FW: Re: [WedTech] Emergence Seminar

[Nick Thompson]

All,

A couple of people have suggested that they would like to do the emergence
seminar if were an evening thing.  

If any of you are among them, please contact me or send a representative to
the first meeting, this afternoon, at 4pm.

Another person wrote from  afar to ask if we would record the sessions.
Doubtful.

 But here is another thought:  Let's say I notify the friam membership of
each week's readings, and (thus) open a thread on the chapter.  People who
want to read with us can join us in a discussion of the readings in the
friam list and that thread.  I will try, where possible, to obtain
electronic references, but I do recommend purchase of the book.

Nick

 

> [Original Message]
From: anonymous

> To: <[hidden email]>
> Date: 9/10/2009 10:18:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [WedTech] Emergence Seminar
>
> Nick:
>
> Disappointed I won't be able to make this today. I'd like to come,
> I'll see if I can manage to start sneaking out early on Thursdays. If
> there's a popular movement to make this more of an early evening
> thing, count my vote.
>
>     --j
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Nicholas Thompson
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > The emergence seminar, such as it is, will have its first meeting this
> > thursday (tomorrow) at Downtown Subcription (which is at Garcia and Agua
> > Fria).  I suggest that we devote the seminar, at least in its early

stages,
> > to the collection, EMERGENCE.  Why a collection?  Why a seminar? 

Because,
> > as I keep saying (sorry), I want to articulate the different views on
the
> > subject.  One thing I noticed about academics is their desire to exclude
> > ways of thinking from discussions.  So academics tend to scoff.  I
think the
> > mark of a truly educated (smart, knowledgeable) person is the ability to
> > hold more than one idea in his or her head at once..... to compare and
> > contrast.  Bedau and Humphreys, in their introduction, invite us to
engage
> > in this kind of analysis by bearing in mind a set of seven questions,
as we
> > read each of the authors.  These are:
> >
> > 1. How should emergence be defined? (by reference to irreducibility,
> > unpredictability, ontological novelty, conceptual novelty, and.or
> > supvenience (whatever that is?)
> > 2.  What can be emergent: properties, substances, processes, phenomena,
> > patterns laws, or something else?
> > 3.  What is the scope of actual emergent phenomena?  (Is emergence a
rare
> > phenomenon, or broadly distributed in physics and biology as well as in
> > psychology?)
> > 4. Is emergence an objective feature of the world, or is it merely in
the
> > eye of the beholder.
> > 5. Should emergence be viewed as static and synchronic, or as dynamic
and
> > diachronic, or are both possible?
> > 6. Does emergence imply or require the existence of new levels of
phenomena
> > with their new causes and effects?
> > 7. In what ways are emergent phenomena autonomous from their emergent
> > bases?
> >
> > Tomorrow, as a warm up; it would be interesting to see what
preconceptions

> > we hold on these questions.
> >
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology an d Ethology,
> > Clark University ([hidden email])
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wedtech mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/wedtech_redfish.com
> >
> >

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