I can see why you’d draw those comparisons to “spontaneous generation” or “God of the Gaps” – it’s a common misconception when people first encounter the idea of emergence. However, that’s not quite what Emergentism, especially in the context of consciousness, is suggesting.
The key difference is that emergent properties aren’t truely “spontaneous” or without a basis in the underlying components. Instead, they arise from complex interactions between those components, often in ways that are not easily predictable from studying the individual parts alone.
Think of it like this:
Water’s wetness: A single H2O molecule isn’t wet. Wetness emerges from the collective behavior and interactions of many water molecules. We don’t say wetness is “spontaneous generation” of a property, but rather a property of the system.
A hurricane: A hurricane is a complex, self-organizing system with emergent properties like its destructive power and eye. These properties aren’t found in individual air molecules or even small air currents; they emerge from the large-scale interactions of atmospheric conditions.
In the context of consciousness, an emergentist perspective suggests that consciousness isn’t located in a single neuron or even a small group of neurons, but rather emerges from the intricate network activity and complex interactions of billions of neurons in the brain. It’s not about throwing our hands up and saying ‘it just happens.’ It’s about recognizing that complexity can give rise to novel properties that aren’t reducible to the sum of their parts.
The challenge isn’t a lack of evidence that something is happening (we clearly observe consciousness), but rather the difficulty in fully understanding and mapping the incredibly complex mechanisms that lead to this emergent phenomenon. It’s an active area of research, and while we don’t have all the answers, it’s a far cry from “God of the Gaps” because it proposes a naturalistic, albeit complex, explanation rather than invoking something supernatural.
While theories like Orch-OR offer a different approach, many neuroscientists find the emergentist framework more consistent with how complex systems behave in other areas of science.
I can see why you’d draw those comparisons to “spontaneous generation” or “God of the Gaps” – it’s a common misconception when people first encounter the idea of emergence. However, that’s not quite what Emergentism, especially in the context of consciousness, is suggesting.
The key difference is that emergent properties aren’t truely “spontaneous” or without a basis in the underlying components. Instead, they arise from complex interactions between those components, often in ways that are not easily predictable from studying the individual parts alone.
Think of it like this:
In the context of consciousness, an emergentist perspective suggests that consciousness isn’t located in a single neuron or even a small group of neurons, but rather emerges from the intricate network activity and complex interactions of billions of neurons in the brain. It’s not about throwing our hands up and saying ‘it just happens.’ It’s about recognizing that complexity can give rise to novel properties that aren’t reducible to the sum of their parts.
The challenge isn’t a lack of evidence that something is happening (we clearly observe consciousness), but rather the difficulty in fully understanding and mapping the incredibly complex mechanisms that lead to this emergent phenomenon. It’s an active area of research, and while we don’t have all the answers, it’s a far cry from “God of the Gaps” because it proposes a naturalistic, albeit complex, explanation rather than invoking something supernatural.
While theories like Orch-OR offer a different approach, many neuroscientists find the emergentist framework more consistent with how complex systems behave in other areas of science.