Supervenience

Supervenience is a philosophical concept suggesting that one set of properties (like mental states) depends on another set (like physical states) such that any change in the first must correspond to a change in the second. In other words, the higher-level properties emerge from and are shaped by the underlying lower-level properties, without being reducible to them. This relationship is significant in discussions of emergentism and causation, illustrating how complex systems have their own unique characteristics that arise from the interactions of simpler components, while still being fundamentally linked to them.