Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, January 2009

Many such patterns are self-sustaining or self-reproducing in the face of perturbing physical forces that might degrade or destroy them (e.g. DNA patterns). Finally, the selective activation of the causal powers of such a pattern’s parts may in many cases contribute to the maintenance and preservation of the pattern itself. Taken together, he says, these points illustrate that ‘higher-order patterns can have a degree of independence from their underlying physical realizations and can exert what might be called downward causal influences without requiring any objectionable 7 Donald T. Campbell, ‘“Downward Causation” in Hierarchically Organised Biological Systems’, in F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky, eds.. Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 179-186. 8 Robert Van Gulick, ‘Who’s in Charge Here? And Who’s Doing All the Work?’ in John Heil and Alfred Mele, eds.. Mental Causation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 233-256, quotation p. 251. 10 Journal of European Baptist Studies alteration of the underlying laws of physics. Higher-order properties act by the selective activation of physical powers and not by their alteration.'’ 9 A likely objection to be raised to Van Gulick’s account is this: The reductionist will ask how the larger system affects the behaviour of its constituents. To affect a constituent must be to cause it to do something different than it would have done otherwise. Either this is causation by the usual physical means or it is something spooky. If it is by the usual physical means, then those interactions must be governed by ordinary physical laws, and thus all causation is bottom-up after all. The next (and I believe the most significant) development in the concept of downward causation is well represented in the work of Alicia Juarrero. 10 She describes the role of the system as a whole in determining the behaviour of its parts in terms similar to Van Gulick’s account of the larger pattern or entity selectively activating the causal powers of its components, and she draws on the theory of dynamical self-organising systems to explain how. Juarrero says: ‘The dynamical organization functions as an internal selection process established by the system itself, operating top-down to preserve and enhance itself. That is why autocatalytic and other self-organizing processes are primarily informational; their internal dynamics determine which molecules are “fit” to be imported into the system or survive.’ 11 She addresses the crucial question of how to understand the effect of the system on its components. Her answer is that the system constrains the behaviour of its component processes. The concept of a constraint in science suggests ‘not an external force that pushes, but a thing’s connections to something else ... as well as to the setting in which the object is situated’. 12 More general