emergent properties: do they exist?

In order to test for their existence, one would have to show that laws describing the behavior of components do not suffice, when combined, to account for the behavior of the whole.

As in sub-atomic particles/atom; chemicals/bodily activity. What's really interesting is to consider how one could test in the domain of biochemistry. Careful also to avoid positing a special force alongside of the other forces (vitalism). Instead of vitalism, refer to Polanyi's heirarchical conception of things of levels of being.

To dogmatise that there are no emergent properties would require one to say that all particles are conscious. For one would have to claim that what seems to have emerged in fact was already there. Monads, anyone?

Comments

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

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Daniel Dennett, disqualifying qualia, softening up the hard problem, fullness of vacuity, dysfunctional functionalism

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