Managing Complexity in Socio-Technical Systems by Mimicking Emergent Simplicities in Nature: A Brief Communication.

In the context of socio-technical systems, traditional engineering approaches are inadequate, calling for a fundamental change in perspective. A different approach encourages viewing socio-technical systems as complex living entities rather than through a simplistic lens, which enhances our understanding of their dynamics. However, these systems are designed to facilitate human activities, and the goal is not only to comprehend how they operate but also to guide their function. Currently, we lack the appropriate terminology. Hence, we introduce two principal concepts, simplexity and complixity, drawing inspiration from how nature conceals intricate mechanisms beneath straightforward, user-friendly interfaces.

The historical and philosophical roots of emergentism in the neurosciences.

Understanding and characterizing the relationship between mental phenomena and the brain is a huge challenge for modern neuroscience. No doubt, the conservative orthodox view of this relationship can be described as physicalist. Physicalism is the idea that, no matter how enigmatic mental phenomena may seem, they are nevertheless completely describable in physical and material terms. Still, despite centuries of effort, aspects of mind, such as the qualitative nature of subjective experience, have defied physical characterization. In the early 1920s, emergentism was advanced to explain the relationship between physical reality and higher-order phenomena, including life and mind. According to emergentism, such higher-order phenomena are derivative of and, at the same time, autonomous to underlying physical reality. This article describes the historical and philosophical development of emergentist theses, particularly as they have been treated in the neurosciences.

Expanding the emergentist Account:Reply to open peer commentaries.

Emergentism provides a framework for understanding how language learning processes vary across developmental age and linguistic levels, as shaped by core mechanisms and constraints from cognition, entrenchment, input, transfer, social support, motivation, and neurology. As our commentators all agree, this landscape is marked by intense variability arising from the complexity. These mechanisms interact in collaborative and competitive ways during actual moments of language use. To better understand these interactions and their effects, we need much richer longitudinal data regarding both input and output during actual contexts of usage. We believe that modern technology can eventually provide this data (Flege & Bohn, 2021) in ways that will allow us to more fully populate an emergent landscape.

Age effects in second language acquisition: Expanding the emergentist account.

In 2005, Science magazine designated the problem of accounting for difficulties in L2 (second language) learning as one of the 125 outstanding challenges facing scientific research. A maturationally-based sensitive period has long been the favorite explanation for why ultimate foreign language attainment declines with age-of-acquisition. However, no genetic or neurobiological mechanisms for limiting language learning have yet been identified. At the same time, we know that cognitive, social, and motivational factors change in complex ways across the human lifespan. Emergentist theory provides a framework for relating these changes to variation in the success of L2 learning. The great variability in patterns of learning, attainment, and loss across ages, social groups, and linguistic levels provides the core motivation for the emergentist approach. Our synthesis incorporates three groups of factors which change systematically with age: environmental supports, cognitive abilities, and motivation for language learning. This extended emergentist account explains why and when second language succeeds for some children and adults and fails for others.

Predicting ecosystem productivity based on plant community traits.

With the rapid accumulation of plant trait data, major opportunities have arisen for the integration of these data into predicting ecosystem primary productivity across a range of spatial extents. Traditionally, traits have been used to explain physiological productivity at cell, organ, or plant scales, but scaling up to the ecosystem scale has remained challenging. Here, we show the need to combine measures of community-level traits and environmental factors to predict ecosystem productivity at landscape or biogeographic scales. We show how theory can extend the production ecology equation to enormous potential for integrating traits into ecological models that estimate productivity-related ecosystem functions across ecological scales and to anticipate the response of terrestrial ecosystems to global change.

More on realism, phenomenology, and causation, in reply to Cheng.

First, I agree with Cheng that the argument from illusions to indirect realism is controversial, especially as to what is meant by "realism," "veridical," and "sense data" and the background assumptions underlying them. I provide a finer specification of some of the sub-movements that were the specific concerns of my previous article, particularly phenomenology as it currently sees itself in perception research, and the relevance of illusions. Perception has turned out to be far more complex than traditional philosophy realized, as has been revealed by recent research in neuroscience and psychophysics. Lastly, I answer Cheng's question about the "causal exclusion argument" by suggesting it is obviated by the temporal substructure of metaphysical states, and I provide a detailed supporting case in Supplementary Material.

Illusions, objectivity, and non-reductive emergentism: Reply to Rose.

