I have been exploring the scientific and philosophical concept of “emergence” (starting <here>). Summarizing my previous entries in a single sentence: my contention is that when you really analyze what emergence means when it is used as an explanation for consciousness, it is actually just another word for consciousness, and thus explains nothing. However, we had to take a detour and address the terms “weak emergence” and “strong emergence” - <here>. I would recommend reviewing those first, as they are prerequisites to this discussion on the liquidity of water.
I’m going
to contrast two common examples of emergence that have been used in the
discussion of consciousness by many philosophers: 1) the liquidity of water and 2) the value
of money. Ironically, the word
“liquidity” is more commonly associated with money than with water, at least in
this day and age. There is a strong link
between water and money in many ways.
But when it comes to emergence, they make an excellent contrast because
they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
When I
talk about “liquidity of water” in this discussion, I’m not referring to the
sensation of wetness (which we have already addressed here). Today we are referring to water as a liquid,
which has properties that are distinct from solids and gases. Also, water itself, as a liquid, has some
properties that are different than other liquids.
I’m going
to start off with a quote from the late philosopher John Searle because it sums
up the thinking very succinctly with respect to liquidity and consciousness:
Consciousness is “about as mysterious as the liquidity of
water, right? The liquidity is not an extra juice squirted out by the H₂O
molecules, it’s a condition that the system is in; and just as the jar full of
water can go from a liquid to solid, depending on the behavior of the
molecules, so your brain can go from a state of being conscious to a state of
being unconscious, depending on the behavior of the molecules.” — John
Searle
So, given
our previous discussion, is the liquidity of water an example of “weak
emergence” or “strong emergence”? One
question is whether being a liquid can be deduced by observing the molecules
that make it up. Can you explain a
liquid based on the action of the molecules and the laws of physics in terms of
the way the molecules interact? Well,
actually, yes you can. The state of
being a liquid has everything to do with how the molecules are interacting with
one another. When water is in the state
of being a liquid, the molecules move past one another in certain ways, but are
weakly connected due to the polarized nature of the water molecule. These characteristics result in properties
like surface tension and flow. Being a
liquid does not introduce a new law of physics.
Being a liquid does not change what the water molecules would otherwise
do based on the fundamental laws of physics.
No fundamental law of physics is violated or modified or reconsidered by
the fact that water molecules, when they get together as a group at the right
temperature and pressure, act like a liquid with interesting abilities like taking
the shape of the inside of a glass or forming raindrops when they fall from the
sky. Reductionism still holds. The liquidity of water is no different than
the fact that two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom get together to create a
water molecule in the first place.
Given
this, the liquidity of water is a great example of “weak emergence.” I suggested previously that this should just
be called “emergence.” The problem is
this: if consciousness is “strong
emergence” – a term that has nothing to do with “weak emergence” – then the
liquidity of water is not useful at all as an analogy of consciousness. The two have nothing to do with each other. Here is a perfect example of
how the use of the “weak” and “strong” modifiers is extremely misleading.[1]
Water is
liquid. Leaves are green. Diamonds are hard. These are all emergent properties. They are all based on the fundamental laws of
physics. And they give us zero insight
into consciousness because consciousness is a “strongly emergent”, i.e.
“metaphysical” property <see here>.
Now I
want to contrast the liquidity of water with the value of money. Here’s an example of using the value of money
as an analogy (“comparison”) to consciousness by the American philosopher Alva
Noe, who has written many many books on the topic of consciousness and related
themes:
Regarding consciousness…
“As a comparison, consider that there’s nothing about this piece of
paper in my hand, taken in isolation, that makes it one dollar. It would be ludicrous to search for the
physical or molecular correlates of its monetary value. The monetary value, after all, is not
intrinsic to the piece of paper itself, but depends on the existence of
practices and conventions and institutions.
The marks or franks or pesos or lire in your wallet didn’t change
physically when, from one day to the next, they ceased to be legal tender. The change was as real as it gets, but it
wasn’t a physical change in the money.” - Alva Noe, from the book “Out of Our
Heads”
In my
view, now we have the problem that I started with back when I talked about
meaning arising out of letters and the Mona Lisa arising out of colored pixels on a page. I think most would agree that
the value of money is a “strongly emergent” property of money. The paper, and the ink on the paper, and the
molecules that make up both, have no property that can be called “value”. However, recall that the term “strongly
emergent” can be replaced by the term “consciousness.” Thus, Dr. Noe’s claim is this: “consciousness can be compared
to…consciousness.” A true statement, for
sure, but not particularly insightful!
