• Galuchat
    808

    So emergence has nothing to do with Multiple Realizability?
    Fair enough.
  • frank
    14.5k
    So emergence has nothing to do with Multiple Realizability?Galuchat

    I think you'll find, Galuchat, that every thing is related to everything else.
  • Galuchat
    808

    Inanity.
    Sounds like you're spent, so I'm outta here.
  • frank
    14.5k
    Inanity.
    Sounds like you're spent, so I'm outta here.
    Galuchat

    Up next is challenges to multiple realizability. Please do be outta here.
  • frank
    14.5k
    One of the objections to multiple realizability is that identity of psychological states across species is speculative. Since we can question whether goats actually feel pain, the central argument for MR is undermined.

    So would a consequence of rejecting multiple realizability be that we have to let go of assumptions about other species' experiences?

    More to the point, considering neural plasticity, should we drop the assumption that pain is something we all experience?
  • frank
    14.5k
    The problem a reductionist faces is that instances of reduction will appear to be about individuals at specific times, which clashes with a scientific outlook. It seems to leave us without principles to apply or predictions to test.

    Or so it seems. Consider the reduction of temperature to molecular behavior. I cant predict what will be going on with any particular molecule at any particular time, yet i can say something about the mean. Per SEP:

    "Following suggestions by Clifford Hooker (1981) and Enc (1983), Bickle (1998, Chapter 4) argues that the radical type of multiple realizability (in the same token system over times) is a feature of accepted historical cases of scientific reduction. It even obtains in the “textbook” reduction of classical equilibrium thermodynamics to statistical mechanics and microphysics. For any token aggregate of gas molecules, there is an indefinite number of realizations of a given temperature—a given mean molecular kinetic energy. Microphysically, the most fine-grained theoretical specification of a gas is its microcanonical ensemble, in which the momentum and location (and thus the kinetic energy) of each molecule are specified. Indefinitely many distinct microcanonical ensembles of a token volume of gas molecules can yield the same mean molecular kinetic energy. Thus at the lowest level of microphysical description, a given temerature is vastly multiply realizable in the same token system over times. Nevertheless, the case of temperature is a textbook case of reduction"
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