So how do you determine whether a behaviour/observation is emergent and not merely a consequence of some ulterior agency?
As far as possible, you isolate the system under study, obviously. This is standard practice in scientific studies in general.
Why don't you do back and read my post again? If you want to, you can try to answer the question I asked, once you understand what I was asking.
As someone who believes (broadly) in the Orphic conception of reincarnation/transmigration of the soul, my perspective is that the soul does not automatically reincarnate. For the Orphics, who were rooted in the Mediterranean religious tradition, the baseline is a dreary afterlife where one's memory fades and one's Self fades with it, becoming a mere shade of one's former self. Orphism and certain other Dionysian and Demtrian cults preached that, though certain revelations or experiences, one could find a way to keep one's memory and then reincarnate with an intact Self that will reverberate through that new life. Otherwise, the self fades and is eventually recycled. The slowness of this process necessitates that more souls are produced than are recycled at any given time.
So you don't actually know yourself, you've merely been told, and accept what you have been told as the truth? How do you establish the reliability of the authority? Simply through accepting those who others have told you are reliable?
How's life treating you, since you obviously never utilize the skills of a doctor, dentist, solicitor, accountant, tradesperson, etc or any other professional?
I'm asking if this quote of your... The "you" is your brain and body. Your consciousness is based on sensory input that comes to you from all your senses, which are distributed throughout your body - and is expressed by your voice, your hands and your body (i.e. your muscles.) Your brain drives all of that. The awareness that you consider to be 'you' is an emergent property of the complex neural network that we've evolved to help us survive. ... is this quote true, and is it also a scientific fact. It should be a simple yes, or no answer. Note, this is the 3rd time I am asking you. Jan.
Non sequitur. But thanks for playing. I asked how you establish the reliability of the authority. Care to answer?
So you could say an inherent problem with declaring something emergent is that it works within the parameters of known agents? For instance, in a situation where an ulterior agent is not known, something could very easily be described as emergent, because that is simply the best guess, according to a certain type of thinking, we have on offer?
You observe the behavior of the parts in isolation, then you observe the behavior of the system as a whole. If there are new behaviors that are not seen in/initiated by the behavior of any of the individual parts, then you are observing emergent behavior. Again, seen in schooling fish, swarming locusts, beehives, ant colonies and flocking birds.
Obviously, if the thing that needs explaining can be explained in terms of known agents, there is no need to introduce unknown agents. It comes back to this: if there's no compelling evidence that suggests that ulterior agents are involved in some way, then we should go with what we already know, in terms of known agents. And yes, it is the best guess, based on the available data. This type of thinking is called scientific thinking.
My point is that citing something as emergent is completely compatible with the notion of an unknown ulterior agent. IOW its a false dichotomy to establish consciousness as an emergent property of matter at the expense of ideas of consciousness being a spiritual property.
Jan Ardena: All interesting statements in science are theories, not facts, if by "fact" you mean a direct observation. Scientific theories are inductive. They reason from the raw "facts" to generalised conclusions. Referring to the quoted statement here are some established "facts": * Human beings have senses. * They are distributed through the body. * Conciousness is expressed by the voice, the hands and the body (muscles). * The brain drives (controls) the voice, the hands, and the body. * The brain is a complex neural network. And here is an uncontroversial scientific theory, based on these facts: * Human awareness depends on the senses, and ergo on the brain. * Consciousness requires awareness, ergo consciousness depends on the brain. We also have the following deductions, based on well-established theory supported by innumerable facts that are not mentioned in the quote: * The brain has evolved to help us survive. * Consciousness promotes a survival advantage. We also have a definition: * The feeling/perception that there is a "you" is a feature of consciousness - i.e. it is part of what we mean by the term "consciousness". And a deduction from the above: * The feeling of "you", being a feature of consciousness, depends on the brain. And finally a hypothesis: * The brain is all that is required to produce the feeling of "you". --- So, you see that, as with all useful scientific statements, it is quite a job to separate "fact" from "theory", and trying to divide the world up into that particular binary is usually not very productive. The final statement above is, as I have said, a hypothesis - an idea that we can work with to make further progress in science. As far as I know, there is no evidence that tends to refute that hypothesis, and the hypothesis is consistent with everything that appears above it. Does this help you?
No. The assumption when you say something is emergent is that all the factors that cause the property to emerge are already present and accounted for in the system. A different example would be the claim that a hurricane is an emergent property of the weather system. That is, we are confident that we understand in sufficient detail how the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, combined with the Earth's rotation, interact to produce weather patterns that result in a hurricane. There is no need to invoke a God of Hurricanes in addition to what is known, in order to account for Hurricane Katrina (or whatever). The Hurricane is emergent from a known system. Note that the details of "the cause" of any given hurricane are always unknown (in fact unknowable, as a practical matter). But the large-scale causes are well understood. This is why hurricanes can be described as emergent. None of this says that there couldn't be a God of Hurricanes, of course. Maybe there is one. But nothing compels us to introduce this idea to account for the observed hurricane. Applying this to consciousness, we have a similar situation. Broadly speaking, we know how the brain works. We understand the underlying chemistry and physics. There's no need to invoke a God Of Consciousness to explain why you are you, based on what we know. It seems very likely that all the required elements are already present and accounted for.
Indeed. For example, that unknown agent could be the sound of a bouncing penny, a smelly sock, or a tail flick of The Cosmic Unicorn. You see, there are an infinite number of possible explanations for a given event - provided one abandons the notion of requiring any evidence to support a connection. We more commonly call this fantasy.
You are begging the question. Whether empiricism has the scope to provide evidence for any and all claims is precisely the question being debated.
