Share your view on strong emergence in the comments. What points in this episode stood out to you? If you enjoyed this episode, give our excellent contributors a thumbs up! If you'd like to further explore the cosmos, consciousness, and meaning, please consider becoming a subscriber. For more episodes from Season 19, see our Season 19 playlist: bit.ly/38ZCxq9

@KRGruner

4 жыл бұрын

Cut and pasted from my own comment in the main thread: Strong emergence is a totally obvious reality. Say you have a machine (computer) or a Laplacian demon who can predict the future based on pure physics. I am asked to raise one of my hands at time T (in the future). The predictor (computer or demon) must be able to predict which hand I will raise (left or right) with 100% certainty. Yet if I add the clause that the predictor tells me its prediction ahead of time T, it is no longer able to make any prediction at all. In fact, that's the case even if I tell it that I will pick the opposite hand as what the supposed prediction is (so the whole thing is deterministic). What makes the predictor unable to predict is the totally abstract, non-physical concept of "opposite hand." It's possible to think of reducing "right hand" or "left hand" to physics, but not so for "opposite hand." This example shows how I have the free will to determine my own future: I decide to raise the opposite hand, before even knowing which hand that might be (left or right). Yet this is deterministic. It's just NOT physically deterministic. With all due respect to Kuhn (I like what he is trying to do), you are going to have to do better than this. It's nice to travel to Greece to talk to people and all, but there is no substitute for actually thinking about the logic of the situation. The softball-style interviews only go so far. It's time for actually hard questions and deep thought. I may be wrong in my argument above, but at the very least it's something that should have been brought up. Not to mention such ideas that the physical state of the brain is in part an abstract REPRESENTATION of the world (i.e. a certain state of certain neurons represent, say, a tree, a car, a table, the number Pi) and furthermore in part an abstract representation of possible (or even impossible!) FUTURE states of the world clearly shows the impossibility of reducing ideas to physical states. The fact that I can think of future states (including impossible states) actually influences the PRESENT. Take that, physics..

@Ofinfinitejest

4 жыл бұрын

Nothing "stood out." That is because no evidence for strong emergence was presented.

@KRGruner

4 жыл бұрын

@@Ofinfinitejest I guess you weren't listening. The substrate-independence explanation of things like the concept of "money" is proof of strong emergence. Some things are just not material, yet they do have an impact on the world. No description of any physical state of affair means anything if you are trying to describe what "money" is. And of course the real examples are infinite, consciousness being the prime case.

@thomasridley8675

4 жыл бұрын

Cosmological philosophy ! The two words that never ever belong together. Unless your a seminary student, of course.

@stephendatgmail

4 жыл бұрын

Ellis starts right off by knocking down a ridiculous straw man about what "strong physicalists" believe. So what stood out is he gave me fair warning I shouldn't waste my time listening to him.

The most underrated channel of all times. Keep up the great work!

@behr121002

3 жыл бұрын

Man, I hear that! So true!

@thomasridley8675

3 жыл бұрын

We may not know where we came from. But we do know where we are going. Eventual Extinction !!

@Ascendlocal

3 жыл бұрын

Indeed!

@kimjongun5172

3 жыл бұрын

This is a show. It’s been around for over a devade

@jasonrouleau5647

3 жыл бұрын

Absolutely.

Intellectual sparring with no hint of frustration or erosion of mutual respect. Very cool.

@vhawk1951kl

Жыл бұрын

what you call "intellectual sparring" is merely another way of describing pouring from the empty into the void, to which our friend Mr Kuhn is much given

One of the best KZread channels.

@kimjongun5172

3 жыл бұрын

It’s a show

In all of the interviews, I think there was a very necessary and interesting follow-up question that wasn't asked: What does it mean to say that something (for ex. an idea) is/isn't physical?

@Robinson8491

3 жыл бұрын

Of that which you cannot speak of, you must remain silent, as a commonly quoted phrase goes :')

@noprolixity

Жыл бұрын

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. -Ludwig Wittgenstein

George Ellis is right. The content of our ideas determines some of what we think, and that content is not part of the physical world. EDIT: this was a great topic! Kudos RLK!

@seanleith5312

2 жыл бұрын

I just searched up about Robert Laurence Khun, found some disturbing fact about his connection to the Chinese government. It upset me to know that.

@Appleblade

2 жыл бұрын

@@seanleith5312 IDK if any of that is true, but what does it matter if it is? Kuhn is just talking philosophy with people, not hypnotizing them. ;)

@seanleith5312

2 жыл бұрын

@@Appleblade It doesn't matter to you? The Chinese government (not Chinese people, I am Chinese descendant) is our enemy, working with the our enemy is called what? You ask yourself.

@stevelivingstone4616

2 жыл бұрын

@@seanleith5312 I'm sorry you got upset. 🤣🤣🤣

This is the best KZread channel of all time. I'm glad to have found it.

Barry Loewer seems like a real gem of a philosopher. He does not argue to win; he argues to learn. He will throw you all the advantages so that is arguments are restricted to the the strength of what is true.

I really enjoyed this thoughtful and well presented piece. Thank you.

Out of all the people I would love to sit and have a long talk with it would be you. You’ve obsorb with open a mind. Thank you .

One of the prettiest episodes by location

Thanks, David!!! Great explanation.

Been watching for 5 years! Love this show

What I gathered is that strong emergence makes sense as otherwise there would be two sources of causation, one at the lower physical level and the other at the higher emergent level. Like a computer program, it takes into account the noise at the lower level electronic circuitry, hence it uses binary system. With that a program dives what happens to the lower level electronics. Lower levels only give an illusion that they are in control, but actually the computer program is. Fascinating episode!!

This is by far the best episode you've ever made. The complete examination of Strong Emergence sweeps away any possibility of mind/body duality and takes the notion of free will along with it. The historical references were exactly on the mark.

