I've been trumpeting a similar view since joining these forums - but actually according to physics we can go even further.

The following statement has been proved to hold under quantum mechanics:

Any finite physical process can be simulated to arbitrary accuracy by finite means by a universal computer

The following statement is conjectured to hold for all current and future laws of physics:

Any finite system can be simulated exactly by a universal computer operating by finite means..

What this means is that our micro-physical laws have the remarkable property that they support abstractions, which are real and causal. This is why computation, language, and life are possible. It also means that human minds may be instantiated on a computer, and several other remarkable implications.

Another point that might be worth noting, is that causality does not exist at the micro-physical level. I'm not sure there is any such thing as "botton-up" causation.

Any finite physical process — tom

What is the significance of 'finite' here?

causality does not exist at the micro-physical level. — tom

Where does it start, then?

Strong emergence thus apparently amounts to an indefensible variety of ontological dualism." — Pierre-Normand

I would have thought 'the placebo effect' provides a cogent example of top-down causation.

Incidentally Michel Bitbol is a delight. I'm vastly enjoying his Pure Experience from Zen to Phenomenology.

I am not sure how a discussion about emergentism is relevant to fundamental laws of nature. As I have stated before I have no problem with a secondary (emergent) law like ‘every snowflake is 6-sided’, as a direct consequence of fundamental laws.
So, unless you are arguing that laws at the fundamental level can be explained by emergence, I refrain from commenting on Bitbol.

I am not sure how a discussion about emergentism is relevant to fundamental laws of nature. As I have stated before I have no problem with a secondary (emergent) law like ‘every snowflake is 6-sided’, as a direct consequence of fundamental laws. — Querius

If laws that govern phenomena from a variety of empirical domains (e.g. chemical reactions, natural evolution, the actions of human beings, etc.) don't reduce to the laws of physics, or to so called "fundamental" laws of nature, them there is no reason to think that they are a consequence of them. The laws of physics may explain, partially, how the higher level processes are implemented, but they leave open what the higher level laws themselves are.

The higher level laws (or systemic principles of organization) may depend on contingent facts about boundary conditions, or historically contingent facts about the evolution of those entities. The higher level entities can also be governed by general principles that are quite independent from the laws that govern their low level material constituents since those higher level entities are multiply realizable in different sorts of materials or components (e.g. the same software can run on different hardware architectures.) In that case, it's not the lower level laws that determine the higher level laws. At most, they may enable them though providing a contingent form of implementation. Enablement, though, falls short from causal determination.

I would have thought 'the placebo effect' provides a cogent example of top-down causation. — Wayfarer

I agree. Also every post on this forum is a cogent example of top-down causation. Question is, do we find such causation in inanimate nature.

I take it that you are not attempting to explain fundamental laws with emergence. As such the topic emergentism is irrelevant to our discussion.

I would have thought 'the placebo effect' provides a cogent example of top-down causation. — Wayfarer

For sure. It's Jaegwon Kim's argument that Bitbol is rehearsing here. Kim's argument also is sketched in the section Argument against non-reductive physicalism from his Wikipedia page. It this this argument from causal closure that Bitbol responds to.

I take it that you are not attempting to explain fundamental laws with emergence. As such the topic emergentism is irrelevant to our discussion. — Querius

You initial query in the first post of this thread was about "laws of nature", quite generally, and the source of their universality. What makes you think that some laws are fundamental and some aren't? It's only on the assumption of reductive physicalism, and/or some rather strong thesis of supervenience, that some laws are believed to be fundamental in the sense that they would govern everything that happens in the world.

But what distinguishes the laws of physics (or of "fundamental" physics) from other laws of natures (or from normative principles of biology, cognitive sciences or social sciences) may only be that the former focus on rather general features of material constitution while abstracting to some arbitrary degree from formal principles of organization and contingent boundary conditions.

What makes you think that some laws are fundamental and some aren't? — Pierre-Normand

Correct me if I am wrong, but does the very concept of 'emergence' not imply a lower level of (more) fundamental laws? Emergent stuff emerge from fundamental stuff, right?
Unless you are arguing that it is emergence all the way down, which seems incompatible with the concept of emergence, I do not see the relevance to a discussion about fundamental laws.

