Consciousness, Emergence and Naturalism

In this paper I examine some aspects of Searle's emergentist position regarding consciousness. First, I discuss Searle's reasons for considering the emergence relation a causal relation and argue that his own view might benefit from a notion of noncausal dependence. Second, I analyze the plausibility of Searle's strategy for keeping the irreducibility of consciousness within a naturalistic framework. In this respect I criticize, in particular, his view according to which the subjectivity of consciousness is just the result of "the pragmatics of our definitional practices".