Powerful Qualities for Strongly Emergent Mental Properties

Strong emergentists about mental properties of conscious experience typically hold that these are ontologically “over and above” and distinct in kind as compared to physical properties. Powers-based account of strong emergence offer a promising framework for elucidating the ontological “over and above”-ness of strongly emergent properties. However, they do not automatically ensure the desired non-physicality. In this paper, I argue that a conception of properties as powerful qualities has in-built resources for capturing both the ontological “over and above”-ness and the kind distinctness in a unified way. I begin by illustrating powers-based accounts of strong emergence. Then I defend the superiority of a powerful qualities-based account of strong emergence over two standard approaches recovering the distinctness in kind of strongly emergent mental properties: the via negativa strategy, and the anti-materialist strategy. I conclude that a conception of powerful qualities is a surprising yet natural ally for the proponent of strongly emergent mental properties.