Emergence and Non-Reductive Physicalism

Non-reductive physicalism is the view that although all empirical entities and phenomena are physical, mental properties or kinds are irreducibly distinct from physical ones. Attempts to resolve the tension inherent in the position between its commitment to irreducibility, physicalism, and genuine causal efficacy of the mental have led to interest in doctrines of emergence in the philosophy of mind. Two main metaphysical theories of events emerged as ones favoured for resolving the causal tension inherent in non-reductive physicalism (NRP). One was anchored in what is known as the Property Exemplification Account, a position pioneered by Jaegwon Kim, and the other was anchored in a trope view of events whose origins stem from the work of D. C. Williams. The trope account, inasmuch as it is a version of NRP, suffers from a similar charge, since according to it mental and physical types are held to be irreducibly distinct compatibly with trope identity and so with a version of the Co-instantiation Thesis.