Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!violet!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Subject: Re: Pragmatist thoughts on emergence
Message-ID: <1990Oct9.195943.4303@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <62500@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1990Oct7.012523.3828@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <15705@russell.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 90 19:59:43 GMT
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In article <15705@russell.Stanford.EDU> burke@russell.Stanford.EDU (Tom Burke) writes:
>The following is a quote within a quote that will hopefully add an
>interesting slant on the discussion about emergence, both as regards
>what it is and what it's good for:
>
>    Dewey and Mead used the category of emergence [to cope with the
>    question of how to interpret the situation in which mind has arisen
>    during an evolutionary process whose earliest stages contained no
>    mental phenomena of any sort, not even "potentially"].

[stuff deleted...]

>	"The reality *is* the growth-process itself; childhood and
>	adulthood are phases of a continuity, in which just because it
>	is a history, the later cannot exist until the earlier
>	exists...and in which the later makes use of the registered
>	and cumulative outcome of the earlier--or, more strictly, *is*
>	its utilization.... The real existence is the history in its
>	entirety....  Substitute for such growth a more extensive
>	history of nature and call it the evolution of mind from
>	matter, and the conclusion is not different.... When mind is
>	said to be implicit, involved, latent, or potential in matter,
>	and subsequent change is asserted to be an affair of making it
>	explicit, evolved, manifest, actual, what happens is that a
>	natural history is first cut arbitrarily and unconsciously in
>	two, and then the severance is consciously and arbitrarily
>	canceled.  It is simpler not to start by engaging in such
>	manoeuvers."
>	[J.Dewey: _Experience and Nature_, pp275-6]
>

[more stuff deleted...]

>Here the term 'emergence' labels a concrete evolutionary mechanism.
>
[a little more...]

>So what is "emergence" if it is simply a matter of behaviors emerging
>out of behaviors?  As I see it, an emergent behavior is what you get
>when a complex of behaviors is mastered as a single behavior (and which
>will take on a different functional character as a single behavior
>than as a disjoint complex of behaviors).
>
  I am not really sure what the quotation from Dewy is saying, so I'll
restrict my comments to your surmise.  Firstly, you state that 'emergence'
is an evolutionary mechanism, one which, I presume, is envisioned as
eventually reinforcing certain baseline characteristics in a group of
individuals, and perhaps weeding others out.  The second use you make
of it, is as an abstraction of several behaviours (regardless of origin)
into one 'behaviour'.  I would agree that this ability (to learn more
complex behaviours, ideas, whatever) can be considered 'emergent' when
considered over time (the process of evolution).  But then, are the 
results of applying that learning ability themselves emergent?  It is
if you leave the qualification "emergent behaviour is not obviously
connected any 'previous' behaviour" out.  If one is born with the
'emergent' ability to learn, is then learning to write (as you mention
below) itself emergent?

>For example, when a child learns how to draw a 'W' by drawing four
>straight lines in the correct position, what "emerges" is the making
>of four simple actions into one simple action.  Drawing 'W's, like
>drawing straight lines before, becomes a simple action that can be
>employed in still more complex behaviors, such as drawing words.
>
  I think that if a general ability to learn is 'emergent', then
the ability to compose different instances of learning is not as
interesting, and could be handled as a simpler concept.  Unfortunately,
I do not have a coherant General Psychological Theory of Learning
to point to in support of this, so it's just my opinion. :>

>Following Dewey, this idea should be generalizable to explain
>evolution at large, not just individual growth and development.  Each
>such achievement of mastery of complexes into units is just one more
>sashay onward in evolutionary development, at whichever level of
>organization it happens to happen.  (In agreement with S.J.Gould, we
>can hardly expect this to generate a "linear" view of evolution, but
>that's another story.)
>
  This is rather vague to me.  "Achievement of mastery of complexes" to
me inplies a deliberate act, not a sort of statistical success that
a non-anthropomorphized evolution relies on.  Humans are an exception
due to their ability to have and transmit 'culture', etc.  What do you
have in mind in terms of 'generalization'?

--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Saw, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb. 
cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu|  So called because it makes its way into a
    Davis Centre Rm 2136     |  wooden head."
 Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390  |				Ambrose Bierce