In my recent post on “Science and Philosophy” I made a broad statement about how consciousness is an emergent property… my exact quote was:

“…The emergent property of Mind from an increasing complexity of networked neurons is analogous to the emergent property of Life from an increasing complexity of networked biochemicals.“

I try to stay out of the philosophy side of things, but every once in a while, I go on a speculative bender…

So, my basic question for these amorphous and poorly-defined properties of Mind and Life is, are they really emergent properties as you understand them? If they aren’t what are they?

I notice that the flow of certainty goes in the opposite direction from what you are modeling for materials – where highly uncertain behaviors at the atomic scale lead to highly predictable properties at the macro scale.

For example, with consciousness, highly predictable neuronal actions lead to… unpredictable, unique, individual, random minds, decisions, and actions?

For materials, you model a well-defined property such as elastic modulus, as a function of well-defined atoms behaving with a degree of randomness – and you get a predictable result.

How would you model the everyday phenomena of Life and Mind? How do you even start?

Anyways, thanks for wonderfully explained posts on complex subjects, and for your patience with people like me trying to muddy the waters. ;)