Argument
Supervenience
Overview
In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relation between sets of properties or sets of facts. X is said to supervene on Y if and only if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible.
Examples of supervenience, in which case the truth values of some propositions cannot vary unless the truth values of some other propositions vary, include:
Whether there is a table in the living room supervenes on the positions of molecules in the living room.
The truth value of (A) supervenes on the truth value of its negation, (¬A), and vice versa.
Supervenience is of interest to philosophers because it differs from other nearby relations, for example entailment. Some philosophers believe it possible for some A to supervene on some B without being entailed by B. In such cases it may seem puzzling why A should supervene on B and equivalently why changes in A should require changes in B. Two important applications of supervenience involve cases like this. One of these is the supervenience of mental properties (like the sensation of pain) on physical properties (like the firing of 'pain neurons'). A second is the supervenience of normative facts (facts about how things ought to be) on natural facts (facts about how things are).
The possibility of "supervenience without entailment" or "supervenience without reduction" is contested territory among philosophers.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Hence the Philosopher says (Metaph. v) that they are called relative, not forasmuch as they are related to other things, but as others are related to them. Likewise for instance, "on the right" is not applied to a column, unless it stands as regards an animal on the right side; which relation is not really in the column, but in the animal.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Supervenience is.
Examples of the latter are: 'The mind is no elephant:' 'A lion is no table;' propositions which are correct but absurd, exactly like the identical propositions: 'A lion is a lion;' 'Mind is mind.' Propositions like these are undoubtedly the truth of the immediate, or, as it is called, Qualitative judgment. But they are not judgments at all, and can only occur in a subjective thought where even an untrue abstraction…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Supervenience is.
(7) All other objects, such as fire and water, heat and cold, are only found to be contrary from experience, and from the contrariety of their causes or effects; which relation of cause and effect is a seventh philosophical relation, as well as a natural one. The resemblance implied in this relation, shall be explained afterwards. It might naturally be expected, that I should join DIFFERENCE to the other relations…
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
States what Supervenience is.
Philosophers who discussed Supervenience
- David Malet Armstrong
- George Henry Lewes
- Jaegwon Kim
- David Chalmers
- David Lewis (philosopher)
- Ernest Sosa
- Ted Honderich
- Alexander Rosenberg
- Donald Cary Williams
Related ideas
- G. E. Moore
- Glyph
- Philosophy
- If and only if
- Negation
- Truth value
- Metaethics
- Molecule
- Frank Cameron Jackson
- Aesthetics
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Domain of discourse
- Physicalism
- R. M. Hare
- Paradox
- Jaegwon Kim
- State of affairs (philosophy)
- Philosophical presentism
- Predicate (logic)
- Donald Davidson (philosopher)
- Semantic externalism
- Value theory
- Modal logic
- Logical consequence
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.