[MD] Emergent Consciousness

[ian glendinning]

Platt asked ...

Explain interactions of what to what, how things magically "emerge," and why ...

You don't ask much Platt :-)

Firstly emergence looks magical, but it's just the way the real
natural world works. As Arthur C Clark commented "sufficently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic."

To understand "emergence" as a concept you need to start by reading
some "Chaos" say James Gleick or Ian Stewart for popular starters, or
some more directly relevant stuff from Doug Hofstadter or E O Wilson,
or any of the more neo-Darwinian philsophers.... . Modern popularisers
include Capra, and in fact a number of management writers, like
Snowden. (In fact the "spirals" of your beloved whatshisname are
another example.) if I get time, I'll try an essay to summarise ...
basically, briefly ....

Patterns (we'd call them SPV's I think in MoQ terms) arise in layers
of abstraction above the level of physical interactions, that are
driven by "attractors" in the nature of the interactions, rather than
by predictable causal consequences of the sum of the individial
interactions. The whole is more (different) than the sum of its parts.
(Snowden has a great bacterial example - which I can dig out, if
you're taking this seriously Platt.)

These emergent patterns are the reality we see / experience, and which
interact further with the rest of the world.

To understand which interactions - you could start with Pirsig - which
is why I'm always dumfounded you play so dumb here. Any and all
interactions in fact. BUT ...

Others on this thread (talking of rocks etc.) have gone straight to
"the observer" in quantum physics. Any interaction causes a change in
the things interacting - even the observer of an event - an event IS
an interaction, an exchange of something, information at least.
Mind-blowing stuff even for the people that first debated it - the
Heisenberg's and Schroedingers of this world. Beware that these
metaphors are part of a description of quantum scale reality, so any
consequences at the "human" scale are seen through many layers of
emergence. A rock is more than the sum of the crystals of which it is
built. A crystal is more than the sum of the molecules, a molecule is
more than the sum of its atoms, an atom ..., electron, quantum ...
etc, etc ... A rock is 99.9% free space (whatever that is). The
"arrangements" (clue - interactions) are at least as important as the
components.

Crystals look "magical" when you consider their atomic component parts - No ?

To say more here starts to get contentious .... quantum coherent
effects at the human scale .... very Pribram, very Penrose, People are
struggling to find credible metaphors at the human scale. String
theory seems to have completely unravelled, thankfully. There is no
doubt plenty to be explained, but there is also no doubt that
emergence from quantum scale interactions (what I call quality or
"information") is part of it, and the whole that we experience has an
enormous "holistic" component, aontic (without ontology), not
predicted causally from its component parts. (Which is why the
Buddhist aspect is very useful to get a grip on reality.)

Gotta stop for now.
Educating Archie (sorry I mean Platt) is only my part-time job.
Day job calls.
Ian

On 6/28/06, Platt Holden <pholden at davtv.com> wrote:
> > Ian says - Never even remotely held such a view. Did you read the
> > mail, the semantics, not the words ? Existence depends on interactions
> > between things - aka Quality. All else is emergent.
> >
> > As I say can we even get to first base ?
>
> Not unless you can explain interactions of what to what, how things
> magically "emerge," and why. You seem to think we should all just take
> your word for whatever is and not question your beliefs at all. So how
> about an answer to a specific question. Do rocks respond to DQ?  Of
> course, if you'd rather not answer . . .
>
> Platt
>
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