ABSTRACT
One of the fi elds in which the concept of emergence plays a particularly important role is the philosophy of mind. It is not diffi cult to see why this is so: to understand what the mind is requires addressing the problem of the relationship between mind and body and, in particular, between mind and brain. What sort of relationship holds among the neurophysiological processes which take place in the brain and certain mental states occurring in the agent’s mind? What process in the brain corresponds to the performance of a certain higher-lever mental activity? When a decision or choice occurs where should we locate it? Is it to be located in the brain or, instead, in a non-physical mind or fi eld of conscious awareness which the brain sustains? Moreover, what might it mean, exactly, to say that the brain ‘supports’ the choice? As is well known, there are many different approaches to these issues, and they stand in contrast to each other mainly in how the difference between brain states and mental states is conceived. The options range from the most extreme naturalistic positions, according to which a mental state is reducible to a cerebral neurophysiological state, to dualistic positions which view mental states as irreducible to physical states due to the fact that they are states of ontologically independent entities. However, between naturalistic perspectives inclining towards monism and the strongest dualistic positions there is still room for intermediate points of view. Many of these fi nd in emergence a conceptual category which can be usefully employed to avoid both naturalistic reductionism and forms of dualism which posit subjects of experience wholly distinct from physical reality. If mind is understood as an entity or set of capacities which emerges from the brain, then it will be both ontologically and explanatorily irreducible to the cerebral microstructure from which it emerges, and it will be endowed with genuine and autonomous causal powers. On the emergentistic construal, however, the mind has not only emerged from the brain, but it is continuously sustained by it and bound up with it in a single causal system. Therefore, emergence is a natural candidate to represent a point of equilibrium between the implausibly extreme naturalistic or dualistic positions. Present-day discussion in the philosophy of mind, however, shows how complex the emergentist program has become and how many different
kinds of emergentism are championed by contemporary philosophers of mind. The chapters presented in Part II aim at clarifying the role that specifi c variants of emergentism might play in issues such as how to ground the independent ontological status of the human self and how to safeguard some of its essential dimensions such as agency and free will.
