Ontological Emergence

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Bohm2
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Ontological Emergence

Post by Bohm2 »

Is ontological emergence possible?

Ontological emergence involves causal features of a whole system that are not reducible to the properties of its parts, thus implying the failure of part/whole reductionism and of mereological supervenience for that system. There are some scientists/philosophers who hold that genuine ontological emergence cannot be ruled out and have even suggested that Quantum mechanics, in the Bell properties of entangled particles may serve a promising candidates:
The classical picture offered a compelling presumption in favour of the claim that causation is strictly bottom up-that the causal powers of whole systems reside entirely in the causal powers of parts. This thesis is central to most arguments for reductionism. It contends that all physically significant processes are due to causal powers of the smallest parts acting individually on one another. If this were right, then any emergent or systemic properties must either be powerless epiphenomena or else violate basic microphysical laws. But the way in which the classical picture breaks down undermines this connection and the reductionist argument that employs it. If microphysical systems can have properties not possessed by individual parts, then so might any system composed of such parts...

Were the physical world completely governed by local processes, the reductionist might well argue that each biological system is made up of the microphysical parts that interact, perhaps stochastically, but with things that exist in microscopic local regions; so the biological can only be epiphenomena of local microphysical processes occurring in tiny regions. Biology reduces to molecular biology, which reduces in turn to microphysics. But the Bell arguments completely overturn this conception...
For whom the Bell arguments toll
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/H/James.A.H ... s_Toll.pdf

Many others are, however, skeptical of this view arguing that emergence is a psychological concept; that is,
...it is a measure of our surprise at the consequences of low-level natural laws, not a fundamental truth of Nature in its own right.
So, for example, even non-linear dynamical systems investigated by complexity studies and chaos theory, on careful analysis display only epistemological emergence. So emergence only appears to exist either because of our cognitive limitations or due to the fact that our physics/scientific models are not yet complete:
I should emphasize that the ability, for example, to reduce chemistry to physics is an in principle reduction only. No discoveries in the field of physics will ever render chemistry (or biology, or sociology, etc.) obsolete as fields of legitimate inquiry. Even in a universe in which reductionism is absolutely true, the physical world is hugely complex, and its complexities explode out of control very quickly in a chaotic fashion without any hope of being modeled at the low levels by beings with cognitive limitations like us. It will always be astronomically easier to deal in terms of higher-level chunks of reality than in atomic terms or subatomic terms for almost all purposes. Nevertheless, in principle, if you could model reality at the low level in a reductionist's universe, that would be all you would need to derive any measurable fact about that universe. Any higher level chunking of reality is a cognitive convenience. Put differently, the universe has no need of any "high level" things or concepts as it clanks along one moment to the next. All of the explanatory heavy lifting is done at the lowest level.
Is genuine ontological emergence a possibility? Is it even possible to know the answer to this question, especially given the provisional nature of our scientific models?
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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The analyses seem pretty spot on to me.

Subtle structural changes leading to an emergence can be missed because emergences catch our attention. The complexity of relationships in biology are beyond our analytical capacities at present, with our models still relatively sketchy. Maybe they will be fleshed out by AI?
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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I have to take the skeptical view but I say that because I believe in determinism and causation. I think emergence is a "system" scale illusion in the same way that free will is an illusion of consciousness. Conscious intention should be a perfect example of what would be ontologically emergent if I understand you correctly? I think that intention only appears emergent because the quantum and even macro scale variables leading to the intention are for all practical purposes infinite. Therefore the subjective experience of consciousness is intention and free will but if all variables could be known the illusion would be exposed and we would realize we couldn't have acted any other way. This would be quite disconcerting to me if I didn't realize that because the variables are infinite and will always remain so, no one will ever know the difference and free will and intention will remain intact. Let me know if I've not understood what you mean by ontological emergence. To Greta's point, the complexity of biological systems is a representation of the infinite causal variables I was trying to get at.

