I want to explore the idea of “emergence” or “emergent properties”, as I understand the philosophical concept. Emergence is probably more popularly summed up in the common phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Emergence is the idea that something can have a property that doesn’t exist in its individual parts. I think the most common example typically put forth as an emergent property is the “wetness” or “fluidity” of water. Water is just a collection of H2O molecules. An H2O molecule has no property, by itself, that could be called wetness. But when you put a bunch of them together (and the temperature and pressure are right), the property of wetness “emerges” out of the collection of molecules, and thus it is considered an emergent property. An emergent property is also frequently defined as a property that you would not (or could not?) have predicted by just looking at the individual parts. The idea of emergent properties is apparent in everything from molecules to societies.
There are
lots of examples of emergent properties, and I will explore some in future
entries. However, there is really only
one so-called emergent property that I care about: consciousness. How consciousness is related to the actions
of a bunch of neurons communicating with one another is of great interest to
me. There are many people who consider
consciousness to be the quintessential example of an emergent property. They say that consciousness is a property
that naturally arises from the complex interaction of neural networks. This allows them to consider consciousness to
be a natural part of the material world – as natural as the wetness of water -
and nothing more. Importantly, this
allows them to reject any idea that consciousness is non-material or immaterial. I think that is a mistake (see here and here), and I
hope to show why I say that over the course of a few thought experiments that I
will initiate with this blog entry. My
contention is this: calling
consciousness an emergent property of the brain is tantamount to saying that
“consciousness is the property of exhibiting consciousness” …which is no
explanation at all. Further, I want to
make the contention that all “emergent properties” are conscious
perceptions. I contend that “emergence”
and “consciousness” are the same things, and so you can’t use one to explain
the other, because all you are saying is “consciousness is consciousness.”
This is a
tricky argument for me to explain, so I’m going to unravel it slowly, hoping
that what I say makes sense. This is my
first time trying to explain this concept, so it may be a bit rocky. I would certainly be interested in people’s
comments on the matter.
I’m going
to start my series of thought experiments about emergent properties by using an
example that I have to admit is marginally “emergent”: specifically, the meaning of words. If we string together a couple of “A”s, a
couple of “I”s and an “L”, “M” and “V” in the right order, we can create a
meaning that emerges from those letters that is certainly not contained in any
single letter and could not be predicted by examining the letters alone. We could string those letters together to
create the phrase “I AM ALIVE”, which has a very significant meaning that has
nothing to do with the letters themselves.
The meaning of the phrase could be considered an emergent property
of those letters.
My
question now is this: where does the
emergent property of those letters exist?
Does it exist on the page (or screen) where those letters appear? Does the emergent property somehow float
above the letters in some way? This is
obviously not the case. If an ant crawls
across the page, it doesn’t encounter the meaning of the phrase encompassed by
the letters. If a bird flies overhead
and sees the entire phrase, it doesn’t encounter the emergent property of the
meaning of the phrase. In fact, if a non-English
speaking person, or an illiterate person, looks at the entire phrase, they also
will not experience the emergent property of these letters. The only one who experiences it is an
individual who knows the meaning of the phrase as it is written. Thus, the emergent property exists only in
the minds of human beings. Further, it
exists only in the minds of some human beings. Thus, since not all seeing humans experience
the meaning of the phrase, I think it should be clear that the emergent
property does not exist in the visual perception of the words or even in
the visual cortex. Two different people
can look at the phrase and see exactly the same image in their brains, but one
experiences the meaning and the other, who doesn’t know English, experiences
nothing. In fact, it is not until the
firing of various neurons in our brain are brought together into our conscious
perception of the fact that the image we see on the page is actually a phrase,
and the phrase means something, that we experience the emergent property of
meaning. Thus, in this example, the
emergent property of the meaning of the phrase is our conscious perception of
it. The emergent property just is
conscious perception, in this case. If
we then say that the meaning of letters is an emergent property, we have not
found a new property at all. All we are
describing is our conscious perception of the meaning. We initially ascribed the emergent property
to the letters themselves, but that’s not where the emergent property
exists. It exists nowhere but in our
consciousness. It just is our
consciousness. There is no difference
between the emergent property of “meaning” and the conscious perception of
meaning. I hope that makes sense.
If the
meaning of words were a clear example of what people call an emergent property,
then I might be able to rest my case with this one example. But calling the meaning of words an emergent
property is not particularly clear. Most
“true” emergent properties spontaneously arise from the collection of their
parts. The meaning of words does not
naturally arise from their existence.
Meaning also requires a set of rules of language, rules that have to
also be understood and agreed on by others who use the same language. For the words to have the meaning they have,
there are a lot of outside things that have to be brought to bear upon the
series of vertical, horizontal, and slanted lines that make up the phrase “I AM
ALIVE”. Given that, I don’t think most
people would consider “meaning” to be an emergent property in the same way that
“wetness” is an emergent property. I’m
not sure I totally agree with that, since it seems to me that if you consider
the parts of your system to be the letters plus the linguistic rules of
English, then you can still say that meaning emerges from the sum of the parts,
it’s just that the parts are a lot more complex. But I’m not going to argue that here.
In
summary, to the extent that the property of “meaning” is an emergent property
of letters, the concept of emergence is shown to simply be a restatement of the
property of consciousness. They are one
and the same. The idea of meaning itself
cannot exist without consciousness. My
goal is to show that the same thought process can be applied to more standard
examples of emergence and that the same conclusions can be drawn.