But, to
be complete, we should work through this strongly emergent property of the
value of money in the same way that we walked through the Mona Lisa example
<here>. Dr. Noe has already
started us off on that pathway by stating that the value of money is “not
intrinsic to the piece of paper itself.”
That is true. Also, the value of
money is not in the reflected photons that travel from the dollar bill to our
retinas. Nor does the value reside in
the action potentials travelling along our optic nerve to the occipital
cortex. Nor does the value reside in the
neural networks in the brain. What gives
the money value? The value comes from our
conscious perception of the dollar bill.
Our conscious minds give the money it’s value. It can’t be in our physical brains because we
could look at the paper money of another economy, think that it is just play
money for kids, and not attribute any value to it. But then, we could be told that “hey – that’s
a Kazakhstani tenge and it’s worth a lot of money.” Suddenly, we would see the same piece of
paper as having value. The same rods and
cones would be activated in our retinas.
The same neurons would be activated in our occipital cortex because the
image has not changed. But, we would now
consciously attribute the piece of paper in our hand some value and maybe even
marvel at it a bit if we’ve never held such currency in our hands before. Who values it? Who marvels at it? We do, via our conscious perception
of it.
Thus, the
value of money is just seen to be conscious perception itself and thus can’t be
called a “comparison to” consciousness.
Once again, we find that the statement pretty much boils down to “a
really good analogy of consciousness is consciousness.” And, so, we are back to where we started.
Dr. Noe
is trying to go further by saying that value comes from “practices and
conventions and institutions.” I’ll be
honest – I read his book and I could never figure out what he meant. Practices that are carried out by conscious
humans? Conventions that are established
by conscious humans? Institutions
that are created by, and composed entirely of, conscious humans? Maybe someday I will be able to understand
his point and see something new there, but to me it just seemed like a lot of
the “cars and traffic” type of analogy where what you are really talking about are conscious humans driving cars, not cars actually doing their own
things!
Before I
end this particular discussion, I want to say something about image recognition
in computers. A computer could scan my $1
bill, perform “image recognition” and then put on a display screen that the
value of the bill was $1.00. We don’t even
need anything like artificial intelligence to do this – vending machines have
been doing this for decades. Surely the
scanner, electronic circuits, and associated software in vending machines are
not conscious. They don’t know anything
about the value of money. It’s all a
series of zeros and ones to the machine and that’s it. The screen that displays the characters
“$1.00” doesn’t “know” it is showing $1 - it just shows the pixel arrangement
it is programmed to display. The “value”
doesn’t exist until a human being looks at the screen and becomes conscious
that the arrangement of pixels has a meaning, and that meaning is “$1”.
Oh, and
don’t mistake acting on the $1 bill as if it were a $1 bill as being the same
as being conscious of it. The vending
machine can take the action of spitting out your candy bar that costs $1 as if
it understood that you just gave it $1.
But it does not understand that.
Nowhere in the vending machine does the process rise above a series of
binary zeroes and ones, from scanning the dollar bill to turning the metal
spiral to cause the candy bar to drop. The vending machine is, in some sense,
treating the dollar bill as if it had real value. But vending machines are not conscious and
they have no perception of the concept of value. “Value” only exists in the conscious minds of
human beings.
In
summary, emergence is often used to explain how consciousness can arise from
the brain. I hope you can see that this
is misleading. Either they are referring
to “weak emergence”, which is just describing a shorthand method of
understanding the fundamental laws of physics and is not analogous to
consciousness at all, or they are referring to “strong emergence”, which is the
same as saying that consciousness is consciousness.
I contend
that there is nothing else like consciousness in the physical universe. Nothing even reasonably analogous to
consciousness in the physical universe.
I contend that that is why it is so hard to come up with an example of
consciousness in order to try to explain it.
There is no other example of consciousness. Consciousness is unique in the physical
universe.
[1]To be fair to Searle, I believe he considered consciousness to be an example of
weak emergence because he said that “All of our conscious states, without
exception, are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain.” Yet, he also believed that consciousness
could have a higher level influence on the biological processes, which would
fit the definition of strong emergence.
So, I don’t really know what to make of his views.
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