Supervenience: New Essays

Supervenience is one of the hot "discoveries" of recent analytic philosophy. The interest in supervenience has much to do with the flexibility of the concept. To say that x supervenes on y indicates a degree of dependence without committing one to the view that x can be reduced to y. Thus, supervenience is a relationship that has the potential of replacing the traditional notion of dependence, while performing at least part of the function reductive relationships were supposed to fulfill. Moreover, since it is a topic-neutral concept, the range of applicability of supervenience extends to all the major areas of philosophy.

Supervenience is one of the hot "discoveries" of recent analytic philosophy, and this collection of new essays on the topic represents a "state of the art" examination of it and its application to major areas of philosophy. Hitherto a serious student had to track down scattered articles in journals on the subject. Now that reader can find some of the finest philosophers writing on this topic in a comprehensive, integrated anthology.