In the target article, David Rose makes an interesting and substantive case against a certain kind of sceptical view: "veridical perception is impossible in principle," combined with a certain version of anti-realism. He proceeds by first illustrating several ideas from George Orwell's seminal work, and then proposes that a certain kind of non-reductive, levelled emergentist metaphysics can help us respond to such scepticism. In this commentary, I join forces with Rose's case, but will point out that we need to take seriously two discussions in contemporary philosophy in order to make the realist case stronger: the argument from illusion and hallucination, and the causal exclusion argument. Only then do Rose and his allies can have a more satisfactory case for objectivity and realism.

The Power of Images and the Logics of Discovery in Psychiatric Care.

This paper, aligned with contemporary thinking in terms of patient-centered care and co-creation of patient care, highlights the limitations of the reductionist approaches to psychiatry, offering an alternative, "emergent" perspective and approach. Assuming that psychopathological phenomena are essentially relational, what kind of epistemological framework and 'logic of discovery' should be adopted? I review two standard methods I call 'ticking boxes' and 'drafting arrows'. Within the ticking boxes framework, the clinician's main goal is to discover whether a patient showing psychopathological phenomena meets pre-given diagnostic criteria. The process of discovery can be compared to two people assembling a puzzle where the patient has the pieces and the interviewer has the image of the completed design. Drafting arrows consists in constructing pathogenetic diagrams that display linear causative relationships between variables connected by an arrow to other nodes. These explanatory narratives include psychodynamic (motivational) and biological (causal) diagrams. I argue for a third approach called 'linking dots', a method of discovery based on the emergent properties of psychopathological phenomena. I build on and develop the approach to images and discovery devised by art historian Aby Warburg in his atlas of images Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. The visual constellations created by Warburg in the panels of the Bilderatlas can be understood as a method to reveal the layers of memory and the web of relationships manifested in them, inviting the viewer to participate in the production of meanings, forging ever new connections between the images. It is the viewer's acts of perception that draw relationships between singularities. I suggest that this method is of enormous significance in the context of today's socio-cultural transformation processes and related forms of psychopathological conditions, which can no longer be comprehended using the categories of existing knowledge systems.

The Natural Syntax of Local Coreference.

Emergentist approaches to language are burdened with two responsibilities in contemporary cognitive science. On the one hand, they must offer a different and better understanding of the well-known phenomena that appear to support traditional formal approaches to language. On the other hand, they must extend the search for alternative explanations beyond the familiar languages of Europe and East Asia. I pursue this joint endeavor here by outlining an emergentist account for constraints on local anaphora in English and Balinese, with a view to showing that, despite numerous proposals to the contrary, the two languages manifest essentially the same system of coreference and that the system in question is shaped by processing pressures rather than grammatical principles.

Revisiting Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Production of Cantonese Relative Clauses: Evidence From Elicited Production in 3-Year-Olds.

Emergentist approaches to language acquisition identify a core role for language-specific experience and give primacy to other factors like function and domain-general learning mechanisms in syntactic development. This directly contrasts with a nativist structurally oriented approach, which predicts that grammatical development is guided by Universal Grammar and that structural factors constrain acquisition. Cantonese relative clauses (RCs) offer a good opportunity to test these perspectives because its typologically rare properties decouple the roles of frequency and complexity in subject- and object-RCs in a way not possible in European languages. Specifically, Cantonese object RCs of the classifier type are frequently attested in children's linguistic experience and are isomorphic to frequent and early-acquired simple SVO transitive clauses, but according to formal grammatical analyses Cantonese subject RCs are computationally less demanding to process. Thus, the two opposing theories make different predictions: the emergentist approach predicts a specific preference for object RCs of the classifier type, whereas the structurally oriented approach predicts a subject advantage. In the current study we revisited this issue. Eighty-seven monolingual Cantonese children aged between 3;2 and 3;11 (Mage: 3;6) participated in an elicited production task designed to elicit production of subject- and object- RCs. The children were very young and most of them produced only noun phrases when RCs were elicited. Those (nine children) who did produce RCs produced overwhelmingly more object RCs than subject RCs, even when animacy cues were controlled. The majority of object RCs produced were the frequent classifier-type RCs. The findings concur with our hypothesis from the emergentist perspectives that input frequency and formal and functional similarity to known structures guide acquisition.

What does a critical period for second language acquisition mean?: Reflections on Hartshorne et al. (2018).

