PHILOSOPHY - Metaphysics: Emergence

In this Wireless Philosophy video, Paul Humphreys (University of Virginia) introduces the concept of emergence. Emergence occurs when features of the world are not reducible to arrangements of fundamental entities.

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[HeavyMetalMouse]

Video lacks an anchor point, defining what the term 'Emergence' actually means to those unfamiliar with the concept. It is difficult to follow the discussion of examples of Emergence when we lack a useful anchoring definition to relate back to. The concept itself is not obvious, and the description of 'epistemological' vs 'ontological' emergence seems only to confuse the matter, as those secondary terms are not given explicit anchoring definitions.

It was very difficult to follow what you were talking about, or to understand what it was applying to or why it should be interesting. The presentation lacked both a 'hook' and a 'payoff', nothing to draw in curiosity or seed the discussion, and no destination or final point to tie it together. I kept expecting the end of the video to give us a 'tie it all together' definition and relevance of Emergence, but then it didn't happen.

I only have a vague, layman-understanding of the idea of emergence, and clicked on this video expecting similar content to other videos on this channel - expanding and exploring a subject which I only was moderately aware of, and increasing my knowledge. That was not what I received, and I feel no more informed than I was when I started.

Can't win 'em all.

[egodreas]

As a theoretical physicist with a good understanding of philosophy, and what I thought was a decent grasp of the meaning of emergence, I must confess that I find this video almost incomprehensible.

[Generalfeldmrschall]

Thank you for giving so many examples. I am a foreigner and often have a hard time with certain words, the examples make me understand them from context. Very good, thank you.

[Hecatonicosachoron]

I am not entirely certain that entanglement would qualify to all these criteria. Entangled states are *still* describable in terms of the states of the subsystems (there just happen to be more states than product states). Likewise to arrive to the Hilbert space of a composite system you have to take the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces of the components. Entanglement can be explained in terms of the components.
Emergence in this case can only refer to the statement that there exist "more" states in the composite system than the sum of the states of the isolated components.

[davidwilkie]

On reading the other comments, it seems that the interpretation of the video depends on the emergent state of the viewer's knowledge.
As a layman also, I am predisposed to respond to this as being instructive.

I object to the idea that Newton should be considered a scientist, ...if the story of this video is applied to the emergence of mathematical definition and functions from his study of metaphysics. (I hope that offends the pretentious types on both sides of the argument)

If all information is connected, the concept of isolated objects is false, and the only description of phenomena is in the calculus of quanta. So the only legitimate arguments for science must begin as this one does, and extend logically toward a holistic approach and objective.

The flaw in Philosophy is usually a lax attitude to definition, in which the topic must always be simultaneously reductive and developmental to be completely in context.

Digital Computers are limited deliberately to a function of error correction that "solves" the holistic need for completeness the same way mathematics solved the kind of Hydrogen bonding problem in chemistry. Newton probably would go back to the lab before adopting the limitations of symbols that work with the math. Ie if he was a genius who discovered calculus, why didn't he simply calculate all his results.
And the same applies to other thinkers who thought the postulate of a God connection could be a simple and irreducible connection, such that the infinite division of infinity could be done once by the connection and any number or arrangement of included or excluded properties to derive the compound universe we know.

[Sam_on_YouTube]

I believe this draws a conclusion from a convenient shorthand in physics which is not entirely metaphysically accurate. When you have particles that are sufficiently strongly related, such as entangled particles and covalent bonds, the typical approximation of quantum mechanics that treats particles as numerically distinct breaks down. Rather, you must use an approximation that more closely resembles the more accurate version of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, which treats each type of particle as a unified field that has many related excitations.

Imagine having a long violin string in which you create two waves far apart. These two waves are most accurately thought of as a single complex wave within the string (quantum field theory) but it is far simpler, more useful, and almost as accurate to treat them as distinct waves that may or may not interact (standard quantum mechanics). But if the waves are close together, it becomes impossible to consider them separately and the only good understanding is to consider the string as a whole.

