Science of Self (Humans)

by romansh , Sunday, March 09, 2014, 16:55 (3910 days ago) @ dhw

We have in the past, I think, all accepted Ouellette's definition of "emergence" as "a system in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
While this is a common "acceptance" of the definition of emergence - it is really more akin to synergism (antagonism is the antonym).-If I have a 10% solution of reagent A that extracts 50% of a metal and a 20% solution of reagent B that also extracts 50% of that metal, and if make a solution of 10% A and 20% B, and say I get a 99% extraction of the metal then I can say I have synergism. (If there was no synergism I would have expected 75% extraction). -Were any laws broken? Does the second law of thermodynamics still hold? Did I get something for nothing? Plainly not, I would argue. What happened was I errected a model, and when the system deviates positively from that model I give it a special name ... synergism or perhaps emergence.-> I am almost certain, Romansh, that it was you who pointed out to us a long time ago ... as Hood does here ... that "illusory" does not mean something does not exist. It means that something is not what it seems. This is a very important distinction. 
Agree completely.-> I would argue that the self does exist, and that everyone has the ability to take his or her own decisions in certain contexts ... if we make that a defining element of "free will" ... but that neither the "self" nor "free will" are as self-contained or as free as they appear to be. 
I would say we have the ability to parse the universe into you, me and not me or you - essentially creating a model. -> The combination of brain, body, environment and experience mentioned above clearly entails factors over which we have no control, and so both our identity and our ability to take decisions are under influences we may not be aware of. Nevertheless, that particular combination is what gives each of us our uniqueness, even if we do find it impossible to separate our "selves" and our decisions from the influences that have shaped and continue to shape them.-No one is arguing against uniqueness. But I am questioning what exactly does the controlling of the bioelectrochemical reactions and the underlying fundamental physics? -In one interpretation all this bioelectrochemical/physics stuff is the thought, but compatibilists have a different definition of free will. So ultimately it is the stuff that has the free will. Libertarians (lower case l) have a more dualistic approach where the mind is somehow separate from the brain.-DHW, I can't tell which of the general positions you are proposing, but to me it seems closer to the second.