Philosophy Now Forum

The universe is nothing but particles. All those particles follow laws of motion. They aren’t free. The brain is made up entirely of those same particles. Therefore, there is nothing in the brain that would give us freedom. These particles also don’t understand anything, they don’t make sense of anything, they don’t grasp the meaning of anything. Since the brain, again, is made up of those particles, it has no power to allow us to grasp meaning or understand anything. But we do understand. We do grasp meaning. Therefore, we are talking about qualities we possess which are not made out of energy. These qualities are entirely non-material.

What Are Emergent Properties?

Emergent properties are properties that become apparent and result from various interacting components within a system but are properties that do not belong to the individual components themselves. The individual components within a system amount to or manifest the property that is emergent. Emergent properties are concepts that are studied within philosophy, the physical sciences, and the social sciences.

Emergent Properties in Philosophy

Within philosophy, the overall concept of emergence is debated heavily. The argument involves the possible dualistic relationship between two characteristics: dependence and autonomy. Dependence means that the emergent property is sustained by lower-level physical entities; i.e., the property does not exist independent of the physical components that manifest it. However, this brings into question to what extent is an emergent property dependent on its underlying components. For example, if human consciousness is dependent on human brain cells, what does that entail for human autonomy or free will. The American philosopher John Searle believed that the concept of emergent properties inherently implies causal reduction or reductionism. Another philosopher named Tony Lawson argued that emergent properties such as the nature of social structures cannot be completely explained by their causal relationship with its components. This brings forth a debate between strong emergence and weak emergence.
Strong and Weak Emergence

Reductionism like Searle's interpretation of emergence is a type of strong emergence, where the entirety of the emergent property can be explained causally and directly with regard to its physical components. That is, the property has no autonomy of its own or characteristics of its own outside its relationship to its emergent connection with its physical components. For example, a person's personality and decisions could be entirely based on their component parts, hormones, brain, past experiences, etc., which ultimately rejects any real autonomy or free will.

Weak emergence argues for the affirmation of both the reality of the entities or features dubbed as emergent properties and the physical components that manifest them. It argues that, though the emergent property is contingent on its base physical components, this does not necessitate pure determinism in that the complexity of the entity can cause emergent properties to emerge from lesser emergent properties which can interact amongst themselves emerging further properties. Subsequently, the highest emergent property of a system can take on a life of its own and have characteristics that cannot be fully explained with regard to the smallest units of the system. Weak emergence is made up of five premises which are debated about in regards to which premises should be upheld and which abandoned:

Supervenient dependence - the occurrence of an emergent property or feature at a given time requires and is contingent on the prior occurrence of a lower-level physical component.
Reality - emergent properties are real, and not imaginary entities, but have a grounding in the physical world.
Efficacy - emergent properties are efficiently causally linked to their component parts in that the emergence of the emergent property happens inherently with its parts.
Distinctness - emergent properties are distinct from their lowest physical components. That is, the lowest physical components do not possess the property individually or by themselves.
Physical causal closure - high-level emergent properties are physically gradient to their lowest-level physical components. That is, the lowest-level, purely-physical components first result in low-level emergent physical properties or effects, before further emergence can result in the manifestation of higher-level emergent properties that are increasingly more distinct from their physical components.

Weak emergence basically calls into question that the autonomy of an emergent property is ultimately dependent on how complex its lower-level components are and therefore how distinct the emergent property is from its physical components. There are many disagreements about the premises of weak emergence where some philosophers reject different premises. For example, eliminativists deny realism and that emergent properties are real and epiphenomenalists deny efficacy. Additionally, substance dualists deny supervenient dependence. However, the weak emergentists resist arguments that conclude weak emergence ultimately falls back into overdetermination by expressing that the emergent property and its lowest physical components are non-competing in that the connection between an emergent property and its components does not mutually exclude itself from autonomy, or distinction.
Emergent Properties Examples

A common example of an emergent property is wetness. "Wetness" can be described as an emergent property that manifests from the interaction between the physical molecular components of a liquid such as molecules of water, with both each other and a surface or piece of matter that water is adhesive toward. That is, what is an individual water molecule (which is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom) does not in itself or by itself possess the property of wetness. Instead, wetness is a higher, or emergent property of the interactions amongst many water molecules with themselves and another piece of matter such as a napkin or shirt.

Wetness fits emergent properties definition as the individual water molecules represented in this system do not individually possess the characteristic of wetness.
Wetness and its relationship with individual water molecules are among emergent properties examples.

