[MD] Emergent Consciousness

[Platt Holden]

Ian:

Thanks for  taking the time and trouble to explain emergence. I 
appreciate it. Your description prompted me to go to Wikipedia to learn 
more (which I should have done in the first place rather than bug you) 
and found the following rather strange statement:

"Like intelligence in AI, or agents in DAI, emergence is a central 
concept in complex systems yet is hard to define and very 
controversial. There is no scientific consensus about what weak and 
strong forms of emergence are, or about how much emergence should be 
relied upon as an explanation in general. It seems impossible to 
unambiguously decide whether a phenomenon should be considered 
emergent.

"Further, "emergent" is not always a deeply explanatory label even when 
it is agreed on: the more complex the phenomenon is, the more intricate 
are the underlying processes, and the less effective the word emergence 
is alone. In fact, calling a phenomenon emergent is sometimes used in 
lieu of a more meaningful explanation."

So little wonder a layman like me has trouble wrapping his arms around 
the concept of emergence. 

Thanks again.
Platt


> 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