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From: danforth@riacs.edu (Douglas G. Danforth)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: emergent properties
Message-ID: <1990Oct1.195848.27252@riacs.edu>
Date: 1 Oct 90 19:58:48 GMT
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: news@riacs.edu (James A. Woods)
Organization: RIACS, NASA Ames Research Center
Lines: 57

In <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu (cameron shelley) writes:


>  I have found the discussion of 'emergent' properties quite interesting
>and would like to add some comments of my own.  My background is more in
>computer science (NLU, say) and linguistics than in philosophy or 
>physics and my discussion will no doubt reflect that.
     
     I would like to thank Cameron Shelley for following this line of attack
for it gives me an opportunity to "kill two birds with one stone" 
(actually that's a little too violent, so shall I say address two topics
at once?).
     The first issue is semantics and the second is emergence.  I find it
helpful to consider both of these in terms of "state".  They are both
states of the observer: the hearer of the sentence and the viewer of the
system.  Is there a single meaning to a sentence or is there just an 
elicited state in the hearer (or reader) of the sentence?  Is there
an emergent property to a system or is there simply a change of state
that the observer "decrees" to be unusual, unpredictable, and therefore
emergent from the system?
     
The universe evolves whether we understand it or not (were Newton's laws,
laws before Newton? Are they now?  Are Einstein's?).

The raising of a robot arm may or may not be emergent behavior. To one person
it may be predictible. To another it may not. The mixing of 1 part nitric
acid with 3 parts of hydrochloric acid creates something that disolves gold.
WE call that significant. But what about the fact that gold in water does not
disolve? Why isn't that significant? Its not sexy enought. Its predictable
(but only because many people have experience this fact). Was it predictable
before it was experienced? Really?
     To sharpen up the dialog we need to introduce comparisons and standards.
Such as:  X in state S and in situation Y will be deamed to exhibit emergent 
behavior if any of its actions belong to set A. Also, the meaning of a
sentence within 1 second of its revealing is the average response of native
speakers of the language given a set of choices (forced choice) OR the set of
responses (verbal, written) (free response) from that group. To ask for THE
meaning of a sentence, in my opinion, is without content (even with the
vast literature on semantics and Montague grammars). 
     I'm sure many of you have considered the meaning of a sentence and had 
it change on you in the course of its examination. Your state is changing. Is
the meaning changing? For you yes. For others? A nonsense question until they
attempt the same task.  Will the meaning of the sentence for you be the same
next year as it is now?  Probably not.
     The state of a mixture of atoms is a non-linear function of its 
configuration.  This state can change in "emergent" ways since the 
non-linearity is not just the sum of its parts.  If one is familiar with
the behavior of a specific non-linear system and a second is not does the
behavior of such a system exhibit emergent behavior. To the first? To the
second?
     Everything is in the eye of the beholder.  Its just a good thing that
we are all (more or less) cast from the same mold.
--
() Douglas G. Danforth                   EMail: danforth@riacs.edu
() RIACS M/S 230-5
() NASA Ames Research Center
() Moffett Field, CA 94035