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| Program > Metaphysics |
| Programme > Métaphysique |
| Jillian
Scott McIntosh & Christian Lacroix
(University of Western Ontario) Non-Supervening Emergence? |
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Jaegwon Kim has recently claimed that, since emergence is a form of non-reductive materialism, it is part of "the new orthodoxy" in contemporary philosophy of mind (1999, p. 5). In his classic exposition of Emergentism, C.D. Broad (1925) tried to provide a view that was scientifically informed, ontologically parsimonious, and non-eliminativist. Current emergentists have the same desiderata, but the details of their theories vary. First, we sketch the motivation for emergence along with an immediate problem (or problems, depending on how one counts), informed by Kim's own notion of emergence as a form of supervenience. What's troubling about reductionism, how does a supervenience form of emergence attempt to avoid that, and why think it fails? Second, we outline Paul Humphreys' (1997) alternative view of emergence as a non-supervening relationship and assess its success at meeting said problem(s), arguing that it does not. Finally, we offer a tentative diagnosis of why our verdict differs from his.
University
of Western Ontario
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