Eliezer apparently travels in different circles than I do, and encounters people who use the word “emergence” very differently. Here is the kind of situation where I usually hear the word “emergence” used:
Me: Well, I think I’ll build an AI that understands Chinese this weekend.
Philosopher: Build it from what?
Me: NAND gates, I suppose.
Philosopher: That’s impossible. Searle proved it. NAND gates don’t understand Chinese, even a little. So a collection of lots of NAND gates can’t understand Chinese either.
Me: Huh? Searle and you don’t get it. The understanding of Chinese is going to be an emergent property of the whole complex system.
Philosopher: “Emergence! Aaarghh!”
Me: Would you like me to explain the code to you?
Philosopher: No, thanks. I don’t know anything about programming. But I do know that the word “Emergence” is a sure sign of messed up thinking.
In other words, I don’t consider “emergence” as an inoculation against curiosity. I consider it an inoculation against stupidity. It is a claim by a reductionist that a
high level phenomenon can be constructed from low-level machinery which is different in kind.
Most scientists I know use ’emergence” as I do. But I have to admit that most philosophers I know use it as Eliezer does. I guess we will just have to agree to dis- … err, agree to miscommunicate. But I do wish that Eliezer would stop pretending that the word “emergence” has to have an explanatory function in order to be useful. It has a classificatory function. It collects together a class of models which have in common the property that naive reductionists fail to understand them. It is classification, not explanation. Putting the shoe on the other foot:
Philosopher: Your argument is fallacious.
Me: Aaarghh! “Fallaciousness” How does that explain how my argument is wrong. You are just trying to stop conversation.
Philosopher: But… But… You don’t understand. Fallaciousness is not being used as an explanation.
There were some good comments on this thread, but I needed to add my own two cents.
I am glad that there are people other than myself who find the notion of “emergent phenomena” to be code word for “magic” or “ignorance.” Quite frankly I am mystified by how learned people, presumably taught the scientific method, could be so enamored with so called “emergent phenomena” but then I recall that practically the whole discipline of modern cosmology is little more than dressed up religion (anyone here know what possible cosmological consequences “Dark Energy” or “Dark Matter” have). But in that vein it bares mentioning that if it is impossible to discriminate between two things, then they are logically identical. Magic = achieving work through methods that do not involve “work effecting activity.” Emergent phenomena = quality achieving methods that do not involve “quality achieving activity.”
In order to deal with the topic of Emergent Phenomena one is required to comprehend what is called “Supervenience.” I will leave it to the readers to explore Supervenience at their own discretion. (Standford encyclopedia of philosophy has a good article on it). Suffice it to say that some people have managed to convince themselves that a form of Supervenience can exist whereby “Top down causation” can occur.
Strong claims to emergent phenomena (which are essentially arguments regarding causation) require that the Supervenient qualities occur out of nowhere. This would be like in real life saying that Kinetic Energy occurs without there being any potential energy. Potential energy is not itself energy; hence the POTENTIAL part of its name. So can anyone point out why we “assume” the existence of potential energy in matter but that “potential intelligence” is not present in neurons?
Weak claims to emergent phenomena (which are essentially classification arguments) reference sets which include all objects in the universe (as Eliezer has pointed out), and as such are completely devoid of explanatory powers. Technically all things in the universe are “emergent properties” of physics. But we could potentially explain everything in the universe “if we had perfect knowledge of physics.” We would need something like Laplace’s daemon, but with perfect predictability we could derive neurochemistry. Once you have perfect neurochemistry knowledge, you can derive economics or any other set of behaviors you wish.
Example: When two triangles are brought together a square is the result (technically a quadrilateral, but I am keeping it simple). There is no property of triangles that is equivalent with “squareness.” So “squareness” can be said to be an emergent property of triangles. Right now every person reading this should realize that something fishy is going on. Each triangle has “potential squareness” as part of its “list of qualities that it possesses.” So when two triangles are brought together you get a square. You do not get something for nothing. The only difference between the triangles in this example and everything described as “emergent” is the degree of complexity.
The “proper way” Emergent Property is supposed to be used is when you have a universe of discourse that is random and note that “small sections of apparent order” occur. These properties are then “emergent” as they are not connected with any law that the universe itself possesses. The problem is that any application of this to a level of reality short of applying it to reality itself is entirely inconsistent with all non-paraconsistent logics.
A truly random “thing” does not exist. Such a “thing” could not interact with any thing we are aware of, since any interaction involves a two-way quality exchange/copy/removal,etc. Does anyone here have any idea what “mono-interactive interaction” looks like? The only way to achieve that is to have a “nothing” do something.
The very definition of “Nothing” is that it lacks any and all qualities. No qualities means no abilities. No abilities means “doing” is impossible. Nothing does not result in a change in anything.
Just because you are not aware of all the causal factors DOES NOT mean that there do not exist any causal factors. You can use this for any possible “emergent phenomena.” Just because you are not aware of selection mechanisms for quantum physics does not mean that there are no selection mechanisms. Repeat ad nauseum.
“(anyone here know what possible cosmological consequences “Dark Energy” or “Dark Matter” have)”
Ok, this is the point where I started to question your logic (incidentally, apology for the tangent).
I agree that Dark Matter and Dark Energy feel like epicycles and phlogiston. HOWEVER, they also feel like that or felt like that at one point to all actual physicists.
Therefore, if you claim that they do not exist, you must both know what the standard answer to that question is (for if there is no standard answer science would have abandoned those concepts long ago), and also why it is wrong, or in short you must know more about physics than every physicist on earth.
That is not quite so hard to do as it seems on first glance; Einstein did it. Maxwell did it. Planck did it. But it is important to realize that the chance that every scientist on Earth is wrong about thing X is significantly greater than the chance you just don’t understand thing X.
