Story time. Because I am obsessed with philosophic concepts, I am always pondering, learning, and debating them. I am not good at "staying in one lane" and end up getting involved with a variety of issues. Within my brain, each type of topic could be considered a branch of neuronal structure being developed. These branches also generate a logical structure that leads to logical conclusions. Two of my more developed branches of philosophic thought are morality and consciousness. Each branch is exploring the topic deeper and trying to land on higher-order conclusions. But one day while I was taking a walk, it suddenly hit me - I was a walking contradiction! The conclusion of my moral branch was contradicting the conclusion of my consciousness branch! The dissonance was mentally distabilizing but simultaneously exhilarating. There was a puzzle here that needed to be solved. Were one of my conclusions wrong? Where they both half-right and needed to be synthesized? Or was there a higher vantagepoint from which to look at the problem and transcend the contradiction?
In the consciousness branch of thought, I was dissecting the idea of emergence. It seemed more and more obvious to me that emergence was limited to the ontologically subjective domain and had no ontologically objective foundation. For example, in pondering the emergence of water phenomenon (water droplet, puddle, ice, snow, rivers, oceans, clouds, etc), it seemed obvious to me that each emergent phenomenon was ontologically reducible - which means there is nothing in excess of the parts (Liquidity). The only thing emergent about water phenomenon was the subjective experience and subjective understanding - as we seem to group water droplets together and call it rain, or group water molecules together and call it a puddle; these phenomenon were mere inventions of the mind.
CONSCIOUSNESS BRANCH CONCLUSION:
There is no such thing as ontologically objective emergence.
IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS:
Ontology - study of what exists; or scope of stuff that one believes exists; the nature of existence
Objective - "of or like an object"; measurable; mind-independent in principle;
Ontologically Objective - stuff that objectively exists
Emergence - the total is more than the sum of the parts.
Ontologically Objective Emergence - a process where by adding parts together magically summons more objective stuff into existence that is in excess of the sum of the parts.
Ontologically, I think we would agree that base ontology is at minimum the laws of physics. This means that stuff produced by the laws of physics exists. We believe atoms exist. We believe quantum phenomena exist. We believe the forces exist. We believe energy and photons exist. Every ontological object seems reducible to more fundamental building blocks.
Consciousness presents a problem. Qualitative experience (color, taste, sound, smell, pleasure, pain, conceptual understanding) does not seem reducible to fundamental building blocks. Why? It seems like we have the problem of a difference in kind. Color seems like a fundamentally different substance from material. How can this be?
Materialists and physicalists seem to want to say that consciousness emerges from something like 'complexity'. But doesn't this seem like an attempt to hand-wave away the problem? How does emergence address the radical transformation of moving materials into rich, unique, distinct, and powerful experience? Moving materials seem robotic and dead - but our conscious experience is abundant with creative vividness. How do we arrive at that level of vividness? Does brain matter randomly transition from 'dead' to 'alive'? How can a picture of art be visualized without each pixel being visualized? Where are these pixels located within our experience? Can we dig into the brain and discover the ontology of 1 pixel of subjective color? If the brain is building pixels, then we have the building blocks for vision. Now we no longer need emergence - we can say that color vision reduces to the brain's manufacture of color pixels. Now we just need to figure out the laws of physics for the manufacturing of pixels and we will have a reductive account of the vision aspect of consciousness.
So, my conclusions have led me to the idea that it should be possible to reduce consciousness, eliminating emergence.
MORALITY BRANCH CONCLUSION:
Morality is an objectively emergent phenomenon that maps to game theory.
Just as gravity is a mind-independent principle, game theory is a mind-independent principle. Just as instantiations of the principle of gravity may vary by situation, instantiations of game theory will vary by situation. So the variety of moral systems does not debunk its root in game theory.
CONTRADICTION:
There is no such thing as ontologically objective emergence <> Morality is objectively emergent.
Okay, there is a slight distinction here. Can we resolve the gap by focusing on how one side has the word "ontologically" and the other side does not? What is going on here?
Back to our definitions:
Objective - "of or like an object"; measurable; mind-independent in principle;
Ontologically Objective - stuff that objectively exists
Emergence - the total is more than the sum of the parts.