-- Updated February 27th, 2017, 3:35 pm to add the following --

My answer to your last question is I don't think it is possible to know with certainty for the same reason we can never know whether our intentions were emergent or causal. I'm a determinist but I can never be 100% certain of my position.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by NickGaspar »

Bohm2 wrote: February 26th, 2017, 9:36 pm
Is ontological emergence possible?

Ontological emergence involves causal features of a whole system that are not reducible to the properties of its parts, thus implying the failure of part/whole reductionism and of mereological supervenience for that system. There are some scientists/philosophers who hold that genuine ontological emergence cannot be ruled out and have even suggested that Quantum mechanics, in the Bell properties of entangled particles may serve a promising candidates:
-its not only possible, its an observable fact of reality.
I will return for the rest of your points later, since I have already posted 3 replies and I am short of time, but before I wrap up I will share a very useful video that explains the criteria and characteristics we use in our evaluation of different types of emergence.
I think that this video can help our conversation and set us on the same page.


Strong & Weak Emergence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66p9qlpnzzY
examples of Strong emergence phenomena can be found at 6:00 time mark.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by Consul »

My basic ontological argument against ontological emergence (which was originally devised by John Heil):

Imagine a simple (noncomposite) property Z and two distinct simple (noncomposite) material objects x and y. If Z is emergent, then it isn't had by x alone or by y alone, but by x+y collectively: Z(x+y).
Where is Z? It is neither wholly in x nor wholly in y, since it would then be a non-emergent property of x alone or y alone; and it is neither partly in x nor partly in y, since it doesn't have any spatially separable parts that can be at different places (where x is and where y is). If Z is neither wholly nor partly in x, and neither wholly nor partly in y, then it is neither wholly nor partly in x+y either, which means it isn't in x+y at all, in which case Z isn't an emergent property of x+y. There is no place for Z to be as an emergent property; and if there isn't, there can be no such emergent property as Z. This example can be generalized to any number >2 of objects said to collectively have some simple emergent property, so it's a general argument against the possibility of ontologically emergent properties.

Footnote: My argument presupposes Aristotelian immanentism about properties—as opposed to Platonic transcendentalism, according to which properties instantiated by objects in space aren't themselves anywhere in space.

Consider the following figure: There are two simple things, a and b, a relation R between a and b, and two simple properties, F and G: a has/is F, and b has/is G. Now let there also be a simple emergent property H of a+b (such that H ≠ F, H ≠ G, H≠ R, H ≠ F+G, H ≠ F+G+R): Where is H, and what has H?

Image

QUOTE>
"Suppose that in a complex whole there are two properties, occurring simultaneously, which are linked by nomological necessity. Note that the principle of reducibility does not, so far, require a logical connection between these two properties. The connection between the two properties can be as opaque, conceptually speaking, as you please. However, if one of the two properties is said to be a property of the system as a whole, the principle poses a question: what exactly is it that has the property? By hypothesis, the whole simply is 'in the strict sense, a system of objects'; there is no whole 'over and above' the parts of which it is composed. So whatever nonrelational properties the whole has must consist of properties of, and relations between, the parts; there simply is nothing else of which they could consist. If a property of the whole is not logically grounded in the properties of the parts, then it is 'floating in mid-air', unattached to any real individual—but this is unintelligible."

(Hasker, William. The Emergent Self. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. p. 138)
<QUOTE
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmYou're begging the question by presupposing the ontological possibility of emergent properties, especially as it is not true that they have actually been observed.
-This can't be possible. Emergent propertiy is just a Label we use on specific type of properties that owe their manifestation to a specific observable mechanism. IT is a classification term not an ontological claim! My take on subject (and science) and yours are in different ballparks!
Its a Description. i.e. two combustible gases when combine can produce a substance with fire extinguishing capabilities. Example=water.
Nothing in the above statement introduces any ontological presupposition. It is purely a descriptive narrative.
I've been talking about nothing else but ontological emergence!

