Michael Ruse - Philosophy of Reductionism & Emergence

[@HanifBarnwell]

Another excellent segment!

[@jadebrownofficial]

The world isn't either a machine or organism. The problem with language and being human is that we insist everything we see be labeled when in actuality what we call Earth isn't really Earth, it is a name we arbitrarily gave it. It is a molten rock, with what we call water, land, mountains, organisms all the things which are alive who spin around a giant ball of gas with other planets in a twisted helix orbit downwards in the abyss of spacetime. Even then all of that is using words we made up to help categorize what we see. Closer to Truth is realizing that there will always be a limit of knowledge (boundary of the knowable as a great man once said), that we can't cross because we are just one of many flawed creatures that exist out there.

[@dmitryalexandersamoilov]

The way you see the world depends on your perspective. A reductionist perspective yeilds theories that allow us to invent new scifi devices. A wholist perspective allows you to study complex systems without paying attention to the details which are too complex to deal with.

[@haros2868]

​@@dmitryalexandersamoilovWe talk about if something is fundumentally irreducable or reducable. Not perspectives and practical implications. When we say reality is ontologicaly reducable we mean that if i could somehow isolate you to only the quantum knowledge (standard model) and no macro information you could never, even in infinite years, figure a out say consciousness

[@dmitryalexandersamoilov]

@@haros2868 I think it also depends on whether time is fundamental or not. If time is fundamental things are truly irreducible. But if time is just computationally-irreducible, there is hope we could philosophically provide a contextualization for it, even if that might not be able to be empirically verified.

[@jussirytkonen2871]

Boundary is only our willingness to find out, because every new discovery requires discovery of oneself in a new level of life, and a discovery of new level of oneself is always a process of pain and suffering, of death. Yet only death makes us able to move and be renewed in existence and not turn into a stones. What we are studying in external sciences, however, is merely stones and minerals, not life. The boundary might also be a safety net ensuring that we cannot destroy the whole human race or planet with knowledge we are not ready to handle with responsibility.

[@haros2868]

@@dmitryalexandersamoilov well I think for any entity (like a quark or even consciousness I propose) to be causaly efficacious (to interact with the world) it must exist continuously. So time too would have to provide a continuous canvas, where no time windows of stop exist. Infinitely smooth

[@kuvasz5252]

One finds gems in the strangest places, viz., "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice there is" (Yogi Berra). Theoretically, living beings are simply molecules, in practice they're not.

[@shephusted2714]

you are cranking out the content - this is a good thing

[@DouglasVoigt-tu3xb]

Enjoyable discussion. Any closer to truth? Maybe. I’m feeling it.

[@henrikoelschlaegel1780]

Outside of human conceptual frameworks, complexity, simplicity, and emergence do not have intrinsic power or explanatory value. They are descriptive tools rather than fundamental attributes of the universe. In a naturalistic universe where everything interacts with everything else continuously, the concepts of complexity, simplicity, emergence are completly meaningless and therefore connot be used to try to explain conciousness. One could postulate of course that there is an undiscovered law of nature that one or some specific spacetime material configuration creates somethink outside of the naturalistic universe in a plane of subjectivity, but that would be no better then saying it is magic.

[@caricue]

If you want to be aware of all the human conceptual frameworks that impede progress, you could include the concepts of reductionism, causation, determinism, natural selection, fitness, adaptation, life and while we're at it, consciousness. In the end, there is the universe doing what it does, and any other categories or concepts are subjective, and while useful, not actually part of the natural world.

