Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Gertie]

Fair enough

[Count Lucanor]

I went back and forth with the AI to make sure I was actually understanding the proper usage of the term 'emergence' and a fit analogy would be this:

A national or international music band plays in a small club filled with devoted fans. Many if not most of the fans have a lighter in their pocket. When a very sentimental song comes on the fans pull their lighter out and wave it in the air to the song. Light and heat emerged from that group as a consequence of their recognition of the song and how it impacted them.

That’s not the concept of emergence. Light and heat appear under many other circumstances and are not a property of the group of fans. Now, find a property of that group that is not found in the individual members of that group, then we might be talking about emergence.

[The Beast]

What is known as paradigmatic.
The origin of matter is energy. Weak energy or strong energy or maybe something in between we call subjective either. There is a “dual” interpretation wave/particle. The spectrum of life on Earth is one of solar energies within known parameters. Sunbathing is a common thing to get our vitamin D flowing, but the merciful sun might flare, and the wave might be in the parameter of x-rays or worse/gamma. The skin might roast, and photonic collisions will be the norm with the subsequences of changes that will occur, but we don’t know where the changes will occur (another dualism as determinism/stochastic freedom). So, under this premise, intelligence happened on Earth (result). Under the laws of chemistry, “reactive” is a two-way road. Matter/intelligence is a two-way road. In the case of matter, it is a two-way particle/wave, so it is more than possible that intrinsic/extrinsic waves interact with the brain matter albeit the thick skull. Like vitamin D, exposure to the metaphysical wave of knowledge fosters the wave of intelligence. A diamond might liquefy at higher temperatures than regular carbon, but it does, and reactive changes might happen to the atoms…cations, anions, might correlate with energies… then it cools off waiting for the next flare in the dual particle/wave emergent (two-way) result. IMO it did happen, and I call it the evolution of C under Earth parameters. So, it is possible that we receive “core” energy/waves and express intelligence, and that intelligence is the C-expression of the energy/wave. A morphic wave has (IMO) a high probability in a group of reptiles looking for the same sunbathing spot. An intrinsic wave?... So, what do we call the emergent generation other than Alpha? Weak Alpha? Or Strong Alpha? IMO: It depends on the lighter.

[Papus79]

It seems to me that if you buy into Physicalist Emergence, then you have to buy into Physicalist Reductionism, which science tells us ends in the Standard Model.  A model which doesn't place conscious experience as fundamental.   Actually it doesn't place conscious experience anywhere, but if it's not fundamental, it must somehow emerge from physical stuff interacting in ways described as  physical 'laws'.   

I agree that the Strong Emergence of conscious experience would be akin to magic per our current Physicalist understanding. It doesn't happen in nature, except when minds are already a component (like your example which requires minds playing the part of the bridging/causal mechanism).  

And I agree that Weak Emergence can't account for consciousness on its own Physicalist reductionist terms. In fact I'd say the term 'emergence' here is used as a Physicalist place-holder for 'no idea' when confronted with Levine's Explanatory Gap. 

What inference we should take is an open question which no-one knows how to answer, though there are plenty of ideas.  Maybe there's a missing/bridging ingredient in brains we've not yet found/recognised,  some form of panpsychism,  some quantum mallarky, something else entirely we might not have the toolkit to grasp,   Physicalism itself is an illusion, etc.

Good response - could also add to the last paragraph analytic idealism pinned to amplituhedron, E8, or some other similar oddity.

[Papus79]

That’s not the concept of emergence. Light and heat appear under many other circumstances and are not a property of the group of fans. Now, find a property of that group that is not found in the individual members of that group, then we might be talking about emergence.

That's to the other side of my question though - ie. does a property that's not at all in it's components or parts ever come up in nature?

[Lagayascienza]

Of course properties that do not exist in component parts come up in nature. For example, the myriad fractal shapes of snowflakes do not exist in single molecules of H20 but they emerge when tiny crystals join together in different ways due to differences in humidity and temperature through which a snowflake falls and grows.

[Lagayascienza]

Another example of emergence is consciousness which emerges from electrochemical process that occur in clumps of matter we call brains. No single neuron is conscious but together they produce consciousness. We see emergence all over the place in nature.

Consider the property "wetness" that emerges when hydrogen and oxygen atoms join to form H2O (water). Wetness is not a property of individual hydrogen or oxygen atoms or even of single molecules of H20. Wetness only emerges when molecules of H2O join up to make water.

