Philosophy Discussion Forums

Fair enough

Papus79 wrote: ↑January 4th, 2025, 5:55 pm
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.

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.

Gertie wrote: ↑January 5th, 2025, 8:17 pm 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.

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 7th, 2025, 4:06 pm 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?

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.

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 7th, 2025, 4:06 pm ...find a property of that group that is not found in the individual members of that group, then we might be talking about emergence.

Papus79 wrote: ↑January 15th, 2025, 8:24 pm 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?

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2025, 8:44 am 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?

Lagayascienza wrote: ↑January 15th, 2025, 11:41 pm 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 wrote: ↑January 15th, 2025, 11:41 pm 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.

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.

Papus79 wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 12:34 am

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2025, 8:44 am 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?

I'm woefully ignorant about the scientific technicalities, but the way I basically  see it, Physicalism has two fundamental/irreducible parts,  Physical Stuff and Physical Forces (which describe how stuff interacts in a causal framing).  Basically two things exist/happen in the universe - Fundamental Forces causally act on Fundamental Stuff. Everything can be explained by this. Weak Emergence under Physicalism = irreducible forces causally acting on irreducible stuff resulting in the complex universe we observe, without exception.


So if we take h2o molecules and apply physical forces, we can in principle account for the different properties of eg snowflakes emerging.  We just have to know all the details in a specific scenario.  This applies to the entire universe, which if we knew all the details, is reducible to the fundamental forces causally acting on the fundamental particles.

Note in this model, 'top downward causation' by novel properties would be a misnomer, because it's the most fundamental forces still doing all the causal work. 

That's how I get my head around it anyway, re Philosophy of Mind. 

The Causal problem for Physicalist Emergence, is that it appears conscious experience can causally intervene in that model.  The mind can instigate causal change. Chat GPT's example of the lighters doesn't make that really clear.   We can take a simple example like I experience feeling hungry, which causes my arm to reach for an apple and my teeth to bite it. 

That looks like an example of  Top Down Causation arising in the novel emergent property of mind. Mental causation, mind over matter. Which  wouldn't be fully accounted for by fundamental forces acting on fundamental particles.  It requires the novel property of my conscious experience of feeling hungry, seeing the apple, deciding to eat it, willing my arm to move, etc to cause that  event to happen.  And thus unlike snow flakes being predictable or deducible in terms of forces acting on h2o molecules, the event isn't predictable under Physicalist Emergence even if we knew all the details of the event.

It looks like an anomaly to 'normal' physicalist emergence.  Magic.  As does the apparently unpredictable/irreducible emergence of conscious experience itself. So Physicalism invents a new type of emergence called' Strong Emergence', to account for it.

But just naming it doesn't account for it in an explanatory way of how emergence can work in a way which contradicts its explanatory model for Everything That Can Happen Or Exist - ie apparently both ontologically irreducible stuff with causally irreducible power.

But now 'Strong Emergence' apparently exists under Physicalism. In reality the term 'Strong Emergence' is simply a place-holder for a physicalistl explanation. Which of course could exist. Or you can take the Epiphenomalist position that mind has no causal power, and physical bodies do all the causal work with the brain at the nexus.

Papus79 wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 12:34 am 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?

Are we now describing our map, not the territory? Emergent behaviours are unexpected and unpredictable, but isn't that because we humans just don't *understand*? Our reductionist approach to understanding pretty much everything, detaches and discards so very many connections*, it isn't really surprising to discover that they (the connections) had a role to play, is it? Emergence really could be that simple.



* — and a near-infinite count of nodes that these connections connected-to.

Gertie wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 5:28 am

Papus79 wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 12:34 am

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2025, 8:44 am 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?

I'm woefully ignorant about the scientific technicalities, but the way I basically  see it, Physicalism has two fundamental/irreducible parts,  Physical Stuff and Physical Forces (which describe how stuff interacts in a causal framing).  Basically two things exist/happen in the universe - Fundamental Forces causally act on Fundamental Stuff. Everything can be explained by this. Weak Emergence under Physicalism = irreducible forces causally acting on irreducible stuff resulting in the complex universe we observe, without exception.


So if we take h2o molecules and apply physical forces, we can in principle account for the different properties of eg snowflakes emerging.  We just have to know all the details in a specific scenario.  This applies to the entire universe, which if we knew all the details, is reducible to the fundamental forces causally acting on the fundamental particles.

