The methods of modern research involves dissecting and focusing in on finer and finer details. We would be forever blind to these finer details if it weren’t for instruments such as the microscope and the telescope. These tools allow specialists to focus in on the parts and gain a tremendous amount of knowledge in narrow fields.
But if researchers don’t look beyond these isolated islands of existence they will settle for a fragmented view of reality. And this causes problems for building theories about development and evolution of life. Researchers begin by looking at the parts to try to understand how they “build” bodies. Viewing things from this perspective it was expected that humans would have many more genes than turned out to be the case.. This is the type of error produced by this way of thinking Initially they did not understand the way in which the organism used its genes because they approached it from the wrong direction. Genes are in reality never isolated from the context of networks, cells and organisms.
Jaap van der Wal argues that we have become accustomed to thinking the human organism is made by a process of cells multiplication. But there is another more realistic way of thinking about it. From conception to adulthood a human being has always been a complete organism with a form and function suited to its environment. A machine is assembled from parts and it can only function as intended when all the parts are in place. Organisms are not like this. Where the organism is concerned the cell or cells of which it is composed serve the whole organism throughout its existence. It is not gradually built from parts. Machines are always built from the parts to the whole but organisms are never anything but complete wholes.
It is time to start paying more attention to how the whole determines the parts within it and luckily this view is becoming more prevalent.
faded_Glory,
Or maybe you could just tell us how many cells does consciousness require?
Are you saying he is a deluded mixturist?
HMGuy,
Apologies for not picking up on this sooner and thanks for your detailed reply. I’m curious about aspects of your idea but rather than make assumptions can I just ask whether your aim is to develop the idea commercially?
If not, then I’d just say, if it works for you, and your animals thrive in it, then fine.
Well indeed. But there’s much more in his book. The first chapter covers the story of Mama but the subsequent chapters are a distillation of his life’s work. He goes on to talk about the similarity among primates in behaviour, emotions, feelings, cultural bias then moves on to fairness and free will and sentience. He takes a powerful swing at behaviorists and Skinner (of Skinner box fame) in particular.
I thought KN might like it. There’s even a bit of philosophy.
ETA he doesn’t mention Tomasello at all!
🙂 (extra points as not your first language!)
BruceS,
Supposing that biology is (weakly) emergent from biochemistry, would it follow that biology is not mechanistic even if biochemistry is?
I ask because I think that these waters get nicely muddied by taking mechanism as equivalent to reductionism, such that (weak) emergentism yields non-mechanistic explanation.
I do like your distinction between weak emergence and strong emergence, though I shall disregard it because I think it turns on the distinction between “in practice” and “in principle.”
The distinction between “in practice” and “in principle” is a difference in principle but it does not make a difference in practice.
It seems it has to have the special kind of cells that translates the immaterial into the material.
Between one and quite a bunch.
And there you see the so called science of evolution.
What’s your answer to that question, phoodoo? And how do you know?
Meanwhile, phoodoo still thinks he knows what ’emergence’ means:
No no, you have it wrong Keiths. I know what it DOESN’T mean.
No one one knows what it does mean.
phoodoo,
No surprise that you’re contradicting yourself on emergence.
But how would you answer your own question on consciousness?
Bruce,
Okay, now I see your point. I think we’re in broad agreement, except that I would prefer definitions that are insensitive to the state of our knowledge (or of our simulation technology) at any given time.
So for me the essential difference between strong and weak emergence is that strongly emergent DH phenomena aren’t simulatable in DL, even in principle, while weakly emergent phenomena are always simulatable at least in principle.
The science of evolution is not about the number of cells necessary for consciousness.
Here is the problem with materialist arguments. They claim, the supernatural is not science, because it can’t be known, whilst materialism is science, because it can.
Then when you ask them, Ok, if it can be known, explain the details. There answer is always some version of, “Well, how do you expect us to know, what’s your explanation?” Or just, “One day…”
Stop claiming your position is science.
OK, but two concerns:
First, is that approach consistent with your ideas on entropy? I understand that you think entropy is determined by the knowledge state and capabilities of the entity/scientific community determining entropy.
Second, is using coarse graining to generate new concepts, representations, and algorithms which allow much more efficient simulation of useful and observable macrostates. For example, population genetics simulations versus simulating the behavior of quarks/electrons or even biochemical molecules. Even if the latter microstate simulations were computationally tractable (with quantum computers?), the outputs would be of little value without the concepts of evolution.
There is a discussion of this idea involving Dennett and Rosenberg in one of the naturalism forum YT videos. I can dig up the link if you want it. I have not checked, but I think you can find the link in the OP that Phoodoo did giving his or her opinion on the outputs of that meeting.
