(January 9, 2019 at 9:03 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Emergence says complex system can possess properties which are not easy to predict from simple statement of properties of its constituent parts. It does not say complex system can possess properties which can not be predicted from the priories of its constituent parts.
In principle There is nothing free about any emergent property. Only that the constraints on emergent properties of complex systems are not as easy to deduce from simple statements of the properties of its constituents as simple properties of simple systems.
Emergence is therefore as misused in the argument for free will as quantum mechanics.
I disagree with all three of these assertions. Evolutionary forces act on chance combinations of materials over long periods of time rather than on determined ones. Such chance occurrences happen because the material world operates statistically. Life takes advantage of such chance occurrences to load the dice in its favor, thus leading to the emergence of consciousness and free will. So consciousness and free will are properties which could not be predicted from the properties of simple particles or the rules of physics because they were self-organized rather than determined. At most, they were enabled by taking advantage of the loophole of the statistical nature of thermodynamics, by working as parts of a total system where they benefited by increasing entropy elsewhere.
