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Single Idea 24496

[catalogued under 17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 4. Emergentism]

Full Idea

It is hard for a consistent emergentism to stop at the brain and avoid the conclusion that the whole organism, and its behaviour in context, is the level at which mental life must be studied (reasserting the role of psychology).

Gist of Idea

If mental life is seen as 'emergent' from the brain, why not emergent from the whole organism?

Source

Mazviita Chirimuuta (The Brain Abstracted [2024], 5.2.1)

A Reaction

I take soft emergentism to be self-evident, and strong emergentism to be nonsense, because it totally contradicts the rest of our ontology. It is philosophically crazy to have an ontology which rests entirely on homo sapiens.

Book Reference

Mazviita Chirimuuta: 'The Brain Abstracted' [MIT 2024], p.142