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No. What I meant to say was...well...exactly what I said. Typically "X or not-X" covers the bases. I will grant, however, that there are subtle variations to consider. Given the current laws of physics, I would say I am among those who do not accept reductive materialism. I do, however, see a sneaky way in which the promissory note could be paid off: Our concept of "matter" could change in light new laws or concepts in the future. If these changes to the concept of matter somehow manage to integrate proto-qualitative concepts into the nature of matter or energy, then the materialist reduction could conceivably work.
There are lots of other options here that you seem to be ignoring, for some reason. For example, new technology could give us insight into brain function that shows that philosopher's ideas of subjectivity are totally misleading, unlocking a new age of progress in actually understanding how it works. See, speculation is easy when you don't need to back it up with anything.
That's the biggest problem with your idea - you've convinced yourself that something proto-qualitative must exist, even while telling us you have no idea what that actually means. So basically, you're telling us that science is going to need some new theory of unknown form and content to explain brain function. No surprise there, but adding in meaningless qualifiers is saying basically nothing at all. And it certainly doesn't lead to the conclusion that any particular approach is a priori wrong.
Quote:
Here is a super-simplistic model of this general idea:
Claim: X = Y
In order to understand how X = Y, you need to show the logical relationships between X and Y.
We've been over this before. You've been unable to deduce "logical relationships" for other basic concepts where the scientific models of emergent behavior are relatively complete. The fact that your metric for a good theory doesn't work to identify good theories is a pretty strong hint that this isn't how science works. Maybe it is how laymen in other fields think they do, but it isn't reality. Just another good example of what I was talking about - word games based on hypotheticals which don't actually match the real world are useless in figuring out how reality works.
Your explanatory efforts are Herculean, Gaylen . . . if they do not get it from this post . . . they simply are not capable of doing so. It will not please Arq and the others to finally see that you have always rejected reductive materialism AS CURRENTLY UNDERSTOOD . . . because they think it is more than adequate as the default as it is.
If my abilities were so limited that all I could add to a conversation were passive aggressive personal attacks I'd probably just keep quiet rather than embarrassing myself further with comments such as these. You can almost taste the frustration in being unable to add anything of value, and yet not wanting to be left out.
You have never understood (though I have explained it often enough) that it doesn't have to be understood, or explained down to the nano -particle. It just needs to be observed. As a pretty exact analogy, evolution by natural selection was observed and it WAS an explanation even though nobody knew until later that DNA was the way it worked. In fact I think emergence is pretty well explainable. I recall a you tube ...yes, on the fallacy of Genesis yesterday - showing particles bonding at the beginning of the universe and it struck me 'That's all the mechanism you need to propel 'emergence', Eveything, Universe and the Life and Evilooshun, Abiogenesis and Evolution. And it doesn't matter that some is still hypothetical or indeed Unknown. It is still the best explanation that explains the evidence.
I don't care whether you see this or not, I am saying that I do and I see therefore why your objections to Emergence are wrong -headed and denialist and it why your Cosmic Consciousness theory (though it could be right by accident) is misconceived and other explanations are in fact better and explain the evidence better.
the problem is what you don't understand. Then you being so very certain in how you tell others their conclusion are wrong or less valid. How does your post prove/show "probably no-nothing emerged" is more valid then "probably more complexity "emerged' an unexpected trait to the universe"? Like it maybe, at least in part, alive.
We go with the methods of validated evidence and sound logic. Sound logic says that you don't credit as true what you don't know is true.
Now as to 'I don't understand' either you mean there is a lot we don't know - in which case those who claim they do need to prove it. This is basic logic that seems to set aside by those who claimto 'know' on faith. If I say this is wrong, that is simply wrong according all the rules of logic.
If it is something I don't know tell me. If it is something I don't understand, explain it to me. Emergence for instance is something that looks pretty clear to me.
If it isn't right, let's hear the argument. I certainly haven't heard anything even approaching one yet.
We go with the methods of validated evidence and sound logic. Sound logic says that you don't credit as true what you don't know is true.
