Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!rutgers!mcnc!ncsuvx!news
From: fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Emergent Properties
Keywords: chaos, science, prediction
Message-ID: <1990Oct23.201811.6886@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 90 20:18:11 GMT
References: <1990Oct12.214636.7945@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <30@tdatirv.UUCP> <1990Oct19.201604.7280@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <1990Oct20.201022.5090@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
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Reply-To: fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel)
Organization: North Carolina State University
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I wrote (among other things) that:

    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

Cameron Shelly (U of T) replied:

    Well!  You imply that traversing levels of description both up and
    down are equivalent - I don't agree. 

and later added:

    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? [sic]
    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?

                   -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

    Well, I don't think I implied any such thing, and I doubt the thing I am
    supposed to have implied even has a well defined meaning in the philosophy
    of science.  Certainly, the material which Shelly supplied after that on
    some details on the morphology of lingusitics did nothing to make me feel
    ashamed of whatever it was I implied.  I wonder what Shelly means when he
    says that something is "hardly useful".  Useful towards what goal?   And
    what on earth does it mean when he says that "in any reasonable sense"
    a word "only exists at a high cognitive level".   I do not understand, and
    I do not think it is because he is speaking Swahili, but rather newspeak.
    The mature sciences tend to have their technical terms defined in words
    that are not taken from daily usage (e.g. latin) and there is good reason
    for this.  People are less likely to fall into loose habits when using a
    term like "metastisize" than "consciousness" or "reasonable" or "useful".

    Later in the same note, Shelly gives me the point I was trying to make,
    so perhaps I should not drag this out.  He said:  

       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. 

    Indeed, the reason it may be hard to find examples of emergence in 
    "objective" models in physics is that it is a mature science and has
    worked out descriptions that make the emergence go away.

    My concern is that emergence is being adopted as a terminal position in
    the undertanding of phenomona (sp?) when in fact it is a very early, and
    very weak position.  Clearly, one needs to gather observations and one
    needs to organize them prior to making the major progress towards a 
    "proper" science ... but that gathering and labeling should not begin
    to masquerade as a proper science.  Perhaps it is only sloppy net talk that
    makes the use of "emergence" seem to be as I observe, but perhaps it goes
    deeper.  I think the behaviorists made this mistake and it would be a
    shame to see another generation of scientists follow that lead.

----GaryFostel----
					Department of Computer Science
					North Carolina State University