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<blockquote data-quote="zippy2006" data-source="post: 73539920" data-attributes="member: 342410"><p>Thanks for your post. I guess I was under the impression that emergentists were pushing for something more than, say, Conway's Game of Life. Presumably you are using simple examples as analogies for how emergence is thought to work, but when push comes to shove the real question is whether the analogy holds, no?</p><p></p><p>The key principle here is your idea that the emergent property is qualitatively different from the underlying substrate. Keeping in mind that condition of an emergent property, I want to focus on explicability.</p><p></p><p>Suppose we consider two sets. One contains instances of demonstrable emergence (e.g. Conway's Game of Life, natural flocks of birds, etc.). The second contains instances of arguable emergence (e.g. intent, consciousness, etc.). The explicability of the first set is fairly easy and straightforward. Consider the flock of birds: structural (and visual) phenomena emerge from the flocking of birds in a way that seems choreographed and yet is in fact a result of the "spatial rules" that each individual bird makes use of in their flight. Thus the emergent property of the dynamics of the flocking might be said to be qualitatively different from anything we see in the individual birds. Therefore in this case we have a "qualitative difference" that is clearly (and demonstrably) explicable.</p><p></p><p>But what if we turn to something from the second set, such as consciousness? This is where my initial criticism comes to bear, and also where the real meat of the argument resides. With consciousness we have a qualitative difference that is not explicable in the same way a flock of birds is. It is not demonstrably explicable, and I'm not sure how many emergentists would even claim that it is arguably explicable so much as that it will be explained at some point in the future. Therefore a natural question arises: What reason do we have to combine these two sets under the common header of "emergence"? The first set is demonstrably emergent; the second set is not. What inferences are available to us to conclude that the second set is an instance of emergence (and will be explained as such in the future)?</p><p></p><p>This counterargument is very much in the way of a "god of the gaps" counterargument. The thrust is that the (poor) argument follows this form: "We were ignorant about phenomenon X in the past; it turned out to be explained by emergence. We are ignorant about phenomenon Y in the present; therefore phenomenon Y is explained by emergence."</p><p></p><p>Since I don't want the posts to grow too long I will leave it there for now. I will just say that the precise concept of "qualitative difference" is something of a sticking point (hence my scare quotes above). I'm not sure what precisely your understanding of that concept is, but it may become central to the exchange.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="zippy2006, post: 73539920, member: 342410"] Thanks for your post. I guess I was under the impression that emergentists were pushing for something more than, say, Conway's Game of Life. Presumably you are using simple examples as analogies for how emergence is thought to work, but when push comes to shove the real question is whether the analogy holds, no? The key principle here is your idea that the emergent property is qualitatively different from the underlying substrate. Keeping in mind that condition of an emergent property, I want to focus on explicability. Suppose we consider two sets. One contains instances of demonstrable emergence (e.g. Conway's Game of Life, natural flocks of birds, etc.). The second contains instances of arguable emergence (e.g. intent, consciousness, etc.). The explicability of the first set is fairly easy and straightforward. Consider the flock of birds: structural (and visual) phenomena emerge from the flocking of birds in a way that seems choreographed and yet is in fact a result of the "spatial rules" that each individual bird makes use of in their flight. Thus the emergent property of the dynamics of the flocking might be said to be qualitatively different from anything we see in the individual birds. Therefore in this case we have a "qualitative difference" that is clearly (and demonstrably) explicable. But what if we turn to something from the second set, such as consciousness? This is where my initial criticism comes to bear, and also where the real meat of the argument resides. With consciousness we have a qualitative difference that is not explicable in the same way a flock of birds is. It is not demonstrably explicable, and I'm not sure how many emergentists would even claim that it is arguably explicable so much as that it will be explained at some point in the future. Therefore a natural question arises: What reason do we have to combine these two sets under the common header of "emergence"? The first set is demonstrably emergent; the second set is not. What inferences are available to us to conclude that the second set is an instance of emergence (and will be explained as such in the future)? This counterargument is very much in the way of a "god of the gaps" counterargument. The thrust is that the (poor) argument follows this form: "We were ignorant about phenomenon X in the past; it turned out to be explained by emergence. We are ignorant about phenomenon Y in the present; therefore phenomenon Y is explained by emergence." Since I don't want the posts to grow too long I will leave it there for now. I will just say that the precise concept of "qualitative difference" is something of a sticking point (hence my scare quotes above). I'm not sure what precisely your understanding of that concept is, but it may become central to the exchange. [/QUOTE]
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