Eliezer apparently travels in different circles than I do, and encounters people who use the word “emergence” very differently. Here is the kind of situation where I usually hear the word “emergence” used:
Me: Well, I think I’ll build an AI that understands Chinese this weekend.
Philosopher: Build it from what?
Me: NAND gates, I suppose.
Philosopher: That’s impossible. Searle proved it. NAND gates don’t understand Chinese, even a little. So a collection of lots of NAND gates can’t understand Chinese either.
Me: Huh? Searle and you don’t get it. The understanding of Chinese is going to be an emergent property of the whole complex system.
Philosopher: “Emergence! Aaarghh!”
Me: Would you like me to explain the code to you?
Philosopher: No, thanks. I don’t know anything about programming. But I do know that the word “Emergence” is a sure sign of messed up thinking.
In other words, I don’t consider “emergence” as an inoculation against curiosity. I consider it an inoculation against stupidity. It is a claim by a reductionist that a high level phenomenon can be constructed from low-level machinery which is different in kind.
Most scientists I know use ’emergence” as I do. But I have to admit that most philosophers I know use it as Eliezer does. I guess we will just have to agree to dis- … err, agree to miscommunicate. But I do wish that Eliezer would stop pretending that the word “emergence” has to have an explanatory function in order to be useful. It has a classificatory function. It collects together a class of models which have in common the property that naive reductionists fail to understand them. It is classification, not explanation. Putting the shoe on the other foot:
Philosopher: Your argument is fallacious.
Me: Aaarghh! “Fallaciousness” How does that explain how my argument is wrong. You are just trying to stop conversation.
Philosopher: But… But… You don’t understand. Fallaciousness is not being used as an explanation.
There were some good comments on this thread, but I needed to add my own two cents.
I am glad that there are people other than myself who find the notion of “emergent phenomena” to be code word for “magic” or “ignorance.” Quite frankly I am mystified by how learned people, presumably taught the scientific method, could be so enamored with so called “emergent phenomena” but then I recall that practically the whole discipline of modern cosmology is little more than dressed up religion (anyone here know what possible cosmological consequences “Dark Energy” or “Dark Matter” have). But in that vein it bares mentioning that if it is impossible to discriminate between two things, then they are logically identical. Magic = achieving work through methods that do not involve “work effecting activity.” Emergent phenomena = quality achieving methods that do not involve “quality achieving activity.”
In order to deal with the topic of Emergent Phenomena one is required to comprehend what is called “Supervenience.” I will leave it to the readers to explore Supervenience at their own discretion. (Standford encyclopedia of philosophy has a good article on it). Suffice it to say that some people have managed to convince themselves that a form of Supervenience can exist whereby “Top down causation” can occur.
Strong claims to emergent phenomena (which are essentially arguments regarding causation) require that the Supervenient qualities occur out of nowhere. This would be like in real life saying that Kinetic Energy occurs without there being any potential energy. Potential energy is not itself energy; hence the POTENTIAL part of its name. So can anyone point out why we “assume” the existence of potential energy in matter but that “potential intelligence” is not present in neurons?
Weak claims to emergent phenomena (which are essentially classification arguments) reference sets which include all objects in the universe (as Eliezer has pointed out), and as such are completely devoid of explanatory powers. Technically all things in the universe are “emergent properties” of physics. But we could potentially explain everything in the universe “if we had perfect knowledge of physics.” We would need something like Laplace’s daemon, but with perfect predictability we could derive neurochemistry. Once you have perfect neurochemistry knowledge, you can derive economics or any other set of behaviors you wish.
Example: When two triangles are brought together a square is the result (technically a quadrilateral, but I am keeping it simple). There is no property of triangles that is equivalent with “squareness.” So “squareness” can be said to be an emergent property of triangles. Right now every person reading this should realize that something fishy is going on. Each triangle has “potential squareness” as part of its “list of qualities that it possesses.” So when two triangles are brought together you get a square. You do not get something for nothing. The only difference between the triangles in this example and everything described as “emergent” is the degree of complexity.
The “proper way” Emergent Property is supposed to be used is when you have a universe of discourse that is random and note that “small sections of apparent order” occur. These properties are then “emergent” as they are not connected with any law that the universe itself possesses. The problem is that any application of this to a level of reality short of applying it to reality itself is entirely inconsistent with all non-paraconsistent logics.
A truly random “thing” does not exist. Such a “thing” could not interact with any thing we are aware of, since any interaction involves a two-way quality exchange/copy/removal,etc. Does anyone here have any idea what “mono-interactive interaction” looks like? The only way to achieve that is to have a “nothing” do something.
The very definition of “Nothing” is that it lacks any and all qualities. No qualities means no abilities. No abilities means “doing” is impossible. Nothing does not result in a change in anything.
Just because you are not aware of all the causal factors DOES NOT mean that there do not exist any causal factors. You can use this for any possible “emergent phenomena.” Just because you are not aware of selection mechanisms for quantum physics does not mean that there are no selection mechanisms. Repeat ad nauseum.
MTF
“(anyone here know what possible cosmological consequences “Dark Energy” or “Dark Matter” have)”
Ok, this is the point where I started to question your logic (incidentally, apology for the tangent).
I agree that Dark Matter and Dark Energy feel like epicycles and phlogiston. HOWEVER, they also feel like that or felt like that at one point to all actual physicists.
Therefore, if you claim that they do not exist, you must both know what the standard answer to that question is (for if there is no standard answer science would have abandoned those concepts long ago), and also why it is wrong, or in short you must know more about physics than every physicist on earth.
That is not quite so hard to do as it seems on first glance; Einstein did it. Maxwell did it. Planck did it. But it is important to realize that the chance that every scientist on Earth is wrong about thing X is significantly greater than the chance you just don’t understand thing X.