The historical and philosophical roots of emergentism in the neurosciences.
Journal of the history of the neurosciences 2024 DOI: 10.1080/0964704x.2023.2248193 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Emergentism Roger sperry Mentalism Physicalism |
| Key points | Argues that emergentism offers an alternative to physicalism by proposing that mental phenomena are both derivative of and autonomous from physical reality. |
Abstract
Understanding and characterizing the relationship between mental phenomena and the brain is a huge challenge for modern neuroscience. No doubt, the conservative orthodox view of this relationship can be described as physicalist. Physicalism is the idea that, no matter how enigmatic mental phenomena may seem, they are nevertheless completely describable in physical and material terms. Still, despite centuries of effort, aspects of mind, such as the qualitative nature of subjective experience, have defied physical characterization. In the early 1920s, emergentism was advanced to explain the relationship between physical reality and higher-order phenomena, including life and mind. According to emergentism, such higher-order phenomena are derivative of and, at the same time, autonomous to underlying physical reality. This article describes the historical and philosophical development of emergentist theses, particularly as they have been treated in the neurosciences.