突现与因果

Emergence, Evolution and Mind-body Problem （Special Column） Humphreys

系统的突现性质是否具有下向因果性或下向因果力，是正确理解突现的一个关键问题。有一些哲学家主张修改现行的因果理论并返回亚里士多德的四因论，使它能容纳或说明下向因果。这不是一个合适的进路。现代哲学的因果理论主要有条件因果和作用因果两个学派，如果对这两个理论做一个统一的整合探索，将INUS条件因概念与当代因果力和因果过程概念联系起来，就能为描述下向因果提供一个现代因果理论的框架。

the International Conference on the Cross-Cutting Issues and Fron- tier Issues of Contemporary Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mind： Emergence, Evolution and the Mind-body Problem＂ was held in Guangzhou with the joint sponsor of South China Normal University, Chinese Society for Dialectics of Nature, Department of Philosophy at Harvard University and Asia International Open University （Macao）. At this Conference, the discussion between Professor Humphreys and Chinese scholars on the issue of context, level, emergence and causal relationship caught participants＇ great attention. This set of articles introduces their viewpoints and comments on each other. Professor Paul Humphreys and Professor Yan Ze-xian, Fan Dong-ping, Zhang Hua-xia all claimed that we should do research on causal relation from the perspective of Dynamics. Professor Humphreys argue that the contemporary division between physicalists, those who hold that all real properties, objects, and states are physical, and dualists, those who maintain that besides the reahn of the physical there is a separate domain of specifically mental properties, objects and states, is too crude, so the approaches to emergence which are based on supervenience relations are unhelpful and that a better approach is through using a kind of contextual emergence. Professor Fan and Yan believed that the key features and main forms of complex system can be generalized as downward restraint and selective cause, downward control and informational cause. Professor Zhang stated that, if we try to integrate two schools, namely the theory of condition-cause and effect-cause, and to connect the theory of INUS condition with the modern theory of the causal power and causal process, we can get the research frame to describe the downward causation of emergence, without violating the closure prineiple of causal power in generalized physi- cal world.