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From: tfl@security.UUCP (Tom Litant)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: re:re:materialism
Message-ID: <313@security.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Jun-83 17:16:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: security.313
Posted: Tue Jun  7 17:16:02 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Jun-83 23:28:08 EDT
Organization: MITRE Corp., Bedford MA
Lines: 15

Emergent Property Theories are not an attempt to explain mind so much as to
explain what the substance is.  Thus saying that mind is an emergent property
of a certain configuration of matter is the jumping off point for discussing
theories of mind, and is not intended to be a complete characterization.  In
summary, then, we start off by saying that "mind is an emergent property of
matter, and not a different substance..." and continue by characterizing the
features of this property.  Joe Margolis writes extensively from this point of
view, but you can see the origins of it in writings by Peter Strawson, etc.

As I mentioned in my earlier submission, the attractiveness of emergent
property theories (EPT)is that Physicalism (everything can be explained in
terms of physical objects) and dualism (there are two diference substances:
mind and matter) each have grave difficulties, which EPTs avoid.

		      cheers.