The Emerging Limits of Emergentism: Systematicity [Book Symposium]
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Simone Gozzano
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of science
Taking steps from Wilson’s distinction between strong and weak emergence, in this paper I cast doubts on the prospect of weak emergence. After discussing the relationship between properties set at different levels and supporting different counterfactuals and laws, I discuss one crucial condition for a property to be weakly emergent, one that is usually taken as the primary motivation for emergence, that of being “realization indifferent”. I set an argument aimed at showing that this realization indifference does not accord with systematic relations holding between properties set at the mental…