Hostname: page-component-7f64f4797f-9t7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-04T01:02:42.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Robust Supervenience and Emergence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Alexander Rueger
Alexander Rueger*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structural stability familiar from dynamical systems theory. Robust supervenience, I argue, captures what the non-reductive physicalist wants from supervenience; most importantly, it provides a natural background for reconstructing the notion of (diachronic) property emergence in a way acceptable to physicalists.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , September 2000 , pp. 466 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5, Canada.

‡

For help with earlier versions of this paper I thank Bob Batterman, Alex Byrne, Martin Carrier, Mohan Matthen, Glenn Parsons, Dave Sharp, and two anonymous referees.

References

Arnold, Vladimir I. (1983), Geometrical Methods in the Theory of Ordinary Differential Equations. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Andrew (1999), “Supervenience and Physicalism”, Synthese 117: 53–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batterman, Robert W. (1995), “Theories Between Theories”, Synthese 103: 171–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, William and Richardson, Robert C. (1992), “Emergent Phenomena and Complex Systems”, in Beckermann, Ansgar et al. (ed.), Emergence or Reduction? Berlin: De Gruyer, 257–288.Google Scholar
Berry, Michael (1994), “Asymptotics, Singularities and the Reduction of Theories”, in Prawitz, Dag et al. (ed.), Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science IX. New York: Elsevier, 597–607.Google Scholar
Chen, Lin-Yuan, Goldenfeld, Nigel, Oono, Y., and Paquette, Glenn (1994), “Selection, Stability and Renormalization”, Physica A 204: 111–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grad, Harold (1967), “Levels of Description in Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics”, in Bunge, Mario (ed.), Delaware Seminar in the Foundations of Physics. Heidelberg: Springer, 48–76.Google Scholar
Guckenheimer, John and Holmes, Philip (1983), Nonlinear Oscillators, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4612-1140-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellmann, Geoffrey and Thompson, Frank (1975), “Physicalism: Ontology, Determination, and Reduction”, Journal of Philosophy 72: 551–564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, Terence (1993), “From Supervenience to Superdupervenience”, Mind 102: 555–586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, Paul (1996), “Emergence, Not Supervenience”, Philosophy of Science 64: (Proceedings), S337–S345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hüttemann, Andreas and Terzidis, O. (forthcoming), “Emergence in Physics”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon (1984), “Concepts of Supervenience”, in Kim 1993, 53–78.10.2307/2107423CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1987), “‘Strong’ and ‘Global’ Supervenience Revisited”, in Kim 1993, 79–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. 1989), “The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism”, in Kim 1993, 265–284.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1990), “Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept”, in Kim 1993, 131–160.10.1111/j.1467-9973.1990.tb00830.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1992), “‘Downward Causation’ in Emergentism and Nonreductive Physicalism”, in Beckermann, Ansgar et al. (ed.), Emergence or Reduction? Berlin: DeGruyter, 119–138.Google ScholarPubMed
Kim, Jaegwon. (1993), Supervenience and Mind. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1997), “The Mind-Body-Problem: Taking Stock After Forty Years”, Philosophical Perspectives 11: 185–207.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Brian (1995), “Varieties of Supervenience”, in Savellos, Elias E. et al. (ed.), Supervenience. New Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 16–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mormann, Thomas (1994), “Accessibility, Kinds, and Laws: A Structural Explication”, Philosophy of Science 61: 389–406.10.1086/289810CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, David V. (1996), “Emergence and Strange Attractors”, Philosophy of Science 63: 245–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickles, Thomas (1973), “Two Concepts of Intertheoretic Reduction”, Journal of Philosophy 70: 181–201.10.2307/2024906CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pauli, R. C. and Sider, Theodor R. (1992), “In Defense of Global Supervenience”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 833–854.10.2307/2107913CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Port, Robert F. and Gelder, Timothy Van (ed.) (1995), Mind as Motion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Poston, Tim and Stewart, Ian (1978), Catastrophe Theory and its Applications. London: Pitman.Google Scholar
Rueger, Alexander (forthcoming), “Physical Emergence, Diachronic and Synchronic”, Synthese.Google Scholar
Rueger, Alexander and Sharp, W. David (1998), “Metaphysical Presuppositions of Scientific Practice: Atomism Vs. Wholism”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28: 1–20.10.1080/00455091.1998.10715968CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saunders, Peter T. (1980), An Introduction to Catastrophe Theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139171533CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seydel, Richard (1994), Practical Bifurcation and Stability Analysis. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Wilson, Mark (1985), “What Is This Thing Called ‘Pain‘?”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 66: 227–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, William (1996), “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence”, Philosophy of Science 64: (Proceedings), S372–S384.Google Scholar