In recent years, Philip Clayton has established himself as the leading thinker on behalf of a view that tries to steer a via media between strong physicalism and theistic substance dualism. Beside AC, of all the positions considered thus far, his is the most plausible. Nevertheless, after laying out his position, I shall argue that it is not a version of serious, explanatory naturalism, highlight its difficulties, and show that theism and AC are preferable to it.1
Clayton is dissatisfied with substance dualism and reductive physicalism because the former has been rendered implausible by the increasingly precise correlations between states of the central nervous system and mental states, and the latter leaves out our first-person experience of being conscious agents in the world.2 In their place, he defends ‘‘the thesis that mind—causally efficacious mental properties—emerges from the natural world, as a further step in the process of evolution.’’3 More generally, Clayton is committed to a pluralistic version of emergentist monism.4 According to Clayton’s view, reality consists of one basic kind of stuff, of which descriptions in physics are not fundamental or sufficient, and from which a plethora of sui generis emergent properties arise through entirely natural processes5 that are incapable of explanation in physics.6
For Clayton, mental properties emerge from a substrate that is neither mental nor physical7 and this implies that we should not assume that ‘‘the entities postulated by physics complete the inventory of what exists.’’8 By proffering pluralistic emergentist monism, Clayton means to reject strong physicalism along with the primacy of physics,9 the unity of science,10 substance dualism,11 panpsychism,12 the causal closure of physics13 and weak and strong property supervenience when associated with a rejection of top/down causation.14
Six central features of pluralistic emergentist monism
We may grasp more thoroughly Clayton’s pluralistic emergentist monism by elaborating on six aspects of his position. To begin with, Clayton claims that “emergentists should be monists but not physicalists’15 because, “the one ‘stuff’ of the world actually plays a greater diversity of causal roles in the world than old-time materialists thought (and, sadly, still think).’’16 Moreover, “the one ‘stuff’ of the world takes a wide variety of forms and manifests some amazing features.’17 Along with the descriptions of the previous paragraph, this gives the precise sense in which Clayton is a monist.
Regarding emergence, although Clayton sometimes defines emergentism in terms of new, distinct laws and causal forces,18 he usually characterizes his position primarily in terms of emergent properties, and I shall accept this characterization as the correct depiction of his position. Clayton admits that weak emergence (emergent properties are epiphenomenal) is the default position, and strong emergentism (emergent properties have new top/down causal powers) sustains a burden of proof relative to weak emergentism “which is the position to beat.’19 Nevertheless, he defends strong emergentism20 along with downward causation, which amounts to ‘‘the process whereby some whole has an active non-additive causal influence on its parts.”21 ‘‘Emergence just is that pattern that recurs across a wide range of scientific (and non-scientific) fields.’’22 Emergent properties are irreducible to and completely unpredictable from their subvenient base.23
Clayton accepts the standard mereological hierarchy and claims that emergent properties/laws/causal powers appear at various levels in the hierarchy. In this way, he is an ontological pluralist according to which there are many different levels—perhaps as many as two dozen or more— which exhibit not only radically different sorts of emergent properties, but also radically different sorts of emergence. Thus, ‘‘emergence'' should be viewed as a term of family resemblance.24 Still, Clayton offers the following as a characterization of broad similarities shared in common by most instances of emergence in natural history:25 For any two levels, L1 and L2 where L2 emerges from L1:
(a) L1 is prior in natural history.
(b) L2 depends on L1, such that if the states in L1 did not exist, the qualities in L2 would not exist.
(c) L2 is the result of a sufficient degree of complexity in L1. In many cases one can even identify a particular level of criticality which, when reached, will cause the system to begin manifesting new emergent properties.
(d) One can sometimes predict the emergence of some new or emergent qualities based on what one knows about L1. But using L1 alone, one will not be able to predict (i) the precise nature of those qualities, (ii) the rules that govern their interaction (or their phenomenological patterns), or (iii) the sorts of emergent levels to which they in turn may give rise in due course.
(e) L2 is not reducible to L1 in any of the standard senses of “reduction’’ in the philosophy of science literature: causal, explanatory, metaphysical, or ontological reduction.
According to Clayton, there may be as many as twenty-eight distinct levels of emergence, but for his version of emergentism to be true, there must be at least three such levels26 or else the view collapses into dualism or panpsychism which, allegedly, believe in only two different sorts of properties and causes—mental and physical. Thus, the plurality of emergent properties is among the features of Clayton’s position that make it different from dualism and panpsychism. It is clear that Clayton’s emer-gentism is a paradigm case of a shopping-list ontology (see chapter one).
Third, evolution plays a critical role in Clayton’s emergentism. Partly to offset the starkness of the appearance of consciousness, Clayton argues that emergent properties have arisen often in the evolutionary history of the world. Thus, “consciousness is in one sense ‘just another emergent level’, emergence theory is not dualism in disguise.’’27 In fact, evolution is so central to Clayton’s position that he incorporates it into the characterization of strong emergence: ‘‘Strong emergentists maintain that evolution in the cosmos produces new, ontologically distinct levels, which are characterized by their own laws or regularities or causal forces.’’28 Again, ‘‘Emergence is a repeating pattern that connects the various levels of evolution in the cosmos.’’29 Elsewhere, Clayton states that ‘‘It is not possible to engage in reflection on the relationship of mind and brain without considering the evolutionary history that produced brains in the first place.’’30 Finally,
Explaining the supervenience of the mental on the physical, understood as an example of evolutionary emergence, therefore requires a diachronic as well as a synchronic perspective. Mental properties depend upon the entire natural history that caused increasingly complex brains and central nervous systems to evolve ... This evolutionary dependency is neither logical nor metaphysical. ... Rather, the assertion of both a diachronic and a synchronic dependence of mental properties is our best reconstruction of the highly contingent natural history that produced organisms like homo sapiens. Therefore we might best label the resulting position as emergentist supervenience.31
Fourth, Clayton’s view is consistent with and embraces emergent theism. At the very least, pluralistic emergentist monism is consistent with the employment of divine predicates with respect to the one ‘‘natural’’ world.32 This may be understood in pantheistic, panentheistic, e.g. dipolar, or World-Soul terms. Clayton is clear that the phenomena of religious experience do not require such a higher level of emergence, but religious experience and other phenomena point to and open the door for some sort of emergent deity.33 However, if we use certain metaphysical arguments that justify belief in a God who is the ultimate ground and support of the universe, this move supports theistic dualism and not an emergent deity since such a divine being exists independently of the cosmos and, thus, is more like the God of classic theism than some emergent being.
According to Clayton, if we use ‘‘spirit’’ to stand for a new kind of substantial entity beyond human culture and mind, then emergentism does not provide justification for such a being. Emergentism merely supports the extension of emergence to a higher-level beyond the human level, and the use of “deity’’ to refer to a quality that the universe progressively instantiates. Since emergence is in the category of property and not substance, emergentism provides analogous support for this latter notion of deity and not the idea of a substantial spirit or mind.34 Emergentism supports the increasing deification of the universe but not the existence of an independent substantial God.
Clayton concludes that the success of the sciences of emergence provides some justification for such deification,35 but he also considers the question of whether such success is capable of a different metaphysical interpretation ranging from different non-naturalist worldviews to classic theism. If the answer to these questions is ‘‘yes,’’ says Clayton, then emergentism provides grounds for placing limits on scientific explanation and, thereby, it provides further justification for employing additional arguments to support a metaphysic that is even further away from naturalism than is a deified universe. In this case, there may be additional facts about the cosmos that a non-naturalist metaphysic explains and a naturalist worldview does not.
Clayton suggests that there are at least four non-deflationary sorts of questions that naturalism fails to answer adequately and which provide evidence for theistic dualism (classic theism): (1) Why is there anything at all36 and what caused the Big Bang?37 (2) How can there be objective ethical obligation and irreducible ‘‘oughts’’ given the inadequacy of a purely naturalist ontology to account for such things? (3) How can we account for the ubiquity and temporally pervasive existence of powerful religious experiences? (4) How are we to explain and satisfactorily provide a response to the human longing for meaning and purpose in life? How are we to explain the adequacy of our sensory and cognitive faculties for gaining truth about reality?
Given the long history of solid philosophical arguments against naturalism, given that emergent pluralism justifies rejection of strong naturalism, and given that these four areas cannot be adequately addressed within naturalism but are adequately explained by theistic dualism (roughly, classic theism), Clayton rejects naturalism in favor of theistic dualism.38 According to Clayton, emergent pluralism plays an important role in supporting theistic dualism because it weakens the explanatory power of strong naturalism and reductive physicalism and provides grounds for considering these broader questions that justify theistic dualism.39
The fifth and sixth aspects of Clayton’s position involve his methodology and theory of existence and they may be stated briefly. Regarding methodology, Clayton believes that the sciences are authoritative within their proper domains, that there are limits on science, and that debates regarding the reality and origin of consciousness involve both scientific and philosophical considerations. At the very center of Clayton’s methodology is a radical shopping-list approach to ontology. This is clear in his fervent rejection of strong naturalism in favor of a number of levels at which there are sui generis properties, laws, causal powers, types of emergence and scientific methods appropriate for studying entities at those various levels.40 Regarding existence, Clayton adopts a causal theory of existence according to which something exists if and only if it has causal powers.41
Clayton and minimalist naturalism
To put the matter forthrightly: Clayton’s ontology is so bloated that virtually all serious naturalists—those who take naturalism to be superior precisely because of its explanatory power derived from methodological and epistemic considerations in physics and chemistry and the combinatorial processes that drive the Grand Story—will see it as a non-naturalist view and not a legitimate version of a naturalism. Moreover, as we shall see below, there is no scientific evidence at all for emergent properties construed as Clayton does, and without such evidence, not even his attenuated naturalism is epistemically obligatory. Clayton’s naturalism is clearly not of the strong sort and I think that he fails to see the centrality of reductive physicalism for justifying the explanatory superiority of naturalism. And since Clayton is a theist, he is not a naturalist in this sense either.
So exactly why does Clayton think his position is a naturalist one? His naturalism is minimalist: Emergent properties are naturally produced by processes of nature alone;42 the natural world alone accounts for emer-gence43 and, in this sense, biologists should say they are naturalists and not physicalists;44 emergence theory is to be defended on the basis of contemporary science which points to the natural world alone as the source of emergent properties;45 emergence theory implies that the causal history of the appearance of all entities in the natural world is knowable by science, and without this implication science itself could not be practiced.46
Problems with Clayton’s methodology
Clayton’s methodology and ontology will prevent serious or strong naturalists from accepting his views as naturalistic. Regarding methodology,
Clayton’s emergentism is an extreme form of a shopping-list approach to ontology that rests content to pile up numerous cases of sui generis properties, forms of emergence, and law-like contingent correlations all the while resting content to label them as brute facts. Clayton opines that there may be as many as twenty-eight different levels of emergence and dozens of different sorts of emergence. This shopping-list approach fails to grasp the centrality of ontological simplicity, reductive physicalism (whether Nagelian as support for property identities or functional realization reduction with only physical realizers), the adequacy of third-person knowledge,47 causal closure, mechanistic modes of explanation, and combinatorial processes for justifying naturalism’s claim to explanatory and epistemic superiority.
