Possible objection no 7
The Principle or Emergence solves this problem
The principle of emergence is often cited as a causal pathway to the existence of various complex features of life.
It is demonstrably clear that surprisingly complex structures can arise from simpler fundamental properties. This occurs through the interaction of causal forces and constraints combining to produce outcomes that are not always easily predictable in advance.
For example, from the comparatively simple underlying physical processes of meteorology emerges a vast array of diverse phenomena: snowflakes and tornadoes, rainbows and sand dunes, waterfalls and forest fires. All are clearly the direct result of the interplay of physical forces acting under natural law.
In origin-of-life studies, the principle of emergence is often invoked as the causal route for the appearance of lipid membranes, protocells, biological information, and genetic coding systems.
Even consciousness is frequently described as having simply “emerged” from previously non-conscious states.
But is this inference valid?
To get a handle on this question, let us return to the example of meteorology. While the range of emergent outcomes produced by atmospheric processes is undeniably vast, a comprehensive dictionary is not among them. Nor is a musical score, a mathematical equation, a crime novel, or a doctoral dissertation.
We all instinctively understand that no matter how long we wait, none of these things will ever emerge from the mere interplay of meteorological forces. The question is not whether this is true, but why it is true.
Why such things cannot be the emergent product of physics alone?
The answer is that these items belong to entirely different ontological categories. A snowflake and a dictionary have fundamentally different causal relationships with their environment.
A snowflake is a physical structure. It is the product of molecular forces and is entirely determined by physical law and boundary conditions.
A dictionary, a musical score, or a mathematical proof, by contrast, is the product of choice-contingent organization directed toward a distant functional goal. That goal is not visible at the level of individual letters or symbols along the linear structure until the whole is largely complete.
Meteorological forces do not possess the causal capacity to produce a dictionary. This marks a real and principled boundary on what can emerge from purely physical processes.
And yet, the concept of emergence is frequently stretched to explain the origin of biological information.
The assumption is that mutation and selection can reorganize nucleotides into ever-increasing linear chains of functional complexity. It is true that no physical law prevents nucleotides from being rearranged into any sequence one might imagine. But here an ontological boundary asserts itself - a firm causal barrier that prevents such sequences from becoming a functional code.
To illustrate: while it is not strictly impossible for an earthquake to rearrange Scrabble tiles into a best-selling crime novel, what is impossible is for earthquakes, to give rise to the semiotic conventions of the English language. Or for copying errors, and chemical accidents to generate the semiotic conventions that give the genetic code its functional power.
The ability to create symbols, establish rules, and enforce meaning lies beyond the causal capacity of undirected physical processes. These belong to an entirely different causal category.
The universal principle of cause and effect rules out such an outcome.
To fail to recognize this distinction is not merely an oversight - it is a category error.
While emergence explains how complexity can arise within a category of causation; it does not explain how entirely new causal categories come into existence.
Snowflakes emerge from physics because they are physical. Codes do not, because they are semiotic.
When emergence is invoked to explain the origin of biological meaning, symbols, and rules, it ceases to be an explanation and becomes nothing more than a placeholder for a missing cause.
The origin of life question therefore cannot be resolved by appealing to emergence because the central feature of life - its coded, symbolic organization - lies beyond what undirected physical processes can, even in principle, produce.
When the principle of emergence is used in this way it is ceases to be an explanation and is nothing more than an appeal to magic.
This is a “Materialism of the gaps argument “.
This is not science, it is a failure to admit the inadequacy of a material explanation.