Downward Causation | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
Sean Carroll at Cosmic Varience delves into science and philosopher again with an interesting post talking about whether higher levels of emergent phenomena can properly be said to have "downward causation" on the lower levels of physical reality.
Because this is used as an "anti-reductionist" argument by some, Carroll, strongly atheist, reacts against it, and tries to explain why.
The comments that follow are just as interesting. It is, of course, a question that has been addressed by many philosophers of the mind.
This is a topic that I often find crossing my mind. I am tempted to add a comment there that anyone who has had a strong reaction to hearing the words "I love you" knows that downward causation happens. But, probably, serious physicists would say it doesn't.
2 comments:
here's one for your theological speculations. Robin Hanson wonders if dark matter is where the spirit world resides
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/08/dark-spirits.html
Jason
I don't care for that idea much: I didn't think anyone thought dark matter would be distributed alongside normal matter; hence how do dark matter ghosts get here? Dark matter rockets?
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