Explanatory emergence as a guide to metaphysical structure

Abstract

The view that there is a distinction between strong, or metaphysical, emergence and weak, or explanatory, emergence, is widely accepted. It is natural, on this view, to regard accounts of strong and of weak emergence as performing different kinds of work, such that strong conceptions of emergence help us to uncover metaphysical structure, while weak conceptions of emergence help us to understand the limits of our scientific explanations. If we accept this division of labor, then it appears that we cannot use an account of weak, explanatory emergence to find out about metaphysical structure. In this paper, I explore the view that explanatory conceptions of emergence cannot be used for metaphysical purposes, and argue that it is false. Even those who reject strong emergence can, at least in principle, use certain explanatory accounts of emergence as guides to metaphysical structure. On this approach, emergence itself is explanatory, but explanatory emergence may sometimes obtain for metaphysical reasons.