{"id":7777,"date":"2019-05-22T16:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/downward_causation_-or_macrocausation\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:00:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:00:32","slug":"downward_causation_-or_macrocausation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/downward_causation_-or_macrocausation\/","title":{"rendered":"Downward causation (or macrocausation)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A concept introduced by <a href=\"http:\/\/pespmc1.vub.ac.be\/DOWNCAUS.html\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/pespmc1.vub.ac.be\/DOWNCAUS.html&amp;target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Donald T. Campbell<\/a> (1916-1996) in 1974 in order to combat radical reductionism and the excesses of bottom-up explanations as provided by genetic determinism. &nbsp;It is evident when a higher level of a system determines the behavior of lower levels of organization. &nbsp;Under this influence, all processes at lower levels are constrained to act according to the laws of the higher level. &nbsp;However, determination is not complete as the whole is to some degree constrained by the lower levels (upward or bottom-up causation), but at the same time the parts are to some degree constrained by the whole (downward or top-down causation). &nbsp;Such &nbsp;a &#8216;two-way causation&#8217; is said to typify the behavior of complex systems.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"causality_-in_philosophy-\">Causality (in philosophy)<\/a>, <a href=\"causality_-as_a_psychological_phenomenon-\">Causality (as a psychological phenomenon)<\/a>, <a href=\"circular_-or_non-linear-_causality\">Circular (or non-linear) causality<\/a>, <a href=\"holism\">Holism<\/a>, <a href=\"levels_of_analysis\">Levels of analysis<\/a>, <a href=\"levels_of_organization\">Levels of organization<\/a>, <a href=\"open_system\">Open system<\/a>, <a href=\"paradigm\">Paradigm<\/a>, <a href=\"reductionism\">Reductionism<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A concept introduced by Donald T. Campbell (1916-1996) in 1974 in order to combat radical reductionism and the excesses of bottom-up explanations as provided by genetic determinism. &nbsp;It is evident when a higher level of a system determines the behavior of lower levels of organization. &nbsp;Under this influence, all processes at lower levels are constrained &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/downward_causation_-or_macrocausation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Downward causation (or macrocausation)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-7777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}