Craig Callender - Is Emergence Fundamental?

How critical is emergence in how the world works? Emergence happens when the behavior of composite things is more complex than the additive behaviors of all its constituent parts would suggest. Emergence is operating everywhere. Once you see the results of emergence, it’s obvious. Before, it’s impossible.

Craig Callender is a philosopher of science and professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[longcastle]

Robert at his absolute best in this interview!

[micronda]

'Don't take life too seriously or you will never get out alive'. Bugs Bunny

[lorenzoplaserrano]

wait, this conversation makes so much sense

[emergentform]

Yea I'm agreeing with Robert here when he talks about emergent laws, and I would add to that emergent phenomena as well. Why should these things have an existence at the fundamental level of existence. They are products of the formation of compounded phenomena, like how pulsars pulse or whatever, so much complex physics and chemistry going on there that has no direct or obvious correlation to quantum theory, for example.

[georgegrubbs]

Emergence is fundamental and that defeats reductionism, but to get emergence, there must be specific levels of complexity per type of emergence and physical area.

[blijebij]

Emergence is linked to degrees of freedom statistaclly from within an existing equilibrium of the whole of existense. It could be linked to super possition at the planckscales. It would be fundamental in that case.

[longcastle]

The guest discussed an idea at the end that I'm not sure he would endorse, but which I think is likely true; that is, that maybe laws are just elegant solutions that work very well. I would add, that work very very very well, like of the time well. But it's probably useful for researchers studying deeply into a field, I would think, not to become too enamored of any particular well established law; so that when the time comes to let go of it, there's less nonscientific baggage to keep one from moving on.

Break ups are always hard though... 😢

[MagnumInnominandum]

The clearest way to understand a thing is in the simplest of cases, to wit emergence. A hydrogen molecule, H2 has no concept of an oxygen atom muchless contemplate the properties of water. H2 combining with O makes for a product with properties rather different than one might expect from either alone. The rules that atoms must need obey form a product that neither burns or supports it STP. This fact is the emergent property of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen.

[brothermine]

To summarize: No, emergent properties are in principle not fundamental, because they could be predicted given sufficient sufficient computer power and sufficient information about the states of the tiny particles that comprise the system.

[REDPUMPERNICKEL]

It seems to me quite possible that the concept of 'fundamental',
in an absolute sense,
is and will be forever beyond us
because our thinking process is constituted by abstractions only.

[User-kjxklyntrw]

Can a self or frankly I am, emerge from the wholeness of information current traffic cooperation system between comunee member inside a comunnity of what we define as emergence property..

[NWLee]

I just thought of round pegs and square holes, a round peg that has a diameter of X WILL fit in a square hole that has X equal to the length of its sides, but not the other way around.

[missh]

I get a warmer fuzzy feeling from quantum mechanics than ufo. Genuine question...what is round pegs in square holes? Is it the same as Mass over Volume?

[simonhibbs]

This statement of theories as 'laws' is really unfortunate. It promotes this subliminal view that reality obeys rules we create. Put it like that and obviously that's not true, but we still talk about particles, fields and such 'obeying laws'. In reality these laws are just formal descriptions in mathematical terms. We have descriptions of the behaviour of particles and fields, descriptions of chemistry and biochemistry, descriptions of the process of evolution through natural selection, and descriptions of the reproduction rates of rabbits. If you've read my posts on CTT comments before you'll see that's my preferred way to think about this. If you rephrase it that way, in terms of descriptions, I think all this confusion about laws fades into the background. Mr Callender explained this very well right at the end, in terms of elegant summaries.

Just as a note, I think Kuhn is wrong to say that we can't explain emergent 'laws' in terms of underlying physics, actually we can for very many emergent phenomena. The wetness of water, the dynamics of weather patterns, the behaviour of many chaotic systems. The only obstacle in many cases is the amount of computation it would take.

[bozo]

It's hard to see economic or social or herd behavior as purely physics.

IDK BUT... Information guides behavior, and not just bits and bytes but abstract concepts. "Stay in the middle of the herd" is the guiding concept, and whatever brain encoding that facilitates the behavior is a sort of aporoximation.
So "not in the center" is what results in synapses firing and muscles contracting and changing vectors of sheep molecules - not the other way around. If it's not quantum events that steer sheep, then it's sheep who steer quantum events. Or like this: the software controls the hardware. Or: the computer is running hot because you like Bitcoin, and not only because of electrons. I guess.

[browngreen]

I don't like the term "law" either. It suggests the presence of a law giver or law creator. It seems to me that knowledge and emergence lies within Existence itself.

[browngreen]

I don't like using the term "law." It suggests the presence of a outside law giver or law creator. It seems to me that knowledge and emergence lie within Existence itself. Like the pre -Socratic philosophers believed: All that exists has a degree of knowledge ("gods in all things").

[nyttag]

Emergence is potential, the outcome is only restricted by our imagination 🤗

[MagnumInnominandum]

Atoms have no knowledge of duck laws and it is questionable if ducks even are. Atoms obey basic laws of physics without a hint of awareness. Way to move the goalpost to make muddy what otherwise might be clear.

[ronhudson]

The chess master taking on a beginner checkers player.