Why conversational equations and emergence (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 29, 2014, 13:56 (3675 days ago) @ romansh


> > >Romansh: You did not answer my point David. If we can explain a supposed emergent phenomenon is it still emergent?
> > 
> > David; I didn't realize that was your point. I don't think we can curently explain properties we call emergent. That is why we use that term. Consciousness is non-material, but arises from material matter. The same for the condition of life. It arises from biochemisty, but it is not found in the parts.
> 
> Romansh: You still did not answer my question David.
> 
> You say consciousness and life are nonmaterial. I will have to take your word for it, for the material and life/consciousness affect one another. Whether they exist in the dualistic sense the way you imply (or not) is irrelevant for me. They respond in a cause and effect way.-You have your choice in this issue, I have mine. Read Nagel, his article or the whole book:-http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 -"There are two ways of resisting this conclusion, each of which has two versions. The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, either (a) by holding that the mental can be identified with some aspect of the physical, such as patterns of behavior or patterns of neural activity, or (b) by denying that the mental is part of reality at all, being some kind of illusion (but then, illusion to whom?). The second way is to deny that the mental requires a scientific explanation through some new conception of the natural order, because either (c) we can regard it as a mere fluke or accident, an unexplained extra property of certain physical organisms ... or else (d) we can believe that it has an explanation, but one that belongs not to science but to theology, in other words that mind has been added to the physical world in the course of evolution by divine intervention.
 
"All four of these positions have their adherents. I believe the wide popularity among philosophers and scientists of (a), the outlook of psychophysical reductionism, is due not only to the great prestige of the physical sciences but to the feeling that this is the best defense against the dreaded (d), the theistic interventionist outlook. But someone who finds (a) and (b) self-evidently false and (c) completely implausible need not accept (d), because a scientific understanding of nature need not be limited to a physical theory of the objective spatio-temporal order. It makes sense to seek an expanded form of understanding that includes the mental but that is still scientific — i.e. still a theory of the immanent order of nature."-Of course, I'm with d.