Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!voder!nsc!amdahl!kp From: kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Emergence and Static Vs. Dynamic properties Summary: Down with Emergence! Keywords: emergence, logic Message-ID: Date: 22 Mar 90 03:35:21 GMT References: <12143@venera.isi.edu> <14431@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2cSD02rC93BD01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <14648@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA Lines: 53 In article <14648@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: >In article <2cSD02rC93BD01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) writes: >;So the homomorphism of logical structure exists between the descriptions, >;rather than between the phenomena. The analogous relation which obtains >;between the phenomena is *resemblance*. The concepts of logical >;structure and homomorphism serve to analyze resemblance. > >Ken, I think you've just negated the whole value of introducing musical >approaches to the study of emergent processes, That's half of what I'm trying to do ... > . . . I still can't see in >what way a description of a performance has to do with a phenomenological >account of listening experience . . . This is the other half of what I'm trying to do! My position wrt descriptions and perceptions is that we can't understand how hearing a description or reading a review will tell us about the experience of listening to music, until we have solved the problem of understanding literature and poetry. This means we should not attempt to understand perception in terms of its relation to descriptions, except by means of the formal similarity between the semantics of a description and the operation of a transducer. I want to reduce emergence to what I think is its appropriate status - a logical concept which is suggestive but misleading. > . . . "Logical" means to me >(roughly following Langer's usage) "abstracted to its bare but vital >properties." You are using the term in the "what you see is what you get" >approach. I'm using logic in the "How to succeed in arguments without really trying" approach :-). Logic is a total recursive algorithm for accepting the set of valid formal arguments, and absolutely NOT the transcendental categorization of the understanding. Sort of "Kant times Wittgenstein divided by Aristotle", if that makes any sense. I think logic has the epistemic role that Kant gives it, but not the psychological role. On the other hand, I'd say that logic is part of the human way of life, both as a normative abstraction for dialogs, and as a descriptive abstraction for abstractions (ie formal systems). On the psychology of logic, note that you are at this moment *reading* an argument, ie, a literary production offerred in the hope of eliciting logical criticism. Persuation is a sin against the Categorical Imperative, as is loose reading. (I generally avoid the former, and I appreciate Eliot's avoidance of the latter) The most important aspect of logic for present purposes is the immense distance between the *practice* of logic and the *process* of perception. Ken Presting