/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11093030]

How is strong emergentism any different from magic? Why do people spout this nonsense whenever consciousness comes up??

[Anonymous No.11093041]

>>11093030
Because the mechanism for deduction is the mind itself.

[Anonymous No.11093112]

Emergentism is the theory that you can build a blue tower from red lego bricks.

[Anonymous No.11093114]

>>11093112
Wrong.

[Anonymous No.11093300]

>>11093030
The issue here is whether the system in question is too complex to be described by humans, i.e. it is "emergent". This would make the system as an ontological object inaccessible to us as we could never gain enough information about the system in any way to understand it. On the other hand, if we can't understand it because we do not yet have enough information about said system, then the issue is epistemological, where we do not yet have the knowledge to say anything about it.

Now it is because there is not clarification on what type of systems there actually are and could potentially exist that people spout their strong emergentist nonsense. This is especially true when we regard consciousness, or some other processes in the brain, some people just can't tell the difference between an ontologically complex and epistemologically complex system.

I have a paper on this that I might post later, it's on my PC at home so you idiots will have to wait for it

[Anonymous No.11093308]

>>11093030
it isn't.
>[strong emergence]is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing.
Source: Bedau, Mark A. (1997). Weak Emergence.Philosophical Perspectives11 (s11):375-399.

[Anonymous No.11093311]

>>11093030
>unironically believing in emergence

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8QzZKw9WHRxjR4948/the-futility-of-emergence