The Limitations of Supervenience in Explaining the Emergence of Mental Properties

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Hassan Qarehbaghi 1
Yousef Daneshvar nilo 2
1 PhD student at Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute
2 Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy of Religion and Islamic Theology, Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, Qom, Iran.
10.22034/zehn.2025.2060402.2115
Abstract
The mind–body problem has always been one of the most fundamental and intricate issues in the philosophy of mind, and the concept of supervenience has figured prominently in accounts of how mental properties arise from physical ones. In this paper, I endeavor to describe and analyze the various dimensions of supervenience—its meaning, historical background, constituent components, and its relation to emergence. Within metaphysical treatments of emergence, which seek to explain how higher-level features such as consciousness originate from lower-level physical processes, supervenience is often offered as one such explanatory framework. The present study shows that, although supervenience can capture the covariance of properties across levels, it lacks the requisite explanatory power for a fully precise metaphysical and ontological account and encounters significant challenges. In conclusion, I argue that, to provide a robust theory of emergence and to defend the causal autonomy of emergent levels, supervenience by itself is insufficient; one must instead turn to more fine-grained and alternative theoretical approaches.
Keywords
Supervenience؛ Mind&ndash
Body Relation؛ Mental States؛ Physical States؛ Emergence

Subjects

 
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