[jstanley]

Another example: is Firefox explained by electronics?

The computer is made out of electronics, and Firefox exists in the computer and is in a way part of the computer, but electronics is not the right level to understand Firefox, and in principle you could implement Firefox on a computer that wasn't made out of electronics.

[glenstein]

A great example, though it makes me want to head something off. You can be a brute literalist and insist it is the right level since its capable of embodying and instantiating Firefox, and so it's "just" a medium but the medium embodies the message, and knowing its configuration "in terms of electricity" does give you message, the structure, and the concepts.

Although we abstract away the electronics, it doesn't have the implication sometimes suggested by emergentism, that it exhibits a physical reality that is "independent of" its electronics. The abstracting away shouldn't be taken to mean that some new ontological thing was conjured into being that's physically real in the same sense as the electronics.

If that seems like it goes without saying or is beside the point, well, great! That's kind of what I want to hear. But in some emergentism debates it becomes important to insist there's a "more is different" thing happening that's necessary to explain physical properties.