Introducing the brain;complexity seen by a computer geek II (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 13:42 (2200 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: The whole point is life is much more than the sum of its parts. It is in constant work to maintain is homeostasis (the word dhw previously thought doesn't add anything to the discussion). Homeostasis means life is more than the sum of its parts. This entry is a commentary on the previous entry.

A silly misrepresentation of my thoughts. Firstly, homeostasis does not mean that life is more than the sum of its parts. Homeostasis means the maintenance of equilibrium, and of course it is essential to all forms of life and to all econiches. My objection is solely to your constant attempts to use “balance of life” (or equilibrium or homeostasis) as some kind of justification for your illogical insistence that your God designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct, although his purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

Secondly, emergence is the theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and I am the one who has been advocating it as a possible explanation of how materialism may work: namely, that the material elements of the brain produce something that is greater than the sum of its parts: namely, the conscious self. (See my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE).