Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Francesca Bellazzi
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy of science
This paper will consider how the account of weak emergence presented by Wilson in the book Metaphysical emergence (2021) can be used to explore the relation between biochemical functions and chemical structure in biochemical molecules, as vitamin B12. The structure of the paper is the following. Section 2 will introduce why biochemical functions are interesting from a philosophical perspective and why their relation to molecular structure can be seen as problematic. In doing so, it will consider the definition of biochemical functions as in Bellazzi (2022) for which they can…
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Claudio Calosi
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of science
The paper first investigates the tension between reductive accounts of mereological structure and emergence as characterized in Jessica Wilson’s seminal work. It then suggests a new mereology for emergence. Finally, the resulting account is applied to a paradigmatic case of an emergent whole.
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Nina Emery
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of physics, Philosophy of science
Metaphysical emergence has often been used to help understand the relationship between the entities of physics and the entities of the special sciences. What are the prospects of using metaphysical emergence within physics, to help understand the relationship between three-dimensional physical entities, and the non-three-dimensional entities that have been recently posited in certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and quantum gravity? This paper explores Jessica Wilson’s (2021) analysis of certain cases of metaphysical emergence in terms of degrees of freedom and raises several questions that need to be answered in order…
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…
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Brian P. McLaughlin
Topics: Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, Ontology, Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of science
I critically examine Jessica Wilson’s views concerning the relationship between Weak emergence and Physicalism and between Strong emergence and Physicalism, and also her defense of libertarian free will in Metaphysical Emergence (2021).
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Erica Onnis
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of science
In Metaphysical Emergence, Jessica Wilson recognises the problem of higher-level causation as “the most pressing challenge to taking the appearances of emergent structure as genuine” (2021: 39). Then, Wilson states that there are “two and only two strategies of response to this problem” (2021: 40) that lead to Strong and Weak emergence. In this paper, I suggest that there might be an alternative strategy—not opposite, but different in kind—to approach this difficulty. As noticed by Wilson, the problem of higher-level causation was formulated and made central by Jaegwon Kim. However,…