Strong Emergence
Keywords:
Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Emergence, ReductionAbstract
This paper attempts to answer the question of whether strong emergence is a tenable concept and examine how it relates to philosophy of mind. Strong emergence is the idea that truths about a given high-level phenomenon are not reducible, even in principle, to the low-level phenomenon on which it depends. This article advances the position that strong emergence, though a tenable concept, cannot present any convincing and unproblematic instantiations in nature. Furthermore, strong emergence might imply counterintuitive conse-quences for causational structures and philosophy of mind.
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