Baylis, Charles. A. , & Goldstein, Jeffry. A. (2006). "Classic Paper: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence". Emergence, 8(1), 67-83.
(from Goldstein’s introduction) Baylis offered that emergence could be explained causal mechanisms. He put forth four ways in which this change could occur: integrative emergence , integrative subemergence, disintragrative emergence and disintegrative subemergence. This type of change is characteristic of a+b where the sum is not reducible to either a or b. Baylis also offers that the way that scholars of emergence were looking at the subject was too narrow and that not just any change could be seen as being emergent. “…emergence is not ordinary change in general but is instead consonant with a special kind of change, i.e., one that generates the outcomes which are unpredictable, non-deducible, irreducible, and capable of daunting (not violating) traditional notions of causality and determinism” (69).
Baylis begins by noting the current (1929) importance surrounding the issue of emergence. “The aim of this paper is to point out that, ins spite of the fact that emergence is more widespread than even its most ardent advocates have claimed, for it si indeed ubiquitous, nevertheless it solves none of these problems, supports no one Weltanshauung [worldview] rather than any other, and does not even imply evolution” (71)
Baylis defines emergence: “…are those characters of a complex which are not also characters of a proper part of that complex, and emergence or creative synthesis is that event which occurs when a complex having emergent characters is formed” (72). His example is water, with neither the character of hydrogen or oxygen.
“The attempt to solve some of the traditional problems of philosophy by means of the concept of emergence is no more successful than the attempt to make it imply evolution or value [two things he claims it does not support earlier in the paper]” (78). Emergence gives a name and thus calls attention to a commonly overlooked but nevertheless ubiquitous fact of the universe, the fact, namely, that some of the characters of every complex are different from the characters of any of the elements of that complex” (79). “The concept of emergence, then, has philosophic value in pointing out a fact which no theory may deny and in making possible new and suggestive answers to many of the standard philosophical problems…The concept of emergence is a key which opens new doors to philosophic inquiry, some of which may lead to treasure, but it is not a master key which of itself unlocks the many doors of that seemingly impregnable castle where lie concealed the answers to the various problems of philosophy” (83).