EDIT: Emergence does not explain the level on which it sits.

Also every post on this forum is a cogent example of top-down causation. Question is, do we find such causation in inanimate nature. — Querius

There are many examples in physics. George Ellis (responding to Sean Carroll) provides an example in the comment section of this post on emergence by Massimo Pigliucci:

"However this billiard ball point of view, based in Newtonian physics, is invalid once one takes quantum physics into account. A classic example is the fact that the mechanism of superconductivity cannot be derived in a purely bottom up way, as emphasized strongly by Bob Laughlin in his Nobel prize lecture, see R B Laughlin (1999): `Fractional Quantisation'. Reviews of Modern Physics 71: 863-874. The reason is that existence of the Cooper pairs necessary for superconductivity is contingent on the nature of the relevant ion lattice; they would not exist without this emergent structure, which is at a higher level of description than that of the pairs. Hence their very existence is the result of a top-down influence from this lattice structure to the level of the Cooper pairs. The concept of a given set of unchanging interacting particles is simply invalid. They only exist because of the local physical context. One can also find many examples where the essential nature of the lower level entities is altered by the local context: neutrons in a nucleus and a hydrogen atom incorporated in a water molecule are examples."

(Notice that the neutron example provided by Ellis was also given by Wayfarer recently.)

Correct me if I am wrong, but does the very concept of 'emergence' not imply a lower level of (more) fundamental laws? Emergent stuff emerge from fundamental stuff, right? — Querius

There need not be any such implication. One can argue for a notion a strong emergence in a context of explanatory pluralism without endorsing a stratified and foundational view of nature (Bitbol's paper is titled "...without Foundations". Alan C. Love also argues for a notion a emergence that doesn't rely of a stratified view of nature in his Hierarchy, causation and explanation: ubiquity, locality and pluralism.

The relevant distinction of higher/lower "levels" is local (to a specific explanatory context) and is relative rather than absolute, as is Aristotle's distinction of matter and form. Material bottom-up causal explanations appeal to features of implementation or constitution while top-down explanations appeal to features of systemic organisation. But "lower level" entities have form too, and "higher level" entities have material properties too. There need not be an ultimate level at the bottom, and strong emergence allows us to dispense with the need for one.

Unless you are arguing that it is emergence all the way down, which seems incompatible with the concept of emergence, I do not see the relevance to a discussion about fundamental laws.

Yes, in a sense, it's emergence all the way... But there need not be a bottom, fundamental, level. There need not be an ultimate formless material constituent of everything, and such a notion is dubiously coherent anyway.

EDIT: Emergence does not explain the level on which it sits. — Querius

No, of course not, and neither do explanations in terms of material constitution explain the laws and features of the constituted entities, except in he odd case where reductive explanations are available. But that is the exception rather than the rule.

Bitbol's paper is titled "...without Foundations". … There need not be an ultimate level at the bottom, and strong emergence allows us to dispense with the need for one. Yes, in a sense, it's emergence all the way... But there need not be a bottom, fundamental, level. — Pierre-Normand

Emergence from nothing it is.
There are those who demand understanding and those who do not.

Emergence from nothing it is.
There are those who demand understanding and those who do not. — Querius

This is a gross mischaracterization of the position of the nonreductivist/emergentist/pluralist. What is denied is a unique "fundamental" material explanation of "everything". The thesis of strong emergence is not a claim that there is something at the bottom that we must not seek an explanation of. On the contrary, a plurality of explanations is sought that is sensitive to the specific context of existence of the entities being inquired about. The pluralist is much more curious and investigative than the reductionist since she doesn't only look down; she also looks up and sideways.

It is not a claim that there is something at the bottom that we must not seek an explanation of. — Pierre-Normand

However, if you are correct, it is the claim that there is not necessarily something at the bottom.
Unless one argues that there is something up there and/or sideways, then what we have is 'emergence from nothing'.

