The Metaphysics of Emergence

Content: PART I: PROCESSES AND ENTITIES --
1.1 Change and Stability --
1.2 The Need for a New Metaphysics --
1.3 An Overview of the Project --
1.4 A Terminological Difficulty --
PART II: THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICULAR ENTITIES --
2.1 The Reification of Being and the Unreality of Change --
2.2 The Invention of the Timeless --
2.3 Entity as the Primary Category --
2.4 Entities as Countable Particulars --
2.5 The Invention of Material --
2.6 Explaining Change --
2.7 The Disintegration of the Aristotelian Explanatory Model --
2.8 Descartes\' Metaphysical Dichotomy --
2.9 Locke, Newton and the \'Corpuscular Philosophy\' --
2.10 The Rise of Physicalist Metaphysics --
PART III: CONCEPTUAL SHIFTS IN PHYSICS --
3.1 The Invention of Physical Science --
3.2 The Fate of \'Matter\' --
3.3 The Superseding of Newtonian Physics --
3.4 Reconceptualizing \'Particles\' --
3.5 \'Particles\' and Quantum Fields --
3.6 Conceptualizing Quantum Phenomena --
3.7 Realist Interpretations of QFT --
3.8 Metaphysical Implications --
PART IV: THE CATEGORY OF GENERIC PROCESSES --
4.1 Processes, Stuffs, and Particulars --
4.2 Generic and Specific Processes --
4.3 Identifying Categories --
4.4 The Logic of Process-descriptions --
4.5 Processes, Entities, and their Parts --
4.6 Re-categorizing Countables --
4.7 The \'Part-of\' Relation --
4.8 Processes and Series of Events --
4.9 Whitehead\'s Process Metaphysics --
PART V: IDENTITY THROUGH CHANGE --
5.1 Identity and Discernible Difference --
5.2 Identity as Continuity of Temporal Parts --
5.3 Change in Four-dimensional Entities --
5.4 Common Assumptions --
5.5 Heraclitus\' Insight --
5.6 Change in Enduring Entities --
5.7 Sameness across Different Times --
5.8 The Types of Generic Process --
PART VI: A METAPHYSICAL TAXONOMY OF EMERGENT ENTITIES --
6.1 Processes and their Organizations --
6.2 Persistence and Stability --
6.3 Entities as Cohesive Organizations of Processes --
6.4 Energy-wells --
6.5 Far-from-Equilibrium Stability --
6.6 Self-maintenant Systems --
6.7 Recursively Self-maintenant Systems --
6.8 The Status of the Concept of Recursive Self-maintenance --
PART VII: AN EVOLUTIONARY TAXONOMY OF TYPES OF ACTION AND LIFE --
7.1 Agency and Causation --
7.2 Goal-Directedness --
7.3 Serving a Function --
7.4 Liability to Error --
7.5 Minimal Action --
7.6 Selective Action --
7.7 Error Detection --
7.8 Flexible Learners --
7.9 Self-reflective Persons interacting with Externalized Knowledge --
7.10 Social Institutions and Groups --
7.11 Conclusion --
PART VIII: THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCE --
8.1 Clarifying the Issues --
8.2 \'Emergence Bases\' and Open Systems --
8.3 A Definition of Emergence --
8.4 Emergence and Non-linearity --
8.5 Self-organization --
8.6 Emergence and Reduction --
8.7 Emergence and the Causal Exclusion Argument --
8.8 Downward Causation and Physical Laws --
PART IX: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PHYSICALISM --
9.1 Defining Physicalism in terms of \'Physical Objects\' --
9.2 Defining Physicalism in terms of Physical Theory --
9.3 Mereological Supervenience --
9.4 The Irreducibility of Actions --
9.5 Non-reductive Supervenience --
9.6 Humean Supervenience --
9.7 Global Supervenience --
9.8 Basic Particulars --
9.9 Physicalism without Particulars? --
PART X: THE MENTAL ACTIVITY OF HUMAN BEINGS --
10.1 Intentionality and Mental Content --
10.2 Correspondence Accounts of Representations --
10.3 The Interactive Model of Representations --
10.4 The Emergence of Awareness --
10.5 The \'Hard Problem\' of Consciousness --
10.6 Sensory Experience --
10.7 The Emergence of Reflective Consciousness --
10.8 Rationality --
10.9 Being Conscious of Oneself --
PART XI: FURTHER REFLECTIONS --
11.1 Time --
11.2 The Puzzle about Entropy --
11.3 The Emergence of Values --
11.4 Freedom and Causation --
11.5 Concluding Reflections.