No.
I don’t think the concepts of emergence and mechanism are dependent. In fact, I am not even sure what “mechanistic” means or how it would apply to a whole domain of science.
For me, mechanisms are models which are successfully used in science. The Winning & Bechtel paper I linked and its citations give broad ideas on what types of models qualify as mechanisms in the authors’ current view.
Mechanisms often cross domains, eg psychology and neuroscience, but then both domains are needed to explain the mechanism, eg psychological models of observed behavior realized by whole body neural architectures.
Mechanisms can be used as a form of local reduction, I suppose, but only in the sense that they unify specific phenomena in two domains, not in the sense that one domain is completed reduced to the other.
On emergence: a mechanism could be weakly emergent if the mechanism involved nonlinear dynamics, nominally emergent if the dynamics were linear. There is a Bedau 2012 paper in on downward causation and emergence:
Section 8.2 defines ‘nominal emergence’.
For me, strong emergence means inconsistency with fundamental physics. Since I think consistency with fundamental physics is part of methodological naturalism, I agree with you that there is no practical difference between principle/in practice.
I take this as a consequence of the pragmatic approach which requires examination of practices of successful inquiring communities as a necessary part of understanding and defining concepts like methodological naturalism.
‘Emergence’ is a term of art. Scientists and philosophers propose conditions that such terms should meet to be useful, then stipulate definitions that they claim effectively meet those conditions, basing their justifications at least partly on successful scientific practices and outcomes.
So it is not a question of knowing what a term means, it is instead a question of assessing proposed definitions, in particular how they meet the proposed criteria, and whether those proposed criteria properly reflect the practices of successful science.
in my reply to KN, I separated nominal, weak, and strong emergence. One criterion is consistency with methodological naturalism as I defined it (nominal and weak are consistent; strong is not). The other criterion is the linearity of the dynamics: nominal is linear, weak is not.
If you look at the Bedau article I linked and its citations, you will find more nuanced approaches.
I agree that DNA is an essential part of the organism.
Genes are used in the process of controlling functions. They are not actors they are acted upon.
Cells are only synonymous with organisms in unicellular organisms or immediately after conception in multicellular organisms. But cells and organisms have this in common: they can be treated as active units whose behaviour can be studied. Genes when considered as strings of DNA do not behave in an active way.
I’m not arguing against genes having effects. I’m asking you to explain in what way they have an active role.
I’ll need more time to look at this. (I can’t access your last link either.)
I found this talk by
Stuart Glennan, “The new mechanical philosophy and Its implications for the philosophy and practice of ecology and ecological modeling”.
In the presentation a mechanism is described thus:
Do you think that is an accurate description?
I disagree that it has a meaning, other than going from something base to something more complex, in an unspecified manner.
Even just quoting from the link to a book about the topic, the first synopsis of it states : “”Emergence” is paradoxically the most important, yet least understood notion in the sciences of complexity.”
Furthermore, the fact that people use the phrase to discuss such unconnected phenomenon as ant colonies, brain functioning, and the development of a city, shows just how meaningless the word actually is.
So its not so much a term of art, as it is simply art; it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
It’s a good start. Note that, as I said in my reply to KN, the phenomenon can be in one scientific domain, like psychology, and the realizing details can be in another, like neuroscience.
But there are complications with that short definition: You have to be careful to avoid assuming mechanisms always involve parts comprising a whole and you have to be careful to be the nature of interactions: the dynamics may not be simple causal relations, for example. More details at the Bechtel paper, which I can message you a pdf of if you really want to pursue this. Fair warning: it’s technical and also assumes background knowledge.
BruceS,
In fact calling it a term of art is completely fallacious, given that a term of art must be well understood within the community in which it is associated.
As your link states quite unequivocally, it is very much not understood.
Right about being clear so that it can be well understood. Wrong if you are meaning to imply that would entail unanimity.
There can be reasoned disagreements eg on the criterion themselves and how well a proposed definition meets them, as I described. And there are such disagreements. Reasoned, respectful, transparent disagreement is essential to philosophy and science.
I happen to agree with the philosophers who say that the practices of successful scientific communities must be respected and then disagree on how well criteria do that. Other philosophers, however, give more weight to metaphysical concerns unrelated to science and then argue for that approach, according to their reasoned justifications.
But no professional philosopher or scientist relies on knee-jerk emotional responses, or on responses which do not engage with the position being responded to.
I am bowing out of this exchange.
