Essays in Philosophy 3 (2):3 (2002)
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Abstract |
The tradition of pragmatism has, especially since Dewey, been characterized by a commitment to nonreductive naturalism. The notion of emergence, popular in the early decades of the twentieth century and currently re-emerging as a central concept in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, may be useful in explicating that commitment. The present paper discusses the issue of the reality of emergent properties, drawing particular attention to a pragmatic way of approaching this issue. The reality of emergents can be defended as a pragmatically-useful ontological commitment; hence, pragmatism can be employed as a tool in the debate over the structure and reality of emergence. This strategy of justifying ontological commitments is examined through historical and systematic discussions of the pragmatist tradition. It turns out, among other things, that while classical pragmatists did not specify any technical notion of emergence in the contemporary sense, their non-reductively naturalist views are relevant to the more recent emergence discussions -- especially because they rejected the metaphysical realism typical of today’s ontologically-oriented emergence theories.
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Keywords | Applied Philosophy Contemporary Philosophy |
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DOI | 10.5840/eip2002325 |
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References found in this work BETA
Philosophical Investigations.Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein - 1953 - New York, NY, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.David J. Chalmers - 1996 - Oxford University Press.
Mental Events.Donald Davidson - 1970 - In L. Foster & J. W. Swanson (eds.). Clarendon Press. pp. 207-224.
Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays.Jaegwon Kim - 1993 - Cambridge University Press.
View all 95 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Semiosis as an Emergent Process.João Queiroz & Charbel Niño El-Hani - 2006 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (1):78-116.
Semiosis as an Emergent Process.João Queiroz & Charbel Niño El-Hani - 2006 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (1):78-116.
Distinguishing Between Inter-Domain and Intra-Domain Emergence.Olimpia Lombardi & María J. Ferreira Ruiz - 2019 - Foundations of Science 24 (1):133-151.
Distinguishing Between Inter-Domain and Intra-Domain Emergence.María Ferreira Ruiz & Olimpia Lombardi - 2019 - Foundations of Science 24 (1):133-151.
View all 20 citations / Add more citations
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