@highvalence7649

3 жыл бұрын

When you say "mind/body duality do you mean mind/body dualism? And I'm not a dualist (at least not according to my understand of that word) but I don't see how "The complete examination of Strong Emergence sweeps away any possibility of mind/body duality (mind/body dualism?) and takes the notion of free will along with it". How does it do that?

@psmoyer63

3 жыл бұрын

@@highvalence7649 The mind does not exist apart from the body. My consciousness emerges from the functions of my brain. My "will" cannot exist separately from the physical processes. Gravity emerges from the machinations of spacetime. It's been a while since II watched the video, but I'll play it again while making breakfast.

@highvalence7649

3 жыл бұрын

@@psmoyer63 I appreciate your reply, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I find it difficult to have on point philosophical conversations without maybe coming off as rude. But I wanna say: if you attempted to answer my question, then I don’t see how your reply does that. Yet I find what seems to me to be your tangents quite interesting. So, I’ll interact in spite of their, to me, seeming not obvious relevance. It’s not obvious to me how we are even supposed to understand the word “mind”. How do you understand the word? Moreover, I just want to point out, in case anything to the contrary is believed and/or implicitly suggested, that that does not imply a supervenience relation between mind and body in which mind supervenes on physical facts about bodies. By “consciousness” what sense of consciousness are you talking about? Phenomenal consciousness? - or some other sense of consciousness? What is the difference between your consciousness and not your consciousness, someone else's consciousness say (which I presume you regard as a real distinction since you use notions such as “my consciousness”)? If by “my consciousness” you mean to refer to some set of instances of consciousness, then is there an argument for the claim that “My consciousness emerges from the functions of my brain” that leads you to that conclusion? When you write “My "will" cannot exist separately from the physical processes” do you mean that your will supervenes on certain physical processes? Also, and if that’s what you mean, it’s just not obvious to me that this is true. Can you give some kind of argument for that? "Gravity emerges from the machinations of spacetime” This statement is not up my alley. So, I’m not interested in asking any questions about it except for: what is the relevance of that statement in regard to the question I asked you? Also, I forgot to ask: what do you mean by free will? Do you have in mind some sort of definition by which you could clarify the meaning of the term “free will”? “It's been a while since II watched the video, but I'll play it again while making breakfast” Sounds good man!

@psmoyer63

3 жыл бұрын

@@highvalence7649 I originally "watched" this video while driving. My response to it six months ago was what happened in my brain while not crashing my car. Now, upon actually watching, it I realize I got the Strong Emergence definition exactly backwards. I now, and still somewhat confusedly, understand that the emergent part of strong emergence goes off on its own, apart from the physical, even though it is created by something physical. That the computer program sits on top of the computer doing the processing and is telling the computer's mechanism what to do, apart from the computer's mechanism. In that respect I totally disagree with the strong emergence concept. Let me say, that at each step in the computer's case, at no time does the program function without a corresponding physical / electronic process going on inside the computer. At no time will the program do something if the computer loses power. Same thing for the human thought process. You can't have thoughts without the brain actually working corresponding to that process. I've had a stroke in the hospital. I saw flying purple elephants. I have migraines. I can't remember the names of the planets. My brain controls my thoughts. Free will? Do I have the ability to have done or though something other than what I actually did think or do? No. The only way to change the present is to change the past. Thank Gerardus 't Hooft for that piece of wisdom. And for comparing quantum field theory to insurance actuarial tables. Both make great predictions. But in both cases, some real not yet predictable process has a causal relation to events in question. While the gravity issue is actually outside the scope of this video, the reference to Einstein was right on. Einstein did not like the fact that physics was considered to be probabilistic, and that things happened without some underlying causal flow. But the acceptance of quantum field theory -- that there are fields throughout empty space that make particles when they are perturbed -- is ultimately what gives license to this kind of nonsense.

Splendid..... you are doing wonderful work!!!

one of the best shows, thanks!

If SE is a thing then consciousness is a thing and it is that which "decides" which of the infinite statistical wave function solutions is perceived. Statistically the most popular perception is the "reality" we all claim to experience. In other words, all wave function solutions are existing simultaneously (multi-world) but our consciousnesses (in aggregate) dictate reality. In this sense strong emergence is real.

Consciousness! Also great channel this is awesome

After many time watching these episodes, I came to the conclusion that the answers I want to know the most are the ones that Robert Kuhn has.

Well said Barry Loewer 👍

This was over my head.

Great episode!

Damn, I love this channel.

For me the answer can be understood by looking at dice. If we have a pair of dice and we roll them we can predict with 100% certainty that the result of the roll will be an integer number from 2 to 12 and nothing beyond that is possible. In this way, viewing the dice as the laws of physics, then physics can indeed explain every possible outcome. If we are living in a world that had rolled say a 7, there would be no way that we could predict that it had to come out to be a 7, but we can see that 7 was among the possibilities. Now consider really many dice, each die having a thousand faces. The same situation exists. When those dice are tossed at the onset all possibilities have already been dictated. However, only ONE huge number will be the result. Our universe is that number. There is no way that we could look back and predict that this particular number would have been rolled. However, if we knew the configuration of all the dies that had been thrown we could (in theory) predict all possible outcomes. In this way we might see the final "number" (i.e. The Universe) as having emerged from this initial crap shoot. But there's no way we could have predicted that this number in particular (i.e. Our Universe) would have been the precise result. In other words, "Weak Emergence" is no doubt true, and doesn't invalidate physics at all. But the idea of "Strong Emergence" (i.e. the idea that things could have emerged that weren't dependent on the initial dice) makes no sense. As someone else had posted: "Where is the theory, much less the evidence, for strong emergence?" At least the current scientific theory of physics can indeed explain everything with just simple weak emergence. So there's no problem there. And there's no reason to fear this conclusion. Reality can still be mystical and still work on a principle of weak emergence. So this wouldn't be a nail in the coffin of any mystical dreams. Besides we shouldn't be choosing ideas or theories based on what we wish were true. Instead we should simply embrace the ideas that make the most sense.