Hartshorne et al. (2018) used a very large sample in order to disentangle the effects of age, years of experience, and age of exposure from each other in context of second-language acquisition. Participants were administered an online test of English grammar. Results revealed a critical period ending around 17 years of age for the most effective acquisition of a second language (L2). The findings of a late cutoff indicate the age range of late childhood to late adolescence as crucial for learning an L2. In this piece, we argue that these results can be conceptualized by emergentist models of language acquisition in which both behavior and brain interactively reorganize across development.

A paradigm shift for the Great Bifurcation.

This paper is an attempt to achieve an understanding of the situation the evolution of humanity is confronted with in the age of global challenges. Since global challenges are problems of unprecedented complexity, it is argued that a secular paradigm shift is required away from the overemphasis on allegedly neutral standpoints, on a mechanistic picture of the world and on deductive logics towards accounts of emergence, of systemicity, informationality and conviviality, building upon each other and providing together a transdisciplinary edifice of the sciences, in the end, for, and by the inclusion of, citizens. Viewed from such a combined perspective, the current social evolution is punctuated by a Great Bifurcation similar to bifurcations other emergent systems have been facing. On the one hand, humankind is on the brink of extinction. It is the world occurrence of the enclosure of commons that is detrimental to sharing the systemic synergy effects and thus to the cohesion of social systems. On the other hand, humanity is on the threshold of a planetary society. Another leap in integration would be the appropriate response to the complexity confronted with. Humans and their social systems are informational agents and, as such, they are able to generate requisite information and use it to catch up with the complex challenges. They can establish convivial rules of living together in that they disclose the commons world-wide. By doing so, they would accomplish another evolutionary step in anthroposociogenesis. The concept of the Global Sustainable Information Society describes the framework of necessary conditions of conviviality under the new circumstances.

Repensando las consecuencias bioéticas del monismo y el dualismo: el emergentismo sistémico como perspectiva epistémica superadora del totalitarismo / Rethinking the bioethical consequences of monism and dualism: Systemic emergentism as an epistemic perspective that overcomes totalitarianism / Repensando as consequências bioéticas do monismo e do dualismo: o emergentismo sistêmico como perspectiva epistêmica que sobrepuja o totalitarismo

La comprensión de la conciencia ha sido durante siglos uno de los caballos de batalla del devenir intelectual, en tanto contexto en el que se han definido y redefinido las diferentes percepciones socioculturales, científicas, filosóficas e ideológicas del ser humano. Lejos de tratarse de un problema superado, se trata de una cuestión que, reformulada una y otra vez, en distintos ámbitos y contextos, retorna sin cesar al epicentro del debate intelectual, dadas sus consecuencias epistémicas y necesariamente éticas. En este trabajo se trata de mostrar cómo tal debate y sus posturas se alimentan de una percepción que se estima "anticuada" del problema, al afrontarlo desde una óptica esencialista (cifrada sobre un modelo de pensamiento basado en esquemas de razón-objeto), a la par que se propone una reformulación de la cuestión en términos procesuales, inspirada en la propuesta del emergentismo sistémico. Con ello, se pretende aportar un enfoque superador de un modelo intelectual que se estima obsoleto, a la par que se propicia una reflexión ética en torno a las consecuencias intelectuales ideológicas y prácticas devenidas de un sostenimiento artificioso del mismo en el ámbito de la ciencia.

For centuries, the understanding of conciousness has been one of the topic issues of intellectual development, and a context in which the different sociocultural, scientific, philosophical and ideological perceptions of the human being have been defined and redefined. Far from being a solved problem, it's a theme that, reformulated again and again in different fields and contexts, returns endlessly to the epicenter of intellectual discussion because it has, necessarily, trascendental epistemic and ethical consequences. This paper tries to show how such confrontation and its positions are fed by an "outdated" perception of the problem, when faced it from an essentialist perspective (encrypted on a model of thought based on reason-object schemes). Therefore is proposed a reformulation of the question in procedural terms inspired by the theory of systemic emergentism. So, it is intended to provide an overcoming approach to an intellectual model that is considered obsolete, while fostering an ethical reflection on the ideological intellectual consequences and practices derived from its artificial support in the field of Science.

A compreensão de consciência tem sido, durante séculos, um dos cavalos de batalha do tornar-se intelectual, no contexto em que se definiu e se redefiniu as diferentes percepções socioculturais, científicas, filosóficas e ideológicas do ser humano. Longe de se tratar de um problema superado, trata-se de uma questão que, reformulada uma ou outra vez, em distintos âmbitos e contextos, retorna ao epicentro do debate intelectual, dadas suas consequências epistêmicas e necessariamente éticas. Tratamos demonstrar neste trabalho como tal debate e suas posturas alimentam-se de uma percepção que se estima ser "antiquada" do problema, ao enfrenta-lo a partir de uma visão essencialista (codificada sobre um modelo de pensamento baseado em esquemas de razão-objeto), ao mesmo tempo em que se propõe uma reformulação da questão em termos processuais, inspirada na proposta do emergentismo sistêmico. Com isto, pretende-se aportar um enfoque que supera um modelo intelectual que se estima obsoleto, ao mesmo tempo em que se propicia uma reflexão ética em torno das consequências intelectuais ideológicas e práticas decorrentes de um apoio artificial do mesmo no âmbito da ciência.

The controversy around the concept of archetypes and the place for an emergent/developmental model.

This paper addresses two key controversial questions to do with the concept of archetypes - do they operate autonomously without connection to an individual's personal life experience? Does their biological base mean they are genetically determined, innate and thus a priori inherited psychic structures? These questions are addressed through the case of a person who began life as an unwanted pregnancy, was adopted at birth and as an adult, experienced profound waking visions. An emergent/developmental model of archetype is outlined which stresses developmental start-points through this infant's engagement via response and reaction to the affective and material world of the infant/birth mother matrix and from which emergence later occurs by way of participation in a socio-cultural and material context. The emergentism aspect of this model rescues it from being reductionist since it allows for cultural and socialisation inputs. The model's explanatory power is vastly enlarged by combining this with the developmental component. Critically, once developmentally produced mind/brain (image schema) structures are in place, they have the capacity to generate psychological life. Imagery can then appear as if it is innately derived when that is not the case. The contemporary neuroscience which supports this model is both outlined and related back to the case example.

Cet article s'attache à deux questions clés et controversées au sujet des archétypes: fonctionnent-ils de manière autonome, sans lien avec l'expérience personnelle de vie de l'individu? Et: est-ce que leur fondement biologique implique qu'ils soient déterminés génétiquement, innés et de ce fait qu'ils soient des structures psychiques héritées, a priori. Ces questions sont étudiées à travers le cas d'une personne qui a commencé sa vie en tant que grossesse non-désirée, qui a été adoptée à la naissance et qui à l'âge adulte a de profondes visions éveillées. Un modèle émergent et développemental de l'archétype est présenté. Il met l'accent sur les points de départ dans le développement au travers de l'implication de ce nourrisson, au moyen de la réponse et la réaction au monde affectif et matériel de la matrice nourrisson-mère biologique. De cela l'émergence se produit ultérieurement par le fait de la participation dans un contexte socio-culturel et matériel. L'émergentisme de ce modèle l'empêche de sombrer dans le réductionnisme parce qu'il laisse sa place à la contribution de la culture et de la socialisation. Le pouvoir explicatif de ce modèle est très élargi si on le combine avec la composante développementale. De manière cruciale, une fois que les structures produites au cours du développement par l'esprit/le cerveau (schème d'image) sont en place, elles ont la capacité de générer la vie psychologique. L'imagerie peut alors sembler provenir de l'inné, alors que ce n'est pas le cas. Les neurosciences contemporaines permettant de soutenir ce modèle sont exposées et mises en rapport avec le cas étudié.

El presente trabajo da cuenta de dos cuestiones controversiales claves vinculadas al concepto de arquetipo: ¿operan de manera autónoma sin conexión con la experiencia de vida personal del individuo? ¿Su base biológica significa que son genéticamente determinados, innatos y por lo tanto, estructuras psíquicas heredadas a priori? Estas preguntas son abordadas a través de un caso que comenzó su vida como un embarazo no deseado, fue adoptado al nacer y como adulto experimentó profundas visiones. Se describe un modelo emergente/desarrollista de arquetipo que enfatiza los puntos de partida en el desarrollo a través de las interacciones del infante en respuesta y reacción al mundo afectivo y material, de la matriz de la madre de nacimiento, y desde la cual la emergencia ocurre después, a través de la participación en un contexto material y socio-cultural. El aspecto emergentista de este modelo lo rescata de ser reduccionista debido a que da lugar a estímulos culturales y de socialización. El poder explicativo del modelo es amplificado al combinar el mismo con el componente del desarrollo. Críticamente, una vez que las estructuras mente/cerebro producidas por el desarrollo (esquema imagen) están en curso, tienen la capacidad de generar vida psicológica. La imaginería entonces aparece como si fuera derivada innatamente cuando no es el caso. La neurociencia contemporánea que fundamenta este modelo es descripta y relacionada con el caso clínico.

