[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

Strong emergence is simply the opposite of reductionism. The basic idea of reductionism is very simple. It is the belief that all aspects of complex phenomena can be understood by reducing them to their constituent parts. It is the motions of these parts and how they interact together which explain the phenomenon concerned. For example, consider a clockwork clock. By looking at the components of that clock - namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels - and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the minute and hour clock hands move.

If reductionism says that we can explain the principles of operation of a system by explaining the operation of its parts, that does not imply that we can understand a specific, existing system by analyzing its components. If the system includes random factors, for example, we would not be able to predict the system from its parts, even though we can describe the operation of a family of these systems in probabilistic terms.

But imagine that when the minute and hour hands move that consciousness is produced. This would be a genuine new phenomenon which could not be derived from the internal components of the clock.

Why not? It sounds like you are assuming some sort of dualistic notion of this consciousness that arises.

But it can't explain the miraculous. Whatever properties the ultimate constituent particles of an object might have, they must be quantifiable and entail quantifiable effects i.e measurable. This is not to say they could not produce consciousness, a qualitative effect, but if they did, then that would be a new phenomenon coming into existence at a certain degree of complexity not derivable from these ultimate constituent particles. Quantifiable effects can only entail quantifiable phenomena.

I have no idea why you think this.

Presumably this is why reductive materialists declare that consciousness is identical to either the actual biological material of the brain (identity theory) or is identical to what the brain does i.e the causal chains of events performed by brains (functionalism). They have to say that consciousness is identical to something which is measurable because if they acknowledge the existence of consciousness in its own right, then necessarily it is not reducible and therefore reductive materialism is false.

No one knows what it means to "acknowledge the existence of consciousness in its own right," so that is why scientists are unlikely to do it. What are the properties of the existent that we would acknowledge?

~~ Paul