Antiemergentists happily grant that there are higher, systemic levels of representation (conception, description) and predication. What they deny is that those levels corresponds to higher levels of existence or reality where ontologically emergent attributes (properties, powers) occur.

Ontological emergentism postulates a hierarchy of different and mutually irreducible levels or layers of being.

Unfortunately, that there is more than one concept of emergence is a source of confusion and misunderstanding. For example, what Carl Gillett calls "qualitative emergence" is perfectly compatible with the rejection of (what I call) ontological emergence.

QUOTE>
"Emergence, Qualitative – A property instance F is qualitatively emergent only if it is a property of a composed individual not had by any of the constituents of this individual."

(Gillett, Carl. Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. p. 358)

"[C]onsider these three simple “rules” for future discussions about both emergence and also reduction:

First Rule: Remember that evidence for Qualitative emergence and/or scientific composition starts the fight over “emergence” and “reduction,” rather than finishing it.
Second Rule: Assume that there is no such thing as “the” concept of “emergence” or “reduction.”
Third Rule: Guard against using theoretically unarticulated assertions of “emergence” or “reduction” that are either vacuous or damaging or both."

(Gillett, Carl. Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. p. 197)
<QUOTE
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmNote that an emergent property of a whole or a system isn't any old property of it, but a novel simple, non-complex/non-structural property of it which is irreducibly different from any complex/structural property of it. An emergent property of a system (such as a molecule) depends on but isn't identical to any structural property of it.
-Sure...this is part of the definition of emergence, but why should I note that? I never claimed something different!
Good, so we're not talking past each other.
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmBy "antiemergentists" about properties I mean ontological reductionists about them; and there is nothing antiempirical about reductionism.
-My understanding is that "antiemergentists" use the inability to reduce or relate the emergent properties to their constituents parts as an argument in favor of their ideology. I didn't know that "antiemergentists" are also reductionists!!!
Sure the reductionistic approach (since I hate the arbitrary "creation " of isms as a way to make positions appear as equal ideologies) is a basic tool of science, one of many available methodologies. So it is empirical by default.
I use "(ontological) antiemergentism" and "ontological reductionism" synonymously. Another synonymous label is "(ontological) compositionalism", which refers to the same view that all higher-level (chemical, biological, psychological) entities are fundamentally composed of (and thus reducible to sums/fusions/combinations of) base-level physical entities.
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmHave the emergentists "met their burden" and demonstrated empirically that there are nonsimple objects or substances in nature which have emergent simple properties? – No, they haven't!
-The demonstration of the existence of objects and substances is a burden on those who make the claim.. Parsimony, Null Hypothesis, Burden of Proof and Default position ALL set the burden on the side MAKING the existential claim ...not on the side DESCRIBING a specific phenomenon and the Necessary and Sufficient conditions for it to "emerge"(to be observable and quantifiable).
If those objects and substances do not exist...how on earth one can ever prove a universal negative???
Anyway, the debate between emergentists and reductionists seems empirically underdetermined. But recall that I've presented an ontological a priori argument against the possibility (and thereby against the existence) of emergent properties!
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmScience, particularly microphysics deals with unobservable entities too! Nobody has ever seen a quark.
-Well you are confusing "vision"(seeing) with Observation. Quarks are indirectly obsessed.(within Handrons). The same is true for quantum fluctuations and many other phenomena in Physics.
The difference between observing or even "assuming" elementary particles and entities with Advanced Properties is that the first group do not violate our Current Established Scientific Paradigm, while the second are in direct conflict with it and with everything we can observe test and verify
Okay, "observable" can be defined more or less broadly, depending on whether we're talking about direct or indirect observability, or about observability by means of our natural senses alone or by means of our natural senses plus artificial devices such as microscopes and telescopes.
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmAnyway, even in the case of observable entities, there is always an interplay between observation and theory. Theoretical science has ontological implications and presuppositions, the critical analysis and assessment of which is the job of ontologists.
-Not really true. Theories describe observations and concepts like quarks just explain measurable data. Such theoretical constructions do not bring science on its had and they are in absolute agreement with our measurements and observations.
Floating substances with advanced properties on the other hand....brings science to the Dark Ages.
What exactly do you mean by "floating substances with advanced properties"?
What exactly does it mean to say that quarks are "theoretical constructions"?
It sounds as if they haven't been discovered but invented by physicists? Or are they just convenient theoretical fictions?
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmOntology sets out an even more abstract model of how the world is than theoretical physics, a model that has placeholders for scientific results and excluders for tempting confusions. Ontology and theoretical science can help one another along, we hope, with minimal harm.
(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 42) "
-I don't know what you think these quotes can offer in this discussion. The truth is that Science is the best tool we have to verify our Ontological speculations, hypotheses and presuppositions. Look at atoms, Higgs Boson, the rainbow etc.
People get anxious when science doesn't verify their ontological assumptions...that is because their claims don't meet the scientific standards of verification.
It's a positivist-verificationist mistake to believe that scientific theories are ontology-free.

