“Emergent” is ambigious, and some versions mean “incapable of being reductively explained”, which is probably not what you are getting at.
What you are getting at is probably “sentience is a reductively explicable higher-level property”.
Really? I’ve only seen it used as “a property of an object or phenomenon that is not present in its components”. I think that “incapable of being reductively explained” is the implication of emergence when combined with certain viewpoints, but that is not necessarily part of the definition itself, even when used by anti-reductionists. Still, it is pointless to shake one’s fist at linguistic drift, so I should change my terminology for the sake of clear discussion. Thanks.
(That has the added benefit of removing the need to countersignal the lack of explanation in the word “emergence” itself [see SSC’s use of “divine grace”]. That is probably not very clear to somebody who hasn’t immersed themselves in LW’s concepts, and possibly unclear even to somebody who has.)
“Emergent” is ambigious, and some versions mean “incapable of being reductively explained”, which is probably not what you are getting at. What you are getting at is probably “sentience is a reductively explicable higher-level property”.
Really? I’ve only seen it used as “a property of an object or phenomenon that is not present in its components”. I think that “incapable of being reductively explained” is the implication of emergence when combined with certain viewpoints, but that is not necessarily part of the definition itself, even when used by anti-reductionists. Still, it is pointless to shake one’s fist at linguistic drift, so I should change my terminology for the sake of clear discussion. Thanks.
(That has the added benefit of removing the need to countersignal the lack of explanation in the word “emergence” itself [see SSC’s use of “divine grace”]. That is probably not very clear to somebody who hasn’t immersed themselves in LW’s concepts, and possibly unclear even to somebody who has.)
It’s much worse than everyone agreeing on one meaning, and then shifting to another. The two definitions are running in parallel.