c:o/re Junior Fellow 10/21 − 09/22
Erica Onnis is Associate Professor at Cusano University (Rome) and Subject Expert at the University of Turin. She was a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Cultures of Research” (RWTH Aachen University) from 2021 to 2022 and has been a member of the Labont – Center for Ontology since 2015. During her PhD, she devoted herself to the understanding and clarification of the concept of emergence. She was visiting student at University College Cork under the supervision of Joel Walmsley an expert in British Emergentism, and at the University of Lisbon under the supervision of David Yates who is developing the project “Emergence in the Natural Sciences”. Her research focuses on the history of the debate, the nature of emergent phenomena, and the relation between the notion of emergence and those of reduction novelty, complexity, and causation.
Emergence between Biology and Metaphysics: Complexity, Distributed Causation, and Qualitative Novelty
In recent years, many general and comprehensive models of emergence have been formulated. However, they rarely consider the heterogeneity and contextual nature of emergent phenomena. In my project, therefore, I would like to formulate a particular model of emergence able to specifically describe complex biologicalsystems. To do so, I will focus on two points. First, I will examine and suggest a revision of the theory of causation usually associated with emergence; secondly, I will clarify the scope of the notion of qualitative novelty, which corresponds to diversity and differentiation and plays an extremely important role in biology.
Publications (Selection)
Onnis E. (2024). Between Armaments and Ornaments. Weak and Strong Emergent Patterns in Virtual and Real Cellular Automata. In A. Cuevas-Badallo, M. Martín-Villuendas, & J. Gefaell (eds.), Life and Mind – Theoretical and Applied Issues in Contemporary Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences. Springer.
Onnis E. (2024). Emergenza. APhEx. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Analitica, 29.
Onnis E. (2023). Questioning, rather than solving, the problem of higher-level causation. Argumenta. Journal of Analytic Philosophy
Onnis E. (2023). Emergence: A pluralist approach. Theoria. An International Journal for Theory History and Foundations of Science 38(3).
Onnis E. (2021). Metafisica dell’emergenza. Rosenberg & Sellier.
