Mental phenomena aside, one of the keys to understanding the epistemic frame of reference that we try to take when labelling emergent phenomena is the scale of time and space involved. For instance, the duration of the phenomena (and the sensory recording required to perceive it) can easily constrain whether and to what extent it is observable in the first place; fast phenomena are hard to work with, and slow phenomena even more so. Furthermore, by arbitrarily defining something as "emergent" because it is self-sustaining or long-lasting, we're simply brushing aside potentially immeasurable complexity that occurs on time scales too quick or slow for us to notice or care about.

Spatial scale causes similar problems: Browning motion might be an emergent rule or heuristic that we can derive by looking at a system at the molecular scale, but zooming out we might be able to instead derive something like the ideal-gas law (the fact that pressure and temperature tends to average out when a gas contained).

... One molecule of hydrogen doesn't do much when it is alone. A few million hydrogen molecules don't do much either... But if we get like... an octo-dectillion of them... all together within a certain radius, their sheer cumulative gravitational pulls will cause them to begin clustering at their centre of mass...Wait long enough, and once they get close enough together, they start heating up, until eventually the heat and pressure is so great that they start fusing into heavier atoms, while releasing tons of photons/radiation.

If we keep adding more mass, gravity keeps rising, and we eventually get a black hole... (I wonder what happens if we over-feed a black hole...)

It would be very hard, if only given the details of how a single atom of hydrogen behaves, to deduce what would happen if you get enough of them together (stars or black-holes). Unless we're capable of making detections/sensory observations over the scales required to observe these phenomenon, we could likely never have anticipated them. Although vast time and scale changes are not required for emergent phenomenon to exist (certain complex systems are especially good at giving rise to emergence, where others take eons), the human scale of time and space is one of the primary factors that boot-straps our ability to make observations (and therefore boot-straps our ability to make inferences about the emergent phenomenon we are confronted with).

In other words, pressure and temperature are either irrelevant inconsistent, or inaccessible if you're a quark or a solar system. The way/length that the observation is carried out inexorably shapes and constrains how we then define and interact with it.

So at what epistemic level is a non-viewer based emergent event happening. You keep giving me the human picture of how emergence looks. The viewer is baked in. Next it's going to be shoehorned in by some generic level of "forces" but what does that even mean without the epistemic viewer? Then people will make the odd epistemic imaginative leap to pretend they are the first person view of a localized physical event that combines forces and matter. Nope. — schopenhauer1

Isn't it just that as your perspective changes, the rules change for the stuff you're looking at?

If there is no view from nowhere, then "what" is happening? Can one speak of this? — schopenhauer1

If there is no view from nowhere, there are views from somewhere.

The cogito is happening: I think thus am, and the world appears to be as well; as well as its phenomenological reduction: our subjective experience at (as much as "of") the world is happening. We are part of the world, historical like it, physical like it.

From this it follows quite a few things, including that science is happening, as a human effort to make sense of our subjective experience at the world.

Science that can study, document, test and try and understand emergence.

Make sense?

There are two choices here 1) I know that x, 2) We know that x. — magritte

2 is just 1 multiplied by 2.

Make sense? — Olivier5

Nope. I think we are so used to having a view of emergence that we don't know that is epistemic, not metaphysically happening. Emergence has a view from one thing to another. I'll call it a an epistemic leap. In fact, I don't even know if there was a view to start from that leaps, so perhaps nothing is leaping anywhere.

2 is just 1 multiplied by 2. — Olivier5

1 is not only subjective and private but (in that special sense only) also possibly absolute, unquestionable, and irrefutable. 2 Public knowledge, like all scientific facts, changes or evolves over time. 1 I am hungry is an absolute fact because I say so. 2 Rome is the greatest Western empire. This is an expired fact.

If we're talking emergence, then is that private, scientific, or both? Scientific emergence is already a puzzle but at least it has some history.

Emergence has a view from one thing to another. I'll call it a an epistemic leap. In fact, I don't even know if there was a view to start from that leaps, so perhaps nothing is leaping anywhere. — schopenhauer1

Is this another version of "if a tree falls and no one sees it fall, did it really fall?"

