Talk:Emergentism

Misspelling
Your article on "Emergentism" misspells John Stuart Mill's name more than once as "John Stewart Mill". (says unknown user)


 * This seems to have been corrected. (User:Jussi Hirvi)

Where does it come from?
From article: "More rigorously, a property P of composite object O is emergent if it is metaphysically possible for another object to lack property P even if that object is composed of parts with intrinsic properties identical to those in O and has those parts in an identical configuration."

Where does this come from? Sounds dubious to me as a definition of emergence. Makes it sound like the emergent level were a separate substance or something. Jussi Hirvi 20.July 2005

Anyone familiar with Evolutionism is invited to check it out. I think it needs a rewrite badly. See the talk page.--Ben 03:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The definition in the article basically defines O and P as identical. Isn't the idea that P would consist of the same components but not share the same arrangement? i.e., a computer versus a box of computer parts...

The definition is actually incompatible with supervenience, although the article says it is compatible! 1Z (talk) 10:14, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

A very poor definition indeed.
I think this definition completely mischaracterizes emergentism. I don't think anyone would say that O and P could be in the same configuration and still not have the same properties. That sounds downright nonsensical. The configuration is precisely what matters, from thermochemistry to consciousness.

The contrast with reductionism is not that reductionism claims that things are made of constituent parts, but that it tries to explain everything in terms of the parts rather than in terms of layerings of interactions upon interactions. Emergentism recognizes that the constituent parts cannot themselves explain the behavior of the whole without considerations of these different layers of interaction and configuration.


 * I agree; that line conflates scientific and theological/philosophical emergentism. I'm going to take it out or move it. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 05:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:57, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

is emergence science
How is it a testable theory, it seems more like philosophy. Can you quantify emergence, measure it, etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.101.65 (talk) 22:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This Article may be mostly philosophy, but neuroscience has indeed arrived at a certain type of emergence. Perhaps the Article could be rewritten to focus more on the neuroscience and less on the philosophy. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:34, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

"In particular, the dependence of an emergent mind on its base means there is no metaphysical possibility of life after death, in contrast with substance dualism."
No, not if you believe in God. Here is an article on multiple realizability:. All a Theist would have to concede is that our very identities are multi-realizable via the mind of God. This means that even though the mind is dependent on body chemistry while you're alive, God can "copy" you to another (non-physical) medium at the moment of physical death. Strictly speaking this is a matter of identity, not mind per se, but it's still an argument for an afterlife, one that reconciles with the modern synthesis of neuroscience and therefore emergentism/non-reductive physicalism.

Furthermore, that sentence was unsourced anyway.

For both these reasons, I shall remove it. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 09:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

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What weasel words?
Hello! Which words have been flagged as weasel words? 204.136.186.135 (talk) 23:38, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

cited Form-in first sentence
Arnlodg (talk) 01:24, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Literary Emergentism
The section was introduced to describe another strand of emergentism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razum (talk • contribs) 14:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Major development of Article
The article was incomplete and had serious gaps in its structure. For example: the main ideas, developments and branches of Emergentism were missing, the discussion on the main ideas of Emergentism was missing. Not enough sources and authors were cited. Therefore, the article has been developed with the idea of making it as qualitative and complete as possible, keeping all the important sections from the previous version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razum (talk • contribs) 08:18, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Wetness
Wetness is referred to three times in the article as an emergent property from molecules of water. However, without a concrete definition on what wetness is exactly, I turn to my subjective account of wetness. Is this not circular? 82.129.108.28 (talk) 15:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)