[@sujok-acupuncture9246]

In modern science a new concept is becoming very prevalent - they call it androgyny. Buckminster Fuller has defined androgyny as the characteristic of a whole system, an organism. An organism has something which is not just the sum total of its parts. It is called synergetic - that is, more than the simple sum of its parts. When these parts are united in a functioning whole, in a working order, a synergetic dividend appears-the “tick”. You can open a clock and you separate everything - the tick disappears. You put the parts together again in a functioning order-the tick appears again. The tick is something very new. No single part can be made responsible for it; no single part had it. It is the whole that ticks. Osho , Zen : The path of the paradox. Vol 1

[@chrisgriffiths2533]

Mind and Body Indeed. The Test of :- Do You Know Why You are You ?. Sure You Know Part of Who You Are, came Via DNA Etc, from Your Parents. But If Your Consciousness is High Enough, You Sense the Seperation of Who You are from Your Parents. Sure You Repeat Some of Your Ancestors Behaviour, Repeat Some of the Behaviour of those Around You. But Still You Sense the Individual You. Sure Your Captured by the Times and Environment, You Sense this Limits Your Mind, Your Consciousness. Bottom Line Evolution Theory Simply can Not Explain Who I am and Why I Know My Consciousness is Uniquely Assigned to this Body. Good Topic Thanks.

[@esorse]

Unordered uphemisms idea and matter, caricatured by soul and body, for category and necessary complement?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

emergence as conscious awareness of time?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

could time have conscious awareness of causation, allowing language, thought, reasoning?

[@kylebowles9820]

I just think the universe isn't alive, a machine, a computer, etc. The universe can express those things, so it must be something greater. Notice machines and life embody some common, and some different characteristics of the host universe. What distilled subset of attributes the universe expresses will become the next computer, the next machine, the next thing people will compare to the universe?

[@heresa_notion_6831]

Walker and Cronin (Assembly theory) need to be interviewed on this topic. I don't think they have on this channel?

[@simonhibbs887]

Not yet. Their appearances on Lex's show were fascinating.

[@anteodedi8937]

10:30 “...this is known as pan psychic monism…" It's actually neutral/hybrid monism (the both view). Everything is both mind and matter. Everything falls under one type of substance which has both mental and non-mental properties. A sort of property dualism all the way down. That's the real alternative. Panpsychism is no alternative. It is a vague term that simply means mind is ubiquitous/everywhere.

[@mikel4879]

Consciousness is something real, a real material process, a precise functional process. Nature on Earth has done it in many iterative steps, many of them redundant due to natural evolution where some of the steps are just cumulative extra repetitive and overlapped. But the fundamental functional process that artificially creates full artificial consciousness is simple, direct and fast. Too much philosophy and not enough clear cognitive prowess makes this material process look like it would be mystical, bewildering and hard, which is not at all. / The entanglement is possible because the real connection between the entangled realm, particles , etc is human STUPIDITY, which all humans know that it is infinite and therefore can connect and prove anything.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

reduce to subjective causation?

[@stephenzhao5809]

