Hi Katie,
Discussions of emergent properties often come off quite muddled to me. As I understand the term, an emergent property is some pattern that emerges from a collection of simpler patterns, and accepting an emergent property’s existence helps us make predictions, predictions that we could not make (or not make as easily) were we to accept the existence of only the simpler patterns whence the emergent property emerges.
Can we sometimes better our predictions by accepting that patterns can emerge from simpler patterns? If yes, then it seems sensible for me that we should accept the existence of emergent properties. And I do think the answer is yes. In so many fields, there are so many macro-studies, many of which are awfully handy.
To be sure, many (if not all) reductionists accept emergent properties. They accept that it’s often easier to study and predict stuff based on patterns that emerge from simpler patterns. Sometimes there’s just too much of a mess going on at the simpler level for any reasonable study or prediction. But they maintain their reductionism by arguing that if they could just get a hold of that mess on the simpler level, they’d be able to predict better than by using the emergent property.
Also, accepting emergent properties does little to escape the idea that we’re just a bunch of little, physical, organized bits. It might be that consciousness is an emergent property, but then from which simpler patterns does it emerge? The physicalist will say it emerged from the physical. The non-physicalist will insist otherwise. Positing emergent properties won’t resolve the debate. Aside, if consciousness is truly basic, then I think it’d be a misnomer to call it emergent.
Jordan
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