Opps! Here is the problem, there is more than one definition of emergence! For morality I am using the following definition! Emergence - the process of coming into view or being
DEFINITION COMPARISON:
Ontologically Objective Emergence - a process where by adding parts together magically summons more objective stuff into existence that is in excess of the sum of the parts.
Objective Emergence - measurable mind-independent stuff (that may not exist) coming into view or being
Okay, does this resolve everything? Not yet. This problem is revealing something about the trickiness of ontology. How can something that doesn't exist come into being? Isn't that an internal contradiction? So the question is - does game theory exist? What is its ontological status?
Game theory is just like math, just like physics, just like Platonic forms. These are patterns that are deducible from reality.
If you change the ecosystem, you simultaneously change the game theory. If you change the geometry, you simultaneously change the mathematical solution. If you change the attributes of the particles, you simultaneously change the laws of physics. If you change the goal, you change the Platonic ideal.
What does this mean? This means that there are abstract principles that are dependent on concrete structures. If you change the concrete, you simultaneously change the abstract. Do they have two separate ontologies? Or are their ontologies nested together? Or does the abstract merely exist within the mind?
If we focus on the laws of gravity we can ask ourself the question - in what form do they exist? Do they exist separate from the particles of reality? Or are they embedded within the structure of the particles?
When we think about equations like this, we can see that the equation isn't being applied to particles. The equation is measuring the relationship between two masses, two massive objects (M and m). We can already see that this is an abstracted relationship, and isn't reflecting the fundamental relationship (based in particles). Who is doing the abstracting? Subjective minds. Hence, we can see that the human generated laws of gravity have a subjective ontology - they exist in minds, not in the real world. But if we zoom down deep enough, we should be able to land on the objective ontology of gravity.
Similarly, with game theory, our moral systems may be attempting to map out the proper game theoretic strategies for human societies. When we do this, we are abstracting out the principles of game theory - generating a subjective ontology for our human moral systems. But just like subjective gravity is attempting to map onto objective gravity, subjective morality is attempting to map onto objective game theory.
So, back to the fundamental question - does ontologically objective emergence exist?
Objective gravity is not emergent in the "sum is more than the parts" sense.
Objective game theory is not emergent in the "sum is more than the parts" sense.
Both of these are emergent in the "coming into view" sense. What does this mean? It means, if you change the configuration, you change the forces applied. It means that there is a contingent relationship between a configuration and a manifestation. If you change the size of the planet, the gravity changes. If you change the intelligence of an animal, its game theory changes. So, in a sense, there was a different gravity/game theory before, and a new gravity/game theory afterwards. So this new force emerged from a new configuration.
So can "coming into view" emergence exist?
I am biased to thinking that it doesn't exist in an ontologically objective sense. Game theories don't exist in outer space. Laws of physics don't exist in outer space. They exist inside their constituent parts. They are patterns that are deducible from their building blocks. Deducibility is a subjective function.
Sometimes math is viewed as "discovered" as opposed to "invented". This temptation to view mathematical equations existing in the wild awaiting discovery seems to be due to the deducibility of patterns. Once we establish a pattern, we can discover many things that are deducible by means of the pattern. But the pattern is the only true ontology. The deductions are subjective.
Hence, all "coming into view" emergence is merely the deducibility of patterns from their building blocks.
So, the conclusion is, objective emergence has a subjective ontology.
WAIT! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO!
How can something be objective and subjective at the same time?
Another language issue. We have just exposed the gap between ontology and epistemology. Game theory is epistemologically objective, in that we can come to a knowledge of it by measuring it in a mind-independent way. Game theory is not ontologically objective, but rather ontologically subjective - we can find its existence inside minds that are performing abstractions.
FINAL CONCLUSION:
There is no such thing as:
Ontologically objective 'sum > parts' emergence (consciousness magically appears)
Ontologically objective 'coming into view' emergence (math objects)
There IS such a thing as:
Ontologically subjective epistemologically objective 'coming into view' emergence (math, game theory, human laws of physics, Platonic forms)
*Written as of 6/29/2023. These thoughts are subject to change over time. I cannot be held accountable for these conclusions, because my ideas are constantly in flux as I attempt to think deeper and deeper about these issues. My opinion on this is likely to change over the next few years.