No such thing as emergent properties

[Tayla]

There are numerous examples of complex behaviour arising from simple rule sets. Bee swarming being a great example.

Each molecule of each bee is following the natural laws. Consciousness is not like this; there is no natural law called "mind" or "conscious awareness". The subjective experience of consciousness has nothing in common with a swarm of bees.

 

[Sorn]

What does being a Christian have to do with it?

I was alluding to the fact that i think our consciousness comes from our souls which are spiritual components provided or created by God and that interact with our physical bodies.

We have no clear way of defining what consciousness is that we have been able to program into a computer and say its is conscious.
I write computer code for a living and often write programs that check their internal state (by way of flags and variable values) so as to 'know' what to do next, but that does not in any way make them conscious and I'm not sure if simply increasing the complexity of these internal state checking steps a few orders of magnitude would result in a conscious machine.

Now i know that in research labs some scientists may well be writing much more sophisticated algorithms specifically to try and replicate consciousness but none have so far come out and said 'we've done it'.

We can't even explain what simple insects experience let alone higher animals or us.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I guess it depends on what 'wetness' means.

I'd be interested if you can find a definition that doesn't specify it as a property of liquids.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Each molecule of each bee is following the natural laws. Consciousness is not like this; there is no natural law called "mind" or "conscious awareness".

Consciousness is comparable - each molecule of every neuron in the brain follows natural laws.

Just as there is no natural law called 'mind' or 'conscious awareness', there is also no natural law called 'swarming', or 'hive activity'.

The subjective experience of consciousness has nothing in common with a swarm of bees.

The have in common that they're both the (emergent) results of the combined activities of a large number of similar elements

 

[Sorn]

I'd be interested if you can find a definition that doesn't specify it as a property of liquids.

No, but that's not the point, the point is that the definition like this one the definition of wetness define it as 'being covered or soaked with water' The point is that wetness is simply water clinging to or resting on a solid.

Now I can use an eye dropper and place a drop of water onto a sheet of paper. The paper is hardly soaked or covered by water but it is now wet.
If you needed a piece of paper that was completely dry this one drop would disqualify it.
I could do the same with half a drop, or a quarter of a drop etc. Eventually the 'wet' patch (yes, tiny wet patch) would be too small for me to see but nevertheless if I had a dropper fine enough I could still be dropping water molecules onto the paper and they would be resting on it and soaking into it, ie WETTING it.
One water molecule would also do the same, ie rest on the paper or lodge itself into its fibers, thereby wetting that tiny bit because that is what wetting is, water in contact with a solid. Wetting is a physical action of water on a solid and 1 water molecule can do this. Technically, water is not wet, it does however wet stuff, wet is a verb, the act of water molecules resting and lodging amongst fibers etc is the act of wetting.

In any case for the purpose of the OP the point is that even if you regard 'wetting' as an emergent property of water then it is one that if FULLY explainable by the underlying components and their interactions with each other, ie water molecules, and the solid in question. It is NOT magic.

 

[Sorn]

The have in common that they're both the (emergent) results of the combined activities of a large number of similar elements

Regarding consciousness, your definition above MUST be qualified, if you are intellectually honest, that you are making as assumption that it arises from the brains physical properties. As you are an aetheist I can understand why this is your only option but until we do understand how consciousness arises the possibility exists that it is not fully explainable or arising from just the brain.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I was alluding to the fact that i think our consciousness comes from our souls which are spiritual components provided or created by God and that interact with our physical bodies.

The neurological evidence suggests that consciousness is part of what the brain does; i.e. it's a particular kind of brain activity. This is supported by the fact that every identifiable aspect of consciousness can be modified by interfering with specific parts of brain activity. If some aspect of consciousness was independent of brain activity, this would not be expected. It would be like finding that fiddling with the insides of your TV could change the plot of a play it was receiving, or the gender of the news announcer, or the programme schedule on some channel...

Can you suggest some observable or reportable aspect of consciousness that you'd expect not to be affected by modifying brain activity? If not, just what is it that the soul is supposed to actually do?

We have no clear way of defining what consciousness is that we have been able to program into a computer and say its is conscious.
I write computer code for a living and often write programs that check their internal state (by way of flags and variable values) so as to 'know' what to do next, but that does not in any way make them conscious and I'm not sure if simply increasing the complexity of these internal state checking steps a few orders of magnitude would result in a conscious machine.

Now i know that in research labs some scientists may well be writing much more sophisticated algorithms specifically to try and replicate consciousness but none have so far come out and said 'we've done it'.