It is worth recalling Timothy O’Connor’s insight once more: If an emergent property is depicted in such a way as to be contingently linked to the base properties causing it to emerge, then apart from an appeal to God’s contingent choice that things be so and to God’s stable intention that they continue to be so, there will be no explanation for the link itself or its constancy. Otherwise, you end up with a mere shopping list of facts that need to be explained.
Correlations in science, especially those involving an emergent property, are merely contingently linked phenomena as such, and, thus, they are the things that need to be explained. The correlation between pressure and temperature in the ideal gas equation is not an explanation of the sort needed to justify a naturalist worldview. The atomic model of gases provides what is needed. The model transforms what appear to be contingent correlations into real explanations that show why pressure must be such-and-such given that the temperature (and volume) is thus and so. However, given the complete unpredictability of emergent properties from exhaustive knowledge of their subvenient bases, such explanations will not be forthcoming, and one has an ontology with a lot of contingent, unique brute facts, a situation that can be solved by a theistic explanation but not a naturalist one.
Clayton also misunderstands the methodological and explanatory resources of evolutionary theory. While he acknowledges that the evolutionary dependence of emergent properties such a mental ones are not metaphysically or logically dependent upon their evolutionary histories, he still claims in several places that “Strong emergentists maintain that evolution in the cosmos produces new, ontologically distinct levels, which are characterized by their own laws or regularities or causal forces.’’48 Again, ‘‘It is not possible to engage in reflection on the relationship of mind and brain without considering the evolutionary history that produced brains in the first place.’’49
Unfortunately, Clayton’s employment of evolution fails to grasp the central problematic for such employment, a problematic that is correctly stated by Colin McGinn (see chapter five). It is not hard to see how an evolutionary account with its combinatorial processes could be given for new and increasingly complex physical structures that constitute different organisms. However, organisms are black boxes as far as evolution is concerned. As long as an organism, when receiving certain inputs, generates the correct behavioral outputs under the demands of fighting, fleeing, reproducing and feeding, the organism will survive. What goes on inside the organism is irrelevant and only becomes significant for the processes of evolution when an output is produced. Strictly speaking, it is the output, not what caused it, which bears on the struggle for reproductive advantage. Moreover, the functions that organisms carry out consciously could just as well have been done unconsciously. Thus, both the sheer existence of conscious states and the precise mental content that constitutes them is outside the limits of evolutionary explanation.
Given consciousness and its causal powers, one could give an evolutionary explanation of why certain mental states would be selected over others in the struggle for reproductive advantage. What cannot be explained is why consciousness exists in the first place. Evolution in particular, and combinatorial processes in general are simply inadequate to explain the hard problem of consciousness and, more generally, any sui generis, simple, emergent property.50 Moreover, given the combinatorial processes involved in the Grand Story, such processes are apt for explaining the origin of combinatorial structures constituted by external relations. What they cannot explain is the appearance of a new, simple property.
Clayton employs the term “combinatorial novelty’’51 to express the idea that when suitable combinatorial complexity obtains, an emergent property arises, but this is just a label for the problem and not an explanation. If fact, ‘‘suitable complexity’’ is an ad hoc notion that is far from enlightening. Given Clayton’s view of the complete unpredictability of emergent properties from exhaustive knowledge of the correlated subvenient base, the only way to identity ‘‘suitable complexity’’ is to register the complexity after discovering the emergent property. ‘‘Suitable complexity’’ is a definite description that means, ‘‘whatever the complexity is that is associated with the relevant emergent property’’ and, as such, is hardly enlightening. The real question is why the emergent property arises in the first place, and naturalism is silent about that question. Clayton’s “explanatory pluralism’’ fails to explain anything and merely amounts to providing labels for a wide variety of sui generis entities.
It is ironic that Clayton proffers emergent pluralism as having explanatory superiority to theistic dualism which Clayton characterizes as entailing two theses: substance as well as property dualism, and a rejection of emergent pluralism in favor of the view that mental and physical properties are the only sorts there are.52 While the latter claim may apply to very narrow Cartesians, there is nothing about property or substance dualism that entails a rejection of a plurality of properties, and Clayton is wrong if he things otherwise. I, for one, am among those substance dualists who accept a plurality of sorts of properties besides physical and mental.
Now it is the former claim (emergent pluralism has greater explanatory power than theistic dualism and AC) that represents a serious error in Clayton’s attempt to wed pluralism and naturalism together. Clayton argues that if there are not a number of levels of emergence in the natural world and consciousness is the only clear case, then this would support a dualist ontology and, indeed, a theistic dualist explanation of the origin of consciousness. Why? This one case would be so novel that it would be question-begging and implausible to claim to have a naturalistic explanation of consciousness. What Clayton fails to see, however, is that by quantifying over numerous cases of emergent properties and forms of emergence, he is actually providing further cases of radical novelty and such cases provide additional grounds for a theistic explanation. What makes them radical is not their number but their uniqueness coupled with the inadequacy of naturalism to account for them.
