Collapsing Emergence

Philosophical Quarterly 65 (261):732-753 (2015)
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Abstract

The thesis that nature is composed of metaphysical levels is commonly understood in terms of emergence. In this paper, I uncover a problem for accounts of emergence, the collapse problem. The collapse problem suggests that emergence merely tracks relations between arbitrary groups of properties and so cannot be used in service of the levels view. I reject several failed attempts to solve the collapse problem and argue for an alternative solution according to which emergence is not a distinction between metaphysical levels, but instead tracks the unavailability of scientific explanations.

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Elanor Taylor
Johns Hopkins University

References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
Universals and scientific realism.David Malet Armstrong - 1978 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Studies in the logic of explanation.Carl Gustav Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Philosophy of Science 15 (2):135-175.

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