What is emergence, and why should we care about it?

May 27, 2020Posted inAxis Praxis, neurologism8 Comments

CarbonEmergence occurs when there is a conceptual discontinuity between two descriptions targeting the same phenomenon. This does not mean that emergence is a purely subjective phenomenon — only that scientific ‘double coverage’ may be a good place to look for emergent phenomena.

For example, in the case of starling murmuration, there is an aggregate description of individual birds, and a description of the flock as a unified entity. The latter phenomenon invites description in terms of concepts from fluid dynamics, but descriptions of individual birds, however detailed, typically do not.

In the case of phase transitions in physics, the description of one phase of matter, such as gas, does not fully map onto descriptions of the other phases. Surface tension, for example, is not defined for gases, since gases do not have surfaces. In the transition from gas to liquid, a qualitatively new attribute not only emerges, it becomes a defining feature of the post-transition system. From a different perspective we can say that it is the emergent qualitative property that enables us to determine that the transition has occurred in the first place. Quantitative readings of some control variable (such as temperature or pressure) cannot themselves be used to mark out ‘events’ — they can only be used to index them.

A common type of theoretical disjunction involves mismatch between descriptions of parts and wholes. A description of micro-level constituents in terms of atomic properties does not lead in any smooth way to descriptions in terms of thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, or solid state physics. In physics, the lack of smoothness in transitioning from one theoretical domain of discourse to another is not always apparent, since the two domains are often well specified mathematically, while the (often ad hoc) linking assumptions enabling the transition are neglected in popular (and even introductory textbook-level) explanations.

Is reality continuous or discrete?

January 29, 2020Posted inAxis Praxis2 Comments

A performing artist stands among large planets while juggling smaller ones and their satellitesReality is whatever it is… only our models of it can be considered continuous or discrete (or true, or false, or useful).

I say this like it’s obvious, but it’s a potentially controversial opinion. 🙂

People have a strong tendency to confuse the map with the territory. So a very successful theory becomes synonymous with reality itself.

But things get murky when we investigate all the details of the theory. If we are being extra cautious about what we consider “real”, then we can always wait for experimental confirmation before believing in the existence of some thing or process proposed by a theory.

Is thinking conscious or unconscious?

January 28, 2020Posted inneurologism

Sherlock Holmes smokes his pipe reclining on cushions and wearing a roomy overcoatThere are two ways to define thinking: each leads to a different answer to the question of whether thinking is conscious or not.

  1. Thinking as a subjective experience. If someone asks you what you are thinking about, you can introspect, and describe your thought process. You can also say that you weren’t really thinking at all.
  2. Thinking as the cause of ideas and thoughts. If you discover a thought, then you can infer that the process that led up to the thought was a form of thinking, even if there was no subjective experience associated with the process.

We can test our preference for definition 1 or definition 2 by considering an example.

Sherlock Holmes was a good chemist. When he found himself stuck while attempting to solve a mystery, he would sometimes distract himself by doing a chemistry experiment. At the end of such an experiment, he often found that a solution simply popped into his head.

Synchronicity, Coincidence and VALIS

January 9, 2020Posted inAxis Praxis, Odds & Ends

Synchronicity is coincidence right?

Here’s how Wikipedia defines the concept:

“Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related.”

Since meaning is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose you get to decide if a coincidence is an example of synchronicity or not.

But from a mainstream scientific perspective, synchronicity is criticized for pretty solid reasons. Here are some Wikipedia excerpts again:

“Critics assert that standard science, causality, physics, statistics, and probability (for instance, Littlewood’s law or the law of truly large numbers) suffice to explain alleged (in Jung definition) “synchronistic” events, it doesn’t mean that similar events can not exist (see for instance: mathematical coincidence) but the explanation as synchronicity is criticized, so the term coincidences is used instead.”

[…]

“In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, and avoids information and interpretations that contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or is a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study, or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis. Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence that challenges a preconceived idea, but not to evidence that supports it.”

And now for some wild sci-fi speculation!