ABSTRACT
“Consciousness”, “emergence” and “physicalism” can each be defined in a variety of ways, and thus the question of whether or not consciousness is emergent is ambiguous, as are its implications for physicalism. Concepts of emergence divide into two basic categories in terms of whether emergence is understood as an epistemological claim or an ontological claim. These are: epistemological emergence and ontological emergence. Emergence concepts are often classed as weak or strong in terms of how radically they interpret the novelty aspect of emergence. Several forms of consciousness appear to be at least weakly ontologically emergent, though it is far less clear if any are strongly ontologically emergent. Creature consciousness in the sense of sentience and wakefulness both appear to be at least weakly ontologically emergent. Regarding epistemic emergence, weak emergence again seems likely for many forms of consciousness, and even strong epistemic emergence may apply with respect to phenomenal, qualitative and “what-it-is-like” forms of creature and state consciousness.
