[illuminant]

It is! I have studied this past ten thousand years of civilization, and have come to the conclusion that specialization is easy, and coharent generalizations with integrity are hard.

As soon as some perfection is found, it crumbles and reconstitutes in the minds of those who express and those who perceive.

Seeing "potential" as the underlying and the "things" (which we value) as meta symbolic liberates my definition of a dozen contingencies.

There is a great mystery, yet this is a very useful definition.

Emergent properties are those potential created by a system of which such potential does not exist in any part otherwise.

A product emerges from an assembly line.

All that other stuff you said must be scrapped off one meaning, and further distilled toward whichever mystery you actually want to solve.

... which may be consciousness or meaning or edge cognitive technology.