Evaluating Strong Emergentism: An Argument for Non-Physical Substential Strong Emergentism

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD of Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Physicalists and dualists have been unable to give a convincing answer to the mind-body problem, because they sacrifice, respectively, the mental causation and the close relationship between mind and body. Consequently, some recent philosophers, like Timothy O'Connor and Jonathan Jacobs, have turned to the idea of strong emergentism considereing the mind as an emergent but physical substance that has independent causal powers. If this answer is defensible, it will be a promising approach to solve the mind-body problem. However, there are significant challenges facing the idea of strong emergentism. In this article, we have two objectives: firstly, to address these challenges and to show that even the most serious one, the Collapse Problem, cannot threaten a particular understanding of strong emergentism. Secondly, we argue that O'Connor and Jacobs's proposal, although thought-provoking, is not comprehensible and can only be understood clearly when we consider the emergent substance to be not merely physical.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Baysan, U., & Wilson, J. (2017). Must strong emergence collapse? Philosophica, 91, 49-104.
Bennett, K. (2017). Making things up. Oxford University Press.
Broad, C. D. (1925). The mind and its place in nature, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hasker, W. (2018) The case for emergent dualism. In J. Loose, A. Menuge, & J. P. Moreland (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to substance dualism (pp. 62-72). Wiley Blackwell.
Heil, J. (2012). The universe as we find it. Clarendon Press.
Heil, J. (2017). Downward causation. In M. Paolini, & P. and F. Orilia (Eds.), Philosophical and scientific perspectives on downward causation (pp. 42-53). Routledge.
Kulstad, M., & Carlin, L. (2020). Leibniz’s philosophy of mind. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition). (E. N. Zalta, Ed.). URL: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/leibniz-mind/>.
Lowe, E, J. (2010). Substance dualism: a non-Cartesian approach. In R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (Eds.), The waning of materialism (pp. 439-461). Oxford University Press.
Martin, C. B. (1980). Substance substantiated. Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
58, 3–10.
O’Connor, T. (2018). For emergent individualism. In J. J. Loose, A. J. L. Menuge,
& J. P. Moreland (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to substance dualism
(pp. 369-376). Wiley Blackwell.
O’Connor, T. (2020). Emergent properties. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (E. N. Zalta, Ed.). URL=       
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/properties-emergent/>.
O’Connor, T. (2020). Emergent Properties. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (E. N. Zalta, Ed.). URL=       
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/properties-emergent/>.
O’Connor, T., & Jacobs, J. D. (2003). Emergent individuals. The Philosophical Quarterly, 53(213), 540-555.
O’Connor, T., & Wong, H. Y. (2005). The Metaphysics of Emergence. Nous, 39(4), 658-678.
Rickabaugh, B. L. (2018). Against emergent dualism. In J. J. Loose, A. J. L. Menuge, & J. P. Moreland (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to substance dualism
(pp. 73-86). Wiley Blackwell.
Searle, J. (1992). The rediscovery of the mind. MIT Press.
Taylor, E. (2015). Collapsing Emergence. Philosophical Quarterly, 65, 732-753.
 
Send comment about this article
CAPTCHA Image
Journal of Philosophical Theological Research
Volume 26, Issue 1
March 2024
Pages 67-84

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics