The meaning of emergence

[Immanuel Can]

....vegetation for example can evolve or emerge to become animal life.

Congratulations. You're the only person I've ever met who thinks that's true. I'm out.

But again, you misuse the word "emergence." You're only taking about "evolution." Emergence isn't that. Evolution is alleged to happen gradually, progressively, over millions of years, thought physical processes. "Emergence," if any such thing there is, would be sudden -- not a culmination of a process, but a sort of "radically different thing" springing suddenly into being without precedent or any known or understood connection with material mechanisms.

[Nick_A]

....vegetation for example can evolve or emerge to become animal life.

Congratulations. You're the only person I've ever met who thinks that's true. I'm out.

But again, you misuse the word "emergence." You're only taking about "evolution." Emergence isn't that. Evolution is alleged to happen gradually, progressively, over millions of years, thought physical processes. "Emergence," if any such thing there is, would be sudden -- not a culmination of a process, but a sort of "radically different thing" springing suddenly into being without precedent or any known or understood connection with material mechanisms.

Organic life on earth is a living machine. All the parts and creatures form an organic whole serving a cosmic purpose through the interactions of their bodily functions.. The being of vegetation is of one quality. The being of animal as a higher quality, already known consciously as an idea, can emerge on earth when the time is right.

[Skepdick]

....vegetation for example can evolve or emerge to become animal life.

Congratulations. You're the only person I've ever met who thinks that's true. I'm out.

But again, you misuse the word "emergence." You're only taking about "evolution." Emergence isn't that. Evolution is alleged to happen gradually, progressively, over millions of years, thought physical processes. "Emergence," if any such thing there is, would be sudden -- not a culmination of a process, but a sort of "radically different thing" springing suddenly into being without precedent or any known or understood connection with material mechanisms.

Lets play "Spot the weasel word". My money is on "sudden".

And lets resort to the wiki for a trivial example... "life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry"

How "sudden" was the emergence of life from chemistry, do you think? What is the duration of abiogenesis?

I trust you don't need me to remind you that you hold specificity to high regard.

[Immanuel Can]

Organic life on earth is a living machine. All the parts and creatures form an organic whole serving a cosmic purpose through the interactions of their bodily functions.. The being of vegetation is of one quality. The being of animal as a higher quality, already known consciously as an idea, can emerge on earth when the time is right.

This isn't really the picture of things we have in the Bible, Nick. I don't know where you're getting it from, really.

[Immanuel Can]

How "sudden" was the emergence of life from chemistry, do you think?

I do not think life "emerged" from chemistry. I'm pretty sure that if you understand the word "emerged" in the philosophy-of-mind stipulated sense, you don't either.

In your question, you're misusing the term "emergence" if you understand it in that precise sense. "Emergence," unlike "evolution" is not progressive, but happens suddenly (allegedly), when the organism is already optimally "evolved." Evolutionism is gradual; emergence is sudden.

Picture a clock, if you will...it does not work as a clock unless all the parts are already in place; but if they are, then it can tick, move its hands and indicate time. If one spring, coil or wheel is missing or damaged, it doesn't do its work as a clock at all. That's the idea behind "emergence." Until the creature is evolved in every particular required for the production of consciousness, consciousness cannot "emerge." (Anyway, that's the story that Emergence Theorists believe.)

So you may accurately say, "I don't believe life emerged, it evolved," or you may say, "I don't believe life evolved, it emerged," but you can't say "Life evolved BY emerging." That's a contradiction.

If you believe life "emerged" from chemistry, then you don't think it "evolved." If you think it "evolved," then it didn't, in the philosophy-of-mind sense, "emerge."

Pick your horse and ride it, I guess.

[Belinda]

If, as is the case, you cannot have functioning mind without functioning brain, and vice versa, will you still say mind emerges from brain?

Sometimes I will. Some times I won't.

It depends on the context and the objectives of the conversation.

It seems to me 'emerges from' implies a time lapse and therefore that minds and brains evolved separately.

The easiest way to conceptualise emergence is not as cause-and-effect, but as interaction of parts.

Life emerges from the interaction of organic chemistry.

This video juxtaposes reductionism&holism in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_kbt7h1YRw

By way of always walking the middle way one needs to recognise both upward & downward causation, otherwise we are always missing big chunks of the pizzle.

If that is what well informed people mean by 'emergence' so be it. However I much prefer to call that particular holistic concept brain-mind as it is the same thing viewed from two possible aspects.
I do agree about the chemical perspective on brain-mind, and this perspective is from the physiological aspect of brain-mind , not the psychologically subjective aspect. The latter is restricted to subjective access except for talented artists who possess extraordinary empathy.

[Nick_A]

Organic life on earth is a living machine. All the parts and creatures form an organic whole serving a cosmic purpose through the interactions of their bodily functions.. The being of vegetation is of one quality. The being of animal as a higher quality, already known consciously as an idea, can emerge on earth when the time is right.

This isn't really the picture of things we have in the Bible, Nick. I don't know where you're getting it from, really.

The Bible has to be read as a psychological book awakening Man to his possibilities and not a text book. That being the case, do the days of creation described in Genesis 1 indicate an intentional action in which the being of vegetation (day 3) for example and animal life (day 6) are consciously connected or are they the results of accidental evolution?

Also does the human brain create consciousness or is it a machine which receives consciousness as Tesla describes? If Tesla is right, the conscious universe makes sense since all matter within the universe reacts to consciousness as it was intentionally created to do.

"My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists." —Nikola Tesla

[seeds]

I and Veritas Aequitas have and issue about the definition of emergence. I provide my definition here. Yours also welcome.

Emergence means that a state of matter under some circumstances behaves in a specific way or find a specific property, for example becomes a free agent, or become conscious.

There is also the issue of the difference between “weak” emergence and “strong” emergence.

A while back (on a different site) I transcribed a short excerpt from one of Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s interviews with David Chalmers where he (Chalmers) gave an off-the-cuff explanation of the difference between weak and strong emergence:

“...There’s what we might call weak emergence, which is when you’ve got some kind of complicated processing in matter, maybe some complicated dynamics among a bunch of cells and you get a complex pattern in that matter that you wouldn’t have expected, and phenomena emerge like waves on the water. Somehow from these water molecules all jostling around you get these waves, they come into the shore, you can surf on them - that’s emergent, but it’s not something fundamentally new. If you knew about the fundamental structure of all the molecules, you could ultimately predict there are gonna be these waves, and that’s weak emergence. And that’s what you get in a lot of biology and dynamic systems and so on. The more radical kind of thing is what we might call strong emergence - when something totally new emerges from underlying processes. And that’s what you seem to find, I think, especially, with the case of consciousness...”

In defense of the idea of how inexplicable the emergence of consciousness is, I went on to explain how my argument is founded upon the examination of the constituent properties of an electron (as best I can from the literature) and then determining that nothing within its makeup or behavior...

(or the makeup and behavior of a vast and correlated gathering of electrons - in the shape of a brain, for example)

...can in any way explain the manifestation (emergence) of a lucid dreamer who can willfully grasp the inner mental fabric of her own personal being and shape it into anything she desires.

And the point is that weak emergence (as described by Chalmers) simply cannot account for such a thing.
_______

[Immanuel Can]

The Bible has to be read as a psychological book...

Umm...no, no it doesn't, Nick.

That makes no more sense than to say, "The Bible has to be read as a textbook on engineering." There's no logical reason that follows. Some bad assumption must be floating that conclusion for you, some assumption I'm not aware of, but it's certainly not a necessary one. No such thing "has to" be done.

Also does the human brain create consciousness or is it a machine which receives consciousness...

Tell me what you know about this, if it's relevant to the "emergence" problem. How did you decide which it is, if either?

[Nick_A]

The Bible has to be read as a psychological book...

Umm...no, no it doesn't, Nick.

That makes no more sense than to say, "The Bible has to be read as a textbook on engineering." There's no logical reason that follows. Some bad assumption must be floating that conclusion for you, some assumption I'm not aware of, but it's certainly not a necessary one. No such thing "has to" be done.

As we know psychology is the study of mind and behaviour. Christianity Buddhism, Plato and others all assert in their own way that Man is psychologically asleep and unaware of the potential for its being and objective purpose. It cannot be spoken of directly but must open a person to experience awakening. This is the intent of their writings; to bypass habitual associations and the need to reject and touch the essence of person.

Also does the human brain create consciousness or is it a machine which receives consciousness...

Tell me what you know about this, if it's relevant to the "emergence" problem. How did you decide which it is, if either?

My hypothesis asserts that the universe is the body of God. Where the universe serves the process of existence, GOD doesn't exist; God IS . God IS ultimate Consciousness beyond time and space containing the ideas of lawful creation within it beginning with the forms. therefore the universe exists within our source. If true, the human brain receives consciousness rather than creating it.

When it is lawful to do so, conscious Man can emerge from animal Man into a higher quality of being.

Acts 17

28‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’

It is a hypothesis. Can it be verified?

[Atla]

I and Veritas Aequitas have and issue about the definition of emergence. I provide my definition here. Yours also welcome.

Emergence means that a state of matter under some circumstances behaves in a specific way or find a specific property, for example becomes a free agent, or become conscious.

There is also the issue of the difference between “weak” emergence and “strong” emergence.

A while back (on a different site) I transcribed a short excerpt from one of Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s interviews with David Chalmers where he (Chalmers) gave an off-the-cuff explanation of the difference between weak and strong emergence:

“...There’s what we might call weak emergence, which is when you’ve got some kind of complicated processing in matter, maybe some complicated dynamics among a bunch of cells and you get a complex pattern in that matter that you wouldn’t have expected, and phenomena emerge like waves on the water. Somehow from these water molecules all jostling around you get these waves, they come into the shore, you can surf on them - that’s emergent, but it’s not something fundamentally new. If you knew about the fundamental structure of all the molecules, you could ultimately predict there are gonna be these waves, and that’s weak emergence. And that’s what you get in a lot of biology and dynamic systems and so on. The more radical kind of thing is what we might call strong emergence - when something totally new emerges from underlying processes. And that’s what you seem to find, I think, especially, with the case of consciousness...”

In defense of the idea of how inexplicable the emergence of consciousness is, I went on to explain how my argument is founded upon the examination of the constituent properties of an electron (as best I can from the literature) and then determining that nothing within its makeup or behavior...

(or the makeup and behavior of a vast and correlated gathering of electrons - in the shape of a brain, for example)

...can in any way explain the manifestation (emergence) of a lucid dreamer who can willfully grasp the inner mental fabric of her own personal being and shape it into anything she desires.

And the point is that weak emergence (as described by Chalmers) simply cannot account for such a thing.
_______

It says there are some 10^28 electrons in the human body, so a lucid dream probably has to do with at least 10^25 electrons. You came to such conclusions by thinking about the properties of an isolated one?

[Immanuel Can]

My hypothesis asserts that the universe is the body of God.

If that's your hypothesis, why do you try to use the Bible to back it, since it goes against what the Bible says, starting from the very first verse?

It seems to me that that would be like somebody using the traffic law codebook to show they are allowed to run down pedestrians.

[Nick_A]

My hypothesis asserts that the universe is the body of God.

If that's your hypothesis, why do you try to use the Bible to back it, since it goes against what the Bible says, starting from the very first verse?

It seems to me that that would be like somebody using the traffic law codebook to show they are allowed to run down pedestrians.

The universe as the body of god is basic for Panentheism which has its roots in Orthodox Christianity. Everything isn't in the Bible but does Panentheism oppose it?

