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Full Idea
Damn near everything we know about the world (e.g. a mountain) suggests that unimaginably complicated to-ings and fro-ings of bits and pieces at the extreme microlevel manage somehow to converge on stable macrolevel properties.
Clarification
Hence if you assemble enough brain, you get consciousness
Gist of Idea
The world is full of messy small things producing stable large-scale properties (e.g. mountains)
Source
Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 2)
Book Ref
Fodor,Jerry A.: 'In Critical Condition' [MIT 2000], p.21
A Reaction
This is clearly true, and is a vital part of the physicalist picture of the mind. Personally I prefer the word 'processes' to 'properties', since no one seems to really know what a property is. A process is an abstraction from events.
| 3471 | Some properties depend on components, others on their relations [Searle] |
| 3472 | Fully 'emergent' properties contradict our whole theory of causation [Searle] |
| 2320 | Properties can have causal powers lacked by their constituents [Kim] |
| 3291 | Emergent properties appear at high levels of complexity, but aren't explainable by the lower levels [Nagel] |
| 3432 | Is weight a 'resultant' property of water, but transparency an 'emergent' property? [Kim] |
| 3434 | Emergent properties are 'brute facts' (inexplicable), but still cause things [Kim] |
| 2469 | The world is full of messy small things producing stable large-scale properties (e.g. mountains) [Fodor] |
| 4083 | If mental properties are emergent they add a new type of causation, and physics is not complete [Crane] |
| 4082 | The distinction between 'resultant' properties (weight) and 'emergent' properties is a bit vague [Crane] |
| 4612 | Complex properties are just arrangements of simple properties; they do not "emerge" as separate [Heil] |
| 4615 | Complex properties are not new properties, they are merely new combinations of properties [Heil] |
| 18513 | Emergent properties will need emergent substances to bear them [Heil] |
| 14302 | A lead molecule is not leaden, and macroscopic properties need not be microscopically present [Mumford] |
| 14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |