There is no emergence

But interactions between the parts don’t exist until the parts are put together. And interactions between the interactions don’t exist until you have multiple, multi-part systems.

You can say that the way the parts interact is a fundamental property of the parts, but you end up saying that e.g. a molecule of clorine has properties like gas-when-isolated and solid-when-with-sodium. i.e., you end up just taking emergent properties and re-coding them as fundamental properties that aren’t expressed until you get a system of parts.

I’d argue emergence is just a useful concept for thinking about phenomena that are easier to talk about at the system level than at the parts level. It’s possible to describe traffic in terms of quarks, but it’s so cumbersome that we’re better off talking about it in terms of people and cars and traffic laws. In some sense emergent properties just don’t exist, but a description of the world that makes use of emergent phenomena will be better than a description that tries to talk only about quarks.

Of course interaction is important.

Yes, properties of parts in fact allows parts to interact with each other. No property no interaction. What I am saying is that the property of sodium clorine, solidness for example, can be expressed in term of properties parts of sodium and parts of clorine.

If you accept that you can describe traffic in terms of quarks then there is no emergence by definition. Emergence by definition is when a system is larger than sum of parts. This is the part that I have issue with since it claims that there exist not a function that relates the system to sum of parts.

I don’t think “a system larger than the sum of parts” is straightforward. If the parts have properties that can’t be predicted* and are only expressed when arranged into a system, is that system larger than it’s parts?

Take Conway’s Game of Life as an example. The parts are completely defined by a few short rules, and those rules don’t say anything about gliders or glider guns or blinkers etc. And yet we see those systems result from the simple parts, and we can say things about the larger systems that don’t reference the parts explicitly and say something interesting and different about the system, e.g. the system will move across the grid.

There’s no doubt where the behaviors come from, but at the same time those behaviors are definitely not properties of the parts (because the parts are fully and briefly defined in a few explicit rules). It’s just semantic to say that the behaviors aren’t emergent from the rules.

*“can’t be predicted” is a bit loaded and I’m not sure exactly how true it is; they weren’t predicted and seem surprising, and probably aren’t predictable without running a simulation of the system to see how it behaves.

the saying is not “larger” but “greater than the sum of its parts” no one is claiming systems can violate the first law of thermodynamics but rather that they can provide better or even unique results.

As a simple analogy imagine an automated factory line that produces cars, if you were to keep all the parts, but disconnect them from each other, they would no longer produce cars.

I would think “able to produce cars” is a tangible property we could refer to as an emergent consequence of putting them together.

However you could take the term “greater” to mean valuing the number of quarks in existence or something silly and end up with “the quarks were merely arranged differently, no new quarks were created” but that would leave you blind to the difference between a car and a pile of junk… which is why no one adopts that untenable perspective and we all agree this qualifies as “greater” than the sum of its parts

That is what emergence is about.

Particle physics is about predicting the properties of parts. The community however failed to describe reality in small scale.

All these system are predictable. That is an impression created inside the mind which gives us a sense that there is a specific things in there which are not predictable.

Could you describe the behavior of the factory in term of its parts? Sure. You can in fact describe the factory’s behavior in term of a function. What I am arguing is that function exist. This is not the case when there is an emergence.

That’s why I started by saying this comes across as confused.

You don’t seem to be working with the same definition of “emergence” as was intended.

An emergent property would be the assembly of a car… something none of the parts could manage on their own.
Presumably we agree on what happens at an automated factory and that none of the parts could assemble a car on their own, but when put together they can
You don’t seem to think that qualifies as an emergent property, yet that’s all I’ve ever understood anyone to mean by that term…

I’d be curious to hear what you think that term means if not that

I could say “being”.
I have more technical answers. But let’s see if they are needed.

What if every part in order to be a discernible thing (namely, a discernible part) needs to share a fundamental property.

Namely a response-pattern to entropy. Some property that guarantees its resistance to being annihilated.

This is the case in hadrons.

Ok and thanks.

The properties of a part can only be known when they are naked. These properties cannot change. The part however seems to have different properties, charge for example can be screened, but that is only an effect due to existence of other things, virtual particles for example.

Only irreducible thing cannot be annihilated.

Hadrons have charge and spin which are simply the sum of charge and spin of quarks within. I am not aware of another property.

Sorry for not being clear. By emergence I mean that there exist not a function which describe the behavior of new property in term of the properties of the parts.

That is not something which I call emergent.

Could you provide a hypothetical example of something which WOULD qualify as an emergent property?

