Emergence isn't, on its own, bad. It's just generally unhelpful. That doesn't mean it's wrong; my consciousness is in fact emergent from neurons firing. It just doesn't tell me anything extra. If instead, you said something like, "I've got a detailed model of the brain, that simulates the neurons, and through (insert technical explanation here) my model shows consciousness emerging as a property made up of smaller elements", nobody would complain. Emergence is only a bad explanation if it's the only explanation given.
"blegg-ness emerges as an attractor in the distributed network." Is this a useful application of the concept of emergence?
Emergence isn't, on its own, bad. It's just generally unhelpful. That doesn't mean it's wrong; my consciousness is in fact emergent from neurons firing. It just doesn't tell me anything extra. If instead, you said something like, "I've got a detailed model of the brain, that simulates the neurons, and through (insert technical explanation here) my model shows consciousness emerging as a property made up of smaller elements", nobody would complain. Emergence is only a bad explanation if it's the only explanation given.