(in association with Durham Emergence Project)
Co-Investigators: Alexander Reutlinger and Markus Schrenk
This project explores issues at the intersection of metaphysics of laws and causation on the one hand, and metaphysics of emergence, on the other. We aim to understand how philosophical positions and arguments regarding emergence are dependent on or independent of specific ideas about the nature of laws and causation. For example, how do recent developments in the metaphysics of laws and causation affect the formulation and plausibility of emergentism, and the formulation and plausibility of the causal closure of the physical? How do these developments bear on the possibility of downward causation, or mental causation? We study such hitherto ignored questions concerning the nature and possibility of strong emergence.
Juha Saatsi 