Now as to 'I don't understand' either you mean there is a lot we don't know - in which case those who claim they do need to prove it. This is basic logic that seems to set aside by those who claimto 'know' on faith. If I say this is wrong, that is simply wrong according all the rules of logic.
If it is something I don't know tell me. If it is something I don't understand, explain it to me. Emergence for instance is something that looks pretty clear to me.
If it isn't right, let's hear the argument. I certainly haven't heard anything even approaching one yet.
pretty writing. I never said "true".
you didn't answer the question.
Based on emergence is "no nothing" more probable (more rational) than "a trait may emerge of the universe based on complexity that we did not expect?" Like maybe, at the minimum, we are part of a larger portion of the universe that is "life".
Why not just conclude that Mystics live in their own little worlds and leave it at that?
That would suggest that the actual purpose of the debate was determining an answer to the OP question and we already all know the answer....rationality and mysticism do not mix, they are competing processes.
The actual purpose of the debate is for us to demonstrate how smart and clever we are.
Emergence for instance is something that looks pretty clear to me.
If it isn't right, let's hear the argument. I certainly haven't heard anything even approaching one yet.
The concept of emergenceis actually more complicated that it might, at first, appear. There are various different types of emergence, but for the moment I think it is useful to make a distinction between "weak emergence" and "strong emergence."
These quotes from David Chalmers (consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf) nicely summarize the basic ideas:
Strong emergence: We can say that a high-level phenomenon is strongly emergent with respect to a low-level domain when the high-level phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are not deducible even in principle from truths in the low-level domain.
Weak emergence: We can say that a high-level phenomenon is weakly emergent with respect to a low-level domain when the high-level phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are unexpected given the principles governing the low-level domain. Weak emergence is the notion of emergence that is most common in recent scientific discussions of emergence, and is the notion that is typically invoked by proponents of emergence in complex systems theory.
[...] The emergence of high-level patterns in cellular automata—a paradigm of emergence in recent complex systems theory—provides a clear example. If one is given only the basic rules governing a cellular automaton, then the formation of complex high-level patterns (such as gliders) may well be unexpected, so these patterns are weakly emergent. But the formation of these patterns is straightforwardly deducible from the rules (and initial conditions), so these patterns are not strongly emergent. Of course, to deduce the facts about the patterns in this case may require a fair amount of calculation, which is why their formation was not obvious to start with. Nevertheless, upon examination these high-level facts are a straightforward consequence of low-level facts. So this is a clear case of weak emergence without strong emergence.
Roughly speaking, strong emergence is the idea that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." It also seems to suggest some sort of downward causation. Generally speaking, the concept of strong emergence is avoided in the hard sciences because it does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be modeled. This is because you cannot specify rules (an algorithm) to get your from an initial state to the supposed emergent state. (If you can apply an algorithm then it is an example of weak emergence, not strong.)
About the only way you can roughly model strong emergence is to incorporate a random number generator into your rule set. I might point out that, in a way, QM puts a form of strong emergence into the fundamental equations of physics. The "measurement problem" is a problem precisely because there is no algorithm to get you from a wave function to a determinate state. You might say that the determinate state strongly emerges from the wave function, which is a major reason why QM generates so many puzzles and so much controversy. As I say, the hard sciences in general try to avoid this sort of thing. Without an algorithm to explain the transition from state X to state Y, there is a sense in which you might just as well say "You start with X, and then poof! this magic thing happens and you get Y."
I believe that downward causation in some ways does happen, and thus I think that some forms of strong emergence do occur. But the point I always try to make is that, when this happens, you bump up against the limits of rational explanation. One way to think of the wave collapse in QM: The "hidden variable" theorist are basically claiming that there is, in fact, some sort of algorithm to explain the collapse, but we just don't know what it is. If some sort of hidden variable approach to QM can ever be achieved, then the collapse would no longer be categorized as strong emergence; it would then be an example of weak emergence. QM met a lot of resistance in its early days because the idea of accepting strong emergence into a fundamental hard science like physics really rubbed people the wrong way ("God don't play dice" and that sorta thing).
