Emergence in Mind

Cynthia Macdonald · Graham Macdonald

Apr 2010 · OUP Oxford

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There have long been controversies about how it is that minds can fit into a physical universe. Emergence in Mind presents new essays by a distinguished group of philosophers investigating whether mental properties can be said to 'emerge' from the physical processes in the universe. Such emergence requires mental properties to be different from physical properties, and much of the discussion relates to what the consequences of such a difference might be in areas such as freedom of the will, and the possibility of scientific explanations of non-physical (for example, social) phenomena. The volume also extends the debate about emergence by considering the independence of chemical properties from physical properties, and investigating what would need to be the case for there to be groups that could be said to exercise rationality.

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Cynthia Macdonald is Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her research interests focus on the metaphysical foundations of mental causation and explanation and authoritative self-knowledge. Related recent publications include Varieties of Things: Foundations of Contemporary Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell 2005), 'Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Authoritative Self-Knowledge', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108, (2008), and 'Introspection', in A. Beckermann, B. McLaughlin, and S. Walter, eds., the Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008). She is currently completing a monograph with Graham Macdonald on Mental Causation and Explanation in the Special Sciences, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Foundation. Graham Macdonald was educated in South Africa and England. He is presently Distinguished International Fellow in the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University Belfast, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Recent publications include 'The Metaphysics of Mental Causation'(with Cynthia Macdonald), Journal of Philosophy 2006, and 'The Two Natures: Another Dogma?', in C. Macdonald and G. Macdonald, eds., McDowell and His Critics (Blackwell 2007).