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Coomb t1_j72huxb wrote

Reply to comment by YawnTractor_1756 in What makes humans unique is not reducible to our brains or biology, but how we make sense of experience | Raymond Tallis by IAI_Admin

>One can write a dissertation on emergent properties IMO, and I am not a PhD, but allegorically speaking, a wave on the liquid surface is determined by the physical properties of the molecules of the liquid, but cannot be reduced to the properties of a molecule.

Of course it can. The phenomenon of periodic motion that we call a wave is merely the result of individual molecules reacting to applied forces according to their properties. The wave has no existence outside of the molecules. Any properties that we attribute to it (e.g. amplitude, phase, frequency) are properties which exist only because of, and in principle can be computed from, the properties of each individual molecule. Conveniently for us, those properties are such that we can describe the motion of a large enough chunk of molecules using simple equations to a good approximation. But that's all it is, an approximation.

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_j72ksa5 wrote

Yes wave is result of interactions of individual molecules, no one argued that, but wave is not just any result of interactions of individual molecules, it is a certain pattern, and the pattern is not a property of single molecule in the wave, it is a property of a whole.

That is why a wave cannot be reduced to "interactions of individual molecules, phase, frequency" etc. Because just random interactions do not produce wave, you need a certain pattern which does not belong to any single molecule.

The final definition of a wave then will be a pattern of interactions of single molecules in a form that makes a wave. So "a wave is... a wave".

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Coomb t1_j736yrj wrote

A pattern can't be a property of a single molecule because patterns, by definition, involve repetition in space or time or both.

But so what?

In what sense is the wave not reducible to the physical motion of the molecules? Every molecule that you conceive of is being part of the wave is simply bouncing around in its environment and responding to the forces to which it is subjected. As it happens, if you have a bunch of molecules in a fluid and you provide a particular external intervention, you can make the molecules move in a repetitive way. Are you saying that somehow creates a new entity that can't be explained by looking at its parts? If so, how many particles do I need to create a wave? Actually, even a single particle can oscillate in a wave. If you trace the time history of a single molecule in the ocean as a wave passes over it, you will see the wave in the motion of that molecule. So what is new when you have a bunch of them doing it at the same time?

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_j73aze0 wrote

>In what sense is the wave not reducible to the physical motion of the molecules?

Generalized enough everything can be described as a transfer of energy. If you accept that 'transfer of energy' can serve as the definition of any process (wave, fire, typing comments on Reddit), then we are on the same page, and we now have universal and useless theory of everything.

But if you insist that we cannot generalize like that because it omits important differences, then I repeat again: physical motion of the molecules is not a wave. Wave is a physical motion of the molecules in a pattern of wave.

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Foxsayy t1_j73dnv7 wrote

>Wave is a physical motion of the molecules in a pattern of wave.

Yeah. If I wave my arms in the air, it's just a blip. If I'm in a stadium and raise my arms in sync with others so that we create a wave around the arena, that's a wave. The wave is not any one of us, but a collective effort of individual parts orchestrated in a particular way.

Can we reduce the wave to a single, immutable part? No. But we can't even do that for atoms. The whole being the sum of its parts does not mean that the whole has features that are mysterious or inexplicable in parts.

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_j73eu1w wrote

>Can we reduce the wave to a single, immutable part? No

I'm glad we ended on the same page.

>The whole being the sum of its parts does not mean that the whole has features that are ... inexplicable in parts.

It can have features that are inexplicable in parts. Subatomic particles are a great example of that.

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Foxsayy t1_j73gny0 wrote

>It can have features that are inexplicable in parts. Subatomic particles are a great example of that.

Potentially. But before recent times, entire sun was inexplicable. The human heart was inexplicable. The motion of the wind and waves was inexplicable.

You're putting forth a modified God of the gaps arguement.

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Coomb t1_j73m957 wrote

>>In what sense is the wave not reducible to the physical motion of the molecules? > >Generalized enough everything can be described as a transfer of energy. If you accept that 'transfer of energy' can serve as the definition of any process (wave, fire, typing comments on Reddit), then we are on the same page, and we now have universal and useless theory of everything. > >But if you insist that we cannot generalize like that because it omits important differences, then I repeat again: physical motion of the molecules is not a wave. Wave is a physical motion of the molecules in a pattern of wave.

What about "wave" is not reducible to the motion of the fluid particles?

Are you just saying that we have an abstract concept of a wave? Because that's true but pointless in the sense that we can't interact with abstract concepts, only physical realizations. There is no real wave which can be described exactly using abstract parameters associated with a general wave.

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hairyforehead t1_j74j0vo wrote

Im not sure if you're being serious or playing devil's advocate. Could you reduce Bethoven to motions of atoms in the void, or Newtons equations to ink molecules on paper molecules? All of the internet is just various states of transistors?

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