The meaning of emergence

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bahman
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The meaning of emergence

Post by bahman »

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.
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Re: The meaning of emergence

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You are over-complicating it because nobody knows what "meaning" means.

The definition of emergence is "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Without getting stuck into semantics here is an example.

One person with $10 in their pocket can buy an item that costs $5, but 10 people with $1 in their pocket can't.

The "purchasing power" of 1 * $10 is greater than the "purchasing power" of 10 * $1
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bahman
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by bahman »

Skepdick wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 7:45 pm You are over-complicating it because nobody knows what "meaning" means.

The definition of emergence is "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Without getting stuck into semantics here is an example.

One person with $10 in their pocket can buy an item that costs $5, but 10 people with $1 in their pocket can't.

The "purchasing power" of 1 * $10 is greater than the "purchasing power" of 10 * $1
My definition is good. It is simple. The whole is greater than the sum means that there is a property or behavior in whole which does not exist in parts. These properties are however subject to the conditions. Here I am looking at the emergence when condition changes.
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by odysseus »

bahman wrote
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.
Interesting about emergence: First, the "what it is" out of which something emerges is reconceived in the light of the emerging phenomenon. You take two contained environments of elemental "stuff" X and and Xprime, and let them sit and evolve or, allow emergent qualities to become manifest, for 13 billion years or so. In the one you find conscious beings, caring, tortured, loving, ecstatic, horrified, making choices, solving problems, and so on. In the other, you find none of this. Perhaps elaborate structures, fractals, crystals, molten and gaseous states, and the rest. This latter is the world of empirical science. It is NOT our world. Out quarks, electrons, atoms, molecules and the rest do this: the human drama. That means they are not to be defined as inert, "things" under a microscope.

Another thought: merging properties are all that a thing can be. There are no "original" or pure states out of which things arise, for all that can be named is emergent already. Therefore, all identifiable emerging properties have equal standing as emergent, and the quasi reductive idea of "emergence" itself loses it grounding. All is emergent, and reality is all of this. Therefore, our ethics and other localized subjective events are just as real as anything science might say is real.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by Immanuel Can »

bahman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 7:27 pm 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.
That attempted definition is only question-begging.

You say, "matter...under some (unspecified) circumstances" just "behaves" or "finds" something that was never there before, such as becoming not only "conscious" but also "a free agent."

Since you don't even attempt to say HOW such a thing is even possible, you've added nothing at all to the understanding of "emergence." For "emergence" implies a process by which the second phenomenon is produced by the first...and regarding that process, you've given us absolutely no idea how it works, or even how it's possible for non-sentient matter, like rocks, or particles of hydrogen, to become a sentient being like an Albert Einstein.
odysseus
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by odysseus »

Immanuel Can wrote
say, "matter...under some (unspecified) circumstances" just "behaves" or "finds" something that was never there before, such as becoming not only "conscious" but also "a free agent."

Since you don't even attempt to say HOW such a thing is even possible, you've added nothing at all to the understanding of "emergence." For "emergence" implies a process by which the second phenomenon is produced by the first...and regarding that process, you've given us absolutely no idea how it works, or even how it's possible for non-sentient matter, like rocks, or particles of hydrogen, to become a sentient being like an Albert Einstein.
There is no explaining such a thing. It would be explaining qualitative change, while science can only explain quantitative change. Inquiry can only look at that which comes to be and the sequences of events involved. At best, we can describe the world, but what manifests is a different matter. The reason for this is that at a pre-emergent level, prior to consciousness, freedom, or anything you can think of, qualitative possibilities are not given, are not written into the examination of, say, the atoms, quarks, photons and the rest. It is when qualitative change occurs that we then learn what these entities really are, or were all along. Consider: A thing is actually defined by it dispositional properties: call something a cat and this is reducible to what we anticipate cats to do, how they might smell IF we get close enough, how we anticipate behavior, expect certain outcomes, etc. When a novel property emerges this really means that when it is encountered, certain events will ensue and this one is different from expectations. So novel emergences redefine the world because they show new possibilities that were antecedently hidden.

We should think of emerging properties as disclosures of what the world really is. Thought emerges at one point. Who could have thought (were there thinking to consider anything), in an analysis of all that was prior to thought, that the "stuff" of the world could do that?