One of the core tensions in science is between reductionism 【which results from Principle of Entropy Increasing】and emergence 【which results in Evolutionary Biology】I have followed it very carefully and thoroughly in the F in the world of physics and philosophy of mind um but I've recently come to see that this tension also exists in philosophy of biology so tell me about it what is the relationship between the these ideas in biology what are the different signs and where do you come? 0:34 MR: 7:46 ... in this I've always felt that somehow emergence is and then a miracle occurs (Well the concept is that um emergent phenomena what I like to call weak or strong weak is that we can't explain how what happens but in principle perhaps we can strong emergence is that even in principle we're not able to we'll never be able to explain no matter how sophisticated our science what that is) as far as I'm concerned (you're calling that a that's the Mir) yeah as far as I'm concerned it's strong emergence is where I'm at or something like that now do we present these two positions inevitably I've got something to say in the middle. 9:22 ... so what's happening is somehow consciousness is I use the word emerging but I'm not using it in a philosophical sense what I'm saying is it's coming into being we go until we get up to the highest form of human being namely the philosophers 【which is the manifest for reality the whole in a way of self-similarity mechanism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-similarity, called One (Deut 6.4) the infinite & evolved】so what a number of people have been arguing then is that this surely points to fact that consciousness doesn't suddenly start to exist at some level weird it may sound 10:19 ... sounds odd to say that molecules are conscious but at another level you have to say that now this is known as pans psychic monism 【Pans consciousness can be defined as interaction of things】you see Spinosa who wants to say everything is both mind and matter at the same time well the more pompous word that we use these days is pan psychic monism in other words somehow it now I don't I mean I think this gives you a kind of ontological picture of what's going on 【LORD God Is One (Deut 6.4) The Infinite & Evolved Who Created The Heavens and Earth and Humans in His Image and Their Likeness】I don't think it explains it why this happens 10:52 so if I give you that and pan psychism and pan psychic monism is an increasingly popular way of explaining dealing with Mind-Body problem and explaining consciousness (yeah) so if that were the case is there any other application of that in biology in life other than the Mind Body problem in conscious? 11:16 MR: Well I think yeah I'm glad you asked that question because I don't it's the same thing but I think again a number of us are realizing JBS Halane the population geneticist said not only is world is quaker than we think it is it is quaker than we could think it 11:32 and I grew up as a Quaker of course Quakers are very much into some kind of mysticism they it's called a pathetic theology you can say what God is not you can't say what God is so I'm although I don't really believe in God I'm I'm an agnostic on that at some level that makes sense to me and there are things that I simply don't understand like quantum entanglement how is it that something happening on one side of the universe has not you know in 10 minutes not caused by but it happens here and it happens there at the same time now you tell me all I can say is not only a hell a lot quaker than I think it is, ... so for me pan psychic monism if I say it leads to a certain modesty don't try to laugh to that I think you've already realized modesty is not one of the platonic forms in which I participate a great deal but at some level that's where I'm at okay.

[@simonhibbs887]

I'm sorry, I enjoyed reading the first handful of sentences, but the wall of text format is too hard to read.

[@angel4everable]

Professor Ruse needs to re-read Spinoza's ETHICS. Spinoza does not posit that everything is mind and body. Mind and body are parallel, contra Descartes they never interact, and thus two different ways of looking at the same object. We can never truly know the reality of mind, body, or external objects.

[@S3RAVA3LM]

A brief study of nomenclature and meaning, logic, names, and attributes helped me realize your last sentence here. So causes, principles, and universals take first place for me in my inquiries. Regarding the mind: do we know what hotness is in itself or know of it and only from a measure of contradistinction with coldness. I'm really into Platonism currently. It's incredible. Their world and vision was so much greater than what has amounted today from modern science.

[@kvaka009]

​@@S3RAVA3LM spinozas ethics is an incredible work.

[@angel4everable]

@@S3RAVA3LM I'm a Kantian, not a Platonist nor an empiricist. The a priori categories in our minds help us to sort out facts gathered from the senses but do not substitute for them.

[@aminkanji5074]

Sativa

[@hjvjccc]

@@aminkanji5074 if only these folks would knew what they were missing.

[@sujok-acupuncture9246]

Wisest man on earth.

[@shyzanali1965]

How old are you?

[@S3RAVA3LM]

​@@shyzanali1965 "unless ye convert yourselves to being little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" - KJV Do you know what this means ?

[@S3RAVA3LM]

​@@shyzanali1965 it means that because you've made way, in your life, a little bit, acquiring some good facts and knowledge along the way, you now believe that you're the criterion for all principles themselves, and truth, justice, and virtue and wisdom....you lean on your own understanding as if it were absolute. You will fade away along with the sand you grasp within your hand. Wisdom you have no sought out or known, a life wasted.

[@dennisbailey6067]

Maybe not all humans are as conscious as others.Maybe other animals become conscious sooner or later,everything is evolving.Humans aren't one thing,one big cell.They are a collective of cells,driven by genes.Most functions are autonomous,so the mind does not really control much.Maybe it's function is to steer the body,that's all,while the brain keeps the machine running.Maybe becoming conscious,increases our chance of survival.Which is an organism's priority.

