Stuart Kauffman’s metaphysics of the adjacent possible: a critique

ABSTRACT

Stuart Kauffman has, in recent writings, developed a thought-provoking and influential argument for strong emergence. The outcome is his Theory of the Adjacent Possible (TAP). According to TAP, the biosphere constitutes a non-physical domain qualitatively distinct from the physical domain. The biosphere exhibits strongly emergent properties such as agency, meaning, value and creativity that cannot, in principle, be reduced to the physical. In this paper, I argue that TAP includes various (explicit or implicit) metaphysical commitments: commitments to (1) scientific realism, (2) downward causation and teleology, and (3) modal realism. If TAP is to hang together as the kind of robust philosophical thesis it evidently aspires to be, it needs an account – an account that is currently absent – of its metaphysical commitments. It is, however, unclear how such an account can be developed since various dilemmas present themselves when one explores how subscribers to TAP might do so.

KEYWORDS:

• Stuart Kauffman
• adjacent possible
• scientific realism
• downward causation
• teleology
• modal realism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 One might well find metaphysical commitments being tacitly expressed in many (if not all) scientific theories (thank you to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting as much). As with TAP, such theories will need to express and account for their metaphysical commitments if they aim to be philosophically robust.

2 Kauffman does not think that there is any formal sense of causation in biology (see Longo, Montévil, and Kauffman 2012).

3 Kauffman also argues that the same process of becoming occurs in the economy and in cyberspace (see Gatti et al. 2020 for detail).

4 Note that Kauffman has diachronic reduction in mind; i.e. physics cannot explain the functionality of the biosphere and the coming into existence of its contents. Synchronic reduction of biological entities (like hearts and swim bladders) to the particles and forces of physics is, he thinks, in principle, possible. Physicists could, in principle, explain the structure and composition of the heart in terms of fundamental particles and forces, but this could never explain why the function of the heart is to pump blood rather than to make heart sounds, for example.

5 See Okasha (2012) for an informative argument for downward causation in biology. According to Mayr (1988), functional talk in biology also introduces backward causation.

6 See also Noble (2006, ch. 4) for numerous further ostensive examples of downward causation in biology.

7 In chapter 5 of his (2000), Kauffman however endorses the idea of an ontologically significant notion of purpose in the universe (see also 2008, ch. 6).

8 Kauffman and Clayton attempt to sidestep this problem by stating that ‘choice’ applied to bacteria … will have precious few of the connotations that it has in the language game of human agency. The term must therefore be pared down to its absolute minimum, since we are seeking the minimal physical system to which one might apply teleological language (2006, 505). This is, however, not helpful since, even in minimal form, ‘choice’ still plainly denotes a teleological phenomenon of some kind.

9 It is also not clear how causation (whether upward or downward) can cross Kauffman’s strict ontological divide between the ergodic and non-ergodic universe (section 2) (see van der Merwe 2020).

10 Kauffman (2016, ch. 7) also argues (via metaphysical interpretation of quantum mechanics) that Possibles come into and go out of existence instantaneously thereby violating the so-called causal closure of the physical.

11 According to Jenann Ismael, modal realism commits one ‘to the existence of non-actual possible worlds, and it has never been clear what these are, or how we could know about them' (2017, 109). I suspect that Kauffman will find possible worlds metaphysics uninviting (see Divers 2002 for an overview).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by John Templeton Foundation [Project ID: 61408], Increasing Complexity: The First Rule of Evolution?

Notes on contributors

Ragnar van der Merwe

Ragnar van der Merwe is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Johannesburg. His research interests are in the philosophy of science, philosophy of truth, pragmatism and complexity science. His work focuses specifically on questions related to the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists and whether there is some workable middle-ground between these contrasting positions.