This is clearly grasped by tough-minded naturalists. As I have noted earlier, Frank Jackson correctly sees that if naturalism is to be embraced, it must give reductive or eliminative treatments of all sui generis emergent properties, and he explicitly does this for consciousness, secondary qualities and various “normative’’ properties.53 By multiplying cases of emergence, Clayton may provide fodder for people to be psychologically used to novel properties, and in this sense, the origin of consciousness may not be psychologically surprising. But McGinn’s insight that the origin of consciousness cannot be explained by scientific naturalism (Given the Grand Story, why do any physical structures give rise to consciousness?) applies with equal force to normative properties, secondary qualities and the two dozen or so cases of emergent properties and sorts of emergence mentioned by Clayton. By multiplying cases of emergence, Clayton actually provides multiple cases of phenomena suitable for theistic explanations beyond consciousness.
It is important to recall that the unpredictability of emergent proper-ties—something that Clayton accepts—is an ontological and not merely an epistemological principle. Properly understood, it is the claim that emergent properties really are sui generis, and no matter what we learn in the future, no reductive analysis of them will be forthcoming. This straightforward ontological claim is sometimes expressed in terms of unpredictability in the God’s-eye sense. That is, given exhaustive knowledge of the ontological nature of particulars, properties, relations, processes and laws at the subvenient level, nothing follows about the presence or absence of the emergent entity.
Relative to the subvenient ontology, it is genuinely different and new, and the ontological difference means that subvenient processes by themselves cannot give rise to the emergent entity. And if one postulates an emergent potentiality at the subvenient level, neither the potential property nor the fact that it is actualized by subvenient processes can be predicted or known from an exhaustive description of the rest of the subvenient base, or given any naturalistic explanation whatsoever. All a naturalist can do with emergent properties is provide contingent correlations between the emergent entity and subvenient factors. No real explanation can be offered. In the case of emergent properties, epistemic unpredictability translates into ontological contingency. Curiously, Clayton admits this in one place: ‘‘At most one will be able to establish a series of correlations between brain states and phenomenal experiences as reported by subjects.’’54 And by embracing ontological pluralism, he multiplies the problem.
Problems with Clayton’s ontology
So much for Clayton’s methodology. There are also aspects of his ontology that rule it out as a viable naturalist one, and we have already ventured into discussing some of them in our investigation of his methodology. Several aspects of Clayton’s ontology cannot be incorporated into a naturalist ontology in light of considerations we saw in chapters one and two:
(a) a rejection of a physicalist in favor of a monist description of the fundamental stuff;
(b) an unwieldy pluralism that defies mechanistic, physicalist, combinatorial explanation and, thus, cannot be located in the Grand Story;
(c) all sorts of top/down causation along with a rejection of the causal closure of the physical (i.e. the physics-al); acceptance of cultural causation;55
(d) the idea that the causal processes of evolution have been superseded by dynamic causal processes of cultural evolution, according to which, ideas, institutions, language, and art forms have unique causal powers that contribute to the flow of human history in a distinctively non-physical way;
(e) the possibility of an emergent deity in a pantheist, panentheist or World-Soul sort of way; and
(f) certain facts about the world that transcend the limits of scientific explanation and provide grounds for theism.
There are at least three further problematic areas for Clayton’s position: a misrepresentation of dualism; problems with his characterization and employment of emergence; and difficulties with the mereological hierarchy in the category of individual.
Misrepresentation of dualism
Regarding dualism, when one is going to reject a philosophical position, one should present the strongest and not a weaker version of that position,
and one should not generalize that weaker version as representative of all who hold the targeted viewpoint. But this is exactly what Clayton does. Clayton presents dualism as entailing two theses:
(1) the cosmos is characterized by two and only two different sorts of properties—mental and physical—and there is an absolute dividing line between them;
(2) the mind is not a property but, rather, an immaterial, non-physical, substantial object that is outside space and time, independent of matter and is not composed of parts56
Now certain extreme forms of Cartesianism may satisfy Clayton’s characterization, but I do not know of a single contemporary Cartesian dualism that would identify with this description. And there have been and are other forms of dualism, e.g. Thomistic, that quantify over substantial souls and a pluralistic ontology quite contrary to (1).57
Moreover, if ‘‘absolute dividing line’’ is interpreted to mean that mental and physical properties are quite different ontologically speaking, then dualists do accept ‘‘the absolute dividing line’’ between them, but so does Clayton.58 If the definite description is interpreted to mean ‘‘so different that the mental cannot emerge from the physical,’’ then Clayton’s description amounts to a false and question-begging assertion. William Hasker’s substance dualism entails that a substantial mind emerges from a certain level of complexity that actualizes the mental potentiality for that substantial mind, and Hasker does not believe there is an adequate naturalistic explanation for that potentiality or its emergence.59 But he is still an emergentist of a sort. It would be question-begging for Clayton simply to dig his heels in and say that Hasker is not a real emergentist. After all, Clayton acknowledges that emergence is a family resemblance, and Has-ker’s is a non-naturalistic member of that family.
Finally, Clayton’s representation of a mental substance is false on four counts:
(1) no one holds that finite substantial minds exist outside of time;
(2) many dualists hold that while not spatially extended, the mind is spatially located (and some, e.g. Hasker, hold that the mind is extended);
(3) the mind is not composed of separable parts, but it is composed of inseparable parts (a distinction with which Clayton is apparently unfamiliar); and
(4) the mind is not independent of the brain/body in the sense that there is no deep, holistic, functional/causal interaction from mind to body and conversely.
