Re: Consciousness: what's the problem?

On Sep 21, 9:53 am, Alpha <omegazero2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 21, 9:09 am, Don Geddis <d...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





Alpha <omegazero2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote on Sat, 20 Sep 2008:

6) New operators (in most cases) *mean* a new, never-predicted/
inferenced/deduced_by_physics phenomena is borne; that is emergence.

I think this is the key.  You are right that we are not capable of
deducing, say, evolutionary theory, merely from a good understanding of
chemistry.

Nonetheless, _everything_ that happens in biology, is reducible to chemistry,
at least in principle.  It is mere complexity and scale that prevents us from
doing this completely.  But there is no biological interaction that is
"beyond" chemistry.

Or, try another one: thermodynamics.  When learning about ideal gasses,
you come across a formula T = P * V, i.e. temperature equals pressure times
volume.  Now, we know that all these concepts (temp, press, vol) are
statistical summaries of the motions of individual atoms.

Your position, apparently, is that something is "lost" by reducing
thermodynamics to chemistry/atomic physics.  Can you explain in more detail?

The only thing I see that is lost, is ease of computation.  The summaries are
much easier to calculate with, than the full rich detail of the positions and
momenta of all the individual particles.

But realizing that "temperature" really is _exactly_ the same as "average
momentum of the gas particles" is a brilliant reductionist insight.  You don't
seem to like it, but I can't figure out exactly why.

PS: temperature is not a new operator it is a weakly-emergent concept;
it is not a system-level attribute but a statistical" notion of
otherwise uninteresting particles in motion, in the sense of "system"
I use.  That is, a system  is* by virtue of its new operators, that
are only evident at the level of the system (and is not at all part of
the constituents properties or interations), a new *type* of behavior
that is not predictable from the parts/interactions. Temperature
happens to *be* just the mopvement of particles; ther is nothing but
such movement when analysing the aggregate of particles. No new
operators are needed to account for such movement.- Hide quoted text -

PPS:

"Convection cells, particularly Bénard cells, are an example of a self-
organizing system (more specifically, a dissipative system) whose
structure is determined both by the constraints of the system and by
random perturbations: the possible realizations of the shape and size
of the cells depends on the temperature gradient as well as the nature
of the fluid and shape of the container, but which configurations are
actually realized is due to random perturbations (thus these systems
exhibit a form of symmetry breaking)." (Wiki)

Note the difference in my analysis of this vs temperature as follows:
Temperature is not a self-organizing *system* whose structure is
determined by any constraints at the "system" level. Bénard cells do
have a such.

ANn autopoiesis and the meaning of War and Peace have oodles of system-
level constriants and order parameters that are not at all present in
the individual parts making up an autopoietic entity such as a living
cell, or, within the ink particles/cellulose particles of W&P.
.

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