Source
Bishop, “Chaos”, SEP, revision of 11 October 2024, LIT-1961, §§6.2–6.3; read in NOTE-1535. The entry cites Bishop, Silberstein and Pexton 2022 (LIT-1993) and Bishop 2024 for the view.
What was actually shown
A statement of the view with examples, not an argument for it.
- The definition. “Contextual emergence emphasizes multi-scale relations and the roles of stability conditions not given at smaller length and shorter time scales that nevertheless constrain or enable properties, entities, and processes at these smaller/shorter scales, making modal changes to possibility and actualization at these latter scales” (§6.2).
- The contrast. It is one of the “alternative ontological accounts of emergence”, against strong emergence, “where brute inexplicable bridge laws or causal powers come into existence”, which “yield a disunified world” (§6.2).
- The examples. Chaos appears only for classical observables under stability conditions such as the nuclear–electron mass disparity (§6.2); classical chaos modifies quantum tunnelling, “the opposite direction of the supervenience intuition” (§6.3); “emergent large-scale fluid rotation constrains possible motions of smaller-scale fluid molecules” (§6.3).
- Laws. “Physical laws … may delineate bounds of possibility; they don’t determine concrete actualization”; “different stability conditions define the particulars of a physical context” (§6.3).
What this does not say
- That an emergent whole has a causal power its parts lack. The view is framed as constraint and modal change, and causation is treated pluralistically (§6.3); “causal power” is set on the strong-emergence side (§6.2).
- That a boundary between phenomenon and context is required. That is Jennings’s addition (THEORY-1314); the entry’s stability conditions include parameter values and dimensionality, which are not boundaries.
- That the micro description, with the stability conditions written in as constraints, fails to reproduce the macro constraint. That is the open question THEORY-1314’s promote_when asks, and the entry does not address it.
- What the 2006 paper says. LIT-1987 was not reached; the record’s gloss of it as about descriptions may be right for 2006.