[@Jalcolm1]

Nah… the problem is you obdurately maintain the 1st. person stance, but want to use 3rd. person language and instruments. Consciousness is a sensation - the sensation of being alive. It is generated by the brain, which requires a body to maintain homeostasis. Consciousness is not something extra; it is awareness of the surround… including the interior surround. Molecules aren’t conscious. Bacteria are conscious of their surroundings, but they are no more intelligent than Republicans. Who also exhibit minimal awareness of the surround.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

Many think that *emergence* and *reductionism* are incompatible, but they aren't. True, you can regress almost all forms of high-complexity structures back to their less-complex components, but that really doesn't explain the "existence" (the "how and why") of the high-complexity end result. The best example is a pocket watch. You can break down a watch to a bunch of springs, gears, knobs, dials, and other mechanisms, but it is only when they are assembled in a specific way that they transcend the nature of their individual parts and become something "new." This begs the question, *_"Is the end result a 'desired outcome' or merely a 'lucky configuration' that just happened to produce something new?"_* I argue that it's a mixture of both: There is a minimal amount of "intent" embedded within the evolution of the parts that "anticipates" the end result, and the end result is based on the *information* attached to each of the individual parts. However, "Existence" never knows how it will turn out until all the parts are assembled. Just like with how we evolve our inventions over time, it's all based on *trial and error.* For every successful end result, there are scores of failures along the way. ... _They just don't get talked about as much._

[@KickArs]

I always believed in emergence. Take this 1-2-3 logic as i call it. 1 is one. All decision is from within the one. 2 is like one. They can agree or disagree but their view evens out. Now, 3 is interesting because they can all agree still but if one disagree then you have the emergence of "majority" which does not exist and cannot exist if you regress back to 2. Emergence changes everything. Now the majority has the say but not always. Even though, at this point, majority has little effect, in the overall schemes of things it plays a major role in everything. It is not a physical thing yet it rules the world has if it was. I would also suggest that 3 represents a group because of the decision making aspect. So we have the existence of something that does not exist physically but does change the world. I want to believe that i was also an emergence. I have no physical proof but ever since i was aware I always used my body as an extension of me. Not the other way around. Btw, I agree with you. No need to adapt unless something changes. Desired outcome and lucky configuration are necessary though i would tend towards the desired outcome because the element of chance always play a role but is does not supercede the need to adapt for survival. Only bad luck. ;)

[@haros2868]

Again we are talking if everything is ontologicaly reducable or that some are not. Reductionalism says everything is. Strong Emergence says of course many things are reducable but some are not. That's the incompatibility. If we talk about a universe with only quarks and electons in space, and maybe by chance form some blob masses, yes reductionalism. If we talk about a universe with conscious entities then no reductionalism. Exept if you are a panphysist.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

​@@haros2868 *"Again we are talking if everything is ontologicaly reducable or that some are not. Reductionalism says everything is. Strong Emergence says of course many things are reducable but some are not. That's the incompatibility."* ... The only time you run into incompatibility is when the trendy adjectives start getting added to the ideologies (i.e., strong, weak, hard, soft, libertarian, long, short, etc.). There are even different "flavors" of reductionism. If you toss out all the special qualifiers and simply go with basic reductionism and basic emergence, the two ideologies demonstrate a symbiotic relationship. *Example:* On paper, water is two hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom combined to form a new wet, liquidy-type compound with unique properties. Reductionism argues that water is nothing without its basic building blocks (hydrogen and oxygen) whereas emergence argues that hydrogen and oxygen do not / cannot possess the same unique properties and characteristics of water while residing in their fundamental states. ... Both arguments are salient. *"If we talk about a universe with only quarks and electons in space, and maybe by chance form some blob masses, yes reductionalism. If we talk about a universe with conscious entities then no reductionalism. Exept if you are a panphysist."* ... And the third option is that consciousness (like water) is a *standalone condition* that "emerges" from its lesser components, but once consciousness is generated, its unique properties cannot be replicated by its lesser components. If you take away the lesser components, then consciousness cannot emerge, and the lesser components will never have the same abilities and characteristics of consciousness while residing in their fundamental states. In my book I argue that the brain generates consciousness (emergence), but once a consciousness is generated, it can no longer be reduced back into to its lesser components much like a tasty ham and cheese omelet cannot be reduced back into an egg, a pig, and a cow.