QUOTE>
"Ontological theses are assayed not by measuring them directly against reality, but by considering their relative power. One thesis bests another when it proves more adept at making sense of our experiences of the universe in light of our most promising scientific theories."

(Heil, John. The Universe As We Find It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 97)
<QUOTE
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pm There is absolutely nothing antinaturalistic or antiscientific about antiemergentism/reductionism (about properties).
-Of course it is antiscientific, since it is in direct conflict with the established scientific paradigm of the last 500 years. If we include mind properties in the discussion then we project mind properties in to nature...so we are dealing with a supernatural ideology.
There are not any evidence that can support such ideas. They could be true but based on our current facts we need to dismiss them.
No, there's no "conflict with the established scientific paradigm of the last 500 years." On the contrary, reductionism and reductive explanations have been extremely successful in science, particularly in biology, where people have long believed in an irreducible life force (élan vital), and that living organisms are irreducible to purely physicochemical systems.
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmOn the contrary, if something seems "magical" or "spooky", it's ontological emergence, the appearance of ontologically irreducible simple properties of nonsimple objects
-What something seems to us is irrelevant. People couldn't wrap their minds around a spherical earth. Again that is an observer relative evaluation...not an intrinsic feature of the phenomenon.(argument from yuck). Again emergence is NOT an ontological claim but a descriptive based on our direct observations. A. we have volatile H and O b. when we combine them we can put out fires....that's all.
Obviously, claims to ontological emergence are ontological claims!
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmAntiemergentists who are doing serious ontology are anything but "magical thinkers"!
-I can believe that. the problem is that they are doing ontology beyond our observations and that is a useless endeavor.
No, it's not! Ontology and metaphysics aren't themselves empirical disciplines, but there's a continuum between them and theoretical science; and there are more or less speculative or conjectural theories in science too (e.g. the theoretical interpretations of quantum mechanics) that go beyond observation sentences and those sentences which are deductively or inductively inferable from them.

By the way, "going beyond our observations" isn't synonymous with "going against our observations"!
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmThe ontological question is not whether nonsimple objects (can) have any properties at all—they can and do—, but whether the properties they have are ontologically reducible, resultant, nonsimple (composite/complex/structural) properties or ontologically irreducible, emergent, simple (noncomposite/noncomplex/nonstructural) properties.
-The correct question is Can simple objects produce advanced properties. Can fundamental elements of nature display advanced properties.
The answer is No. We don't observe properties other than kinetic. In order to observe advanced properties complex structures are needed.
Function and structure produce high level features. This is our current description of nature.
Any other question or belief is unfounded.
Emergenists and antiemergentists can both acknowledge the existence of high-level features, but the point at issue between them is their ontological nature—see above!
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2021, 2:38 pmMy (John Heil's) simple but (I think) very powerful argument against emergent properties is one against their very possibility and thereby also against their actuality, since nonpossibility entails nonactuality. I maintain that emergent properties are not coherently conceivable and comprehensible.
How this can qualify as an "powerful" argument when we don't have a way to evaluate its premises. I only hear "I can not believe that matter can be so "creative" so I will introduce entities in the background responsible for matter's abilities".
Humanity followed this way of thinking for thousands of years. Only after the scientific revolution and our current scientific paradigm our epistemology experienced an unprecedented run away success. Now you are demanding to take our philosophy and science back in the medieval era.
Rubbish! My point is that if we have no coherently intelligible concept or model of ontological emergence, then there is no (philosophical or scientific) justification for postulating ontologically emergent properties.
NickGaspar wrote: July 13th, 2021, 4:18 pmThe emergent features which stand as criteria are the following.
Emerge from something else.
have some kind of autonomy over and above the things from which they emerge
posses a sertain kind of noverly
have some holistic aspect.
How can an emergent property be dependent on and determined by the structural property from which it emerges and yet "have some kind of autonomy"? For example, emergent properties qua emergent causal powers are said to be capable of "downward causation" in a system; but the very concept of emergent downward causation is of questionable coherence.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by Consul »

Gertie wrote: July 14th, 2021, 1:15 pm
Consul wrote: July 10th, 2021, 6:38 pmExperiences emerging from neural processes are nonsubstantial occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) rather than substances. The substrates of emergent experiential occurrences are material substances such as brains. Emergent occurrences or properties are higher-level entities in a complex or system which depend on, but aren't composed of or constructed from any lower-level entities; and that's why they are irreducible.
How do you then tackle the objection that a property, or an occurence, is by its nature a property OF something?
That's no objection from my point of view, because I fully affirm that there cannot be any unhad (unpossessed/unexemplified/uninstantiated) properties.
Gertie wrote: July 14th, 2021, 1:15 pmSo if an apple has the property of being 8cm diameter, the measurement is OF the constituents of the apple. If my cat is fat, the fatness is related to the constituents of the cat. (There are other types of properties which we minded critters can assign like my cat is adorable, or water feels wet, but lets stick with natural emergence for now).

Ontological irreducibility seems to claim that a property is constituted of whatever its property is, right? The property of conscious experience is composed of the property of conscious experience. As if to say fat is composed of fatness, or speed of speedness.
Composition is usually regarded as a non-reflexive relation; that is, there is no self-composition: nothing is composed of itself.

Irreducible emergent properties are simple precisely in the sense of not being composed of or constructed out of anything. Simple emergents (and simple entities in general) do not have any (proper) parts (components/constituents). To be more precise, (emergent or nonemergent) simples may be spatially extended and thereby have spatial parts; but if they do, their spatial parts aren't (separable) ontic building blocks or construction elements, but just geometric parts—merely "formal" parts rather than "material" ones.

By the way, I distinguish between real, natural properties and pseudoproperties that are nothing but "shadows" of concepts or predicates, because there is no 1:1 correspondence between properties and concepts/predicates.

For example, I think adorability is just a pseudoproperty, and ontological reductionism is only about real properties. Of course, when the aesthetic predicate "adorable" is true of your cat, there is something real about its physical appearance which makes it adorable; but its adorability isn't composed of those real properties of it in virtue of which it is adorable. So I'm an eliminativist rather than a compositional reductionist about adorability.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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Atla wrote: July 14th, 2021, 1:16 pmThe philosophies I listed are compatible with observations, just like emergentism. Actually they are more compatible with observations, since according to observation, the universe has no known separate parts, which could come together to cause emergence.
If the whole universe is one extended simple substance, then it is a material continuum without any substantial parts (parts which are themselves substances). However, being extended (finitely or infinitely), it still has spatial parts (regions); but these are just (arbitrarily delineable) geometric segments rather than architectonic components (building blocks or construction elements). That is, an extended simple object isn't made up of its spatial parts, because regions aren't substances.

Is ontological emergence possible in such a universe?
An emergent property is a property of a whole composed of at least two substantial parts; but since an extended simple universe has no substantial parts at all, property emergence is impossible in it.

However, there can still occur a quasi-emergence of properties:
Imagine two adjacent cubical regions R1 and R2 of the one world-substance W: W is blue in R1 and red in R2. (I'm using color terms just for the sake of illustration. They are meant to stand for physical properties.) It could be a law of nature that when W is blue in R1 and red in R2, then its larger region R1+R2 turns green and W becomes green in R1+R2 (without ceasing to be blue in R1 and red in R2). W's greenness in R1+R2 can then be said to be a regionally emergent property of it that emerges regionally from W's blueness in R1 and its redness in R2.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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Consul wrote: July 17th, 2021, 9:04 pm However, there can still occur a quasi-emergence of properties:
Imagine two adjacent cubical regions R1 and R2 of the one world-substance W: W is blue in R1 and red in R2. (I'm using color terms just for the sake of illustration. They are meant to stand for physical properties.) It could be a law of nature that when W is blue in R1 and red in R2, then its larger region R1+R2 turns green and W becomes green in R1+R2 (without ceasing to be blue in R1 and red in R2). W's greenness in R1+R2 can then be said to be a regionally emergent property of it that emerges regionally from W's blueness in R1 and its redness in R2.
I think this just violates the law of identity, here one thing is two different things at the same time.

(The other issue is that according to observation, the world has no known substance.)
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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Atla wrote: July 17th, 2021, 11:29 pm
Consul wrote: July 17th, 2021, 9:04 pm However, there can still occur a quasi-emergence of properties:
Imagine two adjacent cubical regions R1 and R2 of the one world-substance W: W is blue in R1 and red in R2. (I'm using color terms just for the sake of illustration. They are meant to stand for physical properties.) It could be a law of nature that when W is blue in R1 and red in R2, then its larger region R1+R2 turns green and W becomes green in R1+R2 (without ceasing to be blue in R1 and red in R2). W's greenness in R1+R2 can then be said to be a regionally emergent property of it that emerges regionally from W's blueness in R1 and its redness in R2.
I think this just violates the law of identity, here one thing is two different things at the same time.
…but not at the same place! There's no violation of the law of identity if W is blue and not blue at the same time but not at the same place. Being blue in R1 and not being blue in R1 at the same time is a contradiction, but being blue in R1 and not being blue in R2 at the same time is not.
Atla wrote: July 17th, 2021, 11:29 pm(The other issue is that according to observation, the world has no known substance.)
According to what observations? Anyway, I've been talking about the possibility of the world being a(n extended simple) substance, and not about its "having substance". What does "to have substance" mean (if it doesn't mean "to be a substance" in the ontological sense)?
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Re: Ontological Emergence

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Consul wrote: July 18th, 2021, 12:15 am …but not at the same place! There's no violation of the law of identity if W is blue and not blue at the same time but not at the same place. Being blue in R1 and not being blue in R1 at the same time is a contradiction, but being blue in R1 and not being blue in R2 at the same time is not.
How is the place R1+R2 not the sum of the places R1 and R2?
According to what observations? Anyway, I've been talking about the possibility of the world being a(n extended simple) substance, and not about its "having substance". What does "to have substance" mean (if it doesn't mean "to be a substance" in the ontological sense)?
No observation has found 'substance'.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by Terrapin Station »

A post I made yesterday in another thread is pertinent here. Quoting myself:
On my view, emergentists aren't very clear about what they're claiming, exactly.

Whether they're intentionally unclear because they don't want to present views that can be "pinned down," (this unfortunately is often a motivation for a lack of clarity in general), or whether they have difficulty putting their views into words that would be clear re exactly what they claiming is often difficult to decide.

On my view, properties are factors of:
(a) matter, in the "chunks of stuff" sense,
(b) spatiotemporal relations of (a), and
(c) dynamics, or the fact that (b) is never static.

(a), (b) and (c) aren't ontologically or metaphyiscally separable, but obviously we can make some separation in them conceptually.

