Re-emergence

Gerald Vision takes on one of philosophy's oldest puzzles: how a world made only of matter gives rise to awareness. Many philosophers of mind hold that experience is nothing over and above the physical processes behind it, a view Vision finds unconvincing. He returns to emergentism, a once-dominant position holding that mental features arise from physical matter while remaining distinct from it, and he argues that the approach still has merit on certain questions even though several older emergentist accounts have been seriously damaged.

Vision accepts that conscious properties are realized by, or strongly supervene on, physical systems. His claim is that they still cannot be reduced to, identified with, or fully explained by the physical facts they rest on. He presents emergentism less as a weapon against physicalism and more as a way of making sense of conscious life. The book sets out his version of the theory and defends it against the alternatives, including the case that no equally strong non-emergent account exists.

The final section surveys several forms of physicalism and near-physicalism and compares them with Vision's emergentist framework, which he judges better able to handle the phenomena in question. The book suits readers working in philosophy of mind and metaphysics, and anyone interested in the mind-body problem.