ABSTRACT
Emergence is the opposite of reduction. Properties and behaviour are emergent at higher levels with respect to the lower if they cannot be reduced to the properties and laws manifested by the lower-level objects. The issue of whether mental states can be reduced to physical ones, for example, is not usually regarded as a question about how different levels of description are to be harmonized, but about whether mental states differ radically in kind from physical states. Jerry Fodor is quite right to think that the very same subject matter can be described in irreducibly different ways and still be just that subject matter. Fodor’s theory appears to be essentially dualistic. It seems that the same portion of the physical world is being viewed from outside in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes. The science of psychology is, therefore, itself something that emerges as an interaction of real patterns and interpretation: the external perspective cannot be eliminated.