Incredibly, Clayton asserts that the increasingly precise correlations between mental and neurological phenomena provide defeasible yet strong evidence against dualism, but this is a wildly inaccurate strawman. Clayton is invited to cite one contemporary dualism that would have the slightest objection against the correlations we have discovered.
Clayton’s strawman presentation of dualism is not tangential to his views. Indeed, he is able to ‘‘establish’’ the mereological hierarchy and emergentism only if he can both distinguish his views from dualism and show dualism to be out of touch with advances in science. But when dualism is correctly presented, it is every bit as much in harmony with the sciences as emergentism. There is more on this below.
Three problems with Clayton’s employment of emergence
Regarding emergence, three difficulties undermine Clayton’s attempt to provide a position that is superior to theistic dualism and AC. First, there is a growing consensus among philosophers of mind that ‘‘emergence’’ (the point is often made regarding supervenience) is nothing but a name for the problem and not a genuine solution. Given that Clayton’s description of mental properties is the one property dualists employ, and given that he accepts the so-called hard problem of consciousness, it is hard to see how Clayton can avoid this objection. In fact, since his pluralist ontology quantifies over a multiplicity of novel, simple emergent properties incapable of combinatorial explanation and completely unpredictable from an exhaustive knowledge of their subvenient bases, Clayton’s view entails a multitude of hard problems.
In my opinion, emergentists, Clayton included, have been slow to acknowledge this problem because the regular observation of the relevant correlations provides a psychological expectation of and an ability to predict future instances of the correlations, but unless one is willing to accept a Humean view of causation, this stops far short of providing an explanation of the correlations. I may be wrong about this, but I believe something like a lack of psychological surprise at the emergence of consciousness relative to pluralistic emergence compared to Clayton’s depiction of dualism blinds Clayton to the fact that plural emergence makes the explanatory problem worse and not better.
Second, there are problems with Clayton’s characterization of emergence. Recall that according to Clayton, for any two levels, L1 and L2 where L2 emerges from L1:
(a) L1 is prior in natural history.
(b) L2 depends on L1, such that if the states in L1 did not exist, the qualities in L2 would not exist.
(c) L2 is the result of a sufficient degree of complexity in L1. In many cases one can even identify a particular level of criticality which, when reached, will cause the system to begin manifesting new emergent properties.
(d) One can sometimes predict the emergence of some new or emergent qualities based on what one knows about L1. But using L1 alone, one will not be able to predict (i) the precise nature of those qualities, (ii) the rules that govern their interaction (or their phenomenological patterns), or (iii) the sorts of emergent levels to which they in turn may give rise in due course.
(e) L2 is not reducible to L1 in any of the standard senses of “reduction’’ in the philosophy of science literature: causal, explanatory, metaphysical, or ontological reduction.
I am in basic agreement with (d) and (e), but I will mention below that they actually count against Clayton’s overall position, specifically against (b) and (c). If I am right about this, it follows that there is no scientific evidence for emergence, that Clayton’s own position contains philosophical commitments that undermine philosophical evidence for emergence, and, in any case, emergence is simply false when it comes to mental properties. That leaves (a) through (c).
Principle (a) suffers from two defeaters: It is clearly not a necessary condition for emergence, and if true, it entails that one cannot recognize the presence of an emergent property from inspecting the mereological aggregate that exemplifies it. (a) is not necessary as can be seen from the famous (or infamous!) Swamp Man thought experiment: While walking through a swamp, Joe, a homo sapien, who has resulted from the long process of evolutionary development, passes a tree stump at the precise moment a bolt of lightening hits it. Incredibly, the stump turns into an exact, completely indistinguishable, duplicate we shall call Smoe. Joe and Smoe are exact doubles with respect to all their constituents, including their mental states. It seems clear that each has a mental state identically emergent on his brain state, but Clayton’s position wrongly entails that only Joe has an emergent property. Moreover, no amount of inspection of Joe or Smoe, and more generally, no inspection of any emergent property and its respective whole will allow anyone to know whether the property is emergent, since the presence or absence of an evolutionary history is cognitively opaque.
Principle (b) is false when applied to mental properties. If we tighten up (b) so that it ranges throughout all possible worlds that are minimal physical duplicates of our world, then inverted qualia, zombie, and modal (disembodied) thought experiments present undercutting if not rebutting defeaters for (b). In fact, while I think these thought experiments succeed against strong physicalism, Clayton seems even more vulnerable to them. Principles (d) (which, I suspect, allows for only the sort of prediction that follows after the fact from repeated observations of regular correlations and not from knowledge of the subvenient base) and (e) (which contains the claim that emergent properties resist explanatory reduction which I take to mean that there is in principle no explanation of emergence from exhaustive knowledge of the subvenient base) imply the following: Knowledge of the complete physical description of all minimal physical duplicates of our world provides no evidence whatsoever about what does and does not obtain mentally or about what can and cannot obtain mentally. Absent such knowledge, and it is hard to see what evidence could be employed to rebut these thought experiments.
But we have more evidence that (b) is false than mere thought experiments, and that evidence comes from two sources inexcusably absent from most discussions of the issues with which we are currently preoccupied. These sources may be avoided for sociological or psychological reasons, and in chapter nine I will argue for spiritual reasons, but as far as I can tell, there are no rational considerations that justify their exclusion. I have in mind the widespread and convincing evidence for a disembodied substantial mind/soul that in no way depends for its existence on subvenient conditions from Near Death Experiences (NDE’s) and from cases of demon possession not plausibly explained within naturalistic resources.