[@amAntidisestablishmentarianist]

He looks like John Butler.

[@AlessioAndres]

agreeable to, engineer 😏 the functional purpose of any machinery is only to function. there is never a question as how is a machinery functioning, to be asked by. that's how it's functioning, only by functioning. 😅

[@chachichochacorta8577]

Go 'Noles! Would it surprise you if I told you he has tattoos and a mammary papilla piercing? You should also check out the alleged and supposed partying he partook in at FSU when the college was the #1 party school in the late 90s.

[@rahullahiri4668]

Second

[@DavidMoreharts]

First

[@simonhibbs887]

25th

[@toadster_strudel]

Closer To Truth = Robert's Echo Chamber

[@shawnewaltonify]

I need to listen more to Michael Levin just to figure out if I believe that I would be thinking about biology in a brand new way or just easily fall back into every old assumption, if I were to state as he does, that goal orientation does not require conciousness; iow, intelligence is something that emerges out of the reductionist mechanism in places previously thought to be completely physical in a way that divides pure 1) biological/physical mechanism, from 2) intelligence, and from 3)concious intelligence. We have 3 categories. We have this new category, 2). Since conciousness is a concern for philosophy, it - category 3) - can be discarded from this new theory of Evolutionary Biology and proceed as pure science. I guess we have to define the new category, 2), in terms of having the properties of being alive and of being intelligent. Can we do this? Just state that everything we consider to be alive, to also be intelligent? Is it as easy as equating life and intelligence.?

[@simonhibbs887]

I think there are different levels of perceptual awareness, with a continuum between them. At the base level is stimulus/response. The organism or system has simple responses to environmental stimuli. This is the level of a plant or an amoeba. Next up is an adaptive mechanism where the organism has a simple nervous system and can learn more effective responses to various stimuli. Next is when we have a simple brain or nerve centre and the organism constructs a model of it's environment and it's physical presence, which it populates with sense data, and can do basic reasoning about operating in that environment. There are big variations in the sophistication of this stage. The next level is quite a big step up, where the organism has a model of other agents in the environment as active beings with their own beliefs and agendas. Evolutionary psychologists call this 'theory of mind' and it's what enables a predator to manipulate the behaviour of it's prey, or a social animal to reason about the beliefs and intentions of other members of it's group. Finally we have sense of self, which is where the mental model also includes awareness of the organism's own mental processes, allowing it to reason about what behaviours, plans, etc worked well and which didn't so the organism can self-modify it's own reasoning processes, to learn and better achieve it's goals.

[@shawnewaltonify]

@@simonhibbs887 Michael Levin wants to extend this property of reasoning and stimuli response of organisms unto a continuum that goes down to goal oriented actions of live agents - that are pre-organism - with intelligence on the opposite pole.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@shawnewaltonify They're all forms of information processing. When Ruse says that evolution is gradual and 'smooth' he's right, there are no sudden huge jumps, but the common factor between the activities of the simples to the most complex conscious organisms is information processing in a gradually increasing range of forms of sophistication. We don't need novel pan psychic dualistic properties to explain all this, we already have information science. Yep, Levin's work is fantastic.

[@shawnewaltonify]

@@simonhibbs887 Thank-you. This makes his work clear now; its information processing. I agree.

[@InternetSearchBibleErrors]

Philosophy is about as usful as watching paint on a fence too dry

[@Promatheos]

Well, first off you’re wrong. But let’s say you were right. A kid going down a slide isn’t that useful either but it sure makes life more enjoyable. Philosophy doesn’t have to be useful to be worth our time.

[@MilushevGeorgi]

Don’t eat a philosopher

[@Robinson8491]

Lovely guy

[@mickeybrumfield764]

It would seem there is a miracle of emergence at the moment a group of small particles or atoms or molecules coalesce and develop a strong desire to preserve themselves and reproduce themselves and become what we call a living being.