Very nice! I would really enjoy watching David Albert and Barry Loewer answering Elis's software/logic - hardware analogy, as well as Elis and Lower's response to the economy's analogy. Unfortunately, I am more persuaded by reductionism :(

Incredible content !! This is also the ONLY video on KZread that dives deep into Strong Emergence. I know a certain scholar who can answer most of the questions raised here. I understand it sounds fantastic. If Closer to the Truth is interested, let me know how I can contact you..

Interesting interviews as always Robert. If you ever had time to talk to a layman about mathematics let me know. I have some thoughts you might find interesting.

great episode. I feel like it's a bit like quantum mechanics in that there is a degree of uncertainty that prohibits you from deriving psychology from fundamental physics, however that doesn't mean that we can't go from the top down through neuroscience to biology to chemistry to physics to gain a more rigorous understanding of psychology. In that sense I think strong emergence is correct to a degree, and I don't intend to wave the magic wand of quantum Juju and say its non deterministic, I mean that more as a metaphor. However I don't assume that a wiser person than would be unable to make such a proof. Again great episode, this really pushed me to refine my own thinking and I feel that it was quite productive experience, so Thank you!

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

uncertainty doesnt travel up past the molecular level, so if its impossible to derive psychology from fundamental physics, then there have to be different other reasons?

I'm with David Albert here. Nobody, as for now, has been able to prove that a certain physical phenomenon is strongly, as opposed to weakly, emergent.

@albert6157

2 жыл бұрын

Emergent phenomena has already been proven to be unpredictable. But still is composed of its building blocks regardless

It is amazing how intelligent human beings can be if only they put in effort to understand things. I cannot keep up with your conversations here.

When the representation of the emergent feature in terms of deeper laws in form of symbols would be of an magnitude so that the laws of physics themselfes prohibit a causal relation between the symbols, there is no way that you wouldn't call that feature strongly emergent. That would be the point at which we need further axioms in principle. I guess it is hard to prove that some features we are talking about can't be proven with less symbols depending on the laws of physics that we talking about. But what seems a wired is speaking of predicting emergent features in the case that the laws of physics themselfs would not apply. So I guess whether there is strong emergence depends on the laws of physics, whichever we can't know with certainty, and so it should be ultimately an undecidable problem. What someone could hope to prove is the existence of strong emergence given the theories which havn't turned out to be false as yet. Fascinating topic in my opinion.

It could be that if enough different parts are brought together or combined, a new level of reality / consciousness is obtained.

The discussion shown in this video could not be predicted (in a deterministic sense) using the laws of physics, from the state of the universe at the Big Bang. However, at each instant during the discussion, everything that is happening can be described (or "explained") using the laws of physics, i.e., it has a physical description in terms of particles and fields. But I am not sure if an emergent phenomenon (a brain in a living human body) can really control the underlying physical particles/fields of which it is itself comprised, i.e., from which it emerges. Is this like a computer program rewriting its own subroutines at each instant?

But isn´t our logic driven by chemical-biological experience?

Perhaps in theory as one moves downward (i.e. biology, chemistry, physics, quantum mechanics) something is lost; while in practice as one moves upward from quantum mechanics to biology something is gained that allows to move to next level. When things come together in enough complexity or whatever, there may be a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts (In same way, as things break apart the parts are less than the previous whole)

Precious channel, despite my criticism sometimes.

for the particular questions being posed in this video, im inclined to orient toward political philosophy, specifically toward the eruptions of knowledge throughout history that we humans tend to rely on (knowingly or not) to understand why we bother to even ask such questions, what processes are involved in better understanding such, possible meaning derived frkm conclusions, and the physical constituent components of questions like the one "where do the fundemental forces come into play, such as with primary causation in relation to the experience of such in human conciousness?" while such a question itself might appear perfectly valid for some, there is no logical way to ask the question outside of the human exerience that engenders it. one might feel they can trancend the persistence of conscious experience by removing it via mathmatical equasion or some sort of metaphorical means, but the veracity of the symbols that would arise from such would be opaque to the very human that engendered them in the first place, leading only conclusions based on formula with incomlete data. Personally, seems better to me to examine the works of plato and their modern culmination through the examinations and observations of Eric Vogelin. how we know what we know is a question that has hardly been altered with a more precise understanding of physical properties. seems better to first look at the symbolization.. what the words mean, why the means such, and so forth, before embarking on an earnest desire to understand the relation of physical forces to the human properties found only through metaphoric means, which symbols allow and experience engenders. it appears that many tend to assume from the fact that our understanding the physical world has greatly increased through time that subsequently the understanding of our place within it has increased proportionally. because of such arise symbols that reduce the pnumatic component of human experience to the noetic principles and components of the world that surrounds that human experience. however, even our observations of electrons show very clearly that the fundemental principles underlying the mechanical processes of matter are in a permanent transformative state of being, and exist in many places (and thus things) at once. before things become whatever the thing it is that they presently are, they can only exist when subjected to the logical processes that arise only in the structure of conciousness. How then, would we take an examination of such transformation further back in time, in search of more primary fundemental principle? the only thing we know to exist prior to the interaction of measured with measurer... would be the structure of conciousness itself that is densely reduced to the symbol of time. to suggest that the equivelence of experience that engenders symbols throughout human history, misy importantly those that express the experience of the revalatory nature of being being known only through reflective logical processes , are somehow not actually pneumatic events that they are experienced as, but rather noetic events ariseing out of mechanical processes... discounts the very real thing that is the persistence of the present when we reflect on symbols of trancendence, such as the divine, society, time, or even when inquiring as to why any of the questions are even being asked or dertermining the validity of any subsequent conclusions that would arise from such. this need to bring the trancendent beyond into the world trancended is some sort of magical transformation we observe, but the mixture of one symbol of experience as being the next leads to a very direct loss of openness to platos primary ground of being. with that closure, the questions of whether there is even a "Beyond" becomes moot, and the experience of trancendence is lost because the trancendent directional source from which the question eminates has been lost all together because the experience itself has been reduced logically, prior to inquiry, to symbols of polar relation and measurement, or the relation to motion and velocity. The thing, however, is not the one thing proposed but rather the other thing, and all meaning behind the original symbols is lost this is where the equivelence of symbols begin to break down and render the symbols of one experience of reality can become opaque to the symbols engendered by another... illustratively, it is as though two people were inquiring why bears crap in the woods. After examining the available data, one observer concludes that the physical processes of the bear's digestive system was the primary causation. His friends observations conclude that it was choice, the will of the bear to stop and relieve himself, that was the fundemental process. While both observations could be simultaniously valid, such would only be true because of the fact that neither are even asking the same question at all because their words have different meaning in relation to position of perspective and subsequent perception of reality.

