ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the current state of the debate on emergence, reductionism, and related issues. Robert Van Gulick has argued persuasively that the basic notion of emergence is more or less the converse of that of reduction. It argues that the most important philosophical issue driving current debates about human identity is the issue of reductionism. In modern terms, all causation is bottom-up and all physical processes are deterministic because the ultimate causal players obey deterministic laws. In some quarters emergentism's prospects have been rising exponentially in recent years, while in others the prospects for antireductionism have varied as precipitously as the stock market, and seem to have taken a nosedive in 1994. In the 1970s the central focus of philosophy of science shifted to debates between neopositivists and historicists over scientific methodology, and the issue of reductionism was taken up instead by philosophers of biology and, somewhat later, by philosophers of mind.