[@simonhibbs887]

The issue with strong emergence is that it is essentially the claim that, in a complex system displaying such emergent behaviour, there are activities of part of the system that cannot be explained by known physical processes. After all, if the behaviour of every component, every atom or molecule, could be explained in terms of the physical processes affecting them, then the whole system must be be susceptible to a reductive analysis. Emergentists implicitly claim that components are behaving in ways not described by know processes, but what processes are causing this behaviour and where do they think those processes originate? Why do we not observe such additional behaviour of unknown origin when we look for it? They are essentially making a claim for the existence of the supernatural.

[@sumofat4994]

Indeed! Knowing is not of this space/time. May the love of the one infinite creator find you brother.

[@haros2868]

I dont want to open a discussion but what you describe as issue is the point. Dont beg the question. I know ontological irreducability is spooky to many, but who said human perception is to grasp reality at its finest. If you really really really take reductionalism too seriously you end up with countless paradoxes. What is encounter led in strong Emergence is weirdness (like quantum stuff) but what you encounter in reductionalism is straight up contractions. And, if you are like me who has spent countless hours into thinking those open-mindedly, reductionalism can only lead to either eliminatism (incomprehensibly stupid) or panphysism (still stupid, for me at least)

[@simonhibbs887]

​@@haros2868 It would help if you said what contradictions you mean, but I understand if you're not after a debate. It's enough to outline our positions and their implications. The basis of reductionism is that nature is a complete, consistent system. If there are 'emergent properties' that are not reducible to known processes, they must be the result of unknown ones, and those phenomena would be part of that complete consistent system. That's fine to a point, we discover new phenomena from time to time, like whatever dark energy is, or dark matter, but strongly emergent properties seem different intuit they are supposedly somehow summoned into being by an arrangement of reducible phenomena. It would help if we had any actual evidence of such summoning.

[@Maxwell-mv9rx]

Take in Tauring as reductionism are NOT with pictures reality of machine computer. Tauring computer in his time never was complete machine computer . It show Tauring machine as reductionism It is inconsistency with reality computer system. This guys are completely wrong . Consciousness make up computer development system . Up Tell now computer It is NOT perfect machine so far. Reductionism is absurd process.

[@liamc4113]

I guess we all voted to go down instead of moving up according to reductionism.

[@rossw1365]

the enigma machine isn't a good example of reductionism bc it didn't originate as a bunch of parts that mysteriously "emerged" it originated as a need to encode secret communications ie, it was top-down, not bottom up all human design works by beginning with needs (or ideas) and figuring out how parts can be put together to satisfy the needs this is not surprising since human consciousness lies at the top and works down

[@rossw1365]

curiously, evolution works in a similar way, by selecting organisms that are best adapted to their environments the openings in the environment, ie, determine the changes in genomes that survive it's top-down

[@rossw1365]

none of this is why consciousness is irreducible to neural activity, however consc is irred bc it is a property of being, while neural activity is a property of (physical) description and being is not reducible to description the whole reductionsm vs emergence debate misses this point

[@rossw1365]

* "niches" is the word I was searching for when I wrote "opportunities"

[@S3RAVA3LM]

Everything is mirrored from the top down, from the simple to complex. The Divinities are so simple it is too profound for mans mind to grasp and such gods being so concealed is what is most sacred. Persons like materialists think because phenomena is so complex that the fundamental or essential too must be extreme intricacy - is not so, simple observation of phenomena and the 4 chief elements reveals this. Further down the line there becomes more excess, plurality, proliferation, division, quarrels - this is ignorance, this is a 'going out', a scattering from what was concentrate(light), this is information. Every thing has a likeness to that which it participates and therefore too all such particulars a likeness to others by participation.. Child birth is like a gross image of emergence, and emergence an image of emanation. Even inert formless matter has a likeness to the the ONE in that of formlessness - this is the greatest of end to end spectrum or polarity; that which seemingly the most antithesis has yet a most remarkable likeness. Matter is like a mirror in that it attains an imprint of the pattern. Nous is mind, or Divine mind. Light has always be acknowledged as Intellect or Knowledge there from. Information is not fundamental because it derives from what has been put 'in form' - circumscribed to matter. Still, you'll see persons in 0 by 1 and simon hibbs push their anti Divine agenda claiming information is fundamental. This is what men do who are more afraid of being seen as wrong than having an innate yearning after Truth. Such persons try their entire lifetime to shoehorn EVERYTHING into their shoe, because if such cannot be, automatically does such become nonsense. Aether by its very essence or nature can not be objectified, or else it couldn't be what it is. I'm not going round and round in the revolving door, pretending to be making grounds. I guess it's a realization. Looking for the Divine outside of phenomena is not what has been taught. It's about perspective. Philosophy seeks the core of all, is spiritual by nature, and digresses only to grasp an essential understanding of many aspects and areas, but its focus always on the core aka the Divine.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

