You can say that "lots of little neurons, which are all strictly electrical and chemical with no ontologically basic contemplativeness in them, combine into a complex network that emergently exhibits contemplativeness". And that is still a fake reduction and you still haven't looked inside the black box. You still can't say what a "contemplative" thing will do, using a non-empathic model. You just took a box labeled "lotsa neurons", and drew an arrow labeled "emergence" to a black box containing your remembered sensation of contemplativeness, which, when you imagine it, tells your brain to empathize with the box by contemplating.
Well, yes. That's what emergence IS. It constrains the answer space by saying what it emerges from, thereby focusing the question of how it emerges; it isn't anything close to a complete answer.
Today's post, Dreams of AI Design was originally published on 26 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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