So some facts are agreed by many. But if there was no private experience of facts, no public fact would exist.

So some facts are agreed by many. But if there was no private experience of facts, no public fact would exist. — Olivier5

You're making a good point. I'm missing at least a third kind of knowledge. If I am hungry is subjective and private to me, then we are hungry is still not a scientific fact but is dependent on each of many people asked. This is an example of facts dependent on individuals, one of many kinds of relativism. Other examples are all around, it is raining, it is hot, my pocket is empty, the sky is red and purple.

Scientific laws and facts are often thought as being universal, as being everywhere and nowhere. That's just a conceptual oversight of something Newton understood which is that there is always an implied and unavoidable origin in space and time to every law and observation. That origin is not absolutely fixed within the absolute 'I' (God is the only other absolute) but is 'arbitrary' in the sense that any imaginary daemon may place it anywhere in the universe and the laws will still be correctly applicable (not 'true'). For this to so the universe must be uniform at sufficiently (whatever that means) large scales, and this is axiomatically assumed. Newton didn't know about black holes.

Even scientific observations are made by someone, and thus the whole of science is based on subjective experience.

Not someone but something. Observations can be repeated or measured for public scrutiny or it is not science.

That is indeed a key point to differentiate science from other forms of knowledge. However, note that the replications and verifications are still done by human beings. Therefore science is entirely based on subjective experience.

Ultimately, yes.

Right, so one cannot logically say: "subjective experience means nothing, only science does", because science is an effort to firm up and generalize subjective experience.

Is this another version of "if a tree falls and no one sees it fall, did it really fall?" — Olivier5

As telated to specifically emergence question.

Why treat emergence as something special, different from a tree falling in the forest? Are you making some assumption about emergence here, that would require this question to be asked in the case of emergence but not for a tree falling in the forest?

Are you making some assumption about emergence here, that would require this question to be asked in the case of emergence but not for a tree falling in the forest? — Olivier5

No its all intertwined. We can view emergent events. But at what level do emergent events occur? It's like matter and forces are given extra layers of epistemic value that are not there. You are going to constantly either give me the third person or first person (as imagined by the object) account, but do you see how that's not right?

It's like matter and forces are given extra layers of epistemic value that are not there. — schopenhauer1

What is an "extra" layer of epistemic value, may I ask???? Something you haven't yet read about in a book? Something non-canonical? And how can you possibly check if some "layers of epistemic value" are "there" or "not there"??? What are the criteria for the existence of layers of epistemic value?

In other words, could you clarify your perspective? Seem you are making many assumptions here that you are not aware of, assumptions that you are not prepared to challenge or even explore, and as a result you can't arrive at a clear question.

In other words, could you clarify your perspective? Seem you are making many assumptions here that you are not aware of, assumptions that you are not prepared to challenge or even explore, and as a result you can't arrive at a clear question. — Olivier5

It's to do with the view from nowhere and everywhere. What event is localizing at the level of objects? And I said:

The viewer is baked in. Next it's going to be shoehorned in by some generic level of "forces" but what does that even mean without the epistemic viewer? Then people will make the odd epistemic imaginative leap to pretend they are the first person view of a localized physical event that combines forces and matter. Nope. — schopenhauer1

It's to do with the view from nowhere and everywhere. — schopenhauer1

You are asking the wrong guy. The view from nowhere and everywhere is the view of God, and I am an atheist.

You are asking the wrong guy. The view from nowhere and everywhere is the view of God, and I am an atheist. — Olivier5

So was Schopenhauer.

It doesn't have to do with God as a necessity. So where do events localize?

So where do events localize? — schopenhauer1

I am going to try and interpret this in my own language, if you don't mind. Correct me if I am wrong. The question would translate in my language as: is scale only in the eye of the beholder, an arbitrary choice of the viewer, or are there events (e.g. related to causality) that objectively happen at a certain scale and not below or above that scale?