The world appears to contain diverse kinds of objects and systems—planets, tornadoes, trees, ant colonies, and human persons, to name but a few—characterized by distinctive features and behaviors. This casual impression is deepened by the success of the special sciences, with their distinctive taxonomies and laws characterizing astronomical, meteorological, chemical, botanical, biological, and psychological processes, among others. But there’s a twist, for part of the success of the special sciences reflects an effective consensus that the features of the composed entities they treat do not “float free” of features and configurations of their components, but are rather in some way(s) dependent on them.

Consider, for example, a tornado. At any moment, a tornado depends for its existence on dust and debris, and ultimately on whatever micro-entities compose it; and its properties and behaviors likewise depend, one way or another, on the properties and interacting behaviors of its fundamental components. Yet the tornado’s identity does not depend on any specific composing micro-entity or configuration, and its features and behaviors appear to differ in kind from those of its most basic constituents, as is reflected in the fact that one can have a rather good understanding of how tornadoes work while being entirely ignorant of particle physics. The point generalizes to more complex and longer-lived entities, including plants and animals, economies and ecologies, and myriad other individuals and systems studied in the special sciences: such entities appear to depend in various important respects on their components, while nonetheless belonging to distinctive taxonomies and exhibiting autonomous properties and behaviors, as reflected in their governing special science laws. (The point might be generalized yet further to include human artifacts which are not the object of any natural science, but whose conditions of individuation are tied to human language and practice. But artifacts are set aside in this entry, as these raise distinctive issues that are discussed in the entry on material constitution. Whether there are composites that are neither artifactual nor amenable to scientific analysis is controversial, and if there are, they plausibly will not meet candidate autonomy conditions on emergence. But this will not be explored further here.)

The general notion of emergence is meant to conjoin these twin characteristics of dependence and autonomy. It mediates between extreme forms of dualism, which reject the micro-dependence of some entities, and reductionism, which rejects macro-autonomy.

Emergent behavior is behavior of a system that does not depend on its individual parts, but on their relationships to one another. Thus emergent behavior cannot be predicted by examination of a system's individual parts. It can only be predicted, managed, or controlled by understanding the parts and their relationships. Emergent behavior is also known as emergence, emergent property, or “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

All systems are composed of individual parts. Something arranges the parts into a structure. The structure then determines the behavior of the system. System analysis is thus a matter of identifying the relevant structure of the system and its most important parts.

The key insight of the concept of emergent behavior is it's the arrangement of the parts, and not the parts themselves, that makes the big difference. The chemicals in the human body can be purchased for a few dollars. Buying them and mixing them up in a bucket, or even spending a hundred years to arrange them, would not create a person. That's why it's structure that makes all the difference.

Examples of parts are atoms, the parts in a machine, people, and nations. Each of these is a system because it's made up of smaller parts. Each of these parts is in turn a part in a larger system.

Examples of structure are the social contract people enter into to form a government, the molecular structure of a chemical compound like carbon dioxide, and the way your cells are organized into organs, which are then organized into your body.

Examples of emergent behavior are life, the way the sun can serve as an energy source for billions of years, the dysfunctionality of a gang, and our favorite, the environmental sustainability problem.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 12:43 am

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 12:21 am

I hear ya.

Too bad you focus solely on the delivery and ignore the message...

The universe is nothing but particles. All those particles follow laws of motion. They aren’t free. The brain is made up entirely of those same particles. Therefore, there is nothing in the brain that would give us freedom. These particles also don’t understand anything, they don’t make sense of anything, they don’t grasp the meaning of anything. Since the brain, again, is made up of those particles, it has no power to allow us to grasp meaning or understand anything. But we do understand. We do grasp meaning. Therefore, we are talking about qualities we possess which are not made out of energy. These qualities are entirely non-material.

...anywho, that's me, done, for the evening.

More high-larity tomorrow.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:54 am
And we're all set to talk about...emergence, perhaps. Nifty.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:20 am

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:54 am
And we're all set to talk about...emergence, perhaps. Nifty.

Just a funny little coincidence.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 11:13 am

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:20 am

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:54 am
And we're all set to talk about...emergence, perhaps. Nifty.

Just a funny little coincidence.

I wondered actually and assumed that it had already come up, in posts I'd missed.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 11:13 am

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:20 am

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:54 am
And we're all set to talk about...emergence, perhaps. Nifty.

