Hi Folks,

 

This is for geeks interested in the problem of emergence:

 

   I finished the Carroll-Seth podcast which is mostly on emergence, and somewhat on consciousness. I wrote the list a few days ago saying this was a bit disappointing given the start and the remarkable confusion and floundering laying out the situation. However, listening to the back half of the conversation I found that Seth and Carroll were very close to arriving at what I considered to be the central issue dealing with emergence. This is the difference of what happens at the “joint points” of Life, Mind and Culture. That is, there are some variants of emergence going from particles to atoms to molecules, we can frame these as emergence within a dimension of complexification. However, the key is the jumps into new dimensions and what it means.

 

In this exchange, they are talking about Seth’s approach to framing systems in terms of their macro- or “coarse-grained” states and arguing that macro- or coarse-grained forms might play a role in causing things to happen in the world. The key to see why this is definitely the case, is to focus on how observers perceive the world. That is, we perceive coarse grained forms. (More accurately, we obtain partial sense data that then is matched to expectations/schema, but that is irrelevant). It is because observers perceive forms that coarse grained forms have causal impacts on the world, at least at the level of Life, Mind, and Culture.

 

What is super cool in this exchange is that Sean Carroll sort of sees this. The clip is from 56 minutes to about 1 hour 1 minute.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvGpG0KT3ZbnxzA6p9EEs9alzwSz0-J-/view?usp=sharing

 

He explicitly says something along the lines that, “Hmmm, if I just see the coarse grained form, then doesn’t that play a causal role in what I do”. Unfortunately, Seth does not pick up on what Carroll is laying down. He, like so many people, is thinking about solving the emergence property problem from within. However, it is solved by understanding information processing and communication between observing detecting systems, precisely because they operate on the inFORMational patterns they detect. And, because of that, we know that it is the coarse grained patterns that play a causal role in the perception and because of that, we know that there is a new kind of causal emergence in the world when we get living, mental, and cultural information processing and communication networks.

 

This is important because, as this podcast highlights, the matter-mind relation is tangled up in understanding the nature of emergence.

 

Best,
Gregg

 

 

 

___________________________________________

Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)

Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.

Check out the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:

https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/

 

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