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The Myth of Emergence
There
is a very serious conundrum. We as humans have a very many complex
properties like intelligence, consciousness and life itself. The theory of
emergence states that complex properties magically emerge out of thin
air when simple systems not having these properties interact to form a larger system. Well you
can't get something from nothing. This notion of divine creation is
completely incompatible with science. Physics
tells us that all matter is just energy bound up into systems. That
means we are ultimately just a big collection of energy. The fallacy of division occurs
however if you claim that properties like intelligence, consciousness
and life itself must then be properties of the energy that we are
ultimately composed of. For example, a jet can fly. Since flight can't
magically arise out of thin air all the parts of the jet must be able
to fly. Therefore a solitary jet engine can fly. Of course this is also
absurd. So how do we resolve
this serious problem? The problem is actually one of misattribution.
The energy that composes us has certain properties. When this
energy is bound up into a complex system like a human being, it appears
that novel properties have magically been created out of thin air.
However, if you look at these properties under a proverbial microscope
they are really just the same properties of the energy. Take for
example the fact that iron has the property of hardness. The iron atom
does not have this property. But the property hardness doesn't really
exist, it is just how our primitive senses interpret the properties of
the iron atom when they are combined together. So emergence really does
happen but it happens only in our minds not in reality. The concept of
emergence like chaos, exists only in our imaginations.
There
are two types of properties then: actual properties and emergent
properties.
Actual properties exist (in a lower level of reality at least), like
iron atoms have a property to pack
tightly together after being heated and then cooled. Emergent
properties are illusory and don't exist in reality. Emergent properties
are created by our primitive sensory systems. Hardness is an illusory
property because it exists only in our minds. Emergent properties do
indeed magically arise out of thin air as all illusions do. All
non-existent emergent properties are ultimately based on actual
properties that do
exist though. Consciousness may be an emergent
property. But we have no evidence of that and no indication as to what
actual property it could be based on. So to believe consciousness to be
emergent seems highly illogical. At any rate if we are conscious and
consciousness is a real property it is also a property of the Universe.
If consciousness is emergent the real property it is based on is
also a property of the Universe. We exist and God exists either way.
It
can be argued that there is actually a third type of property called a
category property. For example, you have a pail of wet sand. You take
the sand and create a castle out of it. The property of castleness has
been created out of nothing since the pail of sand did not originally
have this property. Category properties like castleness require a loose
collection of subproperties to be present in order to classify
something as having castleness. Each of these subproperties is either
an illusory emergent property or another category property. For
example, sand castles all have a sandy color which is an illusory
emergent property. Sand castles must have the extension property which
is the ability to extend upwards and from side to side. This is an
illusory emergent property based on the cohesiveness property of wet
sand. Sand castles may have the turretness property which is a category
property based on the extension property. So if category properties are
composed of illusory emergent properties or other category properties
they are in actually also just illusory emergent properties.
Part of the problem is scale. Complex
systems are composed of other smaller complex systems. A system is
complex when its subsystems are highly organized to allow more
communication amongst the subsystems. All actual properties the
systems have
are properties of the subsystems. Larger more complex systems have more
communication with more subsystems and thus have a stronger
implementation of the property. So people might say only humans are
conscious. But really humans have human-level consciousness. Lower
forms of consciousness can exist.
The
energy that makes up the Universe must have the properties of
proto-life, proto-consciousness and proto-intelligence that when
combined into sufficiently complex systems our mind interprets as life,
consciousness and intelligence. That is indisputable and to argue
otherwise requires the invocation of magic. Whether the Universe as an
entity has such sufficient complexity for these advanced "emergent"
properties is a remaining question to be answered. However, you can in
no way say the
Universe cannot have these properties and still be aligned with science.
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