Collapsing Strong Emergence’s Collapse Problem

J. M. Fritzman (Lewis & Clark College)

It is impossible to deduce a strongly emergent whole from a complete knowledge of the constituent parts of a whole, according to C. D. Broad, when those parts are either isolated from the whole or constituents of other wholes. Elanor Taylor proposes a version of the collapse problem. Suppose that macro-level property p strongly emerges when micro-level components A and B combine in relation r. However, each component has the property that it can combine with the other in r to produce p. Broad’s nondeducibility criterion is not met, and p collapses into the micro-level. I argue that the collapse problem ignores relation r. Extrapolating from recent scientific findings strongly suggests that the amount of information required to fully account for r is physically impossible. Strong emergence does not collapse. But the collapse problem does.

September 16, 2022

3:30pm PST