Sean Carroll objects to the notion of downward causation because he doesn't understand it. He wrongly believes the possibility of downward causation to contradict the causal closure of the micro-physical domain, as if a macroscopic or systemic cause of a micro-physical event entailed a violation of the laws that govern micro-physical interactions. But downward causation doesn't have this consequence. It isn't something queer, magical, or unphysical. — Pierre-Normand

This is the same problem which I pointed to. Downward causation puts the effect prior to the cause. The atom only exists after the relationships between the parts has been established. The atom is the effect of these relationships. Therefore we must look for something other than the atom itself, as the cause of these relationships.

The problem is very evident if we refer to new relationships which come into existence, such as when human beings create synthetic chemicals. It is not the case, that the new complex object acts through downward causation, creating the new relationships necessary to bring itself into existence. It is the case that human minds determine the necessary relationships, then human beings act to bring those relationships into existence, causing the existence of the synthetic chemical.

What the proponents of downward causation seem to miss, is that there must be a cause of existence of the relationships which exist between the parts of a complex object. This cause of existence cannot be the complex object itself, because the complex object only comes into existence after the relationships. If some of these relationships are called "laws of nature", then the cause of the laws of nature is something other than the complex objects which come into existence as a result of the laws of nature.

I would have thought 'the placebo effect' provides a cogent example of top-down causation. — Wayfarer

I agree. Also every post on this forum is a cogent example of top-down causation. Question is, do we find such causation in inanimate nature. — Querius

We must be careful not to automatically assume that cases of mental causation, such as intention and free will acts, are automatically top-down causation. We do not know where the free will act derives from, but it has influence over the most minute parts of the brain and appears to be bottom-up.

This is a gross mischaracterization of the position of the non-reductivist/emergentist/pluralist. What is denied is a unique "fundamental" material explanation of "everything" — Pierre-Normand

Take as an example our theory of Life. It is a theory of replicators subject to variation and selection. The theory of life does not even mention anything physical: replicators, variation, selection, ... are all abstract!

If you look at our best theory of information, you will see that it is, at it's core, a theory of counterfactuals! And, the information is independent of the physical substrate.

In most of science, the fundamental objects that the theories deal with are abstract, be they heat engines, replicators, information, computers ...

In the long run, cosmological theories will have to take account of the existence of sentient beings, and what they choose to do.

However, if you are correct, it is the claim that there is not necessarily something at the bottom.
Unless one argues that there is something up there and/or sideways, then what we have is 'emergence from nothing'. — Querius

Reductionist and emergentist accounts of the state of affairs must be compatible. The laws of physics are always obeyed.

This is an attempt to get a coherent concept of the laws of nature. What are they? What are they made of? How do they work? — Querius

The main thing to keep in mind when pondering such questions is that physical laws are not features of the universe (nor are fermions, bosons, etc.). They are features of the conceptual apparatus we've invented to explain the universe.

The main thing to keep in mind when pondering such questions is that physical laws are not features of the universe (nor are fermions, bosons, etc.). They are features of the conceptual apparatus we've invented to explain the universe. — GE Morton

So, you think that electrons (a fermion) and photons (a boson) don't exist? Rather they are merely part of a "conceptual apparatus"?

So, you think that electrons (a fermion) and photons (a boson) don't exist? Rather they are merely part of a "conceptual apparatus"? — tom

They exist if a physical theory postulates their existence, and that theory is successful in explaining various empirical phenomena.

There are two grounds for contending that X exists: X is a subject of direct experience, or X is postulated by a successful explanatory theory. A theory is successful, of course, when it correctly predicts future experience.

There are many examples in physics. George Ellis (responding to Sean Carroll) provides an example in the comment section of this post on emergence by Massimo Pigliucci: — Pierre-Normand

What a fascinating discussion! I was most struck by the vigorous push-back from some of the commentators to Pigliucci's post. Many of the ideas he espouses seem so elementary and obvious to me that I always forget that the reductionist wing of science is as well entrenched as is it. The paper he discusses is equally as fascinating, and it jibes with so much of what I've been reading recently. I love that Pigliucci is so attentive to the fact that the reductionist program so rarely fits the science itself, being rather read-into the data from the 'outside'. It gives me hope. Thanks for the link : )

... a realist would say that a "law of nature" is a real tendency or habit that governs actual things and events, but is not reducible to them. If a law is merely a description, then there is no good reason to think that it would apply to future behavior, since different things and events are involved; yet we make successful predictions all the time, not just in science, but in everyday living. — Aletheist

An excellent argument in favor of the fundamental irreducible nature of laws, which, as far as I can see, no one has attempted to address.

