in philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts (or not) with reductionism. a property of a system is said to be emergent if it is in some sense more than the "sum" of the properties of the system's parts. an emergent property is said to be dependent on some more basic properties (and their relationships and configuration), so that it can have no separate existence. however, a degree of independence is also asserted of emergent properties, so that they are not identical to, or reducible to, or predictable from, or deducible from their bases. the different ways in which the independence requirement can be satisfied lead to variant types of emergence. == forms of emergentism == all varieties of emergentism strive to be compatible with physicalism, the theory that the universe is composed exclusively of physical entities, and in particular with the evidence relating changes in the brain with changes in mental functioning. [many forms of emergentism, including proponents of complex adaptive systems, do not hold a material but rather a relational or processural view of the universe. furthermore, they view mindâbody dualism as a conceptual error insofar as mind and body are merely different types of relationships.] as a theory of mind (which it is not always), emergentism differs from idealism, eliminative materialism, identity theories, neutral monism, panpsychism, and substance dualism, whilst being closely associated with property dualism. it is generally not obvious whether an emergent theory of mind embraces mental causation or must be considered epiphenomenal. some varieties of emergentism are not specifically concerned with the mind-body problem, and instead suggest a hierarchical or layered view of the whole of nature, with the layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity with each requiring its own special science. typically physics is basic, with chemistry built on top of it, then biology, psychology and social sciences. reductionists respond that the arrangement of the sciences is a matter of convenience, and that chemistry is derivable from physics (and so forth) in principle, an argument which gained force after the establishment of a quantum-mechanical basis for chemistry.crane, t. the significance of emergence other varieties see mind or consciousness as specifically and anomalously requiring emergentist explanation, and therefore constitute a family of positions in the philosophy of mind. douglas hofstadter summarises this view as "the soul is more than the sum of its parts". a number of philosophers have offered the argument that qualia constitute the hard problem of consciousness, and resist reductive explanation in a way that all o
Emergence Theories_of_mind