Jessica M. Wilson

Canadian-American philosopher; Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto (Scarborough). One of the leading contemporary metaphysicians; works on metaphysical emergence, powers ontology, fundamentality, and kind essentialism. ¹

Metaphysical Emergence: Weak and Strong

Her central framework (2010 article; 2015 Metaphysical Emergence: Weak and Strong; 2021 OUP book Metaphysical Emergence) distinguishes exactly two forms of metaphysical emergence, both built on:

$\text{Dependence}+\text{Autonomy}$

• The system depends upon its physical base (no violation of physicalism)
• Higher-level properties nevertheless exhibit distinctive causal profiles — framed explicitly in terms of causal powers

1. Weak metaphysical emergence: the higher-level property’s powers are a subset of the powers of its physical realizing base — multiple realizability and higher-level causal profiles without new powers
2. Strong metaphysical emergence: the higher-level property has powers not had by its base — genuinely novel causal powers, confronting physical causal closure directly ¹

Three features make her framework especially useful:

• She does not define emergence as “we don’t understand it” — emergence gets a precise metaphysical characterization of when the higher-level feature genuinely differs in causal profile from its base. This is exactly the route to prevent “emergence” from becoming a synonym for ignorance
• She shows how even weak emergence can secure higher-level causal relevance (via the subset relation on powers), blunting the Kim exclusion worry without new physics
• Her strong emergence is stated with unusual clarity — which makes its costs (closure conflict, “new unexplained fundamental principle”) equally clear

The article’s recommended use: Wilson establishes that emergence can be a precise metaphysical concept — not as evidence that strong emergence of consciousness is established. ¹

Relationship to This Wiki

• Central contemporary framework on emergence — the weak/strong distinction with causal-profile precision
• Her weak-emergence category is the metaphysical counterpart of Bedau’s scientific weak emergence; her powers framing gives Humphreys-style causal-power talk a systematic home
• Her argument that higher-level causal profiles can be real without new fundamental powers bears on psychophysical-harmony’s premise that psychophysical mappings need explanation, and on Searle’s biological naturalism (realization without type reduction)

See Also

• emergence — Her weak/strong taxonomy is the page’s organizing distinction
• paul-humphreys — Companion framework (fusion and causal powers)
• jaegwon-kim — The closure problem her weak emergence answers
• mark-bedau — The scientific weak-emergence counterpart

References

• Wilson, J. M. (2021). Metaphysical Emergence. Oxford University Press.
• Wilson, J. M. (2015). “Metaphysical Emergence: Weak and Strong.” In Metaphysics in Contemporary Philosophy (Wiley). PhilPapers ¹
• Wilson, J. M. (2010). “Non-reductive Physicalism and Degrees of Freedom.” Philosophers’ Imprint 10.
• OUP: Metaphysical Emergence

Footnotes

1. raw/articles/emergence-without-magic-nonreductive-materialism.md ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