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Emergent materialism

In the philosophy of mind, emergent (or emergentist) materialism is a theory which asserts that the mind is irreducibly existent in some sense. However, the mind does not exist in the sense of being an ontological simple. Further, the study of mental phenomena is independent of other sciences. The theory primarily maintains that the human mind's evolution is a product of material nature and that it cannot exist without material basis. The view holds that mental properties emerge as novel properties of complex material systems. These are conceptually irreducible as physical properties of the complexes that have them. The theory, however, states that the mind is independent due to the causal influences between body and mind. This is described as a "primitive relation" that is grounded in or dependent on the physical, but with metaphysical necessity. Emergent materialism can be divided into emergence which denies mental causation and emergence which allows for causal effect. A version of the latter type has been advocated by John R. Searle, called biological naturalism. The other main group of materialist views in the philosophy of mind can be labeled non-emergent (or non-emergentist) materialism, and includes pure physicalism (eliminative materialism), identity theory (reductive materialism), philosophical behaviorism, and functionalism.

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Related concepts (5)
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of particular mental states. Aspects of the mind that are studied include mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and its neural correlates, the ontology of the mind, the nature of cognition and of thought, and the relationship of the mind to the body.
Biological naturalism
Biological naturalism is a theory about, among other things, the relationship between consciousness and body (i.e. brain), and hence an approach to the mind–body problem. It was first proposed by the philosopher John Searle in 1980 and is defined by two main theses: 1) all mental phenomena, ranging from pains, tickles, and itches to the most abstruse thoughts, are caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain; and 2) mental phenomena are higher-level features of the brain.
Problem of mental causation
The problem of mental causation is a conceptual issue in the philosophy of mind. That problem, in short, is how to account for the common-sense idea that intentional thoughts or intentional mental states are causes of intentional actions. The problem divides into several distinct sub-problems, including the problem of causal exclusion, the problem of anomalism, and the problem of externalism. However, the sub-problem which has attracted most attention in the philosophical literature is arguably the exclusion problem.
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