If only Mung was around to let us know what the dictionary has to say about that… oh well 😞
👍
A term of art suggest that a term is special to a particular community and has a special meaning, usually and often different than the commonly used meaning of the word.
But that is not at all the case here. there is no special usage of the word emergence within the science community, which is well agreed and understood within the science community. That is just simply false. Using the word to emerge has no more meaning in science than it has in any other walk of life. You are trying to pretend that there is some special, added meaning, that if one were to study the topic more in depth would begin to understand this special new meaning. But that is a hoax. There is no other meaning. There is nothing to be learned.
They are saying something emerges simply because they have no idea how a chemical brain turns into a thinking, conscious being. So in order to cover for this lack of understanding, they simply say it emerges.
What you are doing, by calling it a term of art, is pretending that there are other meanings, and thus trying to validate this insertion of the word.
Its a false premise. Emergence has no special, well defined meaning in science.
Its sort of like when people claim the word “theory” has special meaning in science. Ohhh…theory!, when it used by “scientists” they mean something completely different then when your uncle uses the word theory. If you were scientist you would understand this…
Nonsense.
For present purposes I’m happy enough with using the term “strong emergence” to indicate a violation of at least one theory of fundamental physics, and I quite agree that naturalists should not countenance the introduction of entities that violate at least one such theory of fundamental physics. (Defining “fundamental physics” as Ladyman and Ross do — since it is extremely likely that all current theories of fundamental physics are false, and at least one of them must be, we should define “fundamental physics” at a completely abstract level.)
I’m curious what you would call a kind of emergence that reveals a fundamental property of matter that is otherwise not addressed.
To me, it seems obvious that matter can be self aware, but that isn’t a property of matter that is studied in physics.
I am not surprised you think the concept of a scientific theory is nonsense, you dislike facts.
Do you mean scientific theory like scientific theory or do you mean scientific theory?
Ha.
So if a naturalist uses the term “strong emergence” to describe a phenomenon, would you consider that a disingenuous term? A ruse even?
In other words, it would make sense for someone who believes in supernatural forces to use that term, because it is a supernatural concept. But if a naturalist uses it, it would appear they are trying to hide their acceptance of supernatural possibilities.
Furthermore, isn’t the acceptance of a strong emergence actual evidence for the supernatural?
You might try to understand what is being said BEFORE dismissing it as nonsense.
In science, a theory is a proposed explanation for a fairly large but related body of observations. The rules are that it must explain ALL observations (not ignore inconvenient ones), and not be contradicted by ANY observations, and imply a body of tests any one of which can refute the proposed explanation. In science, a theory can be proved wrong, but never proved completely right.
The “your uncle” idea of a “theory” is indistinguishable from a hunch, a guess, or an otherwise uninformed opinion.
A scientific theory can never become a fact, because explanations of facts are not themselves facts, they are explanations. They are different categories. But the “your uncle” concept regards a theory as at best an imperfect or debatable fact. He sees a hierarchy of certainty stepping down from fact to theory to hypothesis to conjecture to guess.
phoodoo’s MO:
1. Misunderstand a term or concept.
2. Get angry at the folks who do understand it.
3. Accuse them of perpetrating a scam.
4. Refuse to learn the concept.
5. Get angrier.
keiths:
Bruce:
Yes. See my bracketed insertion above. I’m talking about the definitions of strong and weak emergence specifically, not of definitions in general.
Not sure what you’re asking here.
The theory of evolution fits virtually none of those conditions.
A specific example from Dennett: relative fitness is a parameter of population genetics. But it has no real effect on individual animal biography.
Could relative fitness even be recognized from a microstate simulation of the molecules or quantum entities covering the population and its niche if we did not already use it in evolutionary biology?
Nonetheless, relative fitness seems to be real in the sense that it is indispensable to the science of population genetics (I think). Assuming that it is, is there any reason to think there is in principle derivation/reduction of it from microstate simulation or closed-form analysis?
We’ve had a similar exchange before on Laplace’s demon and entropy. Assuming the demon had no human concepts or special access to the human conceptual system, would the demon in its calculations of microstate dynamics ever invent concepts like entropy or free energy? If not, does that mean these concepts are not objectively real? Are they only real from a human scientists perspective, or is there an objectively real pattern in the macrostates from any perspective.
Similar but simplified issue for gliders et al in Game of Life.
My NRP worldview says yes, they are real, at least when they are part of a the theories of a successful scientific community. But it’s still something I am researching. So I am just offering it as a topic of interest. I don’t really have much further to say unless you want my reading list.