*"Still, you'll see persons in 0 by 1 and simon hibbs push their anti Divine agenda claiming information is fundamental. This is what men do who are more afraid of being seen as wrong than having an innate yearning after Truth."* ... Lol! Just to be clear, "I" am the one who claims lnformation is fundamental. ... Simon doesn't! Simon argues that information is merely a secondary attribute, and that "physical processes" are fundamental. However, Simon is a "physicalist" (not a "materialist"), and I am not. I am not "anti-Divine," either. People once worshiped the Sun as "The Divine" because it kept them warm and nourished their crops. It turns out that the Sun is obviously not "The Divine," but that doesn't negate the fact that the Sun actually does keep people warm and nourishes their crops. That is arguably worthy of "worship and praise." *"Such persons try their entire lifetime to shoehorn EVERYTHING into their shoe, because if such cannot be, automatically does such become nonsense."* ... We all shoehorn everything into our own personal "shoe." You just did the same while making you claims about "The Divine" _(i.e., "The Divinities are so simple it is too profound for man's mind to grasp and such gods being so concealed is what is most sacred.")_ .... That's a pretty big "shoe," pal. The sad part is that you don't see how yours and my understandings of reality tend to overlap. Your "Divine" that is so simple it _boggles the mind_ is tantamount to my claim that "Existence is 1." Logically speaking, both claims are mindboggling in their simplicity. There is nothing simpler than "one of something." Unfortunately, you don't (can't) see this because you're too busy calling me names (i.e., "sophist") and demanding citations.

[@chayanbosu3293]

The supreme God is Sri Krishna , He is the supersoul and we are part & parcel of Him.

[@Shubhamsv28]

Lol

[@S3RAVA3LM]

Christ - "you are the branches, I am the vine"

[@SandipChitale]