For example, an especially interesting NDE case was reported by pediatrician Melvin Morse, who resuscitated a young girl who had nearly drowned while swimming in a pool, being under water for about nineteen minutes. Even though she had fixed and dilated pupils during that time, she was able to describe minutely what her parents and family were doing back at her home, including the clothes they were wearing, what her brother and sister were doing, and the specifics of the meal that her mother was preparing. Soon after her resuscitation by Morse and another physician, she also gave a highly detailed account of the doctors’ procedures and the contents of the emergency room.60
In addition to the little girl who nearly drowned, there are documented accounts where NDErs see items and hear conversations both in and out of the room where they are located, sometimes including blind patients and those who were without heart or brain activity.61
Besides NDEs, there is powerful, pervasive evidence for the existence of demons and the reality of demonization. Only people in the Ivory Tower could dispute this evidence because they know in advance of sifting the evidence that such things cannot be true. But the vast majority of people around the world, including even educated people, have encountered demonic phenomena. Moreover, there is more than sufficient evidence, for those with an open mind, to show that much of these phenomena cannot be adequately explained naturalistically and, by contrast, can be distinguished from mere psychological phenomena.
There is a vast literature in support of the reality of demons, and criteria have been developed for distinguishing demonization from mere psychological trauma.62 Three such criteria are: (1) the universal presence of certain symptoms, including satisfaction of biblical criteria, along with responsiveness to the name of Jesus, all of which take place uniformly throughout the world, including cultures that know nothing about the Bible or Jesus;
(2) the presence of supernatural power evidenced by such phenomena as moving material objects; (3) the revelation by the demon of precise, detailed, private and embarrassing information in front of others about the exorcist that no human person could have known.
These phenomena occur frequently and widely. In fact, in a recent alumni publication of the university at which I teach, the cover story featured faculty members—intellectually sophisticated professors with doctorates from the same institutions that most of us attended—who had experienced such demonic phenomena.63 During an exorcism, one professor saw metal objects fly across the room. I know a professor at another institution who has seen this very sort of phenomena in his own condominium in conjunction with a demonized person moving into the home right next to the professor’s dwelling place. During another exorcism, a different professor experienced the sort of embarrassment mentioned above. A demon accused him in front of the entire prayer team of specific sins that were detailed, including time and location. I know of others who have seen the same thing.
Of course, naturalists do not need to look at the evidence, because they already ‘‘know’’ that such things do not happen. In this way, they evince an anti-empirical attitude. But for those with an open mind, there is more than enough evidence to justify belief in disembodied existence for human selves in NDE’s and for demons in cases of demonization. Note carefully, that whether or not these things are happening is a function of factors such as the quality of eyewitness testimony, the satisfaction of certain criteria, e.g., the plausibility of alternative psychological explanations. What is entirely irrelevant, however, is a description of the laws of physics and chemistry. Let φ stand for an exhaustive, God’s eye description of the physical features of the actual world and all minimal physical duplicates of it. φ is simply irrelevant to evaluating these data. At the very least, this shows how contingently related the mental world is to the physical world. Given that mental phenomena represent L2, (b) and (c) are false.
Finally, Clayton’s emergentism boils down to an egregious post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Indeed, for at least three reasons, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for genuinely emergent properties. For one thing, the in-principle unpredictability of emergent properties from exhaustive knowledge of their alleged emergent bases entails that there is no empirical evidence for emergence. And the fact that there are no criteria for identifying a ‘‘sufficient degree of complexity’’ apart from slapping the label on whatever was present when the emergent property appeared in an ad hoc, after-the-fact manner, implies that there is no straightforward scientific evidence for emergence. This may be why Clayton equivocates on the nature of the subvenient base, sometimes claiming that emergence is ‘‘out of matter’’64 and most often asserting that it arises out of neutral monistic stuff.65 He also claims that emergent properties arise from the complex interactions among the parts of subvenient structures.66 None of these statements can be given one iota of empirical support.
Second, as Jaegwon Kim has convincingly shown, the appearance of emergent mental properties is consistent with numerous positions on the mind/ body problem, e.g. substance dualism, type physicalism, epiphenomenalism, double-aspect theories (e.g. personalism)67 Thus, the scientific evidence is underdetermined with respect to these options, including emergentism.
Moreover, it is far from clear that the philosophical arguments for emer-gentism vs. substance dualism are in support of the former. Emergentists will hold that epistemic simplicity is in their favor, but it must be remembered that this epistemic value applies only if the options are considered equal on other grounds. And this is what the substance dualist will argue. She will claim that issues regarding the unity of the self at and through time, the irreducibility of the first-person indexical, the reality of agent causality and a number of other arguments favor a substantial self. I have presented these arguments elsewhere and my purpose here is not to defend them.68 I note simply that it is far from clear that emergentists get the better of this argument. Remember, Clayton cannot appeal to science to make his case, and the general presumption in favor of emergentist as opposed to substance dualism is, in my view, without adequate justification.
Problems with the mereological hierarchy in the category of individual
Our discussion of emergentist and substance dualist theories provides a fitting transition to my final objection to Clayton’s emergentism: He fails to provide reasons for preferring ordered aggregates and the mereological hierarchical treatment of individuals as opposed to a plurality of unique (Aristotelian/ Thomistic) substances.