Ellis seems to argue for a broader notion of causality than what physicists use, their narrower notion of physical events connected to each other by world lines in a block universe, or some probabilistic causality at quantum scales. Causality in biological and psychological phenomena would require some non-reducible properties, that involve some non-physical emergent properties above and beyond the underlying physical matter and events. I don't know about Ellis' proposals in detail, but I think this is compatible with a broadly naturalilstic aspect dualism, rejecting any supernatural substance dualism (Descartes' res cogitans, as distinct from res extensa). I think this is plausible, in part because physical science explicitly looks for universal laws independent of locations in space and time, and therefore abstracts away from the historicity of biological and psychological phenomena. If you bring that historicity back in, the patterns of life and mind that emerge are explanatory only relative to events that happened on **this** planet in **this** timeframe. Universal physical laws know nothing about **this**ness, which is not universal in time and space. I think this is uncontroversially accepted by most biologists and cognitive scientists, at least during workdays, although they may revert to a reductive physicalism on weekends. Biologists are used to getting explanatory insight from patterns with respect to **this** phylogenetic tree in Earth's history. If we were to detect signals for DNA and proteins on some distant star system, it would tell us something about universal biochemistry, but it would have none of the explanatory force we get from studying our local and historical biology, our natural history. Recent phylogenetic events in that distant star system just have no historical-causal relation to the variation of life on Earth, the past world lines on that star system do not overlap with the past light cones on earth (if you go far back enough, you might encounter some very remote overlap like panspermia events, an exception that proves the rule).

How many water molecules does it take to have "wetness"? How does that boundary behave?

if even just maths, let alone logic is (infinitely) deeper in truth than physics it'd explain it's emergence in more applied sciences seemingly from the more fundamental sciences, putting in question all mechanical emergence, unifying these axes of emergence and causality into the logos

Goddamn! I loved this!! It had me calling out at the screen 'YES!', 'NO!' etc. I need to read up on this . There needs to be a comprehensive documentary about Strong Emergence. This is an important subject and from my perspective - everyone in this video was a bit right and a bit wrong. Wow!!!

Could abstractions like logic (in the example) exist before and undergird or be foundation for physical realities? So that abstract logic brings about cosmic microwave background and what came before, being present in the universe from the beginning? The human brain then does not originate logic (and other abstractions), however is able to perceive and understand logic and abstraction that have been present since the beginning of the universe and before?

VERY interesting problem. Is Logic deriving from the laws of physics or is it something genuine coming from the human mind? Is there a "spirit" or is it all just brain neurology? Thank you for this video, made me think in a new way over this topic!

We're surrounded by "Strong Emergence" examples: In fact, we can see how the human mind, in a scientific context which understands the underlying behaviours of nature, can indeed develop technology and systems that couldn't get developed just by themselves. Of course it all can get explained in terms of that underlying behaviours of nature, but the idea of it was originated in a more complex and abstract layer of reality (aka the human mind). And if we ignore this top layer, everything would seem pretty random (and we'd probably invent a multiverse to explain that bizarre "meaningless" but yet complex and organized behaviour). So reality is in fact built from the top to the bottom as far as it is built from the bottom to the top, and it also maybe could get infinitely abstract, so the top can be an ever increasing, unlimited *becoming* of the universe's mind/body/whatever (explaining the apparent self-organization and growing complexity of matter, laws and systems in the universe). If we see reality as a process, and not as something made up from "fundamental, static substances" (which as far as we know they actually doesn't exist), from a holistic perspective, everything just start making sense. All contradictions and paradoxes just dissipate in this kind of view.

a lot of physics is based upon the principle that things have a beginning, and a (happy) ending sometimes :) So we find ourselves in this uttermost complexest of physics we have ever seen, and it answers some questions that can be made about specific features of reality. It can't answer all questions cause rather than specific, reality is universal. This principle that things have a beginning and an ending is to me the crux in our understanding of reality. What if, things do not have a beginning or an end? What would be the result of that? Time will appear trivial, but yet it is something we continuously seem to perceive. So, perception might differ form actual reality in this sense. The only thing left then would be the present moment, here and now, always and forever. Past and future do not exist as a real place in reality. But that contradicts our perception of time, both subjectively and objectively. To make my point i have to do something tricky: imagine reality disguises itself as being lineair and having an arrow of time. By creating in the present moment, a reality that strongly appears to have a beginning and an end. For us, at the disguised level, we perceive a world of physics and wonder why we cannot explain all of it. But if we transcend the level of disguise, we might realise that the physical world is just a choice of reality, an avatar for it's true being. Suppose this un-disguised reality, is infinite. In being infinite, i can be and/or become anything, anywhere at any present moment. Do'nt confuse this with the multiverse, cause that would be a perception of physics. Why out of all possiblities would it choose to be this reality, here and now, without jumping to one of the other states of infinite being randomly or at will? Maybe it runs an infinite of other reality avatars at the same time. But for our own concern, to us it projects onto the present moment an appearance of physics. And we can work with that, it gives our subjective avatar like beings the sense of time, change evolution, the possibility to create. And as a choice of true reality, this isn't a bad one, for reality can experience itself through one of its own wonders. In this sense, true reality creates a feedback loop through its disguise continuously. And we might even propose that there is no feedback loop at all. Maybe, our reality in the present moment is the ONLY way true reality can express itself, there is no choice at all. But nevertheless there is an aspect of reality which is hidden behind it's first appearance. If we approach reality as such, would it be possible to search for traits that would point in the direction of the true operating system of reality? In this sense, SE has a point when it states that all of our world springs from non-physical ideas. Maybe this place where ideas come from, our own mind is the place to search for the true being of reality :) Maybe we ourselves are that which decides what is what and when and where. The more we identify ourselves with that which creates reality, the more control over its reality true being of reality can have. And more control means creating reality at deeper and deeper levels of existence. Without end.

