Emergentism Quotes

“Once we have isolated the computational and neurological correlates of access-consciousness, there is nothing left to explain. It's just irrational to insist that sentience remains unexplained after all the manifestations of sentience have been accounted for, just because the computations don't have anything sentient in them. It's like insisting that wetness remains unexplained even after all the manifestations of wetness have been accounted for, because moving molecules aren't wet.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“Some people believe that explanations which do not involve matter are supernatural. In fact, material explanations are themselves supernatural. How can lifeless matter produce life? There’s nothing natural about that. How can mindless matter produce mind? What’s natural about that? How can temporal and contingent matter come into existence in the first place? You can’t get existence from non-existence. That’s logic 101.”
― David Sinclair, Universals Versus Particulars: The Ultimate Intellectual War

“No random event has ever been empirically demonstrated. Events have been observed which have been interpreted as being based on randomness, but this is merely an inference, and rationalists can advance totally different inferences that never once refer to randomness.”
― David Sinclair, Universals Versus Particulars: The Ultimate Intellectual War