[ExI] Supervenience (was: Re: What is "Elemental Redness"?)

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 03/05/2023 00:28, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> Here is a simple diagram of supervenience:
> https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Levels_of_existence.svg#mw-jump-to-license


And here's the definition provided by Wikipedia:

"In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relation between sets of 
properties or sets of facts. X is said to supervene on Y if and only if 
some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible."

Hm, that definition and that diagram don't refer to the same thing.

The diagram shows levels of organisation, or 'layers of abstraction'. 
Some things are built from other, lower-level things. That's pretty much 
universal. But the defnition states that a change in a higher level must 
be the result of a change in a lower level.

Changes in, say, the configuration of molecules happens all the time 
without requiring changes in the atoms that they are built from. Same 
with any pair of levels.

So I think these are talking about two different things. (Depending on 
your definition of 'change', I suppose).

In the brain, the levels of organisation include circuits built from 
neurons. Circuits can and do change all the time without the neurons 
they are built from, changing. You can get thousands of different 
circuits from the same few dozen neurons. This corresponds to the 
concept that the diagram illustrates.

The information pattern that results from a particular neural circuit 
firing, does correspond to the definition, though. Any change in the 
pattern must be produced by a change in the circuit. Similarly, any 
change in the circuit will cause a change in the pattern. They are 
effectively just two ways of looking at the same thing. An information 
pattern, and its embodiment, rather than higher and lower levels of 
organisation, which are usually completely different things.

(Actually, the diagram is missing at least two levels, in between 
molecules and cells. That's where the most interesting and important 
things about biology are, really. Yeah, I know it's just an example, but 
that's a glaring omission, to me).

Anyway, am I confused about this? Or are those two things really 
different things? (diagram and definition that it's supposed to 
illustrate) If not, I need to think about it a bit more...

Ben