[MD] Emergent Consciousness

[ian glendinning]

Platt, Arlo, Gene,

Progress I feel.

Gene, took my crystal metaphor back down to the aub-atomic level. The
"weirdness" at the quantum level never ceases to amaze - Einstein went
to his grave struggling with the weirdness - whatever metaphors you
choose ... matter, energy, information, string, who knows ? Cool isn't
the half of it. (And interaction is most of it.)

Arlo, raised my atoms to emergent crystals metaphor further into the
world of carbon and life. (There are whole libraries of books about
carbon). Talk about magic, talk about cool ! Who'da thought that would
happen, talk about unpredictable, etc ... mind-boggling.

Platt - we made an important step - I hope you'll agree. Yes, a single
word like "emergence" can never be very explanatory in itself - and
all the other AI (emergent intelligence) words come with historical
baggage of failed attempts to exploit. The progress is (I hope) that
"being hard to explain and exploit practically" doesn't make something
"wrong", just hard to explain .... etc ...

Grant me that ?

BTW Platt - Layman vs Expert is only a social convention. (I'm no expert)
Ian


On 6/29/06, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> [Platt to Ian]
> "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.
>
> [Arlo]
> The trouble with emergence from a strictly scientific view is that there is
> nothing detectable in cells (for example) that would lead one to conclude
> they would form a chemistry professor (using Pirsig's example). That is,
> examining one level does not give one any way of predicting or explaining
> (from within that level) how the emergent level comes to be.
>
> Indeed, Wikipedia states early on, "For a phenomenon to be termed emergent
> it should generally be unpredictable from a lower level description." From
> LILA, "All life contains carbon yet a study of properties of carbon atom
> shows that for the extreme hardness of one of its crystalline forms there
> is not much unusual about it. In terms of other physical constants of
> melting point, conductivity, ionization, and so on it does just about what
> its position on the periodic table of the elements suggests it might do.
> Certainly there's no hint of any miraculous powers waiting to spring
> chemistry professors upon a lifeless planet."
>
> And yet carbon atoms do form chemistry professors. Pirsig asked "why?".
> Emergence attempts to explain "how". Each answer, I think, are given
> strength by the other.
>
> And for both, the process is the same. "Individuals" on any level are the
> result of the collective activity of "individuals" on the lower level. When
> atoms "collectivize", biological cells are possible. But there was no way,
> before this emergence, to "predict" exactly when and how cells would spring
> into existence from carbon atoms. And as biological individuals formed more
> complex biological individuals though collective activity (cells form
> bodies), eventually (but not predictable beforehand) the collective
> activity was able to give rise to not just more complex biological
> patterns, but a new, higher level of patterns, what we call in retrospect
> "social patterns". And so on.
>
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