This is when you see emergence. It isn't when the object cannot be reduced, rather it is when the more practical explanation is when it isn't reduced. This definition does not distinguish between ontological and epistemological emergence. As long as the inputs of chaotic systems are deterministic (which they usually aren't in nature, but artificial ones in computer science are), the output is deterministic. But it is not possible to predict without actually letting it play out and seeing what happens. To understand why things happen the way they do, you can't study the individual inputs, you have to study the nature of the chaos, the attractors, dimensionality, and so forth. You have to understand, for example, what kind of weather you get from a low pressure system. You won't always predict the weather accurately, but you'll understand it better than if you talk about the properties of the molecules in the air. That's because weather is an emergent phenomenon.

[PeterBernardMDS]

The general definition and four qualities of emergence fit the the lego constructs. They constitute fundamental entities in macrosystems such as public housing or public transportation. On satisfying the four qualities you might object and say that these don't fit the "novel" aspect in the criteria but what makes a thing 'novel'? No! Emergence, I would suggest, is not such an uncommon thing as was suggested. In my opinion, it's a key paradigm in thought about how reality progresses from the simple to the complex.

[PattyBreath]

Thanks for the video.


What sets apart consciousness from quantum entanglement and covalent bonding?


You say that consciousness is possibly not an example of emergence, as we may simply lack enough knowledge on the subject.


What makes us sure that we possess sufficient knowledge of quantum entanglement and covalent bonding to suggest that we are sure they are examples of ontological emergentism? Is it possible that we simply don't know enough about them either?

[-be-blank-]

Amazing video. Its weird how I've never studied the subject but still seem to understand all this so well. To me that's an indication its science we know to be true because its a part of us. I've always thought science needed to explore the gut feeling. My mind got blown when I imagined myself as the hydrogen electron in the covalent bond that lost its identity. It makes sense that's why we don't understand consciousness we appear to have no bond, but due to quantum entanglement we ARE the bond we just don't realize it cuz chemistry

[dirtypure]

I did not give puurrrmission for my likeness to be featured in this video.

[RichardASalisbury]

Nice job! I think about this stuff a lot (my philosophical perspective is Husserl's phenomenology--insofar as I understand it) and I'm very interested in complexity theory, especially emergence. But I hadn't till now thought of the distinction between epistemological and ontological emergence.

[derre]

One appears to run into quantum mechanics as an example whenever there is some idea that doesn't quite make sense. I wonder which gives in first.

[havenbastion]

Emergence = relationship. Any two things interacting create emergent properties. We use the term somewhat less busy to indicate properties that are interesting or useful or unexpected - salient. relationship be a

[truebomba]

It is quite constrained if you want to explain ontological emergence when you still want to carry a reductionist view of the world.

[SikanderG]

I think we understand human consciousness fairly well, we just don't understand it scientifically because science is not the relevant epistemic practice for learning about it.

In my opinion, consciousness cannot be emergent from physical things. It is too different. This is why it is sometimes called 'radical emergence'. I agree with Galen Strawson and others that radical emergence is unintelligible or that positing it should be avoided where possible.

[DrAndrewMaul]

Is liquidity (or solidity) an example of emergence? I remember hearing at some point that it was, because one couldn't "locate" liquidity in individual atoms or molecules but only in the lattice structure of a group of molecules taken as a whole -- is that even close to right?

[Caligula]

Emergence is a great song By Fisherspooner

[ili]

7:30 Doesn’t Wolfram address the human experience dimension in science?

[RedInferno]

How can one be sure that ontological emergence is not simply epistemological emergence? Couldn't those emergences simply be determined by parameters we haven't defined/been able to calculate? My main point is that there's no fundamentally empirical difference between the two.

[PeterKeeble]

Not enough explanation of the two examples of entanglement and covariance given for me to understand . Is there anything wrong with the old example of H2O molecules, en masse, giving the sensation of wetness? Take them apart and where is it? Perhaps that's too simplistic - in which case some further expanation of whey the two examples given are different would have helped.