Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:25:32.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Properties Emerge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Paul Humphreys
Paul Humphreys*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia
*
†Send reprint requests to the author. Corcoran Department of Philosophy, 521 Cabell Hall. University of Virginia, Charlottesville. VA 22903.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A framework for representing a specific kind of emergent property instance is given. A solution to a generalized version of the exclusion argument is then provided and it is shown that upwards and downwards causation is unproblematical for that kind of emergence. One real example of this kind of emergence is briefly described and the suggestion made that emergence may be more common than current opinions allow.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

Previous versions of this paper were read at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Duke University. The University of Virginia, the University of Pittsburgh, the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, and an IUHPS meeting in Warsaw. Comments and suggestions from those audiences and the two anonymous referees from Philosophy of Science were very helpful in improving the paper. I am also grateful for conversations and correspondence with Robert Almeder, James Bogen, Richard Burian, John Forge, David Henderson, Martin Jones, Jaegwon Kim, James Klagge, Ken Olson, Fritz Rohrlich, and Abner Shimony. Research for this paper was conducted partly under NSF grant SBR-9311982 and the support is gratefully acknowledged.

References

Beltrametti, E. and Cassinelli, G. (1981), The Logic of Quantum Mechanics. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
d'Espagnat, B. (1965), Conceptions de la physique contemporaine. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
d'Espagnat, B. (1995), Veiled Reality. Reading, MA., Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
French, S. (1989), “Individuation, Supervenience, and Bell's Theorem”, Philosophical Studies 55: 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healey, R. (1991), “Holism and Nonseparability”, Journal of Philosophy 88: 393–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1989), The Chances of Explanation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1996), “Aspects of Emergence”, Philosophical Topics 24 (1), 53–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1997), “Emergence, not Supervenience”, Philosophy of Science 64 Supplementary volume, PSA96 Part II (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. (1984), “Concepts of Supervenience”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45: 153–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. (1988), “Supervenience for Multiple Domains”, Philosophical Topics 16: 129–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. (1992), “‘Downward Causation’ in Emergentism and Nonreductive Physicalism”, in Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., and Kim, Jaegwon (eds.), Emergence or Reduction: Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism. New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 119–138.Google Scholar
Kim, J. (1993), “The Nonreductivists's Troubles with Mental Causation”, in J. Heil and A. Mele (eds.) Mental Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 189–210.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986), ‘Causation’ and ‘Postscripts to “Causation’”, in D. Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Volume II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 159–213.Google Scholar
Schrödinger, E. (1935), “Discussion of Probability Relations between Separated Systems”, Proc. of the Cambridge Phil. Soc. XXXI: 555–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimony, A. (1987), “The Methodology of Synthesis: Parts and Wholes in Low-Energy Physics”, in R. Kargon and P. Achinstein (eds.). Kelvin's Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, pp. 399–423.Google Scholar
Shimony, A. (1993), “Some Proposals Concerning Parts and Wholes”, in A. Shimony, Search for a Naturalistic World View, Volume II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 218–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teller, P. (1986), “Relational Holism and Quantum Mechanics”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37: 71–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yablo, S. (1992), “Mental Causation”, The Philosophical Review 101: 245–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar