PHIL 2501 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Sentience, Green Leaves, Epiphenomenalism
28 Jan 2016
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Focus on classes 7-8 (last 2 classes) Emergence: which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts (aristotle, metaphysics, book 1045a 8 10). Emergent entities (properties or substances) arise out of more fundamental units, but are novel or irreducible with respect to them. Example of emergence: ant colonies achieve things that no individual member can accomplish; yet they have no idea of the complex unity. Biological naturalism is a name i have given to an approach to what is traditionally called the mind body problem. The way i arrived at it is typical of the way i work: forget about the philosophical history of a problem and remind yourself of what you know for a fact. Any philosophical theory has to be consistent with the facts.
