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TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Weak emergence has qualities that arise from the fundamental features of the parts and the rules that connect them. For example, the shapes made by flocks of birds can be reduced to simple local interactions among the birds.

Strong emergence has qualities that cannot, even in principle, be reduced to the parts and their rules. These qualities are genuinely novel and bring powers that are not found in the constituents alone.

Strong emergence is like mixing two chemicals in a lab and, instead of producing a new compound, discovering an entirely new fundamental force of nature. Consciousness, in particular, seems to lack any physically grounded ontology. While this is a divisive claim, it is hardly original. Physicalists who appeal to weak emergence have not yet shown—nor may they ever be able to show—that consciousness is physically emergent. If strong emergence is to be taken seriously, it must be framed in a way that avoids looking like something from nothing, which would be indistinguishable from magic.

As of now, the physicalists have to demonstrate weak emergence. Failing that, we cannot dismiss strong emergence so that we don’t close the investigative and theory making space.

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derek@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
That makes more sense. Thanks for the response! I’m not sure if can agree with your conclusions. It may be that I’m still missing context you’re working within. My best guess is you’re assume some axioms that I am not. That doesn’t necessarily mean I think you’re incorrect. We might just be operating with different frameworks.

I agree that strong emergemce and weak emergence seem different by your definitions. I’m not convinced strong emergemce is a thing. Is there a compelling argument that the perception of strong emergence is actually a more complex weak emergence that the observers have not fully understood?

Something something Occam’s Razor / god of the gaps something. I find these sorts of discussions quite compelling. Thanks again for engaging. :)

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wols@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I can see what points you’re making, but it’s unclear what you’re arguing for. It would be helpful if you made that explicit, too.

My best guess is that you don’t think that consciousness is emergent. What then, do you consider the nature of consciousness to be? Are you perhaps agnostic on the matter?

I agree that strong emergence sounds like magic and I’m therefore highly sceptical of its existence. I find consciousness one of the most intriguing and mysterious phenomena we know of - I don’t really think I understand it to a degree where I can make confident claims about its nature. But dualism sounds like magic too, so weak emergence seems to me the most reasonable and likely mechanism, not least because it’s one we actually observe in reality.

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- TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I lean toward agnosticism here, because I see real merits and pitfalls on both sides. If I were clever enough, I’d try to devise an experiment that cut between them—but part of me suspects that no such experiment is possible, precisely because the conceptual frame might already bias the outcome.
  
  I’m wary of dismissing strong emergence simply because it ‘sounds like magic.’ That response risks becoming circular: we assume everything unexplained must eventually be physically explainable, since everything explained so far has been physical. But that’s not really evidence—it’s induction edging into dogma.
  
  This is where I find Wittgenstein helpful. ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ But silence, to me, doesn’t mean disengagement. It means recognizing that consciousness may resist the clean resolutions science is used to delivering. To turn away from that means not being rigorous. To turn away from that mystery just because it unsettles our frameworks seems to me to miss something vital about living—and thinking—at all.
  
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  - wols@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I don’t really disagree with anything you laid out here.
    I’ll just add that I think we don’t yet have the conceptual frameworks to fully describe (and by extension - understand) the problem in the first place.
    
    Yes, strong emergence seems like magic, as does dualism. But if there is no magic, consciousness feels like the closest thing to it; so who knows?
    
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