Faustus5 wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:13 amMy basic ontological argument against ontological emergence (which was originally devised by John Heil):Consul wrote: ↑July 10th, 2021, 9:06 amI'm not one of them! I don't believe in ontological emergence.Me, either. The idea that consciousness has any non-physical properties is about as dumb and evidence-free an idea as anyone has ever had in philosophy.
Imagine a simple (noncomposite) property Z and two distinct simple (noncomposite) material objects x and y. If Z is emergent, then it isn't had by x alone or by y alone, but by x+y collectively: Z(x+y).
Where is Z? It is neither wholly in x nor wholly in y, since it would then be a non-emergent property of x alone or y alone; and it is neither partly in x nor partly in y, since it doesn't have any spatially separable parts that can be at different places (where x is and where y is). If Z is neither wholly nor partly in x, and neither wholly nor partly in y, then it is neither wholly nor partly in x+y either, which means it isn't in x+y at all, in which case Z isn't an emergent property of x+y. There is no place for Z to be as an emergent property; and if there isn't, there can be no such emergent property as Z. This example can be generalized to any number >2 of objects said to collectively have some simple emergent property, so it's a general argument against the possibility of ontologically emergent properties.
Footnote: My argument presupposes Aristotelian immanentism about properties—as opposed to Platonic transcendentalism, according to which properties instantiated by objects in space aren't themselves anywhere in space.