I agree it is not studied in physics. But it is not incompatible with physics, eg it does not violate conservation of energy nor does it require laws or forces which are incompatilbe with physics. That is what is important to my definition of methodological naturalism.
I don’t think there such a thing as strong emergence — that is the emergence of novel properties or laws in scientific theories in another scientific domain like neuroscience which violate constraints of fundamental physics.
Strong emergence violates methodological naturalism as currently practiced for that reason.
Panpsychism to explain phenomenal consciousness is the hot possible example of strong emergence, getting play in the popular press . It’s a possible implication of the integrated information theory of consciousness. It is also one of the possibilities Chambers has promoted to solve his hard problem.
If there is irresistible scientific support for IIT or Chambers’ views, then something would need to be added as a new type of force in fundamental physics. Methodological naturalism would change to reflect that scientific practice and strong emergence would again not be possible.
That’s fallibilism for you.
I’m now taking the time to work through L&R in detail.
I’ve just started the chapter on Special Sciences, which gets down to the nuts and bolts on Real Patterns. I enjoy the mathematics and information theory it is getting into, but I am not sure about what I understand as the book’s support for the Semantic View of scientific theories and models, because the SV relies heavily on mathematical entities and mappings.
I am not sure because I also like the pragmatic view of scientific models which relies instead on the role of human conceptual practices to build models of many forms, often not well represented by only mathematical structures.
I think the Beni book I’ve linked might upthread might try to do a reconciliation of the two approaches to scientific models and representations.
Here is a book I have just run across that might interest you:
I’ve only read the preface, which contains this passage:
[start of quote]
“The core argument of this book is that the brain is a self organized system with preexisting connectivity and dynamics whose main job is to generate actions and to examine and predict the consequences of those actions. This view— I refer to it as the “insideout” strategy— is a departure from the dominant framework of mainstream neuroscience, which suggests that the brain’s task is to perceive and represent the world, process information, and decide how to respond to it in an “outsidein” manner. In the pages ahead, I highlight the fundamental differences between these two frameworks”
[end of quote]
(S/O to Neil on this if he is around)
I think other commentators take this approach with regard to philosophy.
Well, maybe one day we will get around to those folks who understand what strong emergence is. Bruce thinks it doesn’t exist. KN thinks its incompatible with naturalism.
Chalmers says:
and
Other academics have called it
And you think you can just google it and all problems are solved.
We are still waiting for that person who “understands it”
You are asking me to show you consciousness as if it were an external object or thing. The only way to know consciousness is from within.
One thing that we do know is that human self-consciousness is only one specific form of consciousness. If you want to get into an epistemological discussion then thinking must be your starting point. Everything subsequent to this you will have arrived at through thinking.
I think it’s fascinating the way in which animals such as these live in and express their emotions. They have a very rich life of feelings.
In that case I’ll give the paper a miss for now. I’ve already found some interesting stuff from him that’s aimed at those like myself with less technical knowledge on the subject. That’ll do me for now. I’m sure he has lots of interesting things to say about entities such as dynein and kinesin motors.
He is trying to bridge the gap between holism and reductionism which can only be a good thing.
Good example. Here are a few others that are less obviously Dennettian: think about things like currency fluctuations or waves of political unrest. Are they real?
In one clear sense, obviously: not only we can say true and false things about them, but these terms can enter into robust counterfactuals (“if OPEC stopped trading oil in US dollars, the value of the US dollar would fluctuate much more than it does”) with specific verifiability conditions. I don’t know what other sense of “real” one might need or want besides that. And yet all there is to currency fluctuations is a way of chunking together the individual acts and decisions taken by millions of individuals — it’s not like there’s what individuals decide to buy and sell and then there’s this other thing, “the economy.”
The point here is that we have no problem at all accepting weakly emergent phenomena in our vocabulary all the time, so that question cannot be “are there any weakly emergent phenomena at all?” but rather “are life and/or mind weakly emergent?”
That does seem exactly like my kind of book: it integrates a neurodynamic account (brains have endogenous dynamics that allow them to respond selectively to perturbing information) with a predictive processing approach (brains don’t passively take in what’s there anyway but actively generate top-down models of the world and only correct those models when they conflict with information that matters for accomplishing specific goals).
From the product description it sounds like it’s pitched to convey these ideas to a general audience. I’ll bear that in mind when I teach philosophy of mind next semester. Thanks!
Yeah, I don’t think that’s true at all.
Charlie,
You seem to think that if our experience of consciousness precedes our experience of matter, then matter must emerge from consciousness rather than vice-versa.
That doesn’t follow.
CharlieM,
Have you read the book?
Nope! 😉