"Laws of nature" don't exist. What appear to be "laws of nature" are only the regularities by which God governs creation.

"It just is" is perhaps even more mysterious than "something else made it this way", but it tries to pretend to be anti-mysterious and obvious to escape any worrysome metaphysical issues that arise when people start thinking. — darthbarracuda

This reminds me of the famous 1948 Copleston vs. Russell debate on the existence of God. At one point Russell counters Copleston's argument from contingency by saying:

I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all.

Correct me if I am wrong, but does the very concept of 'emergence' not imply a lower level of (more) fundamental laws? Emergent stuff emerge from fundamental stuff, right?
Unless you are arguing that it is emergence all the way down, which seems incompatible with the concept of emergence, I do not see the relevance to a discussion about fundamental laws. — Querius

So if more particular laws emerge from more general laws, what's illogical about extrapolating from that observable fact? If what we see is emergence, then why shouldn't we think that is all there is, rather than having to leap to belief in something mysterious, transcendent or supernatural?

All that is required then is a proper understanding of emergence itself. And your claim - the usual reductionist one which makes emergence some kind of elaborate linguistic illusion - is not a proper model of emergence.

Emergence - as it is understood by hierarchy theorists, Peirceans, and others who take it seriously - is a holistic or cybernetic deal. The whole shapes the parts that constructs the whole. So what is "fundamental" is hierarchical development itself. Existence begins not with nothing but instead an "everythingness" - a "state" of unbounded potential. And then limitations develop to produce definite somethingness.

As I say, this is simply a fact when it comes to accounting for the "higher level laws". It is what we mean by them being emergent. Complexity and particularity arises as the general (some generalised set of freedoms) becomes more constrained in specific ways. History locks in its own future by removing certain possibilities as things that could actually happen. And the future is then woven from what was thus left open as a possibility.

So we know this holistic understanding of emergence is right just from looking at the world and listening to how physics actually describes it. For that reason, it is more logical to expect that emergence of this kind can explain it all ... or at least get as near as we are ever going to get to answering that ultimate question of "why anything?".

But instead you have fallen into the usual trap of expecting reality to bottom-out in some fundamental atomistic stuff. And in the 1880s, most physicists would have agreed with you, feeling that the great success of classical mechanics and atomistic metaphysics had basically put an end to physics - leaving it "an exhausted mine". Yet then guess what happened next.

Of course it is just as bad to make the other monistic claim - that everything is instead top-down. That just winds up in mysticism.

If we want to talk about real emergence, it is irreducibly triadic (because everything must emerge - the forms, the materials, and the dynamical balance of these two which is then the substantial actuality).

So you are not even dealing with the actual argument of a proper holist yet. You are just thinking in terms of the reductionism that wants to neuter emergence by treating it as "mere appearance". Or in the slightly more sophisticated defensive position of "supervenience", one shrugs one shoulders and says even if all this top-down stuff is true, it can't change anything important down here at the level of concrete atomistic particulars.

But unfortunately for supervenience, there are no concrete particulars except to the degree that top-down constraints have shaped them.

One can imagine taking an instantaneous snapshot of some material system and transporting its information to make a perfect clone ... that would then roll on as if nothing had happened. Beam me up Scotty! Dissolve my atoms in one place, produce a replica in another. Hey presto.

But science fiction is science fiction. Real science knows it has a fundamental observer problem. The acts of measurement needed to animate the mathematical equations are not reducible to the formalisms of theories. And this is going to catch you out any time you start talking about the big questions of existence.

So supervenient emergence sounds good - if you don't understand the basic problem of observerless physics.

It is something that does catch out everyone. Tom is another example in that he repeats the same error at the level of the information. He believes in observerless computation. And so he has no problem with a scifi story of human minds being downloaded. Or existence itself being a grand computation (finitude being something that can be taken formally for granted and not instead a fundamental problem in being an informal issue of deciding when an act of measurement is "sufficient to purpose").

