Sy Borg wrote: ↑July 19th, 2021, 10:13 pmI wonder what reality would look like if new
things emerged, and not just configurations? Imagine that around 3.8b years ago a non-living glob of ordinary chemicals suddenly started metabolising and/or reproducing.
John Heil regards particle creation as a case of substance(+property) emergence:
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"Emergent properties must be fundamental and so must their bearers. But now the way is open to see emergence as a straightforward, uncontroversial
natural phenomenon. (...) Focus on the fundamental things, or what physicists currently regard as the fundamental things. Do these ever emerge? Consider an imaginary case in which a new kind of particle is produced in a collider. When an alpha-particle encounters a beta-particle, the upshot is the annihilation of the alpha- and beta-particles, and the creation of a new kind of particle, a gamma-particle, possessing properties emergent with respect to alpha- and beta-particles. This is genuine, for-real, honest emergence! The set-up required to produce the particle is complex; it includes the collider and a host of supporting mechanisms. But the gamma-particle does not mysteriously inform this complex. The particle, propertied as it is, emerges from a collision between alpha- and beta-particles facilitated by the complex."
(Heil, John.
The Universe As We Find It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 30)
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And there is William Hasker, who believes that minds are mental substances emerging from physical substances (bodies):
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"[C]onsider the following possibility: an animal or human brain consists of ordinary atoms and molecules, which are subject to the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. But suppose that, given the particular arrangements of these atoms and molecules of the brain, new laws, new systems of interaction between the atoms, etc., come into play. These new laws, furthermore, play an essential role in such characteristic mental activities as rational thought and decision-making. The new laws, however, are not detectable in any simpler configuration; in such configurations the behavior of the atoms and molecules is adequately explained by the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. These, then, are
emergent laws, and the powers that the brain has in virtue of the emergent laws may be termed
emergent causal powers. Given this much, it is clear that to postulate the existence of emergent causal powers is to make a dramatic, and in fact extremely controversial, metaphysical claim. Many philosophers and scientists strongly resist such a claim, pointing to the immense explanatory success of standard physico-chemical explanations in accounting for a broad range of phenomena. Nevertheless, a number of philosophers have felt compelled to assert the existence of emergent causal powers; they hold that crucially important facts about our mental lives cannot be explained in any other way.
Suppose, finally, that as a result of the structure and functioning of the brain, there appear not merely new
modes of behavior of the fundamental constituents (as in the case of emergent causal powers), but also a
new entity, the
mind, which does
not consist of atoms and molecules, or of any other physical constituents. If this were the case, we would have an
emergent individual, an individual that
comes into existence as the result of a certain configuration of the brain and nervous system, but which is
not composed of the matter which makes up that physical system. This, clearly enough, represents yet a further stage of emergence, one that is resisted even by some of those philosophers who acknowledge emergent causal powers. Such an emergence theory would be, in fact, a variety of dualism, in that the emergent mind is an entity not composed of physical stuff. But it would be an
emergent dualism, unlike traditional dualisms which postulate a special divine act of creation as the origin of the soul. …
Having set the stage by this account of emergence, it is time to present the resulting view of the person. The fundamental idea is actually rather simple. As a consequence of a certain configuration and function of the brain and nervous system, a new entity comes into being—namely, the mind or soul. This new thing is not merely a 'configurational state' of the cells of the brain (as, for example, a crystal is a configurational state of the molecules that make it up). The mind, in this view, is a 'thing in itself'; it is what some philosophers call a 'substance.' It isn't made of the chemical stuff of which the brain is composed, though it crucially
depends on that chemical stuff for both its origin and continuance. It is this mind—the conscious self—that thinks, and reasons, and feels emotions, and makes decisions; it is the central core of what we mean by a 'person.'"
(Hasker, William. "Souls Beastly and Human." In
The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul, edited by Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz, 202-217. New York: Continuum, 2011. pp. 213-15)
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