Do time and quantum wave function have something not physical, or more concrete than physical? Which maybe are intrinsic nature of physical matter, and from which strong emergence happens?

I have just now strongly emerged thumbs up.

How do explain values like love, loyalty, fairness, good and evil using physics. Can we code a simple app using just assembly language without concepts of higher level computing language? How about Human language?

Good episode! But a lot is being conflated here. For example, physical state changes in computers are aligned with logical steps symbolically, they don't "realize" such steps. To illustrate, as a computer program simulates the genesis of a hurricane, screen images may represent cloud formation symbolically, they don't "realize" it. To cut to the chase, the laws of optics and aerodynamics can be reduced to more basic laws of physics, while the laws of logic cannot. The laws of logic are not derivable from General Relativity and QM, because the laws of logic are true in all possible worlds. So can our minds sense and respond to the laws of logic as such, not merely be aligned with them symbolically as in computation? If so, naturalism has a hole in it the size of a manhole cover.

8:36 I think I understand his argument of algorithms and ideas being non physical, however one must consider that ideas were a property of the laws of physics and self organization of the universe. Does that imply only some thoughts are thinkable? Does the universe limit itself to the number of ideas it can have by virtue of finite number of degrees of freedom of the human or collective human brain(s)?

@rh001YT

4 жыл бұрын

@ Abhishek shah In "Critique of Pure Reason" Immanuel Kant noted that as we scrutizine everything with Reason shouldn't we know what Reason is? Amoung his conclusions were 1) Working backwards from reasoned observations and conclusions step by step he found that sensory stimuli is filtered in various ways such that before the data is thought about it is already adulterated or "colored". The adulterated stimuli is then thought about with a categorization engine which has about 12 categories into which to fit that adulterated stimuli, and what does not fit with one or more categories will just be ignored as if it isn't there. 2) Apriori judgements are necessary for there to be any aposteriori (evidence based)judgements but there seems to be no way to find a ground for apriori judgements...they just happen. Math at it's root is apriori and thus as far as any of us can tell, baseless, despite it's usefulness. 3) based on how the human mind works, which is how it can only work, study of the natural world leads inevitably towards reductionism. The situation is probably worse than the universe limiting the number of ideas it can have....humans are likely very limited. Kant wrote: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” The double-slit experiement is a great example of human mental limitations....I think Kant would say that it's an fine example of the human lack of categories into which to fit the data.

Could energy be developed in brain for conscious / mind, such that principles of logic and other psychological principles emerge in the strong way? Can logic and psychology come from energy experienced, focused and directed in brain as mind / consciousness?

I always wondered how a physiical, materialistic world can explain concepts like Infiniti being concocted. Where do concepts come from in conscious thinking? What is a truly original idea and where did it come from? Did it emerge from the building of smaller ideas only? If that is a necessity, did every idea always exist, even in just a simply Platonic way, waiting to be discovered?

@skurbanvintr0

4 жыл бұрын

Yes you never left the void.

The world in principle and practice. One can never understand the world totally in terms of principle nor in terms of practical navigation of the world.

That there is anything at all is the real miracle

@u.v.s.5583

4 жыл бұрын

In principle there is a principle that can't be explained by simpler principles, and this principally unexplainable principle is called the anthropic principle. If we existed in a world where nothing, even itself, doesn't exist, it would be very strange.

@DagobahDave

4 жыл бұрын

What is a miracle?

@neil6477

4 жыл бұрын

Why?

I believe due to threading or parallel operations integration in one realm cannot be predicted in next realm. In computing often parallel action get mixed in next level of processing. Luke two threads processed by middle get mix on ui thread to give unified output to the user. Compiler alone can never see two parallel processes at once.

Dear Mr. Kuhn, There is no meaning in all these qustions I analyse, viz. "Free will, consciousness, Truth, ... ", so long as I haven't defined "I" as a particular sequence of particles and specify a definite criterion of proof related to satisfaction of my needs to verify the acuracy of the theory I assume as to the origin of those particles.

weak emergence comes from collective of physical properties in space; strong emergence comes from collective of intrinsic properties, perhaps in time or quantum wave function or other?

I believe that there are phenomena that are strongly emergent. Gravity is probably one of such phenomena. Maybe the reason we are having such a hard time formulating a quantum theory of gravity is that gravity is not quantizable but fully emergent. Strong emergence sounds today like a cop out, but perhaps there is a mathematical model for how emergent properties arise out of quantum interactions. Maybe there's even an inverse square law for all entities embedded in an n-dimensional vector space that describes at what point a physical system begins to exhibit properties that can no longer be computed using the physical states of its constituent particles or building blocks

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

I'd like to understand how proponents of strong emergence differentiate it from simply being a fundamental phenomenon. For me, any phenomenon that could be thought as strongly emergent could also be thought as involving at least one, perhaps unknown yet, new variable that is fundamental. So, for example, if consciousness turned out to be fundamental, then necessarily economics and math and psychology will look strongly emergent when examined in any reductionist theory that doesnt include consciousness, for example, physics. Or, in your example: if gravity is strongly emergent, then, whats the difference in saying gravity is fundamental? I dont see how you could separate both concepts experimentally.

