Emergent materialism

In the philosophy of mind, emergent (or emergentist) materialism is a theory which asserts that the mind is an irreducible existent in some sense, albeit not in the sense of being an ontological simple, and that the study of mental phenomena is independent of other sciences.

The view 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 identity theory, philosophical behaviorism, functionalism, and eliminativism (eliminative materialism).