For one thing, Kim has argued, conclusively in my view, that the mer-eological hierarchy itself generates the problem of top/down causation. Clayton seems to be confused about this point because he thinks that the argument against top/down causation derives from a reductive physicalist depiction of science. Given this understanding, Clayton’s rejoinder is merely to define top/down causation and claim that an emergentist approach to science is open to the discovery of cases that satisfy the definition. Clayton’s confusion is evidenced by the fact that he actually claims to provide an argument for top/down causation by merely offering a definition of levels that include by fiat the notion of top/down causation.69 Unfortunately, this sort of ‘‘argumentation’’ is what Bertrand Russell called philosophy by theft, not honest toil.
The problem remains for Clayton: Given the nature of the hierarchy, there is no room for top/down causation. Kim’s argument for this point may be flawed, though I am persuaded by it. But Clayton does not enjoin it adequately, and by affirming the hierarchy, he is left with no adequate solution for top/down causation. And defining it into existence hardly solves the problem.
Clearly, a substance ontology does not face the problem of top/down causation because it quantifies over a plurality of powerful particulars each of which has its own irreducible causal powers and which does not depend upon separable parts for its existence. Aristotelian substances do not ride upon anything, so there is no ‘‘down’’ that generates the problem.
Clayton baulks at a substance dualist approach to top/down causation because: (1) It postulates a causally powerful entity that is ‘‘ontologically of a qualitatively different kind’’ that exerts top/down causation. But, he asserts, this notion is ambiguous, strange and inadequate for justifying top/ down causation because (1) ‘‘an eel or elephant seems qualitatively different from an electron, yet one does not have to be a dualist to say that an elephant’s movements can affect the motion of the electrons that are a part of it’’;70 and (2) It involves a ‘‘strange new addition of energy into the natural world.’’71
Neither conjunct is persuasive. Regarding (1), the same argument has been leveled at emergentism and Clayton’s ontology postulates a plurality of ‘‘qualitatively different’’ kinds of entities. Clayton’s pluralism may imply that emergent properties are psychologically less strange than his (inadequate) depiction of dualism, which postulates only one different kind of entity, but, ontologically speaking, all simple, genuinely emergent properties are qualitatively different from matter as it is described by physics. And Clayton’s counter-examples of qualitatively different properties do not work, because the strong naturalist will treat ‘‘being an eel’’ and ‘‘being an elephant’’ as structurally and not emergently supervenient properties, and mental properties are not structural.
Regarding (2), Clayton speculates that ‘‘downward causation for emer-gentists might involve transduction, the transformation of energy into forms of energy (say, mental energy) not well understood by contemporary sci-ence.’’72 From my perspective, this does not appear to be any less ‘‘strange’’ than his depiction of the dualist alternative, given the mereological hierarchy and the exclusion argument against top/down causation.
Secondly, scientific data does not favor one ontology over another. Though a minority, there are philosophers who have developed a view of chemical change as substantial change that includes but cannot be reduced to a mere re-arrangement of parts to form new mereological aggregates.73 Similarly, there are those who have developed ontologies of living organisms such that they, too, are substances and not ordered aggregates. Interestingly, such models invariably include the notion that DNA is not the fundamental unit of morphogenesis; rather, the individual organism taken as a substantial unit is. Clayton accepts this position.74 While he tries to flesh it out within a framework of relational structures/systems, he emphasizes the irreducible unity of biological wholes, information and systems biology, and top/down causation. By adopting such a stance, Clayton’s view becomes much less distinguishable from a substance model than he apparently realizes. After all, the view of an individual as an essentially characterized particular was developed by Aristotle precisely to distinguish ordered aggregates with a per accidens unity from genuine substances with a per se unity, and it is the latter that Clayton is clearly after.
In response, Clayton claims that the quantity of separable parts (he calls them particles) and the (apparently quantitative) degree of complexity suffices to explain emergence75 and, more specifically, it allows one to avoid a substance ontology in favor of the mereological hierarchy.76 Moreover, Clayton acknowledges that to make sense of his emergentist view of the hierarchy, there must be a new kind of relation at new levels, such that there is a new integral entity in virtue of a new kind of relatedness within.77 This ontology of relations, along with epistemological simplicity, says Clayton, allows one to avoid a pluralist ontology of unique substances.78
Clayton’s response is inadequate for at least two reasons. First, he fails to see that in order to get the sort of integrated wholeness he seeks, the new kind of relation must be an internal relation. In this case, the integrated wholes are constituted by internal relations among the parts of the whole and the whole itself, and the parts turn out to be inseparable parts. Unfortunately, the sort of combinatorial processes to which Clayton appeals to explain the emergence of such relations is inadequate. Those processes are, one and all, constituted by external relations among separable parts. It is substantial change, not a re-arrangement of externally related separable parts that adequately provides the ontological resources for a new kind of relation and a new, integral whole.
Moreover, neither approach is simpler than the other. Both involve a shopping-list of unique entities. Clayton’s view involves a new category of relation—internal relations—and the view that the unity of emergent wholes takes place in virtue of those relations. The substance view involves new essences in the category of individual and the view that the internal relatedness of certain parts takes place in virtue of the new whole. To avoid an eliminativist treatment of new wholes, Clayton would seem to have to postulate at least new surfaces/boundaries in addition to internal relations, but the substance ontologist does not need to be committed one way or another to such an entity.
It is far from clear that Clayton’s view is ‘‘more scientific’’ or epistemi-cally simpler. And without these, his view comes perilously close to the substance position, a fact that he himself acknowledges. At the end of the day, he fails to realize that his own emergentist analysis of the hierarchy prevents him from having the resources consistently to avoid the substance alternative.
