Emergence

Abstract

Retrospective reflections are provided on the papers “How Properties Emerge,” “Emergence, Not Supervenience,” “Synchronic and Diachronic Emergence,” and “Computational and Conceptual Emergence” by Paul Humphreys. Remarks are made on the respective merits of diachronic and synchronic approaches to emergence and it is noted that fusion emergence is a special case of the author’s more recent transformational emergence. An argument is given that holism should be imposed as a requirement for emergence only on synchronic accounts, and a reevaluation of the six conditions for emergence given in the author’s “Emergence, Not Supervenience” paper is provided. Elaborations of why features are conceptually emergent or inferentially emergent are given and brief remarks on theoretical approaches to emergence are provided. A clarification of the author’s position that introducing levels of properties is in many cases a methodological convenience rather than a recognition of ontological reality is given.