Category: Emergence and Supervenience
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What’s to Stop an AI System from having a Spiritual Soul?
John Doran in a comment presents an argument worth bringing to the top of the pile: A) Anything conscious has a non-material basis for such consciousness. B) Certain AI constructs [systems] are conscious. Therefore: C) Such AI constructs [systems] have a non-material component in which their consciousness resides. Why doesn't that work? It's obviously valid.…
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Philosophy from the Twilight Zone: “The Lonely”
Substack latest. With a tip of the sweat-stained hat to Elliot Crozat and Brian Bosse for stimulating discussion.
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Property Dualism and Supervenience
A reader asked why I didn't mention supervenience in my recent posts on property dualism. He opines that "the notion was invented to make sense of the position you are arguing against." Let's see. My Problem With Property Dualism Roughly Stated I take a property dualist to be one who maintains all of the following propositions: 1.…
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Property Dualism, the Red Ball Analogy, and Emergence
This post advances the discussion in the ComBox attached to Could Brains Have Mental Properties? It would be very easy to be a property dualist in the philosophy of mind if one were also a substance dualist. What I am having trouble understanding is how a property dualist can be a substance monist. In contemporary discussions, the…
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Samuel Alexander on Emergence
Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, vol. II, Peter Smith 1979,(originally published in 1920), p. 46: The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special…
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Supervenience, Emergence, Mind, and Magic
Peter Lupu has come out in favor of emergentism in the philosophy of mind. Here is an argument he could use to defend the thesis that mental properties are emergent properties: 1. Materialistic Anti-Dualism: Human beings are nothing more than complex material systems. 2. Anti-Reductivism: Mental properties are not identical to physical properties, nor do…
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Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief?
I coined the phrase 'ego surfari' some years ago. To go on ego surfari is to type one's name into a search engine in order to see what turns up. The results are often surprising. Today I found Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief? by Sami Pihlström, Helsinki. Excerpt: One of the few recent…
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Classical Theism and Global Supervenience Physicalism
This is a paper I read at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts, August 10-15, 1998. It explains the notions of strong and global supervenience, notions which will serve as foils in getting a handle on the concept of emergence. ABSTRACT: Could a classical theist be a physicalist? Although a negative answer to this…