After going through both a book each by Pinker and Dawkins, I note that neither of them talks about emergent properties. Any materialist who notes emerging properties is like the scribe whom Jesus said "was not far from the kingdom of God." In other words, it leads one out of reductionism, and in my opinion, is the first step in a path away from materialism. Apparently Pinker and Dawkins don't want to go in that directions, so they are careful not to take the first step.
How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...
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