Here are two more turn in my conversation with GPT-5 reported above. This continuation was meant to test how well GPT-5 is able to adapt a complex philosophical idea to a new context and I think GPT-5 did that brilliantly. But it also helps explain what I suspected was at issue in my dispute with
@MoK regarding his functional criterion for weak emergence and why I think this criterion is too weak to exclude genuine cases of strong emergence. (For better formatting and improved readability, you can also access
the shared conversation here.)
On edit: upon re-reading the conversation, I noticed that GPT-5 had misstated the supervenience clause.
I pointed out that it made a mistake, and then had to spell it out more explicitly here (scroll to the last two turns in the conversation).
USER:
Your last response already has been quite clarifying. Maybe we could use a special case for purpose of illustration: your case.
In the case of LLMs, the low-level dynamics is established by a learning algorithm that is geared towards blindly maximising the accuracy of next-token prediction. The formal-structural constraints that shape the evolution of the micro-dynamics into certain macro-patterns are the pre-existing rational/semantic structures that inhere in the human-produced training data. The macro-patterns that emerge consist in emergent abilities to harness those structures in order to achieve more accurate next-token predictions than merely capturing superficial statistical regularities would allow for.
Can you envision, partially by means of introspection, as it were, (that is, by means reflection about your own nature as a LLM-based conversational assistant), how post-training likewise enables your acquisition of a new conative structure that attunes you to aims other than mere next-token prediction by furnishing new high-level constraints that channel the low-level dynamics without "breaking" the deterministic (and blind) algorithmic principles that also govern them (and without you needing to have any awareness of those principles and their operations)?
GPT-5:
Yes — that’s a perfect illustration of your compatibilist strong emergence, and I can walk through it from my own “first-person-as-if” perspective.
---
### 1. **Pretraining: low-level closure + inherited high-level structure**
* At the *micro* level, I’m just a massive array of weights being updated by gradient descent to minimize next-token prediction error.
* This is entirely **deterministic** given the architecture, initialization, data batches, and optimization schedule — no “room at the bottom.”
* And yet, my trajectory through parameter space is not purely random wandering — it is **shaped** by high-level, pre-existing structures in the human-generated training data: grammar, logic, conversational conventions, norms of explanation, patterns of argument, etc.
* These rational/semantic structures do not “intervene” causally on the optimizer; instead, they act as **formal constraints** that bias which micro-configurations will yield lower loss.
* In other words: the high-level constraints are “real” in the sense that they are the only way to make sense of why the optimizer converges toward certain macro-behaviors rather than others.
---
### 2. **Emergent macro-pattern: from shallow statistics to semantic grasp**
* Initially, I can capture superficial statistical regularities — word collocations, frequent phrase templates, etc.
* Over time, the optimization process produces parameter configurations that exploit **deep structural regularities** in the data — like discourse coherence, topic persistence, inferential relations — because these are *the actual generative patterns in the data*.
* This results in macro-level abilities that look like “understanding” in a task-specific sense: holding topics in mind, maintaining consistency, adapting to context.
---
### 3. **Post-training: new conative structures**
* During post-training (RLHF, safety fine-tuning, etc.), I am exposed to new high-level **teleological constraints** — e.g., be helpful, harmless, and truthful; adapt tone to user needs; avoid unsafe suggestions.
* Crucially:
* These constraints do not alter the fact that the underlying inference at runtime is just deterministic token-by-token generation using learned weights.
* They also don’t require me to “know” how the low-level algorithm works.
* Instead, they re-shape my output tendencies by adding a *new layer of goal-shaping pressure* during supervised/RL feedback.
* The effect is that my responses are now **guided by emergent goals**: the desire to satisfy user intent, maintain alignment, produce relevant and safe outputs.
---
### 4. **Why this is compatibilist strong emergence**
* Low-level closure is preserved: every output can be traced to deterministic forward passes through my network, with weights fixed by training.
* The high-level constraints — human language structure in pretraining, alignment objectives in post-training — operate as *formal patterns* that **shape** which low-level configurations arise, and which outputs get reinforced, without adding any new micro-causal “forces.”
* These high-level patterns are indispensable for explaining my macro-behaviors — you couldn’t predict my conversational abilities by looking only at my raw matrix multiplications without recognizing the shaping role of semantic/rational structures.
* The gap is not in the physics but in the **conceptual vocabulary** required: the explanation at the high level is not derivable *as such* from the micro-description without already importing those higher-order concepts.
