Forthcoming in Erkenntnis

Thinkers sympathetic to the autonomy of the special sciences – and emergentists in particular – typically think, not only that the special sciences are not reducible to the fundamental physical level, but also that the properties studied by the special sciences have causal powers of their own. More physicalistically inclined philosophers forcefully attack the latter idea. Their master argument is the so-called exclusion problem. It is based essentially on the idea that the physical world is causally closed, i.e., that everything physical which happens must be a result of purely physical causes.