Why conversational equations and emergence (General)

by dhw, Friday, March 28, 2014, 13:25 (3681 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: So very simply what I am saying is (trying to say): The left hand side of the equation equals the right hand side. so if: The whole is greater and does not equal the sum of the parts
Fix the equation.

dhw ... Why must you have an equation? I've tried to explain what people mean by consciousness being an emergent property. If the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, obviously the two are not equal so there can be no "equation". What does that prove?
ROMANSH: I don't have to have equations. There is no must see no equations ...
Now emergence a scientific concept ... why not an equation to try and understand it?
Yes I understand what you mean by emergence and emergent. And I gave an example when explaining synergy why I thought your definition was wrong in an absolute sense. [...] Two up quarks and a down quark give rise to a proton and lo and behold we have emergence ... the proton is greater than the three quarks.
Why equations? ... They define our axioms for conversation we can apply logical operators to the axioms. Or we can pull rabbits out of hat and claim we don't know for sure it is not really magic.
For example the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. This in a literal sense defies the first law of thermodynamics. On a day to day basis I rely heavily on this law [...] How can we check the veracity of a proposition without clearly stated axioms and accepted logic?
-Not for the first time in our discussions, I find myself getting somewhat confused. George opened the thread on "Science of Self" by drawing our attention to a website discussing the nature of the self. Ouellette wrote: "...your soul is this conscious thing that is emergent, and once all that activity that leads to the emergent phenomenon disappears, so does that, it's gone." You wrote: "I must admit I always find the word emergent a bit of a none word." I then explained what I thought the word meant and why I found it useful. You are prepared to accept its meaning as 'coming out of' but not as 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts', which runs contrary to the first law of thermodynamics. You say the correct term is 'synergic', even though "lo and behold we have emergence" with your quarks and protons, and that's not a problem. You ask me to "fix the equation", though I don't see how there can be one if the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but you say an equation might help us to understand it.-If you still think the term emergent is "a none word", and you want to use synergic, then so be it. I don't know whether consciousness and the self are indeed emergent or synergic properties, but I doubt if a discussion on the use of equations and axioms, and defiance of the first law of thermodynamics, and the difference between definitions "in an absolute sense" and definitions "in a literal sense" will help me to find out. Perhaps it would be more productive for us (and certainly less confusing for me) to return to our discussion on the nature of the self!