Emergence: A theoretical alternative to the mind-body problem

Abstract

Through this paper, we propose to defend the thesis that emergentism is a plausible and fruitful theoretical alternative both to address mind-body relationships and for investigations concerning the ‘space’ occupied by consciousness in the natural world. From there, we want to advocate the thesis that the emergentist postulates reveal an important theoretical alternative before the limitations of the reductionist approaches in their ways of equating the nature, origin and dynamics of mental life. We are referring especially to the conceptions that (i) the reality is stratified at different levels and/or layers of complexity, each requiring its own science, and that (ii) the consciousness is an emerging property that cannot be explained additively, this is, by the sum of the parts. Our most basic hypothesis is that the emergentist perspective is irreversibly naturalistic and, even so, does not commit itself to the reductivist agenda, which is fundamentally anchored in a cerebralist paradigm. Given that an emergentist approach to consciousness is based on the belief that complex relationships between the properties of the system (‘whole’) and its components (‘parts’) not only exist, but are relevant in the constitution of systems, the emergentism, we believe, structures a robust process metaphysics, which is essential, as such, to account for the phenomenon of consciousness and its relations with the substrate neural activities of the mind. We also believe that the emergentist perspective of consciousness is compatible with the thesis that the mind consists of a higher-level ontological novelty of the system, which results from the interaction and integration relations between brain, body, and environment. Through the dialogue promoted between the emergentist theory and the basic positions of the theories of the embodied mind, we aim to present an alternative to the problem of the relations between the mind and the body able to overcome the perspective defended by the cerebralist paradigm without falling into dualism. To accomplish these purposes, our paper involves, first, the presentation of the historical rudiments of emergentism, from the equation of the all-part problem in complex systems to the uplift of the so-called ‘weak emergentism’, as formulated by Stephan (1998, 1999). Then, we will try to demonstrate in what sense emergentism is opposed to reductionism, and, from there, the relationship between the notions of composition and decomposition in emergentist theories. We will also try to relate emergentism and Searle’s biological naturalism (1992), and, finally, we will deal with the descending determination, that is, the influence of systemic properties on its constituent parts.