Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

In Metaphysical Emergence, Jessica Wilson recognises the problem of higher-level causation as “the most pressing challenge to taking the appearances of emergent structure as genuine” (2021: 39). Then, Wilson states that there are “two and only two strategies of response to this problem” (2021: 40) that lead to Strong and Weak emergence. In this paper, I suggest that there might be an alternative strategy—not opposite, but different in kind—to approach this difficulty. As noticed by Wilson, the problem of higher-level causation was formulated and made central by Jaegwon Kim. However,…

Social objects originate from constitutive rules. But there are two ways of explaining the relationship between them. I call them “Manifest Image” and “Deep Image”. The former depends on Searle’s interpretation of social reality and it is based on collective intentionality; the latter is the one I support and it is based on documentality. Indeed, recordings and documents are sufficient to explain how and why social world exists. There is no need to use such a vague notion, as that of collective intentionality, in order to give a useful account…