Phase transitions are an important instance of putatively emergent behavior. Unlike many things claimed emergent by philosophers, the alleged emergence of phase transitions stems from both philosophical and scientific arguments. Here we focus on the case for emergence built from physics, in particular, arguments based upon the infinite idealization invoked in the statistical mechanical treatment of phase transitions. After teasing apart several challenges, we defend the idea that phase transitions are best thought of as conceptually novel, (...) but not ontologically or explanatorily irreducible to finite physics; indeed, by looking at ongoing work on “smooth phase transitions” we even suggest that they’re not even conceptually novel. In the case of renormalization group theory, consideration of infinite systems and their singular behavior provides a central theoretical tool, but this is compatible with an explanatory reduction. Phase transitions may be “emergent” in some sense of this protean term, but not in a sense that is incompatible with the reductionist project broadly construed. (shrink)

A thought process is an unfolding causal chain. Some thoughts cause others in virtue of their contents. Paradigmatic cases of personal level inference involve something more, some kind of appreciation or feeling that the conclusion follows from the premises. First- order processes are inadequate to account for the phenomenon. Attempts to capture the additional ingredient in terms of second-order beliefs have proven problematic. An intermediate position has, however, been overlooked. The extra ingredient could be an epistemic feeling, a form of (...) procedural metacognition. Extensive psychological research has shown that epistemic feelings are involved in monitoring many kinds of cognitive process, affecting how the processes unfold. Inferences may be no different. Inferences are also plausibly accompanied by an epistemic feeling, something like a feeling of reliability or unreliability. Such a feeling accounts for the phenomenological datum. It can also play a significant epistemic role for the thinker. (shrink)

Phase transitions are an important instance of putatively emergent behavior. Unlike many things claimed emergent by philosophers (e.g., tables and chairs), the alleged emergence of phase transitions stems from both philosophical and scientific arguments. Here we focus on the case for emergence built from physics, in particular, arguments based upon the infinite idealization invoked in the statistical mechanical treatment of phase transitions. After teasing apart several challenges, we defend the idea that phase transitions are best thought (...) of as conceptually novel, but not ontologically or explanatorily irreducible to finite physics; indeed, by looking at ongoing work on “smooth phase transitions” we even suggest that they’re not even conceptually novel. In the case of renormalization group theory, consideration of infinite systems and their singular behavior provides a central theoretical tool, but this is compatible with an explanatory reduction. Phase transitions may be “emergent” in some sense of this protean term, but not in a sense that is incompatible with the reductionist project broadly construed. (shrink)

The formal conception of computation (FCC) holds that computational processes are not sensitive to semantic properties. FCC is popular, but it faces well-known difficulties. Accordingly, authors such as Block and Peacocke pursue a ?semantically-laden? alternative, according to which computation can be sensitive to semantics. I argue that computation is insensitive to semantics within a wide range of computational systems, including any system with ?derived? rather than ?original? intentionality. FCC yields the correct verdict for these systems. I conclude that there is (...) only one promising strategy for semantically-laden theorists: identify special computational systems that help generate their own semantic properties, and then show that computation within those systems is semantically-laden. Unfortunately, the few existing discussions that pursue this strategy are problematic. (shrink)

The Covid-19 crisis raises questions of resilience, sustainable transitions and global trade in the wake of a pandemic. Port cities require new scenarios to deal with these questions, and over the past year several online initiatives were held to discuss this challenge. So does the European Urban Knowledge Network (EUKN) ‘Thinking Beyond the Crisis’ series, which explores the urban impacts of and responses to the coronavirus outbreak in EUKN member countries. The online webinar “Port cities and Mega-Trends: Glocal Approaches (...) to Sustainable Transitions,” - held on 26 January 2021 and organised with the French National Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ANCT) and the port city of Le Havre - offered a platform to reflect on the global impact and local effects of mega-trends on port cities, including the recent, far-reaching impacts of Covid-19. The event specifically explored the strategies and experiences of the ports of Le Havre (France), Incheon (South Korea), Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Hamburg (Germany). -/- . (shrink)

Formal methods developed for modeling levels of selection problems have recently been applied to the investigation of major evolutionary transitions. We discuss two new tools of this kind. First, the ‘near-variant test’ can be used to compare the causal adequacy of predictively equivalent representations. Second, ‘state-variable gestalt-switching’ can be used to gain a useful dual perspective on evolutionary processes that involve both higher and lower level populations.