I had a career as a programmer also, and I don't think something like consciousness can be programmed via explicit algorithms; however, I do think it's possible, in principle, to create a system that is conscious using learning networks - the way the brain does it. Of course, you can code a learning network using standard algorithmic code, but that would not be programming it to be conscious, it would be giving it the structural capability to become conscious, given appropriate interaction.

We can't even explain what simple insects experience let alone higher animals or us.

There is inevitably a fundamental disconnect between subjective experience and the objective correlates of that experience. Attempting to reconcile them is futile and causes a lot of unnecessary confusion, e.g. Chalmer's 'hard problem' of consciousness.

When all's said and done, some system configurations produce something it is like to be that system and some don't. We can only know what it is like if we are such a system; otherwise, the best we can do is to compare descriptions in terms of other subjective experiences (via metaphor & simile) in the hope that there will be commonalities of subjective experience - which is a reasonable expectation, given the commonalities of structure, function, and general experience.

 

[Sorn]

The neurological evidence suggests that consciousness is part of what the brain does; i.e. it's a particular kind of brain activity. This is supported by the fact that every identifiable aspect of consciousness can be modified by interfering with specific parts of brain activity. If some aspect of consciousness was independent of brain activity, this would not be expected. It would be like finding that fiddling with the insides of your TV could change the plot of a play it was receiving, or the gender of the news announcer, or the programme schedule on some channel...

Can you suggest some observable or reportable aspect of consciousness that you'd expect not to be affected by modifying brain activity? If not, just what is it that the soul is supposed to actually do?

I agree that the consciousness can be affected by interfering with the brain. Consciousness does indeed need the brain to work it would seem. However it is also possible that brain + something else (spirit etc) = consciousness.

A bit like saying that speed = motorbike + man controlling it where man is not 'part' of the motor bike.
OR
speed = motorbike + fuel where 'fuel' is not needed to have a motorbike, but is needed for speed to emerge, it is a different type of substance that needs to combine with the parts of the bike also for speed. Not the best analogy but i think it gets the picture across.

 

[durangodawood]

Hmm.

Water and wetness as an emergent property of the H2O molecule seems like such a borderline case of emergent properties that it hangs up the discussion.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Regarding consciousness, your definition above MUST be qualified, if you are intellectually honest, that you are making as assumption that it arises from the brains physical properties. As you are an aetheist I can understand why this is your only option but until we do understand how consciousness arises the possibility exists that it is not fully explainable or arising from just the brain.

Sure - I assumed that would be fairly obvious.

As already mentioned, the neurological evidence strongly points to this being the case; and there's also the problem of interaction - physics tells us that there are no significant fields or forces (besides electromagnetism and gravity) that can significantly influence neural activity in the brain, so there are no other means of external influence. IOW, our brains are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and the interactions of these particles at STP and human scales are well understood - if there were any significant fields or forces that could affect those interactions, we'd have discovered them (full details on request).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I agree that the consciousness can be affected by interfering with the brain. Consciousness does indeed need the brain to work it would seem. However it is also possible that brain + something else (spirit etc) = consciousness.

A bit like saying that speed = motorbike + man controlling it where man is not 'part' of the motor bike.
OR
speed = motorbike + fuel where 'fuel' is not needed to have a motorbike, but is needed for speed to emerge, it is a different type of substance that needs to combine with the parts of the bike also for speed. Not the best analogy but i think it gets the picture across.

Sure - but you need to demonstrate that such an addition is both plausible and necessary (or that it actually occurs). Just claiming that you think it is 'possible' is empty speculation.

 

[Sorn]

physics tells us that there are no significant fields or forces (besides electromagnetism and gravity) that can significantly influence neural activity in the brain,

again, you are assuming nothing at all exists outside of the physical reality we can perceive with our senses or instruments. The whole point about a religious faith is that you accept that there are things beyond the physical universe that we can never directly sense or build instruments for but that may nevertheless, be able to influence this world.

 

[Sorn]

Sure - but you need to demonstrate that such an addition is both plausible and necessary (or that it actually occurs). Just claiming that you think it is 'possible' is empty speculation.

Yes i know, i never said it was fact. Thats why I said 'as a Christian I don't think we will replicate consciousness', because I am making the assumption that there is something else involved. If thats not the case then science should be able to fully explain consciousness eventually, which is what your position is based on your view that there is no supernatural/spiritual realm, dimension, plane whatever.

 

[Speedwell]

Yes i know, i never said it was fact. Thats why I said 'as a Christian I don't think we will replicate consciousness', because I am making the assumption that there is something else involved. If thats not the case then science should be able to fully explain consciousness eventually, which is what your position is based on your view that there is no supernatural/spiritual realm, dimension, plane whatever.

