There is no emergence

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.

This is a tricky area, because it’s a gap in our knowledge. As a species we are largely ignorant of how exactly the brain works, it’s easy to fill in that blank with speculation
So while we could in PRINCIPLE explain qualia as a consequence of matter… it’s still not definitive that’s what’s happening in our brains.

If you can’t imagine how one might generate something akin to qualia, perhaps this thought experiment might help. Imagine a computer monitor that’s being perceived by a camera. Let’s say this camera is hooked up to an AI that plays chess but obviously does so visually, in fact it only does so visually. It can only play chess by observing and recognize the pieces and their positions as displayed on the monitor. It has to “appear” a certain way for this AI to recognize the game let alone play.

Now without changing anything about how this AI works, we can hook the input that determines what is shown on the monitor directly into the output of the camera…
We no longer need a screen nor camera… yet the AI can still play chess.

The visual perception it requires in order to recognize the game must be present, but it is rendered imperceptible to the rest of the world. All we see is the hardware clicking and clacking away, but clearly the AI is seeing a 2 dimensional image of a chess board, otherwise it couldn’t play chess.

In such a case would that perception not be a form of qualia?

If you spend a moment and consider the implications you would have to conclude that the AI is no longer sensing EM radiation but is still receiving the visuals of chess… we could add audio to it’s perception without actually vibrating the air. We now have a way to make it sense things that do not exist for anyone or anything else. It is merely interpreting electrical signals and turning them into “perception” at this point. We could make it see anything… hear anything… in fact we could categorize the signals however we like, we do not have to emulate the physical world at all. We could create sensations of novel things that are neither light, sound, taste nor anything else… we could call such things emotions… and none of it would appear as “electrical signals” to the AI… it would appear as chess or anything else we decide.

Idealism and materialism are two monist worlds view.

Materialism claims that either matter is mind (some sort of contradiction since they have different definitions) or mind is the result of matter activities. In later case, mind also experiences and effect reality (some sort of strange thing: something which is the result of matter activity experiences and affects something else which is the result of matter activity too, so matter does two things).

Idealism claims that only mind exist and matter is either mental or illusion, Qualia.

The difference between them, materialism and idealism, is that mind in one case is the product of activity of matter or is matter and in another case mind simply exists.

I have two strong arguments one in favor of idealism and one against materialism.

Yes. That is true. Materilism also suggests that mind is generated by matter or it is matter.

I believe that what we call matter is conscious things. I have an argument for that too. I however don’t know what they/things experience. A machine with an AI experience something different from simple machine. We know this through their inputs, decisions and outputs.

We’re talking about an experience that we have that we NAME. We don’t get to “define” what it is or isn’t…
We’re merely observing and attempting to understand its nature.

Thoughts, feelings, colors… these are experiences or sensations.

Call it consciousness or “mind” or qualia or what have you…

To say “Mind is not matter” is either a definition or it’s an assertion.
If it’s a definition, then it remains to be shown that what we experience qualifies by that definition.
If it’s an assertion it can and should be ignored unless sufficient reason is provided.

I have given you a method by which we can generate a sensation, an experience that is interpreted and “displayed” as something other than what it is.
This COULD account for our experience of the world as something other than chemical reactions in our brains. It’s merely a matter of abstraction… no different to turning electrical signals into images.

This experience this “image” that our “mind’s eye” is observing could be unique to us and all inclusive… it could contain feelings, sounds, thoughts, even the sensation of “observing” itself…
There is no limit to how we could abstract, categorize and display electrical signals… the only constraint would be utility.

And just to tie this back to the subject of the OP, this is all well within the realm of possibility because of the compounding effects of generating novel functionality from systematising interactions…
What I would call emergent properties.

In the example you provided, machine which plays chess, the behavior of the system can be explained in term of properties of parts otherwise one cannot design and build it.

If you’re talking about modeling a machine capable of playing chess, having an understanding of how each of the parts work would be insufficient.
You would also need to understand how the parts work and fit together as a whole…that configuration cannot be said to be a “property” of any of the parts.

Modeling a system is more than only knowing the properties of the parts. You need to know that who the system functions.

I said that the property of the system is a function of the properties of parts. Of course we know how the sum of parts work together. I didn’t said the bold part.

A ‘glider’ is an object within Conway’s Game of Life in the same way that a ‘computer’ is an object within the world: we know computers to be made up of smaller parts (whether that be chips or transistors or atoms or quarks, the point is the same), but we talk about ‘the computer’ as an object. So too, we talk about ‘the glider’, and not about the changes in a matrix of cells.

These objects and their properties are best understood without reference to their component parts.

It seems that this disagreement maps to a known division in theories of emergence, that between epistemological emergence and ontological emergence. I would say that emergence is an epistemological question, that it’s about what we can know or predict and not about what actually exists. I agree with you that “There is no [ontological] emergence”. I do think emergent properties supervene on the properties of their parts, but I don’t think there’s downward causation.

Mad Man P, I like the chess camera example for explaining qualia.

The glider is not a good example since it objectively doesn’t exist. The instrument is objective, where there might be a sort life (experience, decision and causation).

The object that we observe is the result of change in state of matter. Well if what you say is true then that is a sign of life in matter. Such a thing obviously cannot be designed.

Well, I am talking about emergence which describes a property of a system which is not describable in term of the properties of the parts. There exists a function if there is a description. So there could not be emergence if there is a always a way to describe reality. The question is how emergence is possible when you consider the fact that there should be a reason why a system should have a specific property rather than any other property.

What Machine experiences is different than what we experience. An electron inside the machine does not experience what we visually experience.