290 Peter Kroes
Notes
- For a brief history of the notion of emergence, see O’Connor and Wong (2005). In the following I use the
expression “emergent properties (features)” as shorthand to refer to emergent behavior and emergent
capacities. - See, e.g., the pre-proceedings of the Paris conference (November 14–18, 2005) of the European Complex
Systems Society, ECCS’05 (http://complexite.free.fr/ECCS/); this conference hosted satellite workshops on
topics such as “Engineering with Complexity and Emergence” and “Embracing Complexity in Design.” - Note that the occurrence of emergent phenomena in technical systems may raise intricate problems for issues
regarding the moral responsibilities of engineers, especially when this behavior is not predictable; see also
Johnson (n.d.: 2). - Kasser and Palmer (2005) distinguish three types of emergent properties, namely undesired, serendipitous,
and desired; serendipitous features are described as “benefi cial and desired once discovered, but not part of the
original specifi cations.” - See Deguet, Demazeau, and Magnin (2006) and Johnson (n.d.).
- For a discussion of basic ideas associated with the notion of “emergence,” see, e.g., Humphreys (1997: sect.
3), Rueger (2000), Chalmers (2002), Van Gulick (2001), and Kim (1999). Note that our “key” does not fi t into
the overview of Van Gulick. - See Van Gulick (2001: 17); as he remarks, these two interpretations may overlap in case the identity criteria
for properties are based on causality profi les. - For the purpose of this chapter, I treat the functional property of measuring time and the property of being a
clock as equivalent. - Technical artifacts may be said to have a dual nature: they are physical objects with functional properties that
are grounded in physical as well as intentional phenomena; see Kroes and Meijers (2006). - The inclusion of the phrase “for physical constructions of this type” is necessary because other kinds of
physical systems may measure time in completely different ways. - I leave aside here issues regarding malfunctioning technical artifacts.
- Cf. also Searle’s remark (1995: 10) that being a screwdriver presupposes being thought of as, designed as,
and used as a screwdriver, etc. - See also Meijers (2000).
- Whether this is also true for the causal powers of status (social) functions of technical artifacts remains to
be seen (I thank Jeroen de Ridder for drawing my attention to this point). - An example of this kind of emergent causal power in the mind-body situation would be telekinesis, a con-
troversial phenomenon to say the least. But then again, mustn’t there be something similar at work in mind-to-
matter causation of the refl exive-downward type? Note that engineering attempts to design man-machine
interfaces that bypass any (observable) physical human action do not assume causal effi cacy of emergent features
(mental states) on the human environment; they operate on the basis of the detection of brain states (and thus
are based on traditional physical-to-physical causation). - It is quite common in discussions about emergence to use notions such as “high-level” (emergent) and “low-
level properties”; the notion of “downward causation” fi ts very well with this level talk. Emergence then results
in a view of the world with a multilevel (physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and social) ontology. It
is questionable, however, whether it is necessary to couple the notion of “emergence” to a multilevel view of
the world. Humphreys (1997) argues that it is not, just as the notion of “supervenience” does not require such
a multilevel view of the world. With regard to technical artifacts, the coupling of emergent properties to different
levels of reality also is not obvious. If indeed it is the case that a physical construction without a function is not
a technical artifact, and that in reverse a function not realized in a physical structure also is not a technical artifact,
then it is not clear why the function should be classifi ed as a high-level property of a technical artifact. For these
reasons, I try to avoid as much as possible the use of level talk in this chapter. - If that would not be the case, then engineers would be very much inclined to apply Occam’s razor.
Why posit the existence of new entities (emergent causal powers) when complete epistemic access to
these new entities is possible through other entities (causal powers of parts)? What is the conceptual gain in