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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.
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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

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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.

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