Everything has free will to experience from the freedom of consciousness. The free will to experience is basic to physical reality.

Nice video. But regarding the texting, it's (Nils) Bohr and not Borg.

I was disappointed that the line of reasoning concerning reductionism was not accompanied by at least a mention of the line of reasoning concerning deterministic chaos theory. Chaos theory strongly "emerged" in the 60s and 70s thanks to people like Edward Lorenz and Mitchell Feigenbaum (and many others), and articulates that determinism does not imply predictability. Order leads to disorder "at the boundaries," which itself is constrained or channeled by an order. Chaos has nothing to do with "strong emergence," to my knowledge, but I was hoping it would be mentioned at least in passing. It's another way of looking at the forest also, instead of focusing mainly on the trees/leaves.

When you spoke about predictivity of the water behaviour , the answer should have been, yes you can predict humidity but not the shape of wave 🌊 hitting now on the shore.

Georg Ellis is right about the existing non-physical "things" like logic - which realizes itself in language and in mathematics. David Albert missed in his example about money transfer the fact, that money transfers are realizations of abstract things called numbers.

The arguments put forth by the opponents of strong emergence sound like logical fallacies. "It's not what most scientists believe" - bandwagon argument. "It's unusual" - argument from novelty. "It would mean giving up the materialist quest" - argument from consequences. Of course, all of this would be resolved today if someone could demonstrate how the universe emerged from the fundamental laws of physics. Sadly, the attempt to do so has only led to one dead end after another. When will it be time to admit failure and try something else?

Opposing strong emergence: We don't yet know enough to explain the connection, but it's likely one day we will. Favoring strong emergence: No matter what we learn, we will still not be able to explain the connection. I probably don't have that quite right, but it's what I perceive as the competing messages.

@scoooterbob2321

4 жыл бұрын

You may consider exchanging we for I.

@frankhoffman3566

4 жыл бұрын

@@scoooterbob2321 ... I considered it. My grammar is correct.

I don't understand how an idea is not material? It seems to me the underlying supposition is that ideas truly exist outside of the material world to begin with, as in, platonically. But that would just be a supposition (a supposition as valid as them not existing on their own, though). It seems like a mute point to me, yet key.

I think that rather than "wetness" of water being predictable from full knowledge of oxygen and hydrogen I'd say "all the properties (and manifestations) of water. My sense is that it would inhetently not be predictable. On the other hand the potential for these properties must have been there from the start.

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

it doesnt have to be predictable, its enough if its modellable after the fact. That is, if you can take any property of water, and work backwards on how that property is realized by oxigen an hydrogen dynamics, then you dont need strong emergence.

Do Abstract objects alter physical objects?

"the algorithm decides what happens, not the transistors that go on and off" the algorithm is just a cognitively efficient (for humans) way to describe what transistors to turn on and in what order... intuitively at least, having perfect information about a CPU it should be possible to reconstruct the program - it'll be a nightmare, of course, like trying to turn assembly into C, if not more so - but still, how does that disprove reductionism?

2- After watching this video. Yes, there are matters of those that defy lows of physics, but only human calculations of physics. How would you explain the earth being in the middle of space? "I don't buy fabrics for space ©". Metaphysician philosopher

Let me make a naturalistic argument on behalf of strong emergence. (This is straight from Danny Hillis; I think he is correct in his line of argument.) It seems likely that nature organizes itself in something like abstraction hierarchies. There are in fact compelling advantages for there to naturally occur information barriers that prevent one level from controlling or even influencing another level. As an example, one could imagine a sort of meta-evolution at the earliest stages of the development of life. There might be multiple information-carrying molecules that serve the function of encoding cells. One molecule might have bonding properties such that there were less combinations, or the distribution of arrangements of the molecules was constrained, at least probabilistically. Another molecule might be composed of components that were completely chemically interchangeable, with no bonding or other physical preference for one permutation versus another. The latter molecule would have enormous advantages over the former in facilitating evolution at the cellular, biological level. This information opacity or discontinuity from the atomic level to the cellular level would in fact be highly advantageous at the biological level, where the dominant laws are Darwinian as opposed to atomic or molecular. So, the molecule that most effectively instantiates an impenetrable barrier between underlying physics and evolution-driven biology wins.

Environment appears to be the key. The more complex a system is, the higher level of environment it appears to operate in. At the most fundamental level things are purely non-deterministic and even time does not exist. Emergence brings time, determinism and a higher environment.

We just don't have a high enough resolution image of the CMB. ;)

Around 10:58, is the question the same as: "Could society influence the individual?"