To precise even further: are the laws of nature -- as seen or even designed by a hypothetical all-knowing god, not the laws of nature as we feeble humans apprehend them but the noumenal laws, if they exist -- the same at all scales, or are there certain noumenal laws, certain objective forms of causality that only crank up and become applicable at certain scales, and not below?

Did I understand the question?

I am going to try and interpret this in my own language, if you don't mind. Correct me if I am wrong. The question would translate in my language as: is scale only in the eye of the beholder, an arbitrary choice of the viewer, or are there events (e.g. related to causality) that objectively happen at a certain scale and not below or above that scale? — Olivier5

Did I understand the question? — Olivier5

Yes, that above paragraph very much so..

To precise even further: are the laws of nature -- as seen or even designed by a hypothetical all-knowing god, not the laws of nature as we feeble humans apprehend them but the noumenal laws, if they exist -- the same at all scales, or are there certain laws, certain forms of causality that only crank up and become applicable at certain scales, and not below? — Olivier5

This actually, has a few assumptions baked into it, leading to certain kind of answers, so I'd rather focus on paragraph one.

This actually, has a few assumptions baked into it, leading to certain kind of answers, so I'd rather focus on paragraph one. — schopenhauer1

You need language that is as objective as possible, apparently, and to give it to you, I need tools to spot and guard against my natural subjectivity. I need these assumptions explicitly laid out, to flag "the view from nowhere and everywhere", which is not my usual frame of reference. I must remind myself that you are not asking for my point of view, my view from somewhere, but for a theoretical god's view on the laws of nature.

So unless you withdraw your "view from nowhere" request, you are forcing me to use those assumptions. And therefore they must stay.

This being clarified, the first paragraph makes for more natural, less kantian language:

Is scale only in the eye of the beholder, an arbitrary choice of the viewer, or are there events (e.g. related to causality) that objectively happen at a certain scale and not below or above that scale? — Olivier5

Can we test the question on a few examples? E.g.:

1. An atom decays and emits radioactivity.

2. A chaperone protein corrects the folding of another protein.

3. A tiger in a zoo kills a keeper.

4. Biden was just named the winner of Pennsylvania, and
president elect.

Is that an acceptable way to go?

Is that an acceptable way to go? — Olivier5

We can use those examples. I'd like to explore the ideas of scale and localized events as they pertain to those phenomena.

Alright. I'll take the first one.

1. An atom decays and emits radioactivity.

At what scale is this event happening? Assuming that the laws of nature are local, it starts at the atomic scale. But of course, it can set in motion other events, such as radioactivity. So it depends where the atom is located. Assuming the decaying atom is located on earth allows for a few interesting possibilities:

1.a At worse, at the heart of an atomic bomb it could create a chain reaction and kill millions.

1.b Biologically, it could hit some DNA in a living organism and induce a mutation. Or hit a protein and give it a suboptimal, innactive or even toxic steric geometry, or breaks it in toxic oligomers (bits and pieces of broken proteins, see example 2).

1.c The radioactivity could get lost in the cosmic noise, escape earth and get absorbed in a gas cloud around Betelgeuse or something.

1.d it could just get absorbed by a nearby atom, changing almost nothing (remain just an atomic event).

As you can see from this example, a lot of different scales could be affected. So it is possible for an atomic-level event happening on earth to kill a bacteria for instance, by breaking a key part of its DNA (assuming the bacteria won't repair the DNA, which is a big "if"). Or to destroy an entire city. Or to land on Betelgeuse... It is even theoretically possible that this radioactivity event on earth creates a mutation on another planet, around Betelgeuse or elsewhere. Highly unlikely of course, but conceivable.

You want to discuss this case, or shall we deal with 2?

Assuming that the laws of nature are local, — Olivier5

I guess then, let's start there. What does this really mean?

It rules out action at a distance.

It rules out action at a distance. — Olivier5

Ah so as suspected, the perspective of the object is being taken in some third person or first person form. But yet if it's not that, what?

I guess nothing ever happens in the view from nowhere, then.