Truthmaking and the Mysteries of Emergence

Abstract

This chapter discusses and evaluates the role of truthmaking in articulating an unproblematic concept of emergence—specifically, the proposal that emergent properties should be characterized as those that, while “ontologically dependent”, are yet needed as truthmakers. It argues that while emergence so understood appears to avoid several well-known concerns about emergence and emergent properties, including those that stem from the alleged “brute determination” of emergent properties, this result is secured through the weak notion of dependence that it employs. The appeal to truthmaking, in contrast, proves largely superfluous. While truthmaking may thus not be able to play a significant role in emergentist metaphysics, it is argued that it is consistent with this verdict that truthmaking can play a more significant role in characterizing an attractive middle ground between reductive and nonreductive approaches to physicalism.