Structure & interaction

“In this sex-divided electric wave universe of seemingly countless complex pairs of opposite effects, forms, conditions and directions of motion, there are but two effects from which their infinite complexities extend. Just pause and think of this. Think of the thousands of forms of animal and vegetable life, effects of sounds, the ocean crashing on the sands, the songs of birds, the wind blowing cold against your cheek, the roar of avalanches, the ices of the poles, and the inconceivable heat of sun centers; all of the countless effects of Creation which arise from their ONE CAUSE in their CREATOR, spring from just one pair of opposite effects which are Mental CONCENTRATION and DECENTRATION. Mind KNOWING and Mind THINKING are all that is - and all matter is but an electric record of Mind thinking. KNOWING is undivided. THINKING is divided into TWO - hence its simplicity. BUT - those TWO are multiplied indefinitely - hence their complexity. Many different words are used to express the same thing which confuse you. However, you need not be confused if you will but remember that the solution of every complex effect, whether chemical, electrical, astronomical, social, or that business problem which you are now facing, lies somewhere within the balance or unbalance between the concentrative or decentrative thinking which motivates the heartbeat of the universe. CONCENTRATION is an effect of gathering a very large volume of rarified matter like gases, or light rays which you cannot see, into a small volume which compresses it into solid matter or focal point of light which you can see. Visibility is an effect of CONTRACTION, and contraction heats, and that is the way that God’s concentrative thinking gathers hot incandescent suns together in space to create His visible universe of objective forms. God’s decentrative thinking surrounds those suns with cold, dark, evacuated and invisible space. So from concentration and decentration we now have other pairs of opposite effects which mean exactly the same thing. These are CONTRACTION AND EXPANSION, MATTER AND SPACE, HOT AND COLD, SOLIDITY AND VACUITY, LIGHT AND DARK. All of these pairs of opposites mean the same thing, concentration and decentration, and each are expressions of divided FATHER-MOTHERHOOD into FATHER and MOTHERHOOD. Likewise all have the same purpose, and that purpose is to FULFILL THE DESIRE OF MIND to give sex-conditioned body forms to Mind imaginings. CONCENTRATION builds formed bodies by contraction, while DECENTRATION dissolves them. Let us again repeat this sentence in other words of the same meaning. GENERATION builds formed bodies by contraction, while DEGENERATION dissolves them by expansion. Let us again repeat it in other words. GRAVITATION builds formed bodies while RADIATION dissolves them.” (Extract from ‘The Home Study Course’ by Walter Russell)

I think there are at least two types of futures, 1. Inevitable 2. Random. I do not mean such primitive inevitabilities like death, but rather such for example, emergence of stars or planets or more close - money. Money couldn’t not to emerge. That is inevitable future. Which money will become reserve currency is random.

Part of the problem with some smart people is the inability to explain things in terms that are easily understood. I see Strong Emergence as the following (my understanding of it could be flawed). This is simply the theory that certain levels of reality emerge(Strongly emerge vs weak emerge) that can no longer be predicted (determined) by "fundamental" laws of physics. Ok, I am an atheist materialist, and I totally can agree with that. All it takes for me to agree with that, is that the boundary between , say, fundamental physics and biology is a "singularity event", which is a major event in "time" that is similar to a black hole , which then on the other side creates a whole new baby universe. So, once inert matter was able to become Living matter...that was a singularity, once living matter evolved to create what we call Mind or Consciousness, that was another singularity. It just simply means , or is stating that events in our current universe are not deterministic as some people believe, as I used to believe. Quantum mechanics is trying to tell us that, so I listened. Therefore, the concept of free will follows, do we have it? or do we not? Well, I believe we have a weak form of free will, that is , we can choose minor things within the realm of our possibilities, but there is a much more vast set of things we cannot choose due to our constraints (our biology, parents, childhood upbringing, education, religion, accidents, etc). For example I do not have the Free will to flap my arms and fly like a bird or to travel to another galaxy...I have the will to do it , but not the free will (too many constraints on my reality). Strong emergence, to me , just simply states, what I believe now is true, that after these singularity events, we can no longer explain or predict/calculate the rules that have emerged after the singularity by just calculating from the bottom up. In essence....what emerges after a Strong Emergence is a brand new "baby universe", so to speak, with new sets of macro-rules, even though the underlying rules still apply. I apologize for the fact that my use of language is not a good enough tool to convey my thinking...so what I wrote will probably seem scattered and convoluted.

A problem being too complex for humans to know it and being unable to ever know things in such terms is the same thing in my mind. If we get smarter we will find more complex things relevant to us, so the desire will always be greater than our ability to reduce to fundamentals. The vast complexity of how something works by physics and contrasting that to how our understanding works where we approximate the world to make sense of it, there will be forever things we cannot understand by its constituent components. Understanding can never exceed our relevant approximations, to enable that understanding. So in this way, strong emergence is real, but not clearly defined, as its limits will evolve in conjunction with human wisdom. This strong emergence does not prohibit previously separate things from getting connected in some manner. It would still be a mistake to hold onto our categorisations too strongly.

I love your way to be religious and how you dedicate your life to the search of the Creator.

I’ve felt the same as George Ellis, I just had no idea this was a thing other people thought.

There is a string and a bow the music is our experiance and the river

In this interview David Alberts hairstyle looks netherlandish lol

Emergence is simply part of physical world. We should start accept that the Verse is non determistic and has been made on purpose on this way.

Ideas are physical, ultimately, as they originate as, and can be defined as, physical processes (electrochemical interactions in neural systems/brains). The ideas are not extant unless as recorded in some sense (either in a brain or some other medium). Logical truths are not extant unless realized (as a recording, for example). They must be discovered and brought into the world through their discovery. These are physical processes and could also be discovered by computing a theory of everything, and all its resultant permutations, in principle. Yes, some causal arrows point downwards, but that is determined by prior upwards pointing causality via physics, ultimately.

What stood out for me is that it seemed to be agreed that the various levels of physical reality are separate and cannot be connected. As a Problacist I disagree with this. To me, every level is connected and becomes real by nature’s laws of chance and probability. These laws are fundamental to the universe and are the foundation even of physical science itself. Q

QM will describe emergent biology. So either wait and see or join the party and help figure it out. Just don't complain about!

Does strong emergence imply that the material world is self- manifested?

I am not familiar with the term strong emergence. But I believe that abstractions are real and objective although not physical. Human abstract thought is the creation of explanations of how the world works. When Newton looked at an apple and then the moon and questioned in his own mind what these two things might have in common, he discovered a hidden unity within variety. We call this abstract thought or conceptual thought. Such abstract thought is virtual reality and is an emergent phenomenon. It is not physical, but it is real and objective. I hold that each such discovery is a novel conception in the sense of it being a different but somewhat similar explanation for each individual mind. I could be wrong.

