Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watcgl!jwtlai
From: jwtlai@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Jim W Lai)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: emergent properties
Message-ID: <1990Oct3.152626.17406@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 90 15:26:26 GMT
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <8745@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 15

In article <8745@helios.TAMU.EDU> n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller) writes:
>In article <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu
(Marvin Minsky) writes:
>>[...]  But suppose also that some capricious God
>>imposed one extra, arbitrary law: whenever three stars form an
>>equilateral triangle, then they simply disappear.  That would appear,
>>to a classical physicist, to be an "inexplicable emergent" -- until
>>it was added as a new law of nature.
>
>True, but I might question how declaring a new 'law' "explains"
>anything.  It does from the practical standpoint of relative levels
>of abstraction, but it might not in any "absolute" sense.

It simply does not guarantee absolute truth.  Our means of inquiry do not
provide a means of determining absolute truth in the physical sciences.