Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!se-sd!jim
From: jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Emergent properties (was: What AI is exactly)
Message-ID: <3918@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 26 Sep 90 14:56:15 GMT
References: <59556@bbn.BBN.COM> <3894@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <26FA3460.1C7D@marob.masa.com>
Organization: NCR Corporation, Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 32

In article <26FA3460.1C7D@marob.masa.com> cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) writes:
>In article <3894@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>,
     jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes:
>>Not to flame, but I wish people would stop using the term "emergence".
>>I know they won't, but could you state what you mean?  My assessment
>>of the idea of emergence is that it's not possible within our curernt
>>paradigm of science and rationality.  The impression I get is that
>>people throw the term around when they need a hand-waving explaination
>>of some mental phenomenon.
>
>People certainly do abuse the term "emergent", but it does have a definite
>meaning.  An emergent property is a property of a system that cannot be
>accounted for by the properties of the system components, relative to some
>level of explanation.

This sounds like "emergent = I don't know".  Your definition I agree with,
but I don't think it buys us anything.   People usually throw this term
around as if it means something when it really means "we don't know how
this happens, only that it does".  I've seen "emergence" used to try to 
"explain" things, but how can you explain something using a term that
means "unknown"?

- Jim Ruehlin

p.s. I'll be posting all other responses to this conversation to
comp.ai.philosophy.