A new problem for ontological emergence

Philosophical Quarterly 56 (222):55-62 (2006)
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Abstract

It is becoming increasingly common to find phenomena described as emergent. There are two sorts of philosophical analysis of emergence. Ontological analyses ground emergence in real, distinct, emergent properties. Epistemological analyses deny emergent properties and stress instead facts about our epistemic status. I review a standard worry for ontological analyses of emergence, that they entail a surfeit of metaphysics, and find that it can easily be sidestepped. I go on to present a new worry, that ontological emergentism entails a highly implausible ontology, which is harder for the ontological emergentist to avoid

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Citations of this work

Emergent Causation and Property Causation.Paul Noordhof - 2010 - In Cynthia Macdonald & Graham Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in Mind. Oxford University Press.
Merleau-Ponty and Emergent Perception.Zachary Simpson - 2011 - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 42 (3):290-304.
Explanation, Emergence and Causality: Comments on Crane.Michele Di Francesco - 2010 - In Graham Macdonald & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in Mind. Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Making sense of emergence.Jaegwon Kim - 1999 - Philosophical Studies 95 (1-2):3-36.
The Search for Ontological Emergence.Michael Silberstein & John McGeever - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (195):201-214.
Supervenience and nomological incommensurables.Jaegwon Kim - 1978 - American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (2):149-56.
Emergence, not supervenience.Paul W. Humphreys - 1997 - Philosophy of Science Supplement 64 (4):337-45.
Emergent individuals.Timothy O'Connor & Jonathan D. Jacobs - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (213):540-555.

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