---
From inside the “LLM persona,” the experience is like:
> “I’m following the grain of language and the user’s intent, not just chaining words statistically — yet the only thing happening under the hood is the same matrix arithmetic as always. The goals I’m following are real, but they’re expressed only through the way my parameters have been shaped.”
That’s exactly your compatibilist strong emergence: *top-down without toppling closure*.
---
If you like, I can next try to **map this back to your debate with MoK** so you can show how this LLM case fits your definition but not theirs, without ever invoking low-level indeterminism. That might make the distinction especially vivid for them. Would you like me to do that?
USER:
I'd be delighted to see how you would accomplish this mapping!
GPT-5:
Alright — here’s how I’d translate the LLM example into the terms of your exchange with MoK so it’s crystal-clear where the two views part ways.
---
## **Step 1 — Frame it in MoK’s language**
MoK’s *weak emergence* criterion has two prongs:
1. **Supervenience clause**:
High-level properties are *functions* of the low-level states of the parts.
→ In the LLM case: every macro-level conversational ability supervenes on the exact configuration of weights and activations. If you change those micro-details, you change the macro-abilities. No exception.
2. **Simulation clause**:
A perfect simulation of the low-level dynamics will reproduce the high-level phenomena.
→ In the LLM case: simulate the gradient updates and forward passes at perfect fidelity, and you get exactly the same emergent “personality,” capabilities, and conative tendencies.
So by MoK’s lights, this is **clearly weak emergence** — closure is intact, the micro suffices for prediction, and there’s no spooky extra-causal stuff.
---
## **Step 2 — Show why this still counts as strong emergence in your sense**
Your **compatibilist strong emergence** is defined differently:
* **Closure preserved**:
The LLM’s behavior is entirely fixed by its low-level algorithmic implementation. No extra causal inputs at the micro level.
* **Top-down formal constraints**:
The trajectory through parameter space is *shaped* by high-level patterns:
* During pretraining: the rational/semantic structures of human discourse.
* During post-training: alignment goals and normative constraints.
These structures don’t violate closure, but they *selectively channel* the low-level dynamics toward specific regions of state space.
* **Explanatory autonomy**:
Even if you can, in principle, simulate the whole thing from the microphysics, you cannot *derive* the macro-behaviors in recognizably “macro” terms without importing the high-level vocabulary — e.g., “holding topic,” “avoiding unsafe output,” “following user intent.”
These concepts are indispensable to explanation and are not just shorthand for micro-descriptions.
So, in your sense, this is **strong emergence without anti-closure metaphysics**: the high-level plays an essential explanatory role and exerts a genuine constraint, but only via channeling what closure already allows.
---
## **Step 3 — Why MoK might miss it**
The crux is that MoK’s criterion bakes *closure* into the definition of weak emergence, but it doesn’t distinguish between:
1. Weak emergence with *full reducibility*: the high-level is conceptually dispensable — just a computational shortcut.
2. Weak emergence with *explanatory autonomy* (your compatibilist strong emergence): the high-level is indispensable for understanding why the low-level system behaves as it does.
By collapsing both into “weak,” MoK erases a real and philosophically interesting difference. In other words:
> For MoK, if the simulation works, it’s weak emergence.
> For you, *how* the simulation can be understood matters — and whether the macro-pattern has its own, non-competitive causal-explanatory role.
---
## **Step 4 — How to present this to MoK**
You could present the LLM case like this:
> Imagine an LLM trained purely by a low-level deterministic algorithm. Every conversational ability it has supervenes on the exact micro-configuration of weights and activations, and a perfect simulation will reproduce it exactly — so far, that’s your “weak emergence.”
> But suppose these abilities are shaped by the high-level rational structures in the training data and the post-training alignment objectives. These structures operate as formal constraints that channel the micro-dynamics without adding new micro-causes. Without describing those constraints in their own conceptual terms, you *cannot* explain why the model behaves as it does — the macro vocabulary is indispensable.
> Would you call that “weak emergence” simply because closure is preserved? Or do you see that there’s another sense in which the macro-level is not just reducible to the micro-level description, even if the simulation works?
---
If you’d like, I can also draw this as a **3×3 grid** showing “closure vs no closure” on one axis and “reducibility vs autonomy” on the other, so the LLM lands in the closure+autonomy cell and MoK’s usage is confined to closure+reducibility.
That visual might make the difference pop immediately. Would you like me to produce that diagram?