Erik Verlinde on Emergence in Mind and Nature

Prof. dr. Erik Verlinde, well-known for his ground-breaking theory of entropic gravity, talks about emergence in mind and nature, as well as the Platonic realm physicists tap into to describe the world.

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The 'Science of consciousness' conference, 2021:

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[Robinson]

Read something interesting today: Zen-master Dogen said firewood is firewood, and ash is ash. Firewood can turn into ash, but not the other way around: similarly we can die but we cannot be born. That's the underlying argument for reincarnation according to him: consciousness cannot be created (through emergence), instead what is there must be kept: hence reincarnation.

When we cannot explain the mind through emergence, according to him this argument must be valid. I was pretty impressed, this was written about 1237 AD..

[MeRetroGamer]

The problem is what do we actually mean by "emergence". Is emergence something that can be outside of a mind? And if that's not the case, how could consciousness be emergent?

I can only see existence as conscious existence, not necessarily conscious about what it is in itself (and not necessarily conscious in the sense of "a knowing"), but still conscious of what it is about (it's activity, I understand and feel consciousness as just activity).

Then the activity of consciousness could get reflected in-between (as the activity of our inner world gets reflected as a brain), and here we have what I understand by "emergence".

So, emergence is just how we refer to abstractions, what else could it actually be about? I'm pretty frustrated because I can't even understand what people are talking about when they say "emergence" and then say consciousness is something that "emerges" from innert matter... It makes no sense! That's not emergence, that's another completely different thing what they're talking about, and it is sort of magical by the way.

[canisronis]

This Prof does not understand Plato's Allegory of the Cave. He seems to be applying a strictly materialist (quantitative) interpretation of the allegory. He seems to think Plato would associate reality with the microscopic world of material stuff. Plato's theory describes a divided line to reality between the visible world and the intellectual world. The first level beyond the line is mathematics which could be described as the archetype or "ideal form" of order which lead to understanding. Beyond this level is pure abstraction which is purely mind or intellectual which lead to reason. This is what science can tell us...how nature behaves....reduction, deduction....cause and effect. Science cannot tell us what reality actually is in itself. Plato was an Idealist.

[cps_Zen_Run]

His physics was correct and entertaining. But I don’t see any valid connection between gravity, quantum mechanics, and Consciousness.