Scientists: software runs emergent systems
Emergence is one of the hot topics in science today. As with many questions in science, such as dark matter and consciousness, the more we know the more the mystery deepens.
A June 10 report in Quanta Magazine provides a case in point. Quanta, like essentially all respected science news channels, strongly adheres to a physicalist bias. That is obvious in this article on emergence. Philip Ball is the author and makes the statement that the brain produces consciousness as if that was an established fact. This physicalist dogma is undermined by much of the rest of the article. The statement that caught my eye was the second paragraph:
“From the frantic firing of billions of neurons in your brain comes your unique and coherent experience of reading these words.”
This is pure physicalist doctrine, not an established fact of empirical science as he presents it. As we will see, the article he writes essentilly contradicts this opinion parading as scientific fact. Physicalist dogma about consciousness is increasingly under attack as more and more who once accepted that matter produces consciousness now are concerned that this example of promissory materialism may be flawed. The desperation for even quasi-physicalist answers shows in the debates around panpsychism, Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and in bets between…