Philosophers like to say that human subjectivity is a local affair and dismiss it as a mere accident, something incidental, over there on that blue dot in space. But this thinking is all wrong: Humans subjectivity redefines existence.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by Immanuel Can »

odysseus wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:18 am
Immanuel Can wrote
say, "matter...under some (unspecified) circumstances" just "behaves" or "finds" something that was never there before, such as becoming not only "conscious" but also "a free agent."

Since you don't even attempt to say HOW such a thing is even possible, you've added nothing at all to the understanding of "emergence." For "emergence" implies a process by which the second phenomenon is produced by the first...and regarding that process, you've given us absolutely no idea how it works, or even how it's possible for non-sentient matter, like rocks, or particles of hydrogen, to become a sentient being like an Albert Einstein.
There is no explaining such a thing.
If that's true, there's no illuminating in the above definition.
It would be explaining qualitative change, while science can only explain quantitative change.
Well, yes: it's pretty much recognized by all participants in the field of Philosophy of Mind that "consciousness" and "brain" or "meat" and "mind," are distinct issues. One is clearly material, and the other is immaterial.
...at a pre-emergent level, prior to consciousness, freedom, or anything you can think of, qualitative possibilities are not given, are not written into the examination of, say, the atoms, quarks, photons and the rest.
Right. And that's a serious, serious problem...because nothing accounts then for the "bang" that turns mere materials into mind. It starts to look magical, not scientific in any way.
It is when qualitative change occurs that we then learn what these entities really are, or were all along.

It's worse than that, I think: it's that it's only after the whole thing has already somehow "occurred" that we are in any position to look at consciousness at all. And when we do, we're at an utter loss to say how materials translated into mind by some sort of step or cause-effect path.
So novel emergences redefine the world because they show new possibilities that were antecedently hidden.

That is: IF they "emerge." We don't know how they even CAN "emerge." We can't deduce from the fact that consciousness is real and present that it "emerged" from materials. We can only say, "Well, whatever it is, it's here now." But again, we have no path that assures us it "emerged" at all.
We should think of emerging properties as disclosures of what the world really is.
Dropping the word "emergent," I think this would be a good suggestion. We especially ought not to use the verb tense "emerging," since it makes it sound as if we have caught the process in the middle; whereas we haven't the faintest idea of what the process would be, or even if it is a process at all.

What we can say is that consciousness is real. We couldn't say "It's real" if it were not, and there would be nobody to hear or to dispute its reality, if it were not real. So that much we can safely say. But how it got here? We have no idea.
Thought emerges at one point. Who could have thought (were there thinking to consider anything), in an analysis of all that was prior to thought, that the "stuff" of the world could do that?

That's 100% assumptions, though. We don't know how consciousness "arrives," and we don't know it "emerges" from lower matter. What's worse, we attribute what's called "downward causality" to consciousness. For example, we say, "Tom chose to go to the store," by which we mean, "Tom's consciousness induced his material body to shopping." But how can something that is caused-up from the material also cause-down to the material? How can consciousness, if it's just an emergent byproduct of material causes, then turn around and be a causal factor of things and events in the material world? Which is "causing" which?

That's a profound mystery, and one raised very well by various philosophers of mind, like Jaegwon Kim.
Humans subjectivity redefines existence
.
Well, I think I know what you're trying to say here. I would put it this way: "The fact of the existence of a thing called 'consciousness' demands that we rethink our assumptions about what 'reality' means." Clearly it's not all materials. There is mind in there, somehow.
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by Nick_A »

bahman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 7:27 pm 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.
Emergence cannot be explained without first becoming aware of vertical levels of reality. For example consider the level of reality we call Milky Way. Suns emerge within it at a lower level of reality. So simultaneously the Milky Way functions as one quality of existence while the the suns within it simultaneously exist at a lawful lower level of reality.

Emergence is then one quality of being manifesting within a higher level of being. Once levels of reality are understood, the logic of the Great Chain of Being makes perfect sense
odysseus
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by odysseus »

Immanuel Can wrote
Well, yes: it's pretty much recognized by all participants in the field of Philosophy of Mind that "consciousness" and "brain" or "meat" and "mind," are distinct issues. One is clearly material, and the other is immaterial.
Material and immaterial: I don't recognize these terms outside of the contexts in which they are used. It gets to be a very sticky wicket, for to posit a material thing, one usually refers to objects, palpable, and res extensa, in the Cartesian ontology. I don't think this way at all.

