Eliezer, I wonder whether the reason you think “emergence” isn’t a useful concept is just that it seems so obvious to you that every phenomenon must fit the proposed definition that it doesn’t exclude anything that’s meaningful for you. (This seemed to be implied in your original post.) Even so, it can still be a useful concept as long as some people think that there could be non-emergent phenomena.
And yes, the proposed definitions of emergence are vague, but, as has already been pointed out, that doesn’t imply the concept is worthless.
Eliezer, I wonder whether the reason you think “emergence” isn’t a useful concept is just that it seems so obvious to you that every phenomenon must fit the proposed definition that it doesn’t exclude anything that’s meaningful for you. (This seemed to be implied in your original post.) Even so, it can still be a useful concept as long as some people think that there could be non-emergent phenomena.
And yes, the proposed definitions of emergence are vague, but, as has already been pointed out, that doesn’t imply the concept is worthless.