It is not necessary to reject the supernatural in order to conclude that conciousness is an emergent property of the physical brain.

 

[durangodawood]

Not so, the definition of emergent properties: the definition of emergent property does not state that the phenomena can not be explained, just that it arise from one or more lesser or substrate parts.

As it is, all emergent properties must have an explanation, many we understand but not all yet. However they can not arise by magic, they must arise in an explainable way or it breaks the rules of physics and the physical world we live in.

So an emergent property arising out of another emergent property, while not out of the question, still needs to be and should be explainable.
Spiritual consciousness may require something that does not arise from anything in the physical world but is instead provided by God.
Until the 1st layer in your theory, consciousness, is explained, it is speculating as to where spiritual consciousness comes from though the bible would suggest its from God.

Speed is an emergent quality of a motorbike but its best displayed when a human is also added to the bike in the form of a rider, or means of control.

This is a pretty deep concept we're discussion. To do it properly we need to be working more with the encyclopedia explanation than the dictionary definition.

Speed is not an emergent property of the motorbike. Time, space, and motion (speed) were all properties that preceeded the motorbike.

Contrast 'speed' with something like sexual reproduction. Now thats a new property with no precedent in the material world prior to the emergence of biological systems.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

again, you are assuming nothing at all exists outside of the physical reality we can perceive with our senses or instruments. The whole point about a religious faith is that you accept that there are things beyond the physical universe that we can never directly sense or build instruments for but that may nevertheless, be able to influence this world.

Not at all - there could be any amount of stuff existing outside our physical reality (in fact the multiverse theories effectively say just that). The point is that we know very precisely what interacts with the physical bits and pieces that make up our brains and bodies (because we have done literally billions of experiments on those bits & pieces), so we know that whatever other stuff is out there, it doesn't interact significantly with the physical bits & pieces of our everyday experience.

Here is a link to a video that explains this better than I can (skip to 33 mins for the relevant part, although the whole thing is worth watching):

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... your position is based on your view that there is no supernatural/spiritual realm, dimension, plane whatever.

No, you misunderstand; I have no idea whether there are any supernatural/spiritual realms, dimensions, or planes. But I know of no good reason to think there are, no evidence to suggest they exist, and there is good reason to think that if other 'realms' do exist, they do not interact significantly with our reality (or we would have noticed any such interaction).

There are philosophical questions about how real something can be if it doesn't interact with our universe, and even differing opinions on whether any world/universe/reality one can imagine is actually real in some sense (i.e. not just as an idea). These questions are coming to the fore as a result of the predictions of various forms of multiverse in physics; but if they don't interact with our reality, any reality they can be said to have will be a different reality from ours - as far as we're concerned they may as well not exist.

I understand you're committed to a belief that is different, but it seems to me that it is unsupported by, and indeed contradicted by, the best experiential & empirical knowledge we have of the world.

 

[Sorn]

It is not necessary to reject the supernatural in order to conclude that conciousness is an emergent property of the physical brain.

Agreed, but until the emergent property of consciousness is explained by science it may be that there is more involved than just the physical brain and its properties.

 

[Sorn]

Contrast 'speed' with something like sexual reproduction. Now thats a new property with no precedent in the material world prior to the emergence of biological systems.

I would say that speed (ie the ability of the motorbike to move rapidly) is an emergent property of a motorbike, but in any case even if it is not and we go by your example, sexual reproduction and the mating rituals of birds/animals are still explainable, if not by the simple properties of carbon and oxygen then by the properties of all the layers that make up an animal and its ecosystem and environment.

Every step in complexity allows something more to emerge but can still be fully understood from what is there before it.

Take for example the computer you are reading this on, and the internet etc, its all based on 1 and 0, very simple but it allows mind boggling complexity and variety in functionality. Yet it is all FULLY explainable, from computing 101 to phd's in chip design and expertise in algorithm design and connectivity protocols etc, it is all fully explainable, even if no one individual understand it all.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I see no problem in principle with an emergent property (or maybe "emergent system" is the better term) arising from a previous one.

Yes, this is exactly what can be seen in Conway's Game of Life - the interacting patterns that move across the grid are an emergent property of the grid and its rules, but the patterns themselves can be organised to produce another level of emergent behaviour - emulating Game of Life itself, for example:

Or emulating a Universal Turing Machine (a computer), which can itself run programs to generate more levels of emergent properties and behaviours:

There's no theoretical limit to the number of levels of nesting of emergent properties & behaviours - for example, the quantum world gives rise to the emergent semi-classical physical world, from which chemistry is emergent, from which biology is emergent, from which high-level processes are emergent, such as ecosystems, social behaviours, self awareness, abstract thought, etc.