Towards a Reconsideration of British Emergencyism

Abstract

Following McLaughlin (1992), it has become commonplace to refer to a specific group of theorists – Mill, Bain, Lewes, Morgan, Alexander and Broad – as the “British Emergentists”. But whilst McLaughlin’s seminal discussion focused on the similarities between these views (in order to diagnose the downfall of the tradition), the present paper argues that the differences between them are just as important. Whilst the views of Mill and Lewes emphasize an epistemic characterization of emergence, Morgan and Alexander argue for a much stronger, or ontological thesis. C.D. Broad’s 1925 view stands somewhere in between those extremes and, given contemporary desiderata, is in fact the most defensible – and promising – variant of the “British Emergentist” tradition.