We saw something similar to this in chapter four regarding O’Connor. As most naturalists see, the epistemic commitments and the sorts of processes that constitute the Grand Story (see chapter one) justify a unified view of the mereological hierarchy in the categories of property and individual: structural and only structural properties, and mereological aggregates treated in eliminativist or minimalist (e.g. surfaces only and no unifying essences) ways. O’Connor sought to smuggle emergent properties, especially active power, in the category of property, but the reasons for expanding the ontology in that category also justified the adoption of a substantial self in the category of individual. Similarly, by opting for pluralistic emergence in the category of property, Clayton starts down a path that prevents him from limiting ontological expansion to that category. After all, the hierarchy itself was justified by the explanatory power of mechanistic physicalism, and mechanistic physicalism works with respect to changes in external relations in both categories. By admitting exceptions in the category of property, it is hard to limit exceptions to that category.
Third, not only does Clayton fail to provide adequate reasons for preferring mereological aggregates and the hierarchy to a plurality of unique substances, there is one aspect of this thought that actually provides ground for favoring the latter: his adoption of theistic dualism coupled with his acceptance of an analogy between God and human persons. Clayton believes that there are limits to science and naturalistic explanation and that there are grounds for believing in God’s existence. By ‘‘God’’, Clayton means a suprapersonal mind or spirit who is a source of agency,79 that God is an infinite, transcendent, substantial mind non-emergent from and quite independent of the cosmos.80 Thus, Clayton explicitly embraces theistic dualism, and with it, at least one unique substance (besides atomic simples if such there be) that is not a mereological aggregate.
Further, Clayton correctly notes that one must avoid equivocation in talking about God as a conscious personal agent and human persons as such. Indeed, Clayton believes there is an important analogy between the two. But I think Clayton misunderstands the proper implications of this. He starts with a non-dualistic, emergentist theory of human persons and moves to a dualistically conceived God. But I believe that this is wrongheaded. In the order of knowing, it is appropriate to move from us to God. But in the ontological order, things go in the other direction. Now if we start with an emergentist view of human persons, and for certain reasons move to what we take as the justified belief in a dualistic God qua conscious personal agent, we have a defeater for the emergentist view of human persons. Why? Because we have a Paradigm Case of what a conscious personal agent is, and we accept an ontological, and not merely an epistemological analogy with us.
Think of it this way. Whatever else may be different between us and God, Clayton’s own argument presents God as the paradigm case of a conscious personal agent, and, as such, the paradigm case grounds the class of conscious personal agents precisely as such in that each member bears the relevant similarities with the paradigm case. It is hard to see what these analogy-grounding similarities would be if not a self-conscious, substantial agent-self.
Clayton’s failure to come to terms with this problem may be due, in part, to what I think is his confused notion of what it means for a human person to be a conscious personal agent. Clayton clearly wants to understand this in terms of agent causation,81 but he then claims that to regard human persons as self-conscious agents is to commit one to accepting that mental states have causal force.82 Now this is not sufficient for agent causation, which implies that it is the agent-self-qua-mental-substance, not mental properties/states that is the mental cause.
Clayton is aware of this problem, but avoids this move towards a substantial agent-self by merely asserting that the emergentist position is simpler and more in harmony with the natural sciences. But this is a false, groundless assertion as I have tried to show above. Moreover, Clayton fails to include in his methodological approach the implication of the importance of classic theism for justifying the assumptions of science. Fortunately, for my purposes, I do not need to justify such importance because Clayton himself argues for such.83
Granting, as he does, that this is the case, we have the following epis-temic approach to knowledge or justified belief about the world. Episte-mically prior to the employment of natural science, we must justify the assumptions of science, and to do that we must postulate the existence of God. Now God is a dualistically conceived substance qua conscious, selfaware agent. This means that prior to exploring the world through natural science, we already have a dualist ontology and we are under no pressure from simplicity considerations to favor a mereological-aggregate view of individuals, since we already have the category of ‘‘mental individual’’ filled. And when we discover other self-aware, conscious agent-causes, we should treat them as dualistically conceived agent-causes unless there are overriding reasons to the contrary.
This is much different from opting for naturalistic assumptions regarding atomic simples and combinatorial processes, which would justify a mer-eological view of various aggregate wholes and a relational view of the unity of such wholes. But the naturalist view actually undermines the assumptions of science as Clayton acknowledges, and it fails to have the resources to explain radically new kinds of wholes constituted by internal and not external relations. When this radically new sort of relational structure is combined with a pluralist view of emergent properties, I see no reason to think that it is in any sense simpler to a substance ontology. But given a theistic framework justified in the fashion just mentioned, such methodological pressure to employ relations as unifiers is gone.
Moreover, once we have a substance ontology for understanding the sort of unity God and human persons exhibit, we have a metaphysical framework for understanding similar sorts of unities. If certain entities exhibit certain sorts of unity, e.g. chemical elements and molecules, then we are justified in treating them as substances. If they do not, we should treat them as mereological aggregates. I have explained elsewhere the differences regarding unity between substances and mereological aggregates, and shall not repeat my explanation here.84 I merely note that the decision to go one way or another will be grounded where it ought to be—in unity considerations, and not in irrelevant appeals to scientific parsimony. A substance ontology quantifies over Aristotelian/Thomistic substances and mereological aggregates and so does Clayton’s emergentist ontology. This, I believe, makes inscrutable his appeals to parsimony to justify his ontology relative to mine. And apart from emotional hostility to such a substance ontology, it is empirically equivalent to Clayton’s and there are no nonquestion-begging criteria that give an edge to the latter.