People claims that consciousness is the result of matter being in specific formation. I am arguing that matter has not such a property nor consciousness can be explained as a function of properties of matter therefore consciousness is not an emergent property.

We agree that durable particles, things that come into existence without mankinds help and stay in existence for longer than a few nanoseconds, can not be split up in particles that have properites that are separate from each other(s properties).

And no thing is irreducible. But what I meant is that, to annihilate a hadron, youre going to need force. Entropy doesnt annihilate hadrons, even if it does annihilate molecules.

Well there is their mass, to begin with.
But in following of what I said here:

I refer you back to nuclear strongforce. That is what the pattern of gluon exchange that characterizes the existence of quarks amounts in.

I wish you the best in your endeavor, fellow thinker.
Good luck!

I think that a free entity is irreducible since it is uncaused cause. It is uncaused cause since it can cause uncause cause, so called free decision.

In the LHC?

ah… so that’s where you’re going.

These arguments hinge on definitions… you can define consciousness in such a way that matter BY DEFINITION cannot account for it, but vacuous tautologies are a monumental waste of time.

I assume you’re not trying to play a language game but instead you want to grapple with reality.
If so it follows you’re talking about qualia, the 1st person perception we experience and you can’t think of any way to generate that with matter… correct?

Yes. Please read my signature.

Yes. I think that Qualia is generated by mind. It is also experienced by mind. Matter, what exists in outside world, is a mix of minds and Qualia.

That may be, but if it isn’t clear what that means, then it isn’t clear what would qualify as ‘emergence’.

Note here that if the only way to ‘predict’ the outcome of an initial starting position is to iterate through the rules, that isn’t predicting, that’s just running out the game (to call that prediction is like saying that a game of football ‘predicts’ who will win by returning a winner at the end). A prediction function would be one that takes a matrix of cell values and a number of steps and spits out the end state without computing each intervening step.

One example of a prediction function is things like ‘gliders’, i.e. given a certain shape, we know that the shape will repeat in a regular way. ‘moving’ across the grid. The glider isn’t based on the rules, the prediction isn’t based on the rules, we predict the future state by appeal not to the individual cells, but by appeal to the arrangement of the cells. We observe some higher-order object in the space, and it lets us predict the future state of the game in a way that we can’t if we restrict ourselves to descriptions in terms of the parts. That seems to satisfy the proffered definition of emergence.

And I think that’s what’s happening for consciousness too. We can describe human actions in terms of atoms, and qualia in terms of neural networks, but describing it in terms of subjective experience and thought lets us make reliable predictions by appeal to higher-order objects that aren’t explicit in the ‘rules’ and aren’t well predicted without reference to those higher-order objects.

To me emergence means that there exist not a function which describe the property of the system in term of properties of parts.

There is a function when there is a set of rules which dictate the motion of a system. We might not be able to find the exact analytical function though. That is why we do simulation.

I am afraid that I don’t know what you are refereeing in here by gliders. Are you talking about motorless aircraft?

I understand the importance of the higher order functioning which is permissible only when there is consciousness. I however don’t think that consciousness is a property which is a function of properties of atoms (atoms are not conscious). There was no need for consciousness if consciousness was a function of properties of atoms since the behavior of the brain is also a function of behavior of atoms (following the same type of argument). What seems that it is done in higher order functioning is really done by atoms functioning therefore consciousness is irrelevant. If you are still not satisfied then you need to ask yourself this question that why there is a specific higher functioning rather than any other functioning when we are dealing with a situation. There must be a reason why we function in a specific way rather than any other way. There is a function when there is a reason.

I would argue this is too strong, and generally not what people are talking about when they talk about emergence. Such a system would require that the rules at the lower level be broken.

My definition would be something more like, “There exists a function which describes a system in terms of objects and their properties without reference to the system’s fundamental parts and their properties.” My definition is a much lower burden, so that may be the root of our disagreement (similar to your exchange with Mad Man P.

But let me re-raise the point I made above: by your description, I would argue that emergence requires that higher-order descriptions lead to violations of lower-rules. Do you agree?

Sorry, I was calling back to my comments about Conway’s Game of Life. Gliders are collections of grid points that are easily perceived as a cohesive higher-order object. You can describe their behavior in terms of cell matrices, but you don’t have to, and seeing it as an object lets us talk about it and predict its behavior in a way that are very difficult otherwise.

Let’s leave this as an open question for now. We all seem to have strong intuitions about consciousness, and we should avoid the temptation to reason backwards from those.

That is to me the proper definition. The existence of function comes from the fact that there is a reason that the system has specific properties rather than any other properties.

What are objects? We just have the system and its parts.

Yes.