(a), (b) and (c) are the "parts" that everything is comprised of (and on my view (a), (b) and (c) is all that there is.)

So consciousness is identical to a subset of brain states/processes, and all properties are identical to some "set" of (a), (b) and (c). Properties in general are also not ontologically/metaphysically separable from (a), (b) and (c)--they're simply what dynamic relations of matter are like qualitatively. But again we can make a conceptual distinction.

Property dualism is simply the fact that what properties are like differs depending on the spatiotemporal reference frame or point that they're observed from (in the broader, nonpersonal sense of observation a la the sciences).

It's usually not very clear re emergentists whether they're saying that there are emergent properties "above" (a), (b) and (c) or whether they're simply not counting (b) and/or (c) as parts.
And further, the whole typical discussion re emergentism, reductioninsm, bottom-up/top-down, etc. always comes across as rather befuddled to me.

The properties of anything are always due to the dynamic relations of matter that we're talking about, ALL of the dynamic relations of matter in a given thing, which are all parts, but which is also a whole. Properties change if we change anything in the whole/collection of "parts" that we're talking about. Both the parts and the whole are integral. They all have an impact on the properties that obtain in the parts/whole.

The usual talk here always seems to be confusedly separating this into two different things, so to speak, but that doesn't make any sense. Nothing is more than the sum of its parts, but parts include relations and processes, and we can say for everything that the properties of the whole (of all of the dynamic relations of matter) are non-identical to the properties of any proper subset of the parts. So neither emergence as something at all "transcedent," nor reductionism, as something that ignores relations or processes or that claims that properties of proper subsets of parts are identical to properties of the whole, are at all correct, and causality is neither (just or primarily) "bottom-up" nor "top-down."
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by Terrapin Station »

Oops typo on "transcendent" above.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by Terrapin Station »

Consul wrote: July 15th, 2021, 2:38 pm If Z is neither wholly nor partly in x, and neither wholly nor partly in y, then it is neither wholly nor partly in x+y either, which means it isn't in x+y at all
That's a complete non-sequitur. There's no argument for it in the argument in question. It's just stated out of nowhere in the middle of the argument.
, in which case Z isn't an emergent property of x+y.
It's not an "emergent" property, unless by "emergence" we simply mean via dynamic relations of matter rather than simply properties of ontic simples. That would have to be clarified in any discussion, though, because it's not at all what a lot of people have in mind by "emergence."

The dynamic relations of x + y are parts, by the way. When matter has relations to other matter (as it always does), when those relations are process-oriented (as they always are), different properties obtain. Any difference in physical structure/relations amounts to property differences. The location of those properties is that they're "of"/they're located at the dynamic physical structures in question.
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Re: Ontological Emergence

Post by Consul »

Atla wrote: July 18th, 2021, 3:00 am
Consul wrote: July 18th, 2021, 12:15 am …but not at the same place! There's no violation of the law of identity if W is blue and not blue at the same time but not at the same place. Being blue in R1 and not being blue in R1 at the same time is a contradiction, but being blue in R1 and not being blue in R2 at the same time is not.
How is the place R1+R2 not the sum of the places R1 and R2?
It is.
Well, using color terms is misleading here insofar as nothing extended can be (wholly) blue, (wholly) red, and (wholly) green at the same time and at the same place; but, as I said, the color terms are just used to refer to mutually compatible physical properties such as mass and temperature, which can be had by a thing at the same time and place. So there is no contradiction.
Atla wrote: July 18th, 2021, 3:00 am
Consul wrote: July 18th, 2021, 12:15 amAccording to what observations? Anyway, I've been talking about the possibility of the world being a(n extended simple) substance, and not about its "having substance". What does "to have substance" mean (if it doesn't mean "to be a substance" in the ontological sense)?
No observation has found 'substance'.
What we observe or perceive aren't "free-floating" properties, but propertied objects or substances, which aren't reducible to mere bundles of properties lacking a substratum.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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