes aren’t also physical processes.
EDIT again: Dammit, I meant to quote myself and edited the original post instead. Arrgh! 
Is downward causation supposed to be a refutation of the “traditionally upward” causation? Is all causation thus downward? Is all causation both upward and downward? Or just some cases? Is there a particular definable set of cases which always is best described in downward causation?
Your tree example was not in opposition to the traditional view of the relationship between cause/effect and time.
Evolution is by its nature a temporal process. All of the emergent phenomena that you are are not a result of ideal adaptation to your environment (plus mutations), but an ideal adaptation to your parents’ environment (plus mutations).
What is this apparent distinction between “mental activity” and brain activity?
It seems to me that these “emergent properties” are being addressed as an extension of the parent, so to speak, rather than part of the same.
Your tree example, for instance, seems to suggest those properties where always present, but only became apparent to us as the object[s] evolved, reproduced, and grew. Those properties are inherent in those groups of trees, they are not created or “emergent” by means of expansion. That is just how those properties become apparent.
Same for the brain example. I’m something of a monist, I suppose, so I essentially see a claim that the brain can affect itself. Mental faculties that we develop are inherent, but cultivated. That is to say they don’t “emerge” and suddenly impose influence on the brain. We just don’t recognize that influence until those faculties have been cultivated in a way that makes them conscious [or identifiable].
No bloody chance mate. If you want to say how emergent properties affect their elements then YOU tell us.
Damn, Statik, that was a great insight. That made my day.
Causation, in my view, swings both ways and in some others as well. Some causation is neither fully one or the other. The judge banging his gavel can cause your execution without him ever touching an axe.
Care to explain how or are you just going to say “no it isn’t” to everything I say? Because if that’s all you do I don’t want to waste my time.
Natural selection is selection. Evolution is a long process possibly driven by natural selection. Evolution is a result not only of your parents mutations and environmental pressures, but on every parent’s mutations and environmental pressures. Evolution however, is best displayed as downward causation in the context of an entire ecosystem which has several components all affected by the emergent ecosystem.
The distinction between mental activity and brain activity is at the very least one of experience.
These emergent properties CANNOT be an extension of one component (the parent in your language there). So not only are they not part of the the same, they are not even an extension because they are resultant of relationships.
The properties have nothing to do with “expansion”. Like you said, they are only present in GROUPS of trees. A single tree would not exhibit these properties.
The claim is indeed that the brain can affect itself. I’m not trying to put magical ghosts in our brain that dictate our actions. I think these properties are a result of physical processes and have causal efficacy. The reason we don’t recognize consciousness before we are conscious is because that would be impossible. I think this “cultivation” you speak of is the development of systems and therefore their properties. It’s not so crazy as you seem to think.
Yes, let me tell YOU what YOU think, that’ll go over well.
Good stuff.
Captaincrunk, did you get a chance to read my original post before I accidentally edited it?
Sorry for the triple post but that one was getting so long even I didn’t want to read it and I was writing it.
An economy is a decent example of an emergent system, that plays a causal role in the behavior of it’s constituents.
Water is wet but a molecule of H2O is not.
A person is alive but the atoms in their body do not live.
The reason the trees are important is because a single tree does not exhibit those properties. At the level of a system (in this case a forest) those properties emerge.
And to anon, I did not get the chance to see your post before editing.
I can’t replicate it, but I posted a link in the OP of this thread that you might find interesting. Though I’m sure you’ve read many such articles.
Captain - so far, I cannot see the difference between your thesis and the idea of causal processes, which is the model of causation that science uses. In other words, the idea of systemic causation is not antithetical, or even inconsistent with the way science views causation. What am i missing?
I didn’t particularly want to bring it up in this thread, but a system that can affect itself might be able to have free will even in a scientific sense. It’s at least an enticing possibility, though I admit I’m not too concerned with the debate. But supervenience theory won’t even come close, I think.
This post from that thread got me particularly riled up though.
Just because something is necessary for another thing to be part of a specific class does not mean that that something isn’t a property.
FAUST:
What your missing is that reduction, an ideal most scientists hold, is incompatible with downward causation. Causation must travel from the basest parts to the uppermost parts in order for reduction to work, and in some cases causation is purely downward. What is it you think the “idea of causal processes” is? Because I don’t think we’re discussing the same thing for some reason.