What I have in mind here is the elementary form of the hypothetical deductive method which is simply the conditional: IF I take this quartz and scratch mica, THEN there will be a yielding of the mica to the quartz creating a mark, thereby showing that quartz is harder than mica. All science works like this, and the definitions of things are grounded in this IF...THEN temporal structure of thought. All knowledge, and scientific knowledge is no more than a model of everyday thinking, is anticipatory of possible outcomes. Here comes George. I know him well, but what does this mean? It means that I have expectations.
It's worse than that, I think: it's that it's only after the whole thing has already somehow "occurred" that we are in any position to look at consciousness at all. And when we do, we're at an utter loss to say how materials translated into mind by some sort of step or cause-effect path.
worse still, we ARE an emergent state, so observations of emergent properties (properties of the world) like consciousness are all observed through consciousness. This makes consciousness the only real foundation for emergence. This is exactly what existential thinking is based on.

But aside form this, cause and effect is the issue, as X causing Y says nothing of the qualitative presence of these. We "know" the measurements, the intensities, velocities and so on, but these are just quantitative matters. What something IS, is just there, the familiar color or sound. Science is not the kind of thing to tell whats of things.
That is: IF they "emerge." We don't know how they even CAN "emerge." We can't deduce from the fact that consciousness is real and present that it "emerged" from materials. We can only say, "Well, whatever it is, it's here now." But again, we have no path that assures us it "emerged" at all.
That's interesting. We are bound to the principle of sufficient cause, andit is reasonable to say emergent property X didn't simply come, ex nihilo, into existence; but, and I have long thought this a critical insight, causality does not explain emergence, any more than it can explain itself. It can set up scenarios of causal matrixes, and see THAT property X emerges, but qualitative differences are not reducible to to this at all. This is the fallacy in empirical science's claim to explain the world. It cannot explain meaning, only register THAT there is meaning. Emergence is only a causal concept.
Dropping the word "emergent," I think this would be a good suggestion. We especially ought not to use the verb tense "emerging," since it makes it sound as if we have caught the process in the middle; whereas we haven't the faintest idea of what the process would be, or even if it is a process at all.

What we can say is that consciousness is real. We couldn't say "It's real" if it were not, and there would be nobody to hear or to dispute its reality, if it were not real. So that much we can safely say. But how it got here? We have no idea.
I think if one could examine the entire human genome in precise detail, there would be a correlation between this massive mapping of genes and consciousness. But then, a correlation is not consciousness at all.

the phenomenologist's take is always there: It is consciousness that is doing the correlating. making correlation itself an emerged feature of consciousness. There is no way at all to get around this.
That's 100% assumptions, though. We don't know how consciousness "arrives," and we don't know it "emerges" from lower matter. What's worse, we attribute what's called "downward causality" to consciousness. For example, we say, "Tom chose to go to the store," by which we mean, "Tom's consciousness induced his material body to shopping." But how can something that is caused-up from the material also cause-down to the material? How can consciousness, if it's just an emergent byproduct of material causes, then turn around and be a causal factor of things and events in the material world? Which is "causing" which?

That's a profound mystery, and one raised very well by various philosophers of mind, like Jaegwon Kim.
Don't understand the problem of up or down, really: in a fully integrated causal system, no difference would be registered. If Tom choosing is an emergent property out of a causal matrix, then what would there be to to prevent causal downwardness? The whole idea of emergence is to include the supervening property with its source. If the upward holds, and this is a causally consistent (though not clearly seen how this is so) concept, then the downward should be allowed mutatis mutandis: emerging properties and the "difference" they have vis a vis that on which they supervene would have to be reconciled only unless the supervening property possesses NOTHING of its causal counterpart. this argument does rest with similarities between the two, and it I take your point, there is nothing similar at all between descriptions of physical states and those of mental states.
Causality only reveals quantifiable changes. The qualitative changes are entirely distinct; that is, if you dismiss the scientist's observable quantitative features of a causal event, the velocity, mass, relative structural vulnerabilities, and so on, what would remain would be qualitative changes and it is these that are at issue. Showing supervenience requires this qualitative "connection" to be examined.

