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From: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Thoughts on emergence
Message-ID: <63334@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 8 Oct 90 22:56:22 GMT
References: <62500@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1990Oct7.012523.3828@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
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Reply-To: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
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In article <1990Oct7.012523.3828@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes:

>While intelligence might not be considered
>emergent at the "Darwinian" level synchronically, it must still be so
>diachronically.  Unlike a 'designer', natural selection can only 
>passively enforce changes and so must wait until the random process
>of mutation gives it the proper opportunity.  Therefore, at the time
>when a significant enough increase in intelligence occurs, it must
>be emergent.  So intelligence should still be considered emergent in the
>diachronic sense you mentioned earlier (and I cut out :).

Depends on how you construe the teleology of the evolutionary process.
Of course there's no real teleology there, but psychologically we can
construe it an at least three different ways.  My original post suggested
two of these ways, your response suggests a third.

First way: Teleology at the level of the gene.  Goal: get genes to replicate.
At this level, intelligence is emergent.

Second way: Teleology at the level of the organism.  Goal: get organisms to
survive and replicate.  This is your suggestion.  If the only teleology
we impute to the evolutionary process is that of a "natural selector" -- i.e.
produce systems that survive and replicate -- then specific functions like
intelligence are indeed emergent.

Third way:  Teleology at the level of the organism.  Goal: get organisms to
be like X (for some X, e.g. X = strong, fast, intelligent...).  Here, we are
construing the teleology of the evolutionary process not as that of the natural
selector, but as that of the "blind watchmaker".  On this view, intelligence
is the goal of the evolutionary process, and so cannot be regarded as emergent.

The teleology here not being metaphysical but psychological, all these ways
of construing it are quite valid.  My original post only mentioned the
first and third possibilities.  The second possibility is also a very
reasonable construal, and serves the useful purpose of showing how intelligence
can be regarded as emergent without having to descend to the level of the
"selfish gene".  Sorry for omitting this possibility in my original post.

--
Dave Chalmers     (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.

"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."