How do we understand human nature, our "being-in-the-world from an emergentist perspective"? And that obviously, has to do with our notion of human consciousness, and our notion of human "freedom." The idea is to get beyond the old question of free will vs. determinism. Can emergentism throw new light upon human "free will?" Clarke proposes to develop a model to understand human action "as a natural, albeit non-reductive, emergent phenomenon."
Clarke proposes to develop his idea based upon the notion of human agency, that humans make choices in the world not just consciously, but "in terms of our biological inheritances, languages, social customs, and external circumstances and demands." And, human agency is understood "not only in personal terms but as a collective process... as nations, tribes, families, businesses, or teams."
We humans like to think of ourselves as special, but Clarke identifies agency-like behavior in almost all living things. Thus the idea of "protoagency" in living things as basic as "a bacterium swimming up a glucose gradient" that seems to "act on [its] own behalf and [is] able to detect and respond appropriately to both nutrients and threats". Thus agency could be an emergent property of living things that becomes more complex with more complex living things.
Clarke does not want to think of agency or free-will as "random and unpredictable" but rather as "the production of order by means of human agency, individual and collective."
But how does agency work, since agency is a top-level property of living things, while science generally likes to explain the complex in terms of the less complex? The answer is to assume that emergence works from the top-down as well as the bottom-up. This applies at the social level too: it is not possible to understand the operation of society purely from the behavior of individuals. Society clearly affects individuals. This "downward causation" also applies to the mind-body question. Mind and body must be connected and mind must have an influence on body.
In understanding the behavior of a human agent... we need to take into account different levels of understanding -- physical , biological, psychological, and spiritual.
Yet we are also an unity "in which these different levels overlap."
So Clarke proposes a view that "one level of phenomena or type of property... is dependent upon another level... while at the same time not being reducible to it." And that applies to the interdependence of mind and matter.
Another vexed question is the question of "purpose," that seems obvious in a world created by God, but problematic in an naturalist presumption. Clarke thinks it is better to talk about "function" rather than "purpose." And the same applies to the notion of "progress." Clarke decides to reject a teleological tending towards some "ideal goal" while accepting that there seems to be, in the emergent understanding of the universe, some sort of "urge to create" that seems to move towards "more diverse, complex and self-ordered beings."
And then there is the question of morality. Is morality, and our understanding of morality, progressing? And does the concern about violence, "our horror of wars," and "famine, disease, poverty and injustice" might be regarded as "indications of moral and religious emergence." On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe, as with Kant, it helps "to proceed as if something has a purpose" even if it doesn't.
How about extending purpose and functions to values? Wittgenstein says that the world is the totality of facts; Sartre says that values are a creation of our "subjective conscious freedom;" Whatbout the "fact-value" debate? Can we achieve a "naturalization of ethics?"
There is Darwin proposing that pre-human species display a kind of "protomorality." Others show that many animal species have a sense of fairness, empathy, and help others in distress. And there seems to be an evolution in this, not just from apes to humans, but also within the human species, as in the evolution of the common law, that combined a connection with tradition with "constant reflection and adaptation." There seems to be a kind of creatvie emergent order, where values are concerned.
Next: Making Sense of Life.
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