bahman, I cannot make sense of your arguments. Likely you can express them clearly and unambiguously in fewer than five short and simple propositions. Please do so, otherwise I shall have to give up because of what appears to be incoherence on your part. — tim wood
1) What is mind? The Inter Mind Model distinguishes between the Physical Mind and the Conscious Mind and proposes that there must be another processing stage that connects them together. This connecting and processing stage is called the Inter Mind. — SteveKlinko
2) What is conscious mind? The Conscious Mind is the final processing stage where Conscious phenomenon like the experience of the color Red happens. — SteveKlinko
3) What is subconscious mind? It is background processing in the Physical Mind, I'll let the Psychologists explain that one. — SteveKlinko
4) What is brain for? The Brain, or the Physical Mind, is the front end processing for sensory perception. — SteveKlinko
5) What do we experience? We experience our own inner Conscious phenomenon usually called the Qualia. I like to call the Light Qualia, Conscious Light, because it is more descriptive. The important distinction here is that we have never experienced Physical Light but only our internal Conscious Light. We think the Conscious Light is the Physical Light only because it is all we have ever known about Physical Light. — SteveKlinko
6) How do we act? The Conscious Mind has to have a Volitional input capability back through the Inter Mind to the Physical Mind in order for action to happen. — SteveKlinko
Absolutely - I think consciousness is an emergent property of matter. I could have used that as my example of emergence except I thought it might complicate things. Other emergent phenomena - the market, climate, ecological communities, human communities, etc., etc., etc. — T Clark
Interesting. Do you propose that there can be mind where there is no matter? That is, that mind is based in something not (in any way) matter out of which it emerges? Presumably you agree there is such a thing/phenomenon called mind. And presumably you agree it emerges. Or do you have it Athena-like coming into being (somehow) entirely complete? (Which would lead to either humans possessing a complete mind, or not any mind at all. In the latter case whatever it is still needs to be accounted for.) — tim wood
Boredom is a reminder that life has lots of inherent meanings and that the one we are currently using to frame our experience is not conductive to the development of our happiness. — Perplexed
You're right, the behavior of a gas is not emergence, it's statistical mechanics. Emergence is something different. A commonly cited example of emergence is life. It is my understanding that living matter is made up of physical matter - atoms. It is a physical phenomenon, but living matter behaves differently, according to a different set of laws, than non-living matter. If it didn't, there would be no need to make the distinction between living and non-living.
Please explain evolution using only language and principles from physics. — T Clark
To restate the above argument - There is no emergence because there is no emergence. — T Clark
Then where does consciousness/intelligence come from. — tim wood
According to you it's not emergent. I accept that. But it means that the claim of the OP is false. — tim wood
No, he semi-correlates the possibility to render a set of properties meaningful at a level of explanation with the specificities of those levels. An emergent property is emergent more because it simply could not be made sense of in the previous paradigm of explanation, as such, invisible in that paradigm, than because it is magically supervening over other properties. — Akanthinos
Do you see a problem here? And with the water. You say the whole, water, is expressed through its parts. But it isn't. Consciousness isn't "expressed" through it parts - what are the parts of consciousness? — tim wood
Maybe this. There are minimums for pretty much everything, under which the thing doesn't exist. Water can stand as the example. Water is a molecule. If you go to the level of atoms, water does not exist: there is no atom of water. The properties of water - the properties of the whole - do not exist at the level of the parts. Concrete is another example (not to be confused with cement). Sand, water, cement combined yield concrete. As parts, no concrete. Music: notes are necessary, but not sufficient. Think about it. Emergent as a term of art is problematic, but clearly subatomic particles in themselves simply do not possess the properties that aggregates of them may have. — tim wood
The state of a system is simply the set of values its variable assume. If the system has two variables -- height and gender -- then its state would be something like "190cm, male" or "170cm, female". Gender need not be a state. The same applies to consciousness. — Magnus Anderson
There is a correlation between height and gender. The taller the person, the more likely the person is a man. And vice versa. That's an example of a very simple system. You have two variables that are related to each other in a specific way. — Magnus Anderson
One of the variables is quantitative (height) the other is qualitative (gender.) So how is it possible for a quality such as male/female to arise from a quantity? — Magnus Anderson
The question is: why is it impossible for the brain to be conscious if atoms and molecules are not conscious? — Magnus Anderson
So there can be no correlation between variables unless variables are of the same type? — Magnus Anderson
Perhaps you're going about this subject in the wrong way. — Semiotic
It seems that you have problem with the word property.