[Pattern-chaser]

...find a property of that group that is not found in the individual members of that group, then we might be talking about emergence.

That's to the other side of my question though - ie. does a property that's not at all in it's components or parts ever come up in nature?

The most commonly-mentioned example seems to be water.

Water.
Huh?
Take 2 atoms of hydrogen (with certain properties), combine them with an atom of oxygen(with other specific properties) and you get a water molecule with completely different properties.
Combine water molecules and you get completely unforeseen properties in the liquid.
Go up a level and see how water gets integrated into biology.
Go up a level and see how water is fundamental to nearly everything we see.
Go up a level and look at the political/societal implications.

Now plunge down again and look at the 2 types of atoms..... Can you see what they cause to happen just by looking at the atoms and their properties? Of course not. We can't even predict the properties of water from the properties of the atoms.

This is how I explain the concept of emergence, and why we as humans "don't get it", probably can not get it. None of the resultant/emergent properties and rules of the next level of complication are foreseeable.
[Taken from Quora]

Life is mentioned too:

Life
If your starting point (for the last 15 or so billion years) is physics and chemistry, then the creation of life is indeed a surprising thing. There is nothing embedded in physics and chemistry that says Life has to or must exist, it's only a possibility and a really unlikely possibility at that.

The progression of catalysts & complex molecules, then single-celled organisms then multi-celled organisms then multi-celled organisms that mix their DNA to create offspring... that's some amazing stuff.
[Also taken from Quora]

Are these examples helpful?

[Papus79]

Are these examples helpful?

With those examples and the ones Lagayascienza gives it sounds like there's a lot of debate still for what counts as a brand new property not latent in the substrate (water and snowflakes especially).

I think we'd have to clarify what emergence is in physical processes.

What I can see is that horizontal processes - both group processes and iterations of interaction over time - have a way of yielding results that we wouldn't foresee. That would include group dynamics creating behaviors and symmetries which aren't anything truly 'new' other than revealing group behaviors over time as well as evolutionary forces such as with the buildout of a snowflake where if you could jam all inputs into a Markov matrix you could probably get the right answer but nature almost never gives us such a clean example. Is that what emergence is? If not what additional characteristics does emergence have? Otherwise, if so, how does one argue that emergence doesn't rely entirely on the qualities of its substrate and environment and under that wouldn't the only kind of credible emergence be weak emergence in that case?

[Papus79]

Of course properties that do not exist in component parts come up in nature. For example, the myriad fractal shapes of snowflakes do not exist in single molecules of H20 but they emerge when tiny crystals join together in different ways due to differences in humidity and temperature through which a snowflake falls and grows.

Another example of emergence is consciousness which emerges from electrochemical process that occur in clumps of matter we call brains. No single neuron is conscious but together they produce consciousness. We see emergence all over the place in nature.

Consider the property "wetness" that emerges when hydrogen and oxygen atoms join to form H2O (water). Wetness is not a property of individual hydrogen or oxygen atoms or even of single molecules of H20. Wetness only emerges when molecules of H2O join up to make water.

Snowflakes and water seem like great examples of weak emergence - which I can get on board with because weak emergence makes no demand that something brand new comes about that's not latent in the qualities of the H2O involved and what evolutionary processes in the environment can create.

What bothers me is that consciousness is the only thing we could claim looks like strong emergence if we try to call it strictly a result of emergence. Otherwise if we go weak emergence for consciousness we get micropsychism. I'm more inclined in the later direction at least until I see equally cryptic examples where strong emergence seems to happen. I also get the sense that with our Darwinian adaptation to be economically and militarily successful societies (unlike those who historically didn't make it) we're selected on our capacity to ruthlessly exploit opportunity, including the commons of nature, and I think it's that pressure to outperform existential competitors which makes ideas like panpsychism acrid to us (eg. are we giving rocks UN rights?) or why it needs all of the hippy / dope humor as a pre-apology before discussing - ie. that it's out of sync with the prevailing fitness algorithms.

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, my examples of snow flakes etc. are of "weak" emergence. I'm not sure that strong emergence even exists. If, as Wiki suggests, "strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system on its components; qualities produced this way are irreducible to the system's constituent parts [and] the whole is other than the sum of its parts", then I find the concept of strong emergence problematic and I can't think of any examples of it. But that may just reflect my own spur-of-the moment limitations. Maybe others can help us out here.