Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!mt
From: mt@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Michael Travers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: emergence
Summary: emergence is not mysterious
Message-ID: <3531@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 3 Oct 90 00:40:52 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 25

It's interesting to note that some of the better work done on emergent
properties comes from the group at Los Alamos that is interested
specifically in NON-linear systems, that for one reason or another do
not obey the superposition principle.  These people (such as Chris
Langton, chair of the Artificial Life workshops) are very much NOT
asserting that emergent properties are nonphysical or inherently
inexplicable.  In fact, they rather make a fetish of insisting that
complex properties like life or intelligence be modelled bottom-up in
terms of simpler processes.  

In non-linear systems, you can't find analytic solutions to systems
involving interactions between many components, so you turn to
simulation.  Emergence then is more of a methodological than a
theoretical point: to model a complex system, you need to start one
level lower (ie, if you care about intelligence, start with neurons;
if you care about life, start with chemistry) and then wait and hope
that the thing you really care about will happen of its own accord.

So, if you want to criticize the emergent folks, you should attack
them for using methods that are weak relative to the phenomenon they
want to understand, rather than for being mystics or non-materialists.

-- 

Michael Travers / MIT Media Lab / mt@media-lab.media.mit.edu