Synchronic and diachronic emergence

Abstract

I discuss here a number of different kinds of diachronic emergence, noting that they differ in important ways from synchronic conceptions. I argue that Bedau's weak emergence has an essentially historical aspect, in that there can be two indistinguishable states, one of which is weakly emergent, the other of which is not. As a consequence, weak emergence is about tokens, not types, of states. I conclude by examining the question of whether the concept of weak emergence is too weak and note that there is at present no unifying account of diachronic and synchronic concepts of emergence. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.