Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!violet!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Subject: Re: Emergent Properties
Message-ID: <1990Oct20.201022.5090@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Keywords: chaos, science, prediction
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1990Oct12.214636.7945@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <30@tdatirv.UUCP> <1990Oct19.201604.7280@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 90 20:10:22 GMT
Lines: 88

In article <1990Oct19.201604.7280@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel) writes:

[stuff deleted]

>    It is a property of well understood sciences, that we
>    know how to preserve information at different levels of description.
>    I suspect "emergence" is only useful in poorly understood sciences
>    and its usefullness is quite suspect since it may discourage the
>    search for different formulations of the descriptions that DO
>    allow the sort of "simplifying" that Friesen is assuming
>
  Well!  You imply that traversing levels of description both up and
down are equivalent - I don't agree.  Moving 'up' a level of description
involves grouping several distinct 'things' at the lower level together
under one classification and therefore losing a degree of granularity -
and also the information that distinguishes the elements of the new
conception.  An example from linguistics is the phoneme - a group of
sounds which people regard as identical for most purposes of comprehension
although they are realized through *many* different physical sounds.  It
is certainly possible to deal with the phonemic phenomena by considering
each member of the group separately, but the number of these is truly
vast and makes the approach extremely cumbersome - and "not useful".  You
could think of like dealing with text bit-by-bit rather than as a
collection of words.  Note that phonemes and words really are groups
of smaller components, but are not really treated as such by people
at a psychological level - which is a legitimate concern of any science
of man, even if "poorly understood".

  In traversing the description levels downward, how do I preserve the
information that the sequence of characters "c","o","m","p","u","t","e",
"r" refer to a word (and by extension concept) "computer"?  By wrote?
Hardly "useful".  Then what do I do when I move down to the 'bit' level?
And further down?  In any reasonable sense, the 'word' "computer" only
exists at a high cognitive level, it can be 'reduced', but what do you
gain?

  I don't see why this sort of thing should be "discouraging" to scientific
inquiry, btw.  Certainly, like any other concept, it can be inappropriately
applied.

>    There is a lot of question begging going on in this discussion, and
>    perhaps that is unavoidable in this media, esp on this topic. For
>    example, Leonard Norrgard defined fire as an emergent property of
>    material, oxygen and heat.  Fire is supposed to be a property of
>    the system that can not be explained by the subcomponents and is
>    thus emergent.  Well ... but how is "fire" defined?  It is supposed
>    to be a property but it would be quite hard to produce a definition
>    of the property "fire" based on visual observations.  

  I agree that this is not a good stab at an "emergence".  In general,
I'm sure that finding a true emergent in an 'objective' model of physics
is going to prove rather difficult for anyone.  But since I'm not a
savant of physics (:>) I'll avoid putting my foot in here.

>    The purpose of science is (I thought) to search for descriptions
>    of the world, to be offered in terms of defined quantities, and
>    then to test those descriptions for adequacy.  Inverting this 
>    process, as I suspect many "emergence advocates" may be doing,
>    probably interferes with the progress of science -- though of course
>    it may have pragmatic benifits. 

  This sounds almost like you consider emergence a 'heresy' against
'science'.  What inversion do you mean here?  Do you find people
who describe observations before they reconcile them with established
science to all be interfering with science?  I would agree if you refer
to say, Ponds and Fleishmann, but not if you refer to Bohr.  Why, if 
we should deplore premature announcements, do we encourage researchers
to do this - the infamous "puplish or perish" paradox?  


>    Skinner was able to train Pigeons
>    without knowing much of what was going on in pigeons and I worry
>    that emergence is an emergent property of a return to behaviorism.
>    That sort of "science" has its place, especially in the creation of
>    a new field, but if THIS is what emergence is all about why not
>    just call it behaviorism?

  Errr, I think behavourism and emergence are antipodal opposites!  Skinner's
followers regarded all behavour as programmable by simple postive/negative
feedback or training, emergence deals with phenomena (or behavour if you
prefer) which is *not* obviously a simple consequence of a 'creature's
parts or input.  Does my idea of behavourism clash with yours?

--
      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