One could identify qualitative properties (value experiences like anger, say) and their qualitative causal effects (experiential affairs that issue from being angry, like regret), and map these on to their physical counterparts. But this correspondence solves nothing, for what is at issue is explaining how emergence of the experiential from the physical occurs. I don't really think there is much chance in denying THAT anger is connected to physical states, and that the latter are in a causal relation with the former. the problem is that explanations (like Jaegwon Kim's, a bit of which I just read) simply cannot show how qualitative events like anger have their accounting grounded in any way with the physical. So what if anger does "emerge" out of more primordial stuff?
Finally, there is the REAL problem, again, that always comes back to haunt a discussion like this: talk like the above presupposes an existing account of the physical, but where did this come from? It is paradigmatically built up out of scientific theory (and again, Kuhn presents such a good explanation), ever waiting for the next paradigm. Apart from paradigms, there is no physicality.
Well, I think I know what you're trying to say here. I would put it this way: "The fact of the existence of a thing called 'consciousness' demands that we rethink our assumptions about what 'reality' means." Clearly it's not all materials. There is mind in there, somehow.
I go further than this. A bit. What IS material? If one starts Cartesian with it being res extensa, say I conditionally agree. But extension is an empty term. What about the physical? The material? Of course, there is nothing that can be said at all. The moment descriptions begin, paradigms are in play, that is, that which supervenes upon the material. Since material qua material is a vacuous term, explanations apart from emergences are made equally vacuous. All that can be said is about emergence is emergence.

We are in hermenuetics now.
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bahman
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Re: The meaning of emergence

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odysseus wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 5:00 pm
bahman wrote
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.
Interesting about emergence: First, the "what it is" out of which something emerges is reconceived in the light of the emerging phenomenon. You take two contained environments of elemental "stuff" X and and Xprime, and let them sit and evolve or, allow emergent qualities to become manifest, for 13 billion years or so. In the one you find conscious beings, caring, tortured, loving, ecstatic, horrified, making choices, solving problems, and so on. In the other, you find none of this. Perhaps elaborate structures, fractals, crystals, molten and gaseous states, and the rest. This latter is the world of empirical science. It is NOT our world. Out quarks, electrons, atoms, molecules and the rest do this: the human drama. That means they are not to be defined as inert, "things" under a microscope.

Another thought: merging properties are all that a thing can be. There are no "original" or pure states out of which things arise, for all that can be named is emergent already. Therefore, all identifiable emerging properties have equal standing as emergent, and the quasi reductive idea of "emergence" itself loses it grounding. All is emergent, and reality is all of this. Therefore, our ethics and other localized subjective events are just as real as anything science might say is real.
So you believe in the definition of emergence which I provided? Needless to say that I don't think that emergence is real. I have an argument for that: Think of a system with parts in which each part has a set of properties and the system has a set of properties which parts don't have (this means that each property of the system is not a function of the properties of parts). There is however a reason why the system in a given situation has always a specific set of properties rather than any other properties. This means that the properties of the system are a function of specific properties. The only properties that are available however are the properties of parts. Therefore, the properties of the system are a function of the properties of parts. Therefore, there is no emergence.
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bahman
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by bahman »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 5:53 pm
bahman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 7:27 pm 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.
That attempted definition is only question-begging.

You say, "matter...under some (unspecified) circumstances" just "behaves" or "finds" something that was never there before, such as becoming not only "conscious" but also "a free agent."

Since you don't even attempt to say HOW such a thing is even possible, you've added nothing at all to the understanding of "emergence." For "emergence" implies a process by which the second phenomenon is produced by the first...and regarding that process, you've given us absolutely no idea how it works, or even how it's possible for non-sentient matter, like rocks, or particles of hydrogen, to become a sentient being like an Albert Einstein.
I don't think that emergence is real given the definition, that system has a set of properties that parts do not have. I have an argument against emergence: Think of a system with parts in which each part has a set of properties and the system has a set of properties which parts don't have (this means that each property of the system is not a function of the properties of parts). There is however a reason why the system in a given situation has always a specific set of properties rather than any other properties. This means that the properties of the system are a function of specific properties. The only properties that are available however are the properties of parts. Therefore, the properties of the system are a function of the properties of parts. Therefore, there is no emergence.
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by bahman »

Nick_A wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:19 pm
bahman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 7:27 pm 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.
Emergence cannot be explained without first becoming aware of vertical levels of reality. For example consider the level of reality we call Milky Way. Suns emerge within it at a lower level of reality. So simultaneously the Milky Way functions as one quality of existence while the the suns within it simultaneously exist at a lawful lower level of reality.