Anyway, the point is that to dismiss a metaphysics of emergence, one first has to learn quite a lot about what that position entails. Reductionists have conjured up their own strawman versions which they can erect at the boundaries of their domain and say "see we understand, and it doesn't change anything". To people who actually study emergence, you can see why the constant waving of the limp effigy of supervenience or epiphenomenalism is rather annoying. :)

And Peirce called our existing universe God's argument, a symbol whose object is Himself and whose interpretant consists of the living realities that it is constantly working out as its conclusions. — aletheist

Forgive me, but I can't take any argument for a divine creating intelligence seriously. There is just nothing about this actual observable world which suggests that minds exist outside a state of semiotic complexity. So I am happy to reduce existence to that abstraction - the notion that the universe itself arises as a kind of mindful, self-organising state in being pan-semiotic. And if you want to say that is what theists might really mean by "god", then fine. But once you start attributing free choice to an immaterial creator or material being, that's another kettle of fish. It goes against the whole point of even in believing the sign relation to be the fundamental seed of existence.

Theism (of the first cause type) is simply contradictory of Peicean semiosis ... even if Peirce himself made some weak arguments for the difficulty in resisting such theism in the end.

And as to what Peirce really thought about maths, its not something I've really looked into, but the commentary suggests he vacillated between constructivism and Platonism - like all philosophy of maths does.

https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/file/index/docid/53339/filename/ijn_00000208_00.txt

But my own argument here is that his oscillation between these two poles doesn't have to mean he was simply confused or inconsistent. Instead, I have argued that this standard dilemma is to be expected because the actuality is in fact that both poles are correct in defining the dichotomistic limits of (mathematical) being. There is both contingency and necessity in play - with actuality being the effective balance.

So at the worst, it is a "good thing" that Peirce didn't just lump for one metaphysical extreme over the other. To reduce to some monism would be contradictory of his own holistic triadicism.

Thus yes, every mathematician in history might have added up two plus two incorrectly. And yet also the mathematics of symmetry could be maths that has a Platonic strength that even "God" could not question.

(As further clarification, the maths of symmetry I hold as the highest form of maths because it is the pure science of constraints. Arithmetic is clearly just the science of constructive acts. That is why arithmeticians do end up making lumpen statements like "God created the integers". If your mathematical metaphysics has to start with concrete atomistic construction, then like all reductionist, you end up with this kind of hand-waving towards foundations as brute facts. Arithmetic's lack of holism is why division is such a problematic operation of course. But I digress even further...)

Existence begins not with nothing but instead an "everythingness" - a "state" of unbounded potential. And then limitations develop to produce definite somethingness. ...
Complexity and particularity arises as the general … becomes more constrained in specific ways. History locks in its own future by removing certain possibilities as things that could actually happen. And the future is then woven from what was thus left open as a possibility. — Apokrisis

This narrative seems akin to Dawkin’s Weasel program. Also here we have ‘unbounded potential’ at the start: 'WDLTMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P'. And next ‘limitations develop to produce definite somethingness’. And indeed ‘complexity and particularity arises as the general becomes more constrained in specific ways’. And yes also ‘history locks in its own future by removing certain possibilities as things that could actually happen.’ And at generation 43 ‘METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL’ emerges.

The two stories are a perfect fit.

The problem for Dawkins is that he has to explain the existence of well-crafted boundaries (fitness landscape) which produce the target sentence. IOWs where did that fitness landscape come from? Such a landscape potentially exists for any phrase whatsoever, and not just for METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm could therefore have evolved in any direction, and the only reason it evolved to METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL is that he carefully selected the fitness landscape to give the desired result. Dawkins therefore got rid of Shakespeare as the author of METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL, only to reintroduce him as the (co)author of the fitness landscape that facilitates the evolution of METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL.

The same problem for strong emergentism: it has to explain the existence of well-crafted limitations which produce order. Strong emergentism gets rid of order by natural laws, only to reintroduce order as following from ‘limitations’. It’s the same magician’s trick. Dawkins hides Shakespeare in the landscape and the emergentist hides the ordering principle in ‘limitations’.