Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!tamuts!n025fc From: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Emergent properties (was: What AI is exactly) Message-ID: <8569@helios.TAMU.EDU> Date: 27 Sep 90 01:25:41 GMT References: <3894@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <26FA3460.1C7D@marob.masa.com> <3918@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU Followup-To: comp.ai.philosophy Organization: Texas A&M University Lines: 72 In article <3918@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes: > jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes: > >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. No, emergent DOES NOT mean "We don't know how, but it happens." Let me try out a more elaborate definition on you. There are some highly ordered systems in nature with properties which can have no explanation that is solely dependent on the properties of the individual components of the system. That is NOT the same thing as saying that we don't know how to explain them at the component level (although we may not [yet] know how to explain them at any level); it says that a pure component level explanation can *never* be complete, that we must also study *the way the system is put together* to come to an adequate explanation of the phenomenon. Paul Davies puts it best when he asks if a Beethoven symphony is nothing but a collection of notes or if a Dickins novel is nothing more than a collection of words (*). On one level of description, the novel is a collection of words, but is this all we need to know in order to fully appreciate it? There is so much more depth to be found if we only step back and take in the bigger picture! This is the origin of the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." The same principle applies to the phenomenon of life, and by extension, to intelligence. Although I am most certainly alive, the individual atoms that I am made of can hardly be called living. Life is an _emergent property_ of the complex and highly organized way in which living systems are put together, and any serious study which tries to explain the higher-level aspects of life by purely reductionistic biochemistry is doomed to failure (not to say that biochemistry is useless; that's the opposite error, and I don't want to make that mistake either). Your confusion is undoubtedly related to the largely reductionistic approach science has historically taken, but the new physics seems to require a more "holistic" (now there's an often-abused word if I ever saw one, but it has its valid applications) approach. Some problems can be solved only by putting the pieces together. The human brain is one of the most (if not *the* most) complex organized system presently known to exist. The complex patterns of operation in this highly organized system are the physical expressions of intelligent information processing. As others have stated in previous articles, my individual neurons may be no more intelligent than those of, say, an earthworm, so we cannot appeal to neuron physiology exclusively to explain my intelligence (assuming you believe I am intelligent, of course :-) ). They are part of the total explanation, but the rest is due to the properly ordered construction of the components into a working whole. Human beings are truly moving collections of atoms, but not *merely* moving collections of atoms. Magic is not invoked here. In fact, this functionalistic understanding precludes any need for a magical life-aura at all (not to say that there isn't any such thing, but by Ockham's Razor, it becomes an unnecessary annex to the concepts of life and intelligence). -- Kevin L. Weller (philosopher, computer programmer, etc.) (*) Davies, Paul. _God and the New Physics_. New York: Simon, 1983. And no, this is not another _Tao of Physics_ Shirley MacLain-type (sp?) book! Davies gives an essentially unbiased discussion of the impact of the new physics on modern religious AND scientific thought. I would recommend it to anyone interested enough to pursue the topic in earnest.