Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something, but it seems to me that (1) one can adjust the domain on which any “property” is defined ad lib, (2) in many cases there’s a wide range of reasonable domains, (3) whether some property is “emergent” according to your definition is strongly dependent on the choice of domain, and (4) most of the examples discussed in this thread are like that.
Human consciousness is pretty much a paradigmatic example of an emergent property. Is there a function that tells us how conscious something is? Maaaybe, but if so I don’t see any particular reason why its domain shouldn’t include things that aren’t conscious at all (which get mapped to zero, or something extremely close to zero). Like, say, neurons. But if you do that then consciousness is no longer “emergent” by your definition, because then the brain’s constituent parts are no longer outside the domain of the function. (Is it silly to ask “Is a neuron conscious”? Surely not; indeed at least part of the point here is that we’re pretty sure neurons aren’t conscious. And in order to contrast conscious humans with other not-so-conscious things, we surely want to ask the question about chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, dogs, rats, flies, amoebas—and if amoebas, why exactly not neurons?)
Size is pretty much a paradigmatic example of a not-interestingly-emergent property. (I hesitate to call anything flatly not-emergent.) Well, OK. So what’s the size of a carbon atom? An electron? There are various measures of size we can somewhat-arbitrarily decide to use, but they don’t all give the same answer for these small objects and I think it’s clearly defensible to claim that there is no such thing as “the size” of an electron. In which case, boom, “size” is an emergent property in your sense.
I don’t see how being able to run Windows is emergent in your sense. Can my laptop run Windows? Yes. Can its CPU on its own run Windows? No. Can the “H” key on its keyboard run Windows? No. The natural domain of the function seems to be broad enough to include the components of my laptop. Hence, emergence.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean by “domain”?
I do agree that the fact that a computer may fail to be able to do something we want because of a not-entirely-obvious interaction between its parts is an important fact and has something to do with some notion of “emergence”. But I don’t see what it has to do with the definition you’re proposing here. The relevant fact isn’t that ability-to-run-Windows isn’t defined for the components of the machine, it’s that ability-to-run-Windows depends on interactions between the components. Which is true, and somewhat interesting, but an entirely different proposition. Likewise for your other examples where some-sort-of-emergence is an important fact—in all of which I agree that the interactions and context-dependencies you’re drawing attention to are worth paying attention to, but I don’t see that they have anything much to do with the specific definition of emergence you proposed, and more importantly I don’t see what the notion of emergence actually adds here. Again, I’m not denying that the behaviour of a system may be more than a naive some of the behaviours of its components, I’m not denying that this fact is often important—I just think it’s not exactly news, and that generally when people talk about something like consciousness being “emergent” they mean something more, and that if we define “emergence” broadly enough to include all these things then it looks to me like too broad a category for it to be useful (e.g.) to think of it as a single coherent field that merits study, rather than an umbrella description for lots of diverse phenomena with little in common.
Honestly I think that comment got away from me, and looking back on it I’m not sure that I’d endorse anything except the wrap up. I do think “from a quantum perspective, size is emergent” is true and interesting. I also think people use emergence as a magical stopword. But people also use all kinds of technical terms as magical stopwords, so dismissing something just on those grounds isn’t quite enough—but maybe there is enough reason to say that this specific word is more confusing than helpful.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something, but it seems to me that (1) one can adjust the domain on which any “property” is defined ad lib, (2) in many cases there’s a wide range of reasonable domains, (3) whether some property is “emergent” according to your definition is strongly dependent on the choice of domain, and (4) most of the examples discussed in this thread are like that.
Human consciousness is pretty much a paradigmatic example of an emergent property. Is there a function that tells us how conscious something is? Maaaybe, but if so I don’t see any particular reason why its domain shouldn’t include things that aren’t conscious at all (which get mapped to zero, or something extremely close to zero). Like, say, neurons. But if you do that then consciousness is no longer “emergent” by your definition, because then the brain’s constituent parts are no longer outside the domain of the function. (Is it silly to ask “Is a neuron conscious”? Surely not; indeed at least part of the point here is that we’re pretty sure neurons aren’t conscious. And in order to contrast conscious humans with other not-so-conscious things, we surely want to ask the question about chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, dogs, rats, flies, amoebas—and if amoebas, why exactly not neurons?)
Size is pretty much a paradigmatic example of a not-interestingly-emergent property. (I hesitate to call anything flatly not-emergent.) Well, OK. So what’s the size of a carbon atom? An electron? There are various measures of size we can somewhat-arbitrarily decide to use, but they don’t all give the same answer for these small objects and I think it’s clearly defensible to claim that there is no such thing as “the size” of an electron. In which case, boom, “size” is an emergent property in your sense.
I don’t see how being able to run Windows is emergent in your sense. Can my laptop run Windows? Yes. Can its CPU on its own run Windows? No. Can the “H” key on its keyboard run Windows? No. The natural domain of the function seems to be broad enough to include the components of my laptop. Hence, emergence.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean by “domain”?
I do agree that the fact that a computer may fail to be able to do something we want because of a not-entirely-obvious interaction between its parts is an important fact and has something to do with some notion of “emergence”. But I don’t see what it has to do with the definition you’re proposing here. The relevant fact isn’t that ability-to-run-Windows isn’t defined for the components of the machine, it’s that ability-to-run-Windows depends on interactions between the components. Which is true, and somewhat interesting, but an entirely different proposition. Likewise for your other examples where some-sort-of-emergence is an important fact—in all of which I agree that the interactions and context-dependencies you’re drawing attention to are worth paying attention to, but I don’t see that they have anything much to do with the specific definition of emergence you proposed, and more importantly I don’t see what the notion of emergence actually adds here. Again, I’m not denying that the behaviour of a system may be more than a naive some of the behaviours of its components, I’m not denying that this fact is often important—I just think it’s not exactly news, and that generally when people talk about something like consciousness being “emergent” they mean something more, and that if we define “emergence” broadly enough to include all these things then it looks to me like too broad a category for it to be useful (e.g.) to think of it as a single coherent field that merits study, rather than an umbrella description for lots of diverse phenomena with little in common.
Honestly I think that comment got away from me, and looking back on it I’m not sure that I’d endorse anything except the wrap up. I do think “from a quantum perspective, size is emergent” is true and interesting. I also think people use emergence as a magical stopword. But people also use all kinds of technical terms as magical stopwords, so dismissing something just on those grounds isn’t quite enough—but maybe there is enough reason to say that this specific word is more confusing than helpful.