Towards a Logical Definition of Emergence [video]
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But (1) this fails to formalise this notion, since we're not talking about two languages 'plucked from thin air' -- they are langauges whose domains are I-terms and W-terms (a metaphysical, not a logical, constraint).
And (2) it's not a useful formalisation of this really either, since the discussion is why, not that (this is taken as a given).
Suppose that weak emergence is true, then the failure of the I-language to express the W-language is an illusion -- rather there's just some very large number of terms involving I that W reduces to.
Suppose strong emergence is true, then no amount of I-terms will express a W-term.
Which of these is the case cannot be settled as a matter of logic, so the construction of two languages (I-lang) and (W-lang) begs the question. If you say emergence is simply W-inexpressible in I, then you're begging the strong view.
(Incidentally, I take the strong view).
There is nothing that "emerges" in the physical universe, instead things emerge in an observer's model of the world.
A chair doesn't really exist, it's just a collection of atoms arranged in a way that can sit on it and along with the gazillions of other arrangements of atoms that can do the same thing we call it a "chair" because it's a very useful way to call things. There is really not much interesting in the gazillions of microscopic variations of placements of atoma that give shape to the same large scale behavior.
You don't care about the individual momenta of the atoms. What you really care about is that you don't freeze or burn your bottom as you sit on the chair.
So while those properties do depend on the observer (because they are meaningful to the observer) that doesn't mean they are arbitrary and any observer can just choose how to see things.
That's why emergence is an interesting phenomenon. Emergent properties are still objective, because we can all agree on them regardless of our mood or culture or agenda
It's a "real pattern", as real as the underlying things it's "layered" on
Even if I would not say that "A chair doesn't really exist". But it seams like that was more like a rhetorical argument from you given your last paragraph.
If a particular arrangement of the atoms doesn't make a chair a chair, only its use determines identity, then are you also a chair if someone decides to use you that way?
If to be a chair is to be "just a collection of atoms arranged in a way that [we] can sit on it", then what is a human being?
Are you also not nothing but an collection of atoms? What makes you different from the aggregate of atoms you call a chair?
How can both you and I share humanity? Is this a matter of convention? Why this convention? And if usefulness is again the criterion, toward what end?
If I can burn a chair in my furnace, why not you? You're both just collections of atoms, aren't you?
Is your mind just a collection of atoms? If so, how can it entertain these notions, like models or patterns or usefulness or meaningfulness, that are not just collections of atoms?
What are atoms? Are they also collections of atoms?
How did you, a collection of atoms, come to know that atoms exist, that everything is just collection of atoms? And how is it that you know everything is just a collection of atoms, but the existence of anything else is a matter of "models" or convention? And why are atoms privileged in this way?
[0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/04/nothing-but.html
[1] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/10/cartwright-on-reduc...
Oops! - that's just added 'true' and 'definition' to the list...
—Niels Bohr (Physicist)
As a beekeeper, I am truly humbled at our own specie's usual hubris in exploring "meaning" beyond "just is."
None of the individual ant’s rules say “build an anthill,” yet after a few days there is an anthill.
I predict there are many anthills that have never been observed. So we have a fact of nature (anthill exists) that “emerges” from local interactions of ants — without an observer.
Where does the above go wrong in your view?
Edit: fixed grammar.
Things emerge in to something. In this case it emerged in to models of the world that exist in mine and your mind.
The pattern that was the anthill exists, but it has not emerged in to something before it has emerged in to a model of something.
So I guess it goes wrong cause we use different definitions for what it means for something to emerge.
On a side note. I am not quite sure what you mean with "a fact of nature", my best guess is something like: it is an axiom of truth that anthills exist. But that does not make sense to me. Maybe it is more like: we observe anthills so they must exist. Idk? Probably not relevant, seams more like you are refuting some postmodern idealistic idea which states that everything is mind, which I don’t subscribe to.
It is precisely the failure of repeating patterns to scale up in aggregates, and a counter-intuitive simplification as a complex system scales up.
> There is nothing that "emerges" in the physical universe
Here's one example: a tornado -- highly unpredictable, one moment we have one set of meteorological conditions, suddenly there is another, drastically different set of measurable conditions.
Please don't spew unsupported absolutes, especially trivially countered ones, this isn't the place for it.
I could have been more detailed in my comment, but that was not where my mind where when I wrote my comment. And in my defense the only part of your comment that I really understand thoroughly is the last paragraph, so I guess this holds true for both of us, we could both be more descriptive.