I will no doubt sound arrogant to say so, but Kuhn seems philosophically naive to me. Like a great many physical scientists even today, after a century of quantum physics (and 2-1/2 centuries after Hume), Kuhn argues from the famous dictum of Laplace [trans. from French]: "We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes." But the vast intellect Laplace ASSUMES, and the conclusions Laplace drew from its POSSIBLE existence is not even potentially an empirical proposition. More exactly, we cannot conceive of such a mind, beyond the mere label Laplace gives to it, in any concrete way; let alone conceive of how such a mind could deduce what Laplace (and Kuhn) claim for it. In the famous phrase, Laplace's proposition could never, in any manner, be falsified (so also never verified/confirmed). This dictum is, rather, an article of faith in Science as Laplace understood Science in his day. The only mind that has ever been independently thought of that might be offered as a candidate for this "vast intellect" is the mind of God. And the existence of God, and his nonexistence, are propositions that are also unempirical in the scientific sense. Rather, such articles of faith, with their intellectual leaps so far beyond anything we can know with certainty, are ultimately grounded in the people's personal experiences, which will always trump--i.e. always underlie--even the empiricism and logic of Science.

Dave is a cool thinker, I could listen to him only here

Sorta related to McKenna’s Novelty theory.

WHERE DID THE ENERGY FOR THE WORLD COME FROM ???

re 9:38 in the absence of previous experience with fluids one COULD NOT 'know' that H2O has fluid properties IE wetness...water was known of long before it's constituents were identified

If you think random is a law, then there is no strong emergence. But why would people care about a "fundamental" law which will predict infinite numbers of possibilities and our reality is just one of them?

It's easy to get caught up in the human experience because that's what we're familiar with, but with 100 trillion neural connections it seems to be adding an unnecessary layer of complexity. Surely it would be simpler to consider an earthworm brain with only 7000 neural connections in these thought experiments. And instead of considering using physics to explain Mozart's 40th symphony, one could consider an earthworm brain in isolation and why it decided to turn left instead of right at a particular time. It's always a good idea to reduce unnecessary complexity as much as possible.

"emergence" sounds like a term some panicking materialist came up... during a philosophical emergency

@KOKOPIKOSS

4 жыл бұрын

yeap...same thing happened to idealists with consciousness

@kyleo9614

3 жыл бұрын

Emergence-c!

@ezbody

3 жыл бұрын

There are no panicking materialists, because materialists are not superstitious, and it's the dumbest thing ever to panic about, anyway. If you think that the materialists will panic if they find out that God is real, think again. The delusion, that people are materialists because they don't want God to be real, that delusion only exists in the heads of the believers in God. People are materialists because IT MAKES SENSE, AND IT'S RATIONAL. As soon as the existence of an actual, specific, describable God becomes proven, most materialists would have zero problems accepting it's existence.

@st.armanini9521

3 жыл бұрын

@@ezbody What's the connection between panic and superstition again?

@highvalence7649

3 жыл бұрын

@@ezbody I don’t think it’s superstition but materialists can be dogmatic and cling to their ideas like humans usually do when it comes to philosophy, politics and religion presumably because these domains strongly relate to the ego. What is reality and what should we do in it? The ego gets highly attached to what to its limited perspective is the right answer to these sorts of questions. I doubt it’s a coincidence. Dogmatism and clinging to ideas in the context of these sorts of questions is normal human behaviour. And if materialists panic or at least freak out a little bit and then sort of ad hoc come up with emergence, then while i agree that that wouldn't be psychologically motivated by superstition, I wonder, however, if it is more or less subconsciously motivated by a fear or worry by materialists regarding increased superstition if materialism is questionable to a sufficiently significant extent. I think worry of superstition and religious dogmatism is a valid worry or concern. But materialism seems to be an overextended truth claim that seemingly, together with the enlightenment a few centuries ago in general gained popularity as a reaction against religious superstition and dogma. Granted, it's progress. But I doubt materialism is the final answer. Every generation scorns the picture of reality that game before it. Do you really think we happen to live in the time where we got it right? Lucky us. Stop kidding yourself! The materialist paradigm is replacing the religious literalist paradigm. But I think it would be naive to think that it is going to survive reality's nature to keep changing here in the form of paradigm shifts, and I think it would be naive to think that materialists arrive at their position for purely rational motivations. I don't think that's how the psyche works unless one is very very self aware and aware of how the ego mind works and is psychologically mature in a way that few seem to be. The secular scientific culture that is now coming on strong, while certainly progress, is not the pinnacle of progress. Humanity including the secular and scientific and rationalistic culture still has a lot of growing up to do and a lot of including and transcending to do. Now, I am not a theist, and I don’t think materialism makes sense and is any more rational than many of the other alternative theories. Why would it be any more rational than panpsychism, panexperientialism, micropsychism, microexperientialism, dual aspect monism, ontic pancomputationalism, ontological mathematics, cosmopsychism, idealism, and even substance dualism just to name a few? Materialism seems no more the obvious answer than any one of these alternatives. It seems to have a major problem in not yet having an explanation for how physical facts about the brain-body system produces or emerges consciousnesses (the hard problem of consciousness). And it seems to have no significant motivations in comparison to many of the mentioned alternatives. We have tight correlations and causal relations between phenomenological states and physical states but correlation and/or causal relation is not the same as explanation or reduction. And the facts about these tight correlations and causal relations don’t at all seem on its face obviously inconsistent with any of the mentioned alternatives. Many of the other views have problems too but they seem not obviously any more problematic than the hard problem of consciousness. So, I’m not at all convinced that materialism makes sense and is rational to any greater degree than any of the mentioned alternatives. How are you coming to the conclusion that it is?

The fact we make ai and have no idea what it'll say has a place in this argument, hope I'm not early

The world is a Matryoshka doll of 'particles' and interactions between 'particles'. Interactions between outer dolls are infinitely various and are not as standard as forces. Pick one number from 0 to 10, every number has 0 possibilities to be picked, but finally, one number will be picked anyway. Basic principles will derive an infinite number of macro 'particles' and interactions...