Panentheism ("all in God”), from the Greek πᾶν pân, "all", ἐν en, "in" and Θεός Theós, "God")[1] is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza.[1] Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical,[2] panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.

In panentheism, the universal spirit is present everywhere, which at the same time "transcends" all things created.
While pantheism asserts that "all is God", panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe. Some versions of panentheism suggest that the universe is nothing more than the manifestation of God. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God,[2] like in the Kabbalah concept of tzimtzum. Also much Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.[3][4] The basic tradition however, on which Krause's concept was built, seems to have been Neoplatonic philosophy and its successors in Western philosophy and Orthodox theology.

I am part Russian and Armenian and my great great grand uncle was an archbishop in the Armenian Church so a lot of what appears shocking in the West is natural for me by heredity if nothing else. The idea of worlds within worlds, necessary to appreciate levels of reality, is natural for me. It makes us good chess plyers but at the same time opposing secularism and its one level of reality will get someone kicked out of secular philosophy sites

The demiurge written of by Plato and Plotinus doesn't appear in the Bible which is not to say the Bible opposes it. In Genesis 3 it is written:

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

Who is "us?" It is the demiurge or artisans of the universe. Does it oppose the Bible and its awakening intent? No. It invites us to use our powers of conscious contemplation.

The religious beliefs of Neoplatonism can be regarded as panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God ("the One", to En, τὸ Ἕν) of which subsequent realities were emanations. From "the One" emanates the Divine Mind (Nous, Νοῦς) and the Cosmic Soul (Psyche, Ψυχή)

So if the ONE emanates Nous, it is safe to say that Nous emerged from ONE.

[Immanuel Can]

Panentheism oppose it?

Yes. From the very first verse, Genesis 1:1, the Bible makes it clear that Creation is a creation...as such, it is not "the body of God," and is not God, but is a contingent entity, something that once didn't exist when God did, and could not-exist again. But God is the eternal I AM, the self-existent and eternal One. So right from the start, the Bible is a denial of both Pantheism and Panentheism. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Panentheism ("all in God”), from the Greek πᾶν pân, "all", ἐν en, "in" and Θεός Theós, "God")...

I know Panentheism.

An additional problem is this: scientifically, we can see that the universe is not eternal. It had a commencement point in a singularity prior to the Big Bang, and is declining measurably by way of entropy. This gives us a "clock" by which to reckon how old the universe can possibly be, in extremis, and how long it can possibly last before heat death. If we are off by even a hundred million years (which we have no reason to suppose we are), then it would still present the same problem for Panentheism: namely, that the universe is verifiably NOT eternal.

And that, I think, is why Panentheism is not generally believed today.

I am part Russian and Armenian

Ah..."Nicholas," then. Not just "Nick."

The demiurge written of by Plato and Plotinus doesn't appear in the Bible

Right. Instead, God is called "the Creator." So there's no Demiurge.

...which is not to say the Bible opposes it. In Genesis 3 it is written:

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

Who is "us?"

There are different answers to that question. Many Christians take it to be an early statement of the Trinity. But it also fits with some more recent scholarship by people like Michael Heiser, who maintain it refers to the divine council. But that's a complicated matter, and doubtful. It's certainly not obviously a reference to a demiurge, especially because, as you point out, the demiuge idea gets no play at all in Scripture, and is contradicted by a number of key theological points in Christianity, such as God being the Creator, and flesh being redeemable, and preeminently, by the Incarnation.

It invites us to use our powers of conscious contemplation.

I think it "invites" us not to start speculating, actually. It invites us to withhold judgment until we know more information, so that speculations don't mislead us and carry us away into whimsy.

[Skepdick]

In your question, you're misusing the term "emergence" if you understand it in that precise sense.

Ohhhh, you are talking about the precise sense of "emergence".

My bad. I must have missed the post where you formalised "emergence" in Mathematics.