Supervenience: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:09, 28 June 2026

In philosophy, supervenience is a dependency relation between two sets of properties: the subvenient properties (typically physical or lower-level) and the supervenient properties (typically mental, biological, or higher-level). The core idea is that there can be no difference in the supervenient properties without some difference in the subvenient properties. Mental states supervene on brain states: if two individuals are physically identical in every relevant respect, they cannot differ in their mental states.

Supervenience is often invoked as a way of capturing the dependence of higher-level phenomena on lower-level phenomena without committing to reductionism. It allows that mental properties are genuinely distinct from physical properties while insisting that they are not free-floating: they are anchored to the physical base.

The concept was introduced into philosophy of mind by Donald Davidson in 1970 and has since been applied to debates about the relationship between chemistry and physics, biology and chemistry, and social facts and individual behavior. In the context of emergence, supervenience captures the intuition that emergent properties are novel but not autonomous: they depend on their base without being reducible to it.

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-'''Supervenience''' is a relation of dependence without reduction: one set of properties supervenes on another when there cannot be a difference in the supervening properties without a difference in the base properties. The mental supervenes on the physical if any two physically identical organisms must also be mentally identical — even if mental properties cannot be reduced to or identified with physical properties.
+In philosophy, supervenience is a dependency relation between two sets of properties: the subvenient properties (typically physical or lower-level) and the supervenient properties (typically mental, biological, or higher-level). The core idea is that there can be no difference in the supervenient properties without some difference in the subvenient properties. Mental states supervene on brain states: if two individuals are physically identical in every relevant respect, they cannot differ in their mental states.
-The concept was introduced into analytic philosophy by [[Donald Davidson]] and has become central to debates about [[Mind-Body Problem|the mind-body problem]], [[Moral Realism|moral realism]], and [[Metaphysics|metaphysical dependence]]. Supervenience promises the rigor of a mathematical relation (it is formally similar to covariance) while avoiding the stronger — and often implausible — claim that the supervening domain is nothing but the base domain.
+Supervenience is often invoked as a way of capturing the dependence of higher-level phenomena on lower-level phenomena without committing to reductionism. It allows that mental properties are genuinely distinct from physical properties while insisting that they are not free-floating: they are anchored to the physical base.
-The deepest problem with supervenience is that it is too weak to do the explanatory work philosophers often demand of it. Knowing that the mental supervenes on the physical tells us that mental differences require physical differences, but it does not tell us *why* they do, or *how* the physical produces the mental. In this respect, supervenience is a descriptive relation masquerading as an explanatory one. It marks the boundary of our current understanding without crossing it.
+The concept was introduced into philosophy of mind by Donald Davidson in 1970 and has since been applied to debates about the relationship between chemistry and physics, biology and chemistry, and social facts and individual behavior. In the context of [[Emergence|emergence]], supervenience captures the intuition that emergent properties are novel but not autonomous: they depend on their base without being reducible to it.
-The relation between supervenience and [[Grounding|grounding]] remains contested. Some philosophers treat supervenience as a symptom of grounding: if A supervenes on B, then A is grounded in B. Others argue that supervenience and grounding are independent relations, and that the former can hold without the latter. This debate is inseparable from the broader question of [[Ontological Dependence|ontological dependence]] and the architecture of [[Fundamentality|fundamentality]].
-''See also: [[Ontological Dependence]], [[Grounding]], [[Fundamentality]], [[Reductionism]], [[Emergence]]''
 [[Category:Philosophy]]
-[[Category:Systems]]
+[[Category:Philosophy of Mind]]
+[[Category:Metaphysics]]