In another paper, one of us argued that emergence and reduction are compatible, and presented four examples illustrating both. The main purpose of this paper is to develop this position for the example of phase transitions. We take it that emergence involves behaviour that is novel compared with what is expected: often, what is expected from a theory of the system's microscopic constituents. We take reduction as deduction, aided by appropriate definitions. Then the main idea of our reconciliation of (...) emergence and reduction is that one makes the deduction after taking a limit of an appropriate parameter $N$. Thus our first main claim will be that in some situations, one can deduce a novel behaviour, by taking a limit $N\to\infty$. Our main illustration of this will be Lee-Yang theory. But on the other hand, this does not show that the $N=\infty$ limit is physically real. For our second main claim will be that in such situations, there is a logically weaker, yet still vivid, novel behaviour that occurs before the limit, i.e. for finite $N$. And it is this weaker behaviour which is physically real. Our main illustration of this will be the renormalization group description of cross-over phenomena. (shrink)

While most studies of low-carbon transitions focus on green niche-innovations, this paper shifts attention to the resistance by incumbent regime actors to fundamental change. Drawing on insights from political economy, the paper introduces politics and power into the multi-level perspective. Instrumental, discursive, material and institutional forms of power and resistance are distinguished and illustrated with examples from the UK electricity system. The paper concludes that the resistance and resilience of coal, gas and nuclear production regimes currently negates the benefits (...) from increasing renewables deployment. It further suggests that policymakers and many transition-scholars have too high hopes that ‘green’ innovation will be sufficient to bring about low-carbon transitions. Future agendas in research and policy should therefore pay much more attention to the destabilization and decline of existing fossil fuel regimes. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the multilevel selection -1 to MLS-2 model of a major transition is incomplete because it overlooks a crucial component of fitness. It addresses that the evolution of individuality literature has failed to account for expansive fitness and that expansive fitness differences play an important role in the transition to regimes sensitive to the fitness of the corporate agent. It discusses multilevel evolution during the three phases of transitions in individuality: the aggregate phase, the group phase, (...) and the individual phase. This chapter shows that the path a lineage takes through the phases of transitions is not fixed, but determined by ecology. (shrink)

A new conceptual framework is proposed to situate and integrate the parallel theories of Turchin, Powers, Campbell and Simon. A system is defined as a constraint on variety. This entails a 2 × 2 × 2 classification scheme for “higher‐order” systems, using the dimensions of constraint, (static) variety, and (dynamic) variation. The scheme distinguishes two classes of metasystems from supersystems and other types of emergent phenomena. Metasystems are defined as constrained variations of constrained variety. Control is characterized as a constraint (...) exerted by a separate system. The emergence of hierarchical systems is motivated by evolutionary principles. The positive feedback between variety and constraint, which underlies the “branching growth of the penultimate level,” leads to the interpretation of metasystem transitions as phases of accelerated change in a continuous evolutionary progression toward increasing variety. The most important MSTs in the history of evolution are reinterpreted in this framework: mechanical motion, dissipative structuration, life, multicellular differentiation, sexuality, simple reflex, complex reflex, associating, thinking, metarationality and social interaction. (shrink)

A number of recent biologists have used multi-level selection theory to help explain the major transitions in evolution. I argue that in doing so, they have shifted from a ‘synchronic’ to a ‘diachronic’ formulation of the levels of selection question. The implications of this shift in perspective are explored, in relation to an ambiguity in the meaning of multi-level selection. Though the ambiguity is well-known, it has never before been discussed in the context of the major transitions.

I present a novel approach to the scholarly debate that has arisen with respect to the philosophical import one should infer from scientific accounts of phase transitions by appealing to a distinction between representation understood as denotation, and faithful representation understood as a type of guide to ontology. It is argued that the entire debate is misguided, for it stems from a pseudo-paradox that does not license the type of claims made by scholars and that what is really interesting (...) about phase transitions is the manner by which they force us to rethink issues regarding scientific representation, idealizations, and realism. (shrink)

Group-structured and neighbor-structured populations are compared, especially in relation to multilevel selection theory and evolutionary transitions. I argue that purely neighborstructured populations, which can feature the evolution of altruism, are not properly described in multilevel terms. The ability to “gestalt switch” between individualist and multilevel frameworks is then linked to the investigation of “major transitions” in evolution. Some explanatory concepts are naturally linked to one framework or the other, but a full understanding is best achieved via the use (...) of both. (shrink)

We propose a theory of events and causes against the background of branching time. Notions discussed include possibility based on reality, transitions, events, determinacy, contingency, causes and effects. The main idea in defining causal relations is to introduce a certain preconditioning circumstance under which one event follows another. We also briefly compare this theory with some other theories.

(1995). Selection of organization at the social level: Obstacles and facilitators of metasystem transitions. World Futures: Vol. 45, The Quantum of Evolution, pp. 181-212.