Neuroemergentism: A Framework for Studying Cognition and the Brain.

There has been virtual explosion of studies published in cognitive neuroscience primarily due to increased accessibility to neuroimaging methods, which has led to different approaches in interpretation. This review seeks to synthesize both developmental approaches and more recent views that consider neuroimaging. The ways in which Neuronal Recycling, Neural Reuse, and Language as Shaped by the Brain perspectives seek to clarify the brain bases of cognition will be addressed. Neuroconstructivism as an additional explanatory framework which seeks to bind brain and cognition to development will also be presented. Despite sharing similar goals, the four approaches to understanding how the brain is related to cognition have generally been considered separately. However, we propose that all four perspectives argue for a form of Emergentism in which combinations of smaller elements can lead to a greater whole. This discussion seeks to provide a synthesis of these approaches that leads to the emergence of a theory itself. We term this new synthesis Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuromergentism for short).

Psychological Science within a Three-Dimensional Ontology.

The present paper outlines the nature of a three-dimensional ontology and the place of psychological science within this ontology, in a way that is partly similar to and partly different from that of Pérez-Álvarez. The first dimension is the material realities, and involves different levels (physical, chemical, biological, psychological, etc.), where each level builds on a lower level but also involves the development of new emergent properties, in accordance with Bunge's emergent materialism. Each level involves systems, with components, structures and mechanisms, and an environment. This dimension can be studied with natural scientific methods. The second dimension is the subjective-experiential realities, and refers to our subjective perspective on the world. In accordance with Husserl's phenomenology, it is argued that this subjectivity does not exist in the world (i.e., should not be reified as an object among other objects), but represents a perspective on the world that we enter in our capacity as conscious human beings. Essential characteristics of this subjectivity (such as intentionality, temporality, embodiment, and intersubjectivity) can be explored by phenomenological methods. The third dimension is the social-constructional realities, and includes social institutions, norms, categories, theories, and techniques. It is argued that psychological science spans over all three dimensions. Although almost all psychological research by necessity starts from a problem formulation where the subjective-experiential dimension plays an essential role (either explicitly or implicitly), most of present-day psychological research clearly emphasizes the material dimension. It is argued that a mature psychological science needs to integrate all three dimensions.

The challenge of instinctive behaviour and Darwin's theory of evolution.

In the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin argued that his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection represented a significant breakthrough in the understanding of instinctive behaviour. However, many aspects in the development of his thinking on behavioural phenomena indicate that the explanation of this particular organic feature was by no means an easy one, but that it posed an authentic challenge - something that Darwin himself always recognized. This paper explores Darwin's treatment of instincts within his theory of natural selection. Particular attention is given to elucidate how he tackled the difficulties of explaining instincts as evolving mental features. He had to explain and demonstrate its inheritance, variation, and gradual accumulation within populations. The historical and philosophical aspects of his theory are highlighted, as well as his study of the case in which the explanation of instincts represented a 'special difficulty'; that is, the sterile castes of social insects.

The image schema and innate archetypes: theoretical and clinical implications.

Based in contemporary neuroscience, Jean Knox's 2004 JAP paper 'From archetypes to reflective function' honed her position on image schemas, thereby introducing a model for archetypes which sees them as 'reliably repeated early developmental achievements' and not as genetically inherited, innate psychic structures. The image schema model is used to illustrate how the analyst worked with a patient who began life as an unwanted pregnancy, was adopted at birth and as an adult experienced profound synchronicities, paranormal/telepathic phenomena and visions. The classical approach to such phenomena would see the intense affectivity arising out of a ruptured symbiotic mother-infant relationship constellating certain archetypes which set up the patient's visions. This view is contrasted with Knox's model which sees the archetype an sich as a developmentally produced image schema underpinning the emergence of later imagery. The patient's visions can then be understood to arise from his psychoid body memory related to his traumatic conception and birth. The contemporary neuroscience which supports this view is outlined and a subsequent image schema explanation is presented. Clinically, the case material suggests that a pre-birth perspective needs to be explored in all analytic work. Other implications of Knox's image schema model are summarized.