@click here,
Hi CH
click here;65657 wrote:
I can only see 2 general answers to the reason why would be, maybe I am missing something, please do tell.
1. Emergence seems random, but there will one day be research that shows the mechanisms for why emergence happens. Those mechanisms will be be calculable and solid equations will be established to all of what appeared in the past to be random. If this happens then we can theoretically now calculate quantum mechanics and determinism is brought back into light.
2. Emergence is caused by an immaterial essence that exists outside of the laws of the known material world. More or less a soul, or God, as I'm sure that quantum indeterminacy applies to more then just a human. But if the answer is not material (1. above) then it must be immaterial.
Emergence necessitates neither as far as I understand it. Emergence relates to phenomena that are manifest in systems but not in any of its constituents. Specifically, emergent properties can be described in terms of interactions of constituents with more fundamental properties. But they key thing is that the emergent phenomenon is not in any of those constituents.
A lot of the argument against emergence being reducible relies on the observation that, in many complex systems, one cannot simply take the constituents and predict the behaviour given the correct configuration. A lot of this basically seems to come down to feedback loops. I might build a simply configuration in which predictable emergence is manifest, but that manifest behaviour might effect a) the constituents, and b) other simply systems with which the first combines to form a more complex system. Out of these more complex systems there may be yet more emergent behaviour which effects the simpler systems, their constituents and other complex systems with which the first combines with to form yet more complex systems, and so on and so forth.
As such, the top-level system exhibits behaviour that one could never ascribe to any constituent, or predict to occur.
Wiki wrote:
An
emergent behaviour or
emergent property can appear when a number of simple
entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. In other words there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties. The processes from which emergent properties result may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. Why emergent behaviours occur include: intricate causal relations across different scales and feedback, known as interconnectivity. The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities: they are irreducible. No physical property of an individual molecule of any gas would lead one to think that a large collection of them will transmit sound. The shape and behaviour of a flock of birds or shoal of fish are also good examples.
So emergence is unlikely to be random and there is no need to look to any immaterialist cause, or invoke quantum indeterminacy. Complexity is key here.
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