Just a funny little coincidence.

I wondered actually and assumed that it had already come up, in posts I'd missed.

Compatibilism/soft determinism on moral responsibility and punishment

Compatibilists typically attempt to redefine free will to be a human action which is predetermined in a particular way which is consistent with our traditional views on moral responsibility.

Hume, for example, claimed that we should define free will as when an action is determined by internal causes, because it is for actions caused in that way that we have traditionally ascribed praise or blame.

So, for Hume, a person has moral responsibility for actions which are determined by their internal causes, such as their intentions, personality, desires, knowledge, beliefs, etc.

A person is not morally responsible for their actions which were determined by external causes, however.

Harris’s position on free will is straightforward enough. The universe is deterministic, and the behaviour of every entity in the universe is determined by the fixed laws of nature. This includes everything from the motion of atoms and the planets to human behaviour. On this view, according to Harris, there is no such thing as deep responsibility, and humans are no more responsible for their actions (in a deep sense) than mountains are for having avalanches.

Hard determinism and moral responsibility

This is Free Will 101, as Paul Bloom said of another recent essay outlining a position similar to Harris’s. This take on free will sometimes goes by the name of hard determinism, and is defined by two key claims: first, that determinism is true; and second, that free will therefore does not exist. It’s hardly a new or unheard of view; indeed, most discussions of free will start with the problems that hard determinism poses for notions of responsibility, and the moral implications that follow: namely, that if we’re not really responsible for our actions, then how could we be morally culpable for our bad actions, and how could we meaningfully deserve praise for our good actions?

Hard determinism contrasts with the dominant position in contemporary Western philosophy, known as compatibilism. Compatibilist philosophers, such as Dan Dennett, accept that determinism is true, but do not believe that this truth poses the threats to free will and moral responsibility that hard determinists see. That is, compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible with free will and moral responsibility, and so we can meaningfully talk about culpability, guilt, blame, praise and other features of moral judgements.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:55 pm Back again to that, as well: "internal causes".

As long as no one puts a gun to Mary's head, commanding her to "abort the baby or die", she's still "somehow" "responsible" for doing so. Her "intentions, personality, desires, knowledge, beliefs" etc, kick in making her liable for the baby's demise.

A person is not morally responsible for their actions which were determined by external causes, however.

Of course, even here some argue that when another puts a gun to her head commanding her to abort the baby, they too do so only because in the only possible reality they were never able not to.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 9:35 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:55 pm Back again to that, as well: "internal causes".

As long as no one puts a gun to Mary's head, commanding her to "abort the baby or die", she's still "somehow" "responsible" for doing so. Her "intentions, personality, desires, knowledge, beliefs" etc, kick in making her liable for the baby's demise.

A person is not morally responsible for their actions which were determined by external causes, however.

Of course, even here some argue that when another puts a gun to her head commanding her to abort the baby, they too do so only because in the only possible reality they were never able not to.

This last part is changing the focus and topic.
First you are talking about whether internal causes, even if utterly determined, qualify one for responsibility.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 9:35 pmBut the concluding reaction is about the other people. Sort of as if someone who thinks Mary is responsible WOULDN'T think those people are responsible for putting the gun to her head.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 9:35 pmBut of course they would. Unless you can find some determinist or compatibilist who only holds Mary responsible but not them. I can't imagine what philosophical position would justify that.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 9:35 pmI'd just like to say also that it often seems just like a given that Mary did something wrong when she got the abortion.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 9:35 pmI know that at the very least you are fractured and fragmented over that issue, so really you don't assume that abortion is immoral. But it always seems to come off that way.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 9:35 pmShe's either responsible for doing something bad or she's not because she was compelled by causes.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:37 pm Still, I admit [over and again] that the problem here may well be me. I'm simply unable to grasp the argument that the compatibilists make.

Though even here [as I note over and again] how can we not then go back to pinning down -- scientifically, philosophically, theologically -- whether my brain itself is or is not entirely behind my failure to do so.

phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 2:15 amSo, "Einstein" is so stupid he doesn't know about emergent properties?

What Are Emergent Properties?

The world appears to contain diverse kinds of objects and systems—planets, tornadoes, trees, ant colonies, and human persons...

Emergent behavior is behavior of a system that does not depend on its individual parts, but on their relationships to one another. Thus emergent behavior...

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:54 amNow you said this, and it's at least as clear as the dialogue's version...

And we're all set to talk about...emergence...