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A Pragmatic Realistic View of Emergence

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emergence
realism
pragmatism

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NIÑO EL-HANI, Charbel; PIHLTROM, Sami. A Pragmatic Realistic View of Emergence. Manuscrito: Revista Internacional de Filosofia, Campinas, SP, v. 25, n. esp., p. 105–154, 2025. Disponível em: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/manuscrito/article/view/8660034. Acesso em: 15 maio. 2025.

Resumo

This paper examines the notion of emergence from the perspective of
pragmatism, drawing special attention to Donald Davidson's recent account of the
emergence of thought and to Hilary Putnam's pragmatic realism, which, we argue, can
be applied to the question of the reality of emergent properties. Our overall conclusion is
that the debate over the concept of emergence actively going on in contemporary
metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science should be focused more
stronghy on the realism issue, even though most emergentists (and their critics) tend to
assume a rather straightforward metaphysical realism - a view that ought to be called
into question on pragmatist grounds.

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