PHIL 302: Topics in Epistemology & Metaphysics: Emergence as an Explanatory Concept

Spring Semester 2014 | Day | Burnaby

INSTRUCTOR: Phil Hanson, WMC 5658 (hanson@sfu.ca)

REQUIRED TEXT

• Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphries (eds.), Emergence:  Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science.  Bradford/MIT Press (2008).  Other related readings will also be made available.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Bedau and Humphries begin their Preface with the following observation: “Thirty years ago emergence was largely ignored in philosophy and science.  Its ethos ran counter to the reductionist views of the time, and it seemed to invoke mystical and unexplainable levels of reality.  Things have changed.  Emergence is now one of the liveliest areas of research in both science and philosophy.”(op. cit., p. ix).  A goal of this course is to take the measure of this latter claim.  In the process we will examine a number of recent conceptions of emergence, noting both their comparative fit with various examples of would-be emergent phenomena in different fields of empirical inquiry, and their relations to different understandings of such core metaphysical concepts as causality, composition, supervenience, and levels of organization; and such methodological concepts as explanation and theoretical reduction.  The endpoint of this process will be a positive, defensible, and useful account of emergence, albeit perhaps not as useful as early exponents of emergentism had hoped for dealing with so-called ‘hard problems’.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

•  Class participation -10%                             
•  2 short papers (25% each) -50%                 
•  Final paper-40%                                         
  

Prerequisites:  One of PHIL 201 or 203.  (144 or 341 while not presupposed, would be an asset).