Note in this model, 'top downward causation' by novel properties would be a misnomer, because it's the most fundamental forces still doing all the causal work. 

That's how I get my head around it anyway, re Philosophy of Mind. 

The Causal problem for Physicalist Emergence, is that it appears conscious experience can causally intervene in that model.  The mind can instigate causal change. Chat GPT's example of the lighters doesn't make that really clear.   We can take a simple example like I experience feeling hungry, which causes my arm to reach for an apple and my teeth to bite it. 

That looks like an example of  Top Down Causation arising in the novel emergent property of mind. Mental causation, mind over matter. Which  wouldn't be fully accounted for by fundamental forces acting on fundamental particles.  It requires the novel property of my conscious experience of feeling hungry, seeing the apple, deciding to eat it, willing my arm to move, etc to cause that  event to happen.  And thus unlike snow flakes being predictable or deducible in terms of forces acting on h2o molecules, the event isn't predictable under Physicalist Emergence even if we knew all the details of the event.

It looks like an anomaly to 'normal' physicalist emergence.  Magic.  As does the apparently unpredictable/irreducible emergence of conscious experience itself. So Physicalism invents a new type of emergence called' Strong Emergence', to account for it.

But just naming it doesn't account for it in an explanatory way of how emergence can work in a way which contradicts its explanatory model for Everything That Can Happen Or Exist - ie apparently both ontologically irreducible stuff with causally irreducible power.

But now 'Strong Emergence' apparently exists under Physicalism. In reality the term 'Strong Emergence' is simply a place-holder for a physicalistl explanation. Which of course could exist. Or you can take the Epiphenomalist position that mind has no causal power, and physical bodies do all the causal work with the brain at the nexus.

Starting point: What do you think of Space as strong emergence or spacetime or gravity?

Gertie wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 5:28 am The Causal problem for Physicalist Emergence, is that it appears conscious experience can causally intervene in that model.  The mind can instigate causal change. Chat GPT's example of the lighters doesn't make that really clear.   We can take a simple example like I experience feeling hungry, which causes my arm to reach for an apple and my teeth to bite it. 

That looks like an example of  Top Down Causation arising in the novel emergent property of mind. Mental causation, mind over matter. Which  wouldn't be fully accounted for by fundamental forces acting on fundamental particles.  It requires the novel property of my conscious experience of feeling hungry, seeing the apple, deciding to eat it, willing my arm to move, etc to cause that  event to happen.  And thus unlike snow flakes being predictable or deducible in terms of forces acting on h2o molecules, the event isn't predictable under Physicalist Emergence even if we knew all the details of the event.

It looks like an anomaly to 'normal' physicalist emergence.  Magic.  As does the apparently unpredictable/irreducible emergence of conscious experience itself. So Physicalism invents a new type of emergence called' Strong Emergence', to account for it.

One of the most compelling cases for downward causation with consciousness is Michael Levin's biology experiments studying embryos and his 'bioelectric template'.

Now one suggestion above that's relatively profound if taken seriously - is consciousness the only thing we know of that brings about downward causation? If true that could be a silver bullet as far as being able to tell whether AI is conscious and all of the other ethical concerns people have related to that.

Gertie wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 5:28 am But just naming it doesn't account for it in an explanatory way of how emergence can work in a way which contradicts its explanatory model for Everything That Can Happen Or Exist - ie apparently both ontologically irreducible stuff with causally irreducible power.

I still think the particular flavor of science right now is carrying a lot of religious trauma - maybe not as much as it did a century ago but it's still there to the degree that the scientific field is held in a position that it not only needs to explore and reckon reality by way of independently verifiable experiments but it also has the job of staving off the next Yellow Turban rebellion or some other similar case where a religious uprising has Communism-level deadly results. For a long time I think that political mission - of being a counterforce to organized religion - is a hurdle that current proponents of ideas like extended functionalism, analytic idealism, neutral monism, and constitutive panpsychism (all the well known IAI names) are trying to break down with the argument perhaps that the world is already secular enough that it might be safe to explore stranger ideas again - arguably over AI safety rather than religion - as a side door to explore other concepts further.

Gertie wrote: ↑January 18th, 2025, 5:28 am But now 'Strong Emergence' apparently exists under Physicalism. In reality the term 'Strong Emergence' is simply a place-holder for a physicalistl explanation. Which of course could exist. Or you can take the Epiphenomalist position that mind has no causal power, and physical bodies do all the causal work with the brain at the nexus.

This has been roughly my conclusion as well.