Emergence is then one quality of being manifesting within a higher level of being. Once levels of reality are understood, the logic of the Great Chain of Being makes perfect sense
So you believe in emergence. I have an argument against it though: Think of a system with parts in which each part has a set of properties and the system has a set of properties which parts don't have (this means that each property of the system is not a function of the properties of parts). There is however a reason why the system in a given situation has always a specific set of properties rather than any other properties. This means that the properties of the system are a function of specific properties. The only properties that are available however are the properties of parts. Therefore, the properties of the system are a function of the properties of parts. Therefore, there is no emergence.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by Immanuel Can »

bahman wrote: Sat Dec 05, 2020 9:18 pm I don't think that emergence is real given the definition, that system has a set of properties that parts do not have.
That is, in fact, what the explanation "emergent properties" requires. But we can't find any connection at all between the material properties and the immaterial, allegedly emergent quality.

So we really don't know that it "emerged" from thence at all.

There's another possible explanation: namely, that the physiology and the so-called "emergent" properties are actually both products of a third thing. But nobody's really trying that kind of explanation at the moment. Instead, they're stuck on "emergence," it seems -- that is, they assume the conclusion, then hope there's some way they can one day describe the dynamics that make that conclusion warranted.

So far, they've got nothing.
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by Nick_A »

bahman wrote: Sat Dec 05, 2020 9:19 pm
Nick_A wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:19 pm
bahman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 7:27 pm 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.
Emergence cannot be explained without first becoming aware of vertical levels of reality. For example consider the level of reality we call Milky Way. Suns emerge within it at a lower level of reality. So simultaneously the Milky Way functions as one quality of existence while the the suns within it simultaneously exist at a lawful lower level of reality.

Emergence is then one quality of being manifesting within a higher level of being. Once levels of reality are understood, the logic of the Great Chain of Being makes perfect sense
So you believe in emergence. I have an argument against it though: Think of a system with parts in which each part has a set of properties and the system has a set of properties which parts don't have (this means that each property of the system is not a function of the properties of parts). There is however a reason why the system in a given situation has always a specific set of properties rather than any other properties. This means that the properties of the system are a function of specific properties. The only properties that are available however are the properties of parts. Therefore, the properties of the system are a function of the properties of parts. Therefore, there is no emergence.
If I understand you accurately, subject and object as you describe them are really the same. They only differ in their parts. I understand emergence as the connection between two levels of being. The object emerges from the subject as a different quality of being. I'll follow the ideas as written by the highly regarded particle physicist Basarab Nicolescu.

http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_articl ... edings.pdf

In previous times the object was always considered as within the subject. In modern times object and subject were separate. In these times the subject is secondary to the object as we see with the current obsession with fragmentation.

Real is defined by the isness of phenomena while the reality we observe is defined by resistance to isness.

All this is in the introduction to the article. If you are unfamiliar with this line of reasoning it isn't so easy. Just tell me if it makes sense to you and worth moving on to the levels of reality which makes this arrangement and emergence possible.
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Re: The meaning of emergence

Post by odysseus »

bahman wrote
So you believe in the definition of emergence which I provided? Needless to say that I don't think that emergence is real. I have an argument for that: Think of a system with parts in which each part has a set of properties and the system has a set of properties which parts don't have (this means that each property of the system is not a function of the properties of parts). There is however a reason why the system in a given situation has always a specific set of properties rather than any other properties. This means that the properties of the system are a function of specific properties. The only properties that are available however are the properties of parts. Therefore, the properties of the system are a function of the properties of parts. Therefore, there is no emergence.
Then the argument against emergence rests with the non-identicality if properties. The "reason" as you put it, has a lot of work to do. As I see it, you cannot ignore causality. My brain has parts that have parts and so on. Atoms exhibit properties, and these with their properties certainly are causally connected to one another in a way that produces a migraine headache. I do not see the way around this unless you want to deny or rethink causality. So the trouble emergence has is explaining how aggregate causal relationships manifest novel effects. But then, this goes past the question: are we not committed to explaining "reason" in causal terms? And causality is a very simple and apriori principle and one cannot even imagine a "spontaneous" cause, so it never can explain causal emergences, just that they do not occur ex nihilo.

It seems to me that emergence holds ONLY in so far as we are committed to causality. BUT: this is also vacuous, explains nothing. My conclusion is that emergence is trivially true, only, while the world remains the world of glorious and terrible matters. Since the causality does "connect" all things in a necessary way (the one genuine insight in the issue of causality and emergence), the question then would be, what is the world such that these events come about? Sure, they emerge, but emergence is vacuous. The Being of the world remains an absolute mystery.
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