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Levels of organization: a deflationary account

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Abstract

The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of organization give way to more well-defined and fundamental notions, such as scale and composition.

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Notes

  1. Heil (2003) has forcefully argued against ontological levels of being, but these are different from levels of organization, as they are not defined in terms of composition, and involve stronger metaphysical assumptions.

  2. Bechtel and Craver have developed their accounts of levels independently, but they are very similar. I will point out the differences where they are relevant. Bechtel and Craver also discuss levels in one joint article (Craver and Bechtel 2007).

  3. This does not imply any non-reductive view of levels or higher-level properties. The fact that levels capture features of the organization of nature does not mean that those features are irreducible. The account of Oppenheim and Putnam is ontologically reductive: “Any whole which possesses a decomposition into parts all of which are on a given level, will be counted as belonging to that level. Thus each level includes all higher levels. However, the highest level to which a thing belongs will be considered the “proper” level of that thing” (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958, 9–10).

  4. Levels also often appear in the context of theories of emergence, but I take this to fall under goals G1, G2 and G4. Alternatively, one could add to the list “understanding emergence” as a further goal—the list is not intended to be exhaustive. In any case, emergence is not a topic of this article.

  5. A full-text search for the phrase “cellular level” for the period January 2004–January 2014 found the phrase in 572 articles. The total number of papers involved in the search was around 16,500 (the journal publishes roughly 50 issues per year, and there are usually at least 30 papers per issue). This means that the phrase appeared in <3.5 % of the papers. The results for “molecular level” and “behavioral level” were even lower (269 and 212 respectively).

  6. In some fields of the life sciences, such as the study of protein structure, ecology, or systems biology, talk of levels (of organization) may be more common. However, also in these fields the talk of levels can mostly be understood in terms of more fundamental notions, such as scale and composition. See Love (2012) for a discussion of levels of organization in proteins; Potochnik and McGill (2012) for a critical account of levels in ecology; and Richardson and Stephan (2007) for an interesting discussion of levels in systems biology.

  7. This problem is briefly introduced in Eronen (2013).

  8. Craver (personal communication) has pointed out that he no longer believes we need a criterion for being at the same level—what is important is determining when things are at different levels.

  9. To be exact, in Craver’s (2007) framework we should not simply talk of components, but always include the activity the component is engaged in (X’s Φ-ing, S’s Ψ-ing, etc.). However, for the sake of readability I have left out the variables denoting the activities, and mostly just talk of components. Nothing crucial turns on this, and it should be noted that Craver himself switches back and forth between talk of components and acting entities.

  10. Bechtel’s criterion for being at the same level leads to the same conclusion when combined with the mutual manipulability criterion.

  11. The distinction between components and direct components is briefly introduced in Eronen (2013).

  12. As pointed out in Footnote 4, this appears to be the approach Craver himself now favors.

  13. Wimsatt (1994/2007, 221–240) also explicitly states that levels of organization do not apply in many domains of the life sciences, where neat compositional relations break down and it is more appropriate to talk of “perspectives” or “causal thickets”. It should also be noted that Wimsatt’s idea that at some scales we find peaks of regularity and predictability is entirely compatible with my deflationary approach.

  14. Potochnik and McGill (2012) have proposed an approach to levels that comes close my deflationary view. Focusing on ecology, they argue that the idea of (universal) hierarchical levels of organization is deeply problematic, and suggest replacing levels with scales or “quasi-levels” that are derived from scales. The idea is that in a particular context or domain under study we may find that causal processes cluster at a given scale, and therefore it makes sense to talk of a quasi-level at that scale.

  15. I am indebted to McCauley (2009) for this idea. He develops a similar approach, but his account is not deflationary, since he aims at defending (something like) the traditional idea of levels of organization.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the following individuals for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and related presentations: Luca Barlassina, Laura Bringmann, Dan Brooks, Carl Craver, Bob Richardson, Raphael van Riel, and an anonymous referee of this journal. I also thank the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) for financially supporting the research that resulted in this publication.

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  1. Centre for Logic and Analytical Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Kardinaal Mercierplein 2, Box 3200, 3000, Louvain, Belgium

    Markus I. Eronen

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Eronen, M.I. Levels of organization: a deflationary account. Biol Philos 30, 39–58 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9461-z

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