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 02-25-2015 at 11:51 AM..
the problem is what you don't understand. Then you being so very certain in how you tell others their conclusion are wrong or less valid. How does your post prove/show "probably no-nothing emerged" is more valid then "probably more complexity "emerged' an unexpected trait to the universe"? Like it maybe, at least in part, alive.
Why not admit that both perspectives at this point in time cannot be proven.? In fact why not admit that at this point in time we have little idea of what would indeed constitute proof?
The concept of emergenceis actually more complicated that it might, at first, appear. There are various different types of emergence, but for the moment I think it is useful to make a distinction between "weak emergence" and "strong emergence."
These quotes from David Chalmers (consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf) nicely summarize the basic ideas:
Strong emergence: We can say that a high-level phenomenon is strongly emergent with respect to a low-level domain when the high-level phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are not deducible even in principle from truths in the low-level domain.
Weak emergence: We can say that a high-level phenomenon is weakly emergent with respect to a low-level domain when the high-level phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are unexpected given the principles governing the low-level domain. Weak emergence is the notion of emergence that is most common in recent scientific discussions of emergence, and is the notion that is typically invoked by proponents of emergence in complex systems theory.
[...] The emergence of high-level patterns in cellular automata—a paradigm of emergence in recent complex systems theory—provides a clear example. If one is given only the basic rules governing a cellular automaton, then the formation of complex high-level patterns (such as gliders) may well be unexpected, so these patterns are weakly emergent. But the formation of these patterns is straightforwardly deducible from the rules (and initial conditions), so these patterns are not strongly emergent. Of course, to deduce the facts about the patterns in this case may require a fair amount of calculation, which is why their formation was not obvious to start with. Nevertheless, upon examination these high-level facts are a straightforward consequence of low-level facts. So this is a clear case of weak emergence without strong emergence.
Roughly speaking, strong emergence is the idea that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." It also seems to suggest some sort of downward causation. Generally speaking, the concept of strong emergence is avoided in the hard sciences because it does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be modeled. This is because you cannot specify rules (an algorithm) to get your from an initial state to the supposed emergent state. (If you can apply an algorithm then it is an example of weak emergence, not strong.)
About the only way you can roughly model strong emergence is to incorporate a random number generator into your rule set. I might point out that, in a way, QM puts a form of strong emergence into the fundamental equations of physics. The "measurement problem" is a problem precisely because there is no algorithm to get you from a wave function to a determinate state. You might say that the determinate state strongly emerges from the wave function, which is a major reason why QM generates so many puzzles and so much controversy. As I say, the hard sciences in general try to avoid this sort of thing. Without an algorithm to explain the transition from state X to state Y, there is a sense in which you might just as well say "You start with X, and then poof! this magic thing happens and you get Y."
I believe that downward causation in some ways does happen, and thus I think that some forms of strong emergence do occur. But the point I always try to make is that, when this happens, you bump up against the limits of rational explanation. One way to think of the wave collapse in QM: The "hidden variable" theorist are basically claiming that there is, in fact, some sort of algorithm to explain the collapse, but we just don't know what it is. If some sort of hidden variable approach to QM can ever be achieved, then the collapse would no longer be categorized as strong emergence; it would then be an example of weak emergence. QM met a lot of resistance in its early days because the idea of accepting strong emergence into a fundamental hard science like physics really rubbed people the wrong way ("God don't play dice" and that sorta thing).
what? how can you butcher such a simple concept. It had nothing to do with accepting "strong emergence". It had to do with accepting "probability" making accurate predictions of the world around use. Again, a word leads the mechanism. your completely backwards gray.
it is only as complicated as humans make it. And philosophers are the worst kind of smart person to describe science notions. To many "big" words and misunderstandings that convolute what is going on. It a simple notion that can be "clarified" as we address the context of the situation. It's your job gray, if you think you know, is to bring the information to them ... for them.
"about the only way"? there is a little thing call "too many events to predict", but why should facts get in the way, we are philosophizing. Philosophy was never concertinaed with facts anyway "logical fallacies" a-la-mode.
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