The Mechanisms of Emergence

Abstract

Emergentism is often imagined to be opposed to mechanism. If some phenomenon admits of mechanistic explanation, it is thought to be ipso facto not emergent. In this paper I argue to the contrary that emergence requires mechanism. Whenever some emergent phenomenon occurs, there is a mechanism responsible for its emergence. To make this case I show how mechanisms can explain four commonly held characteristics of emergent phenomena – dependence, autonomy, novelty and holism. By looking at the various kinds of emergence-generating mechanisms, it will be possible to classify different kinds of emergent phenomena by the particular features of the mechanisms that generate them, and so to bring some order to diversity of phenomena that we call emergent.