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Two Examples of Downward Causation


 This spring I proudly announced on this blog that I believe I have achieved reflexive equilibrium on the issue of the relationship of the mind and the body.

I am, I said, "an emergentist, and specifically one who embraces downward causation and a planetary mereology."

I also tried at that time in the main text and in a brief exchange with Henry to explain what emergence means and why my mereology (my sense of parts and wholes) is planetary. For now I will just say that if we do discover life on other planets, I will think it perfectly moral to declare oneself an Earth Chauvinist.

Today I would like to speak a bit about downward causation.   

If we think of reality as layered, so that matter was a layer added on to space and life a layer added on to matter, then one might well ask: are events in the upper layers explained fully by events in the lower? And are events in the lower explained fully by themselves? Can we explain all of biology as chemistry, and all of chemistry without regard to biology? If so, then we might say all explanation points upward. But I don't think that is so. 

What are some examples of downward causation? 

Consider this attempted answer: a pet turtle dies and the boy who had cared for it cries. In this simple assertion we can stipulate that there is a biological event (the boy's perception of the death of the turtle) followed by a mental event (sadness) followed by a physical event (the physical manifestations of that sadness such as the flow of tears out of eye ducts). 

But we have a problem here: the James-Lange theory of emotion. According to that now venerable theory, our boy is sad because he is crying, not the other way around. 

So let us vary it a bit. The boy, offered a chance of another turtle pet, turns it down. This turning-down manifests itself in a vigorous shaking of the head. We might call THAT a consequence of his sadness, considered as a mental fact. We say things like "he doesn't want to love and lose again." I think in this case common speech has it right. We do act for reasons, which develop as we live, and in such a case mental facts are the correct explanation of physical facts. 

Another distinct example would be a situation in which a biological fact proves the correct explanation for a physical fact. A dog eats a piece of kibble.  as illustrated above. Let us just focus on the moment when the dog puts the piece of kibble in his teeth and his neck straightens out so he is looking straight forward from the axis of his body. That piece of kibble has moved upward from the bowl. If the dog didn't exist, and the kibble made the same movement, it would be a magical leap upward, "for no reason." 

Yet it wasn't magic. There is a reason. We cannot understand that reason except through understanding that there are carbon-based creatures in the world with their own non-mechanistic imperatives, including a survival instinct that leads them to put kibble in their mouths. 

So let us return to the italicized formula above. I am "an emergentist, and specifically one who embraces downward causation and a planetary mereology."

I hold, then, that life emerged from non-living matter and mind from unmindful life. The emergence itself is upward causation. Those events took place in the depths of geological time. Because they have taken place, some of the particles of that kibble will in due course become part of the body of the dog. The upward causation is genuine, as is the causation in the other direction. The will-to-live as expressed in the dog causes motions of kibble particles. At the next level up, sadness (a mental fact) causes changes in the behavior of some of these organic creatures. 

I don't claim for these propositions the status of scientific theorems. I assert them as integral to a valuable vitalist philosophy, one that is not fully underwritten by, but is also not contradicted by, the relevant sciences.


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  1. HenryOctober 11, 2022 at 9:11 AM

    "if we do discover life on other planets, I will think it perfectly moral to declare oneself an Earth Chauvinist."

    Whoa! -- "perfectly" moral? It's a matter of degree, and this is a complex subject. We are genetically programmed, I believe, to have greater concern for those whose genes we share. But it is highly debatable the degree to which we may morally favor ourselves over others who do not share our genes. To what extent may we take into account differences in race, sex, species, or nationality? Regarding nationality, some people approve of patriotism, meaning that we in the United States may morally show more concern for our fellow citizens than for people in other countries. But even such patriots would consider the importance of the specific matters that induce concern, so that they might donate money to help victims of a tsunami in a foreign country before they donate it to a symphony orchestra in the United States. Surely there could be occasions when Earth chauvinism would not be moral.

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    1. ChristopherOctober 11, 2022 at 8:12 PM

      NASA has recently run a test (apparently a successful one) on a proposition until now only tested in Hollywood movie scripts -- can the human species deflect an oncoming comet or asteroid and save this planet from devastation? The answer, happily, turns out to be YES. That is great. I don't think it is necessary to worry about the possibility that in deflecting a comet from us we may visit a killer comet upon somebody else. Heck, even the possibility that this test, performed on a comet that didn't really threaten us, could eventually because of this path change hit another life bearing planet. But I am a happy Earth Chauvanist and do not care. Go, NASA!

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    2. HenryOctober 11, 2022 at 8:43 PM

      You load the dice by having the comet threatening the Earth with devastation. Suppose it would do minimal harm -- say, destroy only a house in which the six Republican Supreme Court justices were meeting to decide what additional constitutional rights to revoke -- but that to deflect it would destroy an entire planet on which intelligent and benevolent life resided.

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    3. ChristopherOctober 13, 2022 at 10:44 PM

      Yes, we can surely re-word all the trolley-with-forking-tracks hypotheticals in terms of a deflected comet. Still: in this case the "trolley" didn't threaten anyone. Our hypothetical intervenor pulled the switch to test whether he COULD pull the switch, should his mother on some future occasion be tied to one of the prongs of the fork. And I think it is too wonderful a result to worry about the bare possibility that, somewhere down this "track" there is a bio planet full of strangers. We can now save our mother GAIA should that become necessary.

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  2. Paul D. Van PeltOctober 12, 2022 at 7:13 AM

    Very good! Layers of reality---a bit along the line of what John Perry of Stanford wrote several years ago on 'levels' of reality, also intriguing. Or, perhaps Jaynes' notion of consciousness emerging from " the breakdown of the bicameral mind". Several people, who appear to still believe consciousness is more than hallucination, and does not reside in all things, big and small, are re-examining the evolution notion. Probably not the same as downward causation, unless evolution, itself, is a product of downward causation? I don't think so, but I have been wrong before. We can speculate...

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