Robert has known this and did bring it up later in the discussion i.e. the notion of weak and strong emergence. But by just starting the discussion with reductionism vs. emergence, the initial part was a waste of time - because of the reinvention of the concept of weak and strong emergence. Reductionism and "weak" emergence are just two sides of the same coin. "Strong" emergence is just wishful thinking which involves what I call a truncated past analysis (will explain below). As such emergence should mean "weak" emergence. We should not need the qualifier "weak". We can use "strong" emergence when talking about it. Reductionism and "weak" emergence are just two sides of the same coin. Let us take an example of water or H2O. Hydrogen is not wet and liquid at room temperature. Oxygen is not wet and liquid at room temperature. But H2O is wet and liquid at room temperature. So one could say wetness emerges. And it does in the weak emergence sense. It is not a some kind of "bingo" and we get wetness. We precisely know how water molecules form because of valencies of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms, we know why there is a little bit of excess charge leftover on the molecule because of slight mismatch in the charge cancellation. This makes the water molecules hydrophilic and thus they slide past each other giving the liquid behavior. For the same reason they can leave the water and take away the heat with them and thus giving cool, wet effect. We know the angle between the two hydrogen bonds. As a aside - the angle between molecules is also the reason for the helical nature of DNA. Thus if the complete analysis is done we can explain the emergent wet and liquid nature of water based on the properties of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. CO2 has different behavior. NO2 has yet another. Why? Because constituents of each are different. Reductionism. Granted the above example is simple and consciousness is a much more complex phenomenon. A lot of work needs to be done. Sure. A pound of flesh is not conscious - it is quipped. Sure, so does a pile of sand does not compute. It has to be organized in a specific way to be a computer chip and do the computation. No one has objection to thinking that today's very very very highly complex computer chips have (weak) emergent and useful behavior of computation. Another fallacy in thinking about the consciousness of a human is what I call past-truncated analysis. A human does not occur spontaneously and start being conscious. Humans are born from an egg and grow up. But even that is not enough. We have to follow back through the lineage and the process of evolution to the beginning of life and even before that to get to the complete reductionist analysis. It the same as, nobody thinks that the computer chips occur spontaneously. We understand that they were manufactured with a specific design and process. So the past analysis of a chip goes to the humans who thought of it and built it. The past analysis of chips is relatively shorter because it was designed with intent (teleology is OK here) and takes us to humans and then we have to switch to past analysis of humans I talked about. The past analysis for humans is very very very long because humans evolved via the undirected process of evolution (no teleology only teleonomy). I have heard in disbelief something Dr. George Ellis has said on CTT channel in favor of "strong" emergence. He gives an example of software in computer makes it do things. This is an example of truncated past analysis. Someone wrote the software program. Someone built the hardware on which to run the software program. When we are doing reductive analysis, we can not restrict the analysis to an instantaneous, contemporary explanation. We have to do the deep past analysis. And the more complex the thing we are trying to explain, the deeper in the past we have to go to complete the reductive analysis. Dr. Sara Walker talks about the deep time nature of complex objects.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

Here are some thoughts triggered by your excellent comment... Consider a set of objects existing in various fixed locations. Taken all together they constitute a pattern. The pattern they constitute does not materially exist. Only the objects materially exist. Pattern is a way of thinking about a set of objects. Pattern is an abstract notion. Now, if any of those objects achieve a different fixed relative location then the original pattern becomes a memory and a new pattern is manifest. In other words, a new pattern has 'emerged'. Should one or more objects in that set start moving relative to the others then the pattern becomes dynamic. I'm going to use the word 'process' to mean 'dynamic pattern'. Process is a way of thinking about a set of objects moving relatively. Process is also an abstract notion. Only the objects materially exist but with the addition of movement should we instead say, 'physically exist' since 'movement' is of big concern to physics? (A movement is not a material object though it's perfectly clear that movement 'supervenes' on matter, i.e. no matter - no movement. (And, since movement is relative, movement is not a property of an object. I wonder if all this means movement is actually abstract?)). In any case, since everything in the universe is moving, emergence is continuous, ubiquitous and happening at all scales. This comment may be incomplete but I've got a tee time. Cheers!

[@SandipChitale]

@@REDPUMPERNICKEL The objects have to interact somehow to produce something interesting. Otherwise, except for the existence of that pattern, there is nothing more interesting that emerges.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@REDPUMPERNICKEL What you're describing is the active processes of nature that transform physical structures. Since physical structures encode information, all physical transformations of structure are also transformations of information. These transformations can also enact meaningful relationships between sets of objects and information, for example the prices that detects objects and increments a counter. Without the physical process of counting, there would be no relation between the counter state and the set of objects being counted.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

@@simonhibbs887 I can't remember if it was you or someone else but did we not earlier agree that pattern only becomes information in the context of a conscious self?

[@simonhibbs887]

@@REDPUMPERNICKEL That’s not how I view information. I may have just inquired what someone’s view on that was without challenging it, I’m not always picking fights 🕊️ The problem with that view is that information no human ever becomes aware of still has consequences in the world. Our computer systems are constantly sensing, collecting, collating, generation, processing and acting on information no human ever sees. They still work, and that information still has functional meaning and material consequences.

[@SandipChitale]

Robert appears to adlib words like fundamentalist (Dennet) or that is a glib talk (Sean Carroll) only against physicalists reveling his bias.