Abstract

This discussion focuses on whether Mario Bunge’s emergent materialism implies continuism or not. Íñigo Ongay defends that Bunge’s emergent materialism implies continuism. In his response, Javier Pérez-Jara argues that Bunge’s emergent materialism explicitly assumes structural ontological and epistemological discontinuities in the universe. The question is more than a Scholastic one, concerning only a particular system of philosophy, however relevant for current philosophical materialism. Rather, what is at stake is the ability of non-reductionist ontologies to explain (non-miraculous) novelty and plurality.