I guess nothing ever happens in the view from nowhere, then. — Olivier5
I don't know what the metaphysical implication is. The physical one is that you need a frame of reference to describe any event. This is a logical, mathematical requirement to describe any event in any language, whether that language is made of words or x, y and z coordinates and vectors.
Since your rejection of subjective points of view now extends to a rejection of logical frames of reference, no event can be described to you in a logical language.
Nothing can happen in the view from nowhere. — Olivier5
So yes, it does go back to "If a tree falls in the woods.." that makes the problem no less tricky. — schopenhauer1
But what stage is the event happening? Panpsychism and process philosophy gives a first person perspective to the object itself. There are "occasions of experience". That sounds weird, so what else is there? We can keep pretending that we are narrowing in on some specific "object in action" from the third person imaginative perspective, but that's not the case. — schopenhauer1
Why the anthropocentric perspective? When an actual tree does fall in the forest, humans may or may not notice it but the tree seems to notice, as well as many other critters. — Olivier5
Atoms react with other atoms in their vicinity. — apokrisis
will emerge to characterised the atoms as a system with generic properties like temperature and pressure. The system will be thermalised and predictable and so have what Salthe is terming cogency. — apokrisis
But even this simple statement seems so simple in human understanding and so bizarre outside of it, as an event in itself without a perspective. — schopenhauer1
Temperature and pressure are measured. They are properties of the observer. What would that be in itself? — schopenhauer1
The small scale is furiously changing, but that just blurs into a generic statistics from our point of view. Likewise the cosmic scale is making a wild change from the Big Bang to the Heat Death. But that is so large a change that is completely fills our entire possible point of view. We only sample a tiny fraction of that reality during our own cogent moment of emergent existence. — apokrisis
a higher scale of interaction emerging via an ability to ignore the physics of the internals of a lower scale of organisation. The higher scale now only sees the stable, long-run, statistical view. And that stability of view is what in fact allows there to be a new higher hierarchical scale of material organisation. — apokrisis
I'm not sure what an observer has to do with any of this. Either that set of bits is heaped or scattered around or whatever, or it's arranged as a boulder. If we're only asking because of the metaphysics -- whether we countenance the existence of the boulder, and in what way -- that doesn't look all that interesting to me, unless it's to call attention to larger system within which boulders play a part. — Srap Tasmaner
Scale: Can things have scale without a viewer? Where do objects and events obtain in space/time if there is no stage of scale? — schopenhauer1
Properties: Can things have properties without a viewer? Where do properties inhere if there is no stage of properties? — schopenhauer1
Events: Can there be events without a viewer? Without scale or properties, what kind of events can happen? — schopenhauer1
Do we call the boulder an "emergent" object? — Srap Tasmaner
I'm not sure what an observer has to do with any of this. Either that set of bits is heaped or scattered around or whatever, or it's arranged as a boulder. If we're only asking because of the metaphysics -- whether we countenance the existence of the boulder, and in what way -- that doesn't look all that interesting to me, unless it's to call attention to larger system within which boulders play a part. — Srap Tasmaner
So there is a duality to emergence here - that which is being produced as a necessity and that which is being left to the vagaries of chance. — apokrisis
And you might very well answer, in some cases at least, "It happened because nothing was stopping it." That's quite a serious shift in worldview. — Srap Tasmaner
So there are indeed two contrasting worldviews here - and one of them is still basically reductionist about its emergence. Properties pop out as some surprising collective accident instead of being a more complex negotiation between top-down contextual constraints and bottom-up degrees of freedom. — apokrisis
I think I agree with that. Emergence thinking is not a negation of bottom-up causality, it is a reminder that causality is a two way street: it can also work top-down.I found that emergence was modelling as a composite of the bottom-up and the top-down. The two levels of action have to be mutually reinforcing - each synergistically producing the other in emergent fashion - for the whole to have stably emergent existence. — apokrisis
My problem with top-down causation is that the consequence is already assumed at the top. — schopenhauer1
I think I agree with that. Emergence thinking is not a negation of bottom-up causality, it is a reminder that causality is a two way street: it can also work top-down. — Olivier5
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