Complementary Causation and Emergence

By examining the strongly emergent causal structures found in the fractional quantum Hall state/effect and polymer melts, Tom McLeish shows that even physicists cannot rely on reductionism. However, emergence does not transfer from the physical to the mental in the way McLeish supposes. Anti-reduction means that one needs different methodologies and explanations for different kinds of phenomena at different levels of scale. Some emergence theorists admit that corporeal matter cannot be wholly non-experiencing but must already include the necessary mental ingredients for consciousness to emerge in organic structures. In other words, they abandon strict emergence theory and instead adopt a form of emergent panpsychism. Panpsychism offers a robust rejection of anthropocentricism and a more realist interpretation of biblical passages that depict nature as praising God. By contrast, McLeish's interpretation of humanity sharing God's eye-view seems to only reinforce anthropocentrism, as does his idea that humanity is the locus through which all of creation comes to praise the creator.