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From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: emergence
Message-ID: <3592@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 6 Oct 90 03:01:12 GMT
References: <87759@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 8


I like the observations made by abbott@antares.UUCP (Russell J.
Abbott)in article 58.  I had had the feeling that "emergent" involved
a 3-part a relation between a system's structure, its behavior, and
the observer -- but I didn't have a good example.  Abbott's suggests
that an important element is the observer's knowledge or belief about
whether the system was "designed" to have that behavior.  Nice.
Also verges on a 4-part relation.