Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Title: Emergent beasts and where to find them
Abstract: Emergents are elusive beasts. The hunt has been going on for years, but despite the many ingenious tactics employed, they keep slipping through our metaphysical nets. In this paper, I propose a way to finally catch them. My strategy is the following: first, unlike many dualist frameworks that distinguish weak from strong emergence, I contend that either emergence entails ontological novelty or it is not emergence at all – understanding emergence requires us to reconsider how new properties, behaviors, and laws manifest without being reducible to pre-existing elements; then, I will propose a thought experiment based on Conway’s game of life to get an immediate intuitive grasp of the emergent beasts we are after; finally, I will explore various metaphysical implications of such emergent properties, the relationship between emergence and causation, and the broader ramifications for fields such as physics, biology, and cognitive science. Through this exploration, I aim to clarify the criteria necessary for identifying true emergent phenomena and provide a robust framework for understanding their place in the ontological structure of the universe.
Title: Emergent beasts and where to find them
Abstract: Emergents are elusive beasts. The hunt has been going on for years, but despite the many ingenious tactics employed, they keep slipping through our metaphysical nets. In this paper, I propose a way to finally catch them. My strategy is the following: first, unlike many dualist frameworks that distinguish weak from strong emergence, I contend that either emergence entails ontological novelty or it is not emergence at all – understanding emergence requires us to reconsider how new properties, behaviors, and laws manifest without being reducible to pre-existing elements; then, I will propose a thought experiment based on Conway’s game of life to get an immediate intuitive grasp of the emergent beasts we are after; finally, I will explore various metaphysical implications of such emergent properties, the relationship between emergence and causation, and the broader ramifications for fields such as physics, biology, and cognitive science. Through this exploration, I aim to clarify the criteria necessary for identifying true emergent phenomena and provide a robust framework for understanding their place in the ontological structure of the universe.
