Emergence and Grounding

I want to develop a concept I have been using without definition for a little while now: emergence or grounding. As I use these terms, they are reciprocals of each other. If A grounds B, then B emerges from A.

Let us begin with emergence. When B emerges from A, A serves as a ground for B. B begins to exist on account of how A is structured. Ordinarily the claim that B emerges from A mean that A is the main locus of activity making B be instantiated in the context of other events which are also required for B's instantiation. Thus, when I say that our bodies ground our selves, I am leaving space for the idea that other factors are also required for us to be selves beyond our bodies, such as a cultural milieu. The body nevertheless is the ground for our selves.

Let us now turn to grounding. If A grounds B, then A provides a basis from which B can emerge. This need not mean that B requires A, but it (ordinarily, at least) means that B requires something to ground it. Perhaps C can also ground B independently of A. A ground provides the resources for what it grounds. It need not necessitate what it grounds. Further, if A grounds B, B need not occupy the same space as A. B can go beyond what A requires. It may be odd to speak of B occupying a space at all. Nevertheless, A will continue to be required for B to be maintained. This is what distinguishes a ground from other conditions required for something to emerge. A ground provides the relatively stable point amidst a flux of other enabling conditions. The instantiation of an emergent entity thus tracks its ground.

There are two questions which this raises. First, if A emerges from B, could A have failed to emerge from B? Second, if A emerges from B, could A have emerged from C instead? We will address these in order.

First, it is not hard to see that, if emergence involves not only a ground but also a particular kind of context, then a ground would fail to cause the emergence of something if it failed to be in the proper context. Thus, if selves require a culture in order to emerge from bodies, then a body could fail to ground a self in virtue of failing to find itself in a culture.

Second, by necessity of origins it seems that, if A emerges from B, then A must emerge from B if it is to be A. I want to push back against this, however, in order to dodge an argument of Kripke's, which has been expanded on by Eli Hirsch, against materialism. Note that we cannot use necessity of identity here, because A is not B, but only emerges from B. Further, A might not have emerged from B even if B had been identical. However--and this is the point where Hirsch would push--if the entire universe had been the same, then A could not have but emerged from B. This is also what David Chalmers puts pressure on in his similar argument. The way all of these arguments go is that, if the mental is necessitated by the physical, then we cannot rule out knowing a priori that the mental comes from the physical, but we can, so the mental does not come from the physical. The argument works equal well for any theory on which the mental is necessitated by a particular substrate.

The way I want to dodge this is, on the one hand, by noting that it is not clear to me that any given instantiation of a self could be the same self if brought about through a different body. Here we are all in agreement: the necessity of origins usually results in the view that I would not have existed had I not come from my parents (and, more particularly, the particular egg and sperm which I came from). This is relatively uncontroversial.

On the other hand, I want to claim that had the entire universe been identical to this one, it is not at all clear that it could be so without being the same subjectively. That is, I see no reason to think that a suitably smart being could not know a priori that certain arrangements of matter through space and time would give rise to selves (that is, I reject the possibility of "p-zombies"). I doubt that one could take a snapshot of the universe and derive consciousness. Rather, I suspect that consciousness, and selves in particular, require events over time. This is compatible with consciousness being simple and non-localized, because it is not identical to, but emerges from, a physical thing in a suitable environment.

Chalmers, David. The Conscious Mind: In search of a fundamental theory Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Hirsch, Eli. "Kripke's Argument Against Materialism" in The Waning of Materialism Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2010, pp.115-136.

Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1980.