Well, consider the art installation called Descension by Anish Kapoor[1]. The vortex which makes up the piece emerges from the constraints imposed upon the fluid by the artist. If we replaced the water in the installation with any fluid with similar viscosity, the vortex would remain. Thus it appears to be the case that the vortex does _not_ supervene upon the actual substances which makes it up per se.
In the case of Descension the constraints are somewhat artificial and imposed by the artist. Arguably, the phenomena supervenes upon the physical structure of those constraints. But consider some living organism. It's various physical parts might be replaced by other parts with similar properties (with respect to their function) and the organism would keep existing as itself. But there isn't any particular substance which maintains the constraints which define the organism. Some philosophers of science (eg Terrance Deacon) uphold that this means emergent phenomenon do not supervene upon their material constituents per se, and are thus not determined by the laws of physics which dictate their properties. I don't buy it, but it is a position.
Interesting. I definitely don't agree with that myself.
It sort of reminds me of the Philosophy of Mathematics[1], where there are some schools of thought that I consider vaguely ridiculous too. Like some schools of Platonism suggesting mathematical objects actually exist somehow instead of it just being a convenient linguistic shorthand.
In the case of Descension the constraints are somewhat artificial and imposed by the artist. Arguably, the phenomena supervenes upon the physical structure of those constraints. But consider some living organism. It's various physical parts might be replaced by other parts with similar properties (with respect to their function) and the organism would keep existing as itself. But there isn't any particular substance which maintains the constraints which define the organism. Some philosophers of science (eg Terrance Deacon) uphold that this means emergent phenomenon do not supervene upon their material constituents per se, and are thus not determined by the laws of physics which dictate their properties. I don't buy it, but it is a position.
[1] https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/02/anish-kapoor-decensio...