— bahman
No, I don't. You do. You say that x has property p, then you say that property p is provided by y.
You "use property for a purpose." Fine. If you're going to use a word idiosyncratically, it's best if you let your readers know. But what in the world do you mean by it? — tim wood
I do note this:
That is the problem that I am arguing against. Brain cannot become conscious if atoms and molecules are not conscious. That is the main argument presented in OP:
— bahman
This is ridiculous, but at least (at best) it has the virtue of being clear. What's ridiculous about it? I'll answer that if you first defend/support the proposition. As it sits it's mere assertion without evidence, which under a well-known rule can be, and in this case should be, dismissed without evidence — tim wood
See? Here's an example of the kind of problem we're having. I understand perfectly well that usually gas in a container can exert pressure on the walls of the container, the pressure depending in part on temperature. But what you said is that "the pressure is a property of gas." It isn't. I doubt if it's even correct to say that pressure is a property of gas in a container. I don't think it's a property at all. Rather it is something that happens, depending on circumstances. — tim wood
Pardon, but "Duck" has no mind whatsoever. And it's clear that when you say, "in general," in general cannot be what you mean, because it simply isn't true, or a fact, in general. If nothing else, "Duck" makes that clear. — tim wood
And do the particles that make up concrete have the properties of concrete? — tim wood
a living human brain having the property of being conscious despite its atoms and molecules not having it, — SpacedOut
The whole can always be expressed in term of its constitute therefore there is no emergence.
To elaborate consider a system made of "n" particles in which particle "i" has a set of properties Pi={Pi1,..., Pim}, where "m" is number of properties of a particle and Pjk is the property "k" of particle "j". Any measurable property of the system is only a function of {P1,...,PM}. Therefore there is no emergence.
but this might not count for you under your ideas of mind you mentioned. — SpacedOut
The new idea would fundamentally consist of a different form/vibration of the entangled quantum wave. There are limitless variations. — Rich
There is no reason to take a dualist stance. It can be considered all the same stuff, quantum information if you will. — Rich
The only experience that I have had that is fully emergent is a new idea or epiphany. This would represent growth of the mind. — Rich
Are you certain of that? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
If your answer is yes, then that makes two certainties. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
1) What do you say that an ontological argument is? What do you say ontological means? — tim wood
2) What, exactly, does "certainty" mean in your usage? I ask because experience is of something: if the experience is certain, isn't that which is experienced also certain? Are there differing senses of the word "certain" wherein some certain things are less certain than others? — tim wood
The word "emergent" simply means "arising unexpectedly". It refers to an observation that contradicts our model of reality. It refers to an observation that is unpredictable in the sense that it cannot be predicted with our model of reality. If your model of reality says that every swan is white then a black swan would be considered emergent because your model cannot predict it. Very simple. Unfortunately, some people are confused and so they want to make everything unnecessarily complicated and that under the guise of profound complexity. — Magnus Anderson
An example of a whole emerging from particles could be continuous medium, such as a fluid, emerging from molecular interactions. But here we have two different ontologies, two different languages, two different sets of properties - one pertaining to the particulate system and the other - to the continuous one. For example, there is no such thing as "pressure" in the particulate system (but one can link pressure to molecular dynamics via a bridge law). — SophistiCat
Do you mean there can be no emergent properties out of a given system? I'm sorry if I've misunderstood, but its rather vague — SpacedOut
You're going to have to specify - a lot - as to what kind of "whole" you mean, and as well "expressed." — tim wood
For example: do you mean that any text can always be expressed in terms of the letters that constitute it? Music in notes? Sense from mere sounds? — tim wood
You might have said, "I think some wholes may be entirely expressed through their parts, but I cannot think of any. Can anyone?" — tim wood
If you think about the word "expression" you might soon enough come to think that that nothing of any kind whatsoever is "expressable" in terms of its parts. — tim wood
There is a hierarchy of levels of properties L0, L1, …, Ln, … of which at least one distinct level is associated with the subject matter of each special science, and Lj cannot be reduced to Li, for any i < j.
-Paul Humphreys, cited from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/ — Akanthinos
Yes, but can it prove its own consistency? — Posty McPostface