Talk:Emergence

message: I got a copy of Corning's paper, which appears to be the main source actually discussing emergence (and not just providing examples which wikipedia editors then draw WP:SYNTH conclusions from as examples of emergence). Corning largely rejects the definition of emergence as self-organization, considers table salt and water to be emergent phenomena by his own definition, and largely argues in the paper that the whole concept is meaningless. And yet, somehow his arguments were carefully cited to draw essentially the opposite conclusions!
As such, I'm removing most of the article. This is a topic that easily begets nonsense, so at a bare minimum we should have a WP:RS claim made for every example of emergence, and ideally an academic one from a specialist, rather than trying to draw our own conclusions or blindly citing any misconceptions in popular media on the topic.  - car chasm (talk) 16:43, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I took a quick look at a sampling of your extensive removals and other edits, and I have to say I'm quite impressed. This article has been a hot mess for some time. Perhaps there are aspects of these extremely WP:BOLD edits to quibble over, but I think that on the whole the article is much stronger in this stripped-down form. Might make sense to post at WP:NORN to get a few more editors involved in review however. Generalrelative (talk) 17:37, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

text: With regard to whether "strong emergence" is a fringe concept or not, I've raised the question at FTN. Generalrelative (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing most of the article 

message: From just a reader
"Constructal law – Romanian-American professor"
Seems wrong. Sorry I have no time/expertise to fix it. 46.253.188.161 (talk) 14:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mistake  

message: The sentence: "Strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system on its components" suggests that there is always "downward causation" (probably influenced by Jaegwon Kim's argument about the "overdetermination" of the mental over the physical domain, if you consider the mental as strongly emergent). However, that is not true: you can say that the properties of a strongly emergent phenomenon supervene on the properties of its building blocks (just as the properties of a water molecule supervene on the properties of its building blocks: hydrogen and oxygen atoms). But that is not the same as the other way round: "downward causation", where the water molecule is supposed to change the properties of its building blocks. Moreover, "downward causation" is never a direct reversal of cause and effect, but always via a detour - that is normally called "feedback".
Moreover, the question is whether you can even consider the mental domain as a complex system as a case of strong emergence.
I propose to change this.
Ypan1944 (talk) 15:36, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: As always, this will be a matter of checking what the best sources say about the matter, and following what they say as strictly as possible without close paraphrasing. Generalrelative (talk) 17:25, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  About strong emergency