In this work we review the formalism used in describing the thermodynamics of first-order phase transitions from the point of view of maximum entropy inference. We present the concepts of transition temperature, latent heat and entropy difference between phases as emergent from the more fundamental concept of internal energy, after a statistical inference analysis. We explicitly demonstrate this point of view by making inferences on a simple game, resulting in the same formalism as in thermodynamical phase transitions. We (...) show that analogous quantities will inevitably arise in any problem of inferring the result of a yes/no question, given two different states of knowledge and information in the form of expectation values. This exposition may help to clarify the role of these thermodynamical quantities in the context of different first-order phase transitions such as the case of magnetic Hamiltonians. (shrink)

Speech planning is a sophisticated process. In dialog, it regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. In a dialogic experiment, participants took turns with a confederate describing lists of objects. The confederate’s utterances (to which participants responded) were pre‐recorded and varied in whether they ended in a verb or an object noun and whether this (...) ending was predictable or not. We found that response planning in overlap with sentence‐final verbs evokes larger task‐evoked pupillary responses, while end predictability had no effect. This finding indicates that planning in overlap leads to higher processing load for next speakers in dialog and that next speakers do not proactively modulate the time course of their response planning based on their predictions of turn endings. The turn‐taking system exerts pressure on the language processing system by pushing speakers to plan in overlap despite the ensuing increase in processing load. (shrink)

This topic has been discussed earlier on the FOM email list in various guises. The common theme is: big numbers and long sequences associated with mathematical objects. See..

This paper takes a close look at the role of behavior in the “major transitions” in evolution—events during which inheritance and development, and therefore the process of adaptation by natural selection, are reorganized at a new level of compositional hierarchy—and at the requirements for sufficiently explaining these important events in the history of life. I argue that behavior played a crucial role in driving at least some of the major transitions. Because behavioral interactions can become stably organized in (...) novel ways on timescales faster than the lifetime of an organism, behavior can lead the way into a transition—becoming organized at the new level prior to inheritance and development. It is widely acknowledged that behavioral plasticity can play an important role in evolution; environmental novelty can elicit novel behavior that may feed back on the evolutionary process through niche selection or cultural inheritance, for example (Jablonka and Lamb 2005). I argue here that not just novel behaviors but novel forms of behavioral organization (distributed or hierarchical control that produces functional coherence) can emerge, binding the evolutionary fates of a group of organisms which were previously independent in terms of behavior as well as reproduction, and leading the way into a transition to an aggregative or “higher-level” mode of reproduction. (shrink)

The attainment of autocephaly by the Orthodox Church of Ukraine intensified the religious transitions of parishes that were preceded by individual parishioners’ switches. The highest dynamics of such transitions occurred in the Volyn Region in the north-western part of Ukraine. These transitions refer exclusively to a switch from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine without affecting other religious communities. Most of the population supported the autocephalous status of the Orthodox (...) Church of Ukraine, for they consider granting autocephaly as a major historical event for the Ukrainian nation. The process of active religious transitions was primarily determined by the aptness of each parish community and political climate on a national level. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was able to maintain its high regard, but with the change of political power in Ukraine in 2019, it lost political support. The process of religious transitions dwindled. (shrink)

The article critically engages Menachem Fisch’s account of normative frameworks, in particular of (rational) transitions between them. I argue, first, that exposure to the normative criticism leveled at us by other human beings is indeed “capable of destabilizing normative commitment” to one’s own underlying framework beliefs and standards, as Fisch holds; however, closer scrutiny reveals that such exposure is neither sufficient nor necessary but rather accidental in this respect. Second, I will try to show that Søren Kierkegaard’s account of (...) how people fundamentally change their mind provides resources for both a substantial critique of Fisch and a more adequate understanding of the transitions in question. The article argues, third, that Fisch’s framework model – though meaningful, in fact heuristically indispensable in and as of itself – has robust transcendental implications which as such are being ignored, if not directly denied by Fisch and, precisely by being ignored or denied, unnecessarily weaken the overall plausibility of his account. Finally, and ex post, I will address an important objection raised by some commentators. (shrink)

Food retailers are powerful actors of the agro-industrial food system. They exert strong lock-in effects that hinder transitions towards more sustainable agri-food systems. Indeed, their marketing practices generally result in excluding the most sustainable food products, such as local, low-input, small-scale farmers’ products. Recently in Belgium, several initiatives have been created to enable the introduction of local products on supermarket shelves. In this article, we study three of those initiatives to analyse if the development of local sourcing in supermarkets (...) opens up an opportunity for a transition towards more sustainable agri-food systems. We conceptualise transitions as a shift in governance and ethical values and adopt a pragmatist approach of ethics combined with the systemic perspective of transition studies, to evaluate the impact of these initiatives. Our analysis shows that they mainly contribute to the reproduction of the incumbent agri-food system. It also highlights that first, to be a driver for sustainability transitions, food ethics need to be systemic i.e. relate to a systemic understanding of problems and perspective of sustainability, including social justice. And second, it highlights that governance arrangements involving not only representative organisations of the various agri-food and non-agricultural actors, but also actors upholding ethical values that are currently missing in conventional supply chains and representing excluded and marginalised interests, favour the uptake of such systemic ethics by incumbent actors. Hence, systemic ethics and inclusive governance are key features for initiatives to contribute to a sustainability transition. (shrink)