emergence as stop gap

[Nick Thompson]

Gunther very wisely wrote:

I used to throw around the word "emergence" around until I noticed
that I used it there where I did not understand what was really going
on, like in: "consciousness? - simple - an emergent process"
Since then I have stopped using the word - it is, in fact, vacuous to
call something emergent - whereas ie. nonlinear has definite meaning.
 
The problem is that emergence seems to be the opposite of a
mechanistic or an algorithmic process; or an analytical one.
So it becomes a stop-gap concept for all processes which elude
our common problem solution techniques.

Nick Replies:

I don't think the problem is with STOP GAP concepts.  They have great
importance in science.  

The problem is with confusing what they are.   Whatever "emergence" is, it
certainly isn't "the cause of emergence."  So we have TWO problems here:
the first is a descriptive problem -- what is it that puzzles us? and the
explanatory problem, "how does that puzzling thing or event come about?"
There is a LONG history of confusing these two functions of words in the
history of science.  Think of the word "adaptation" which is variously
defined as the property of organisms that sets them apart from rocks AND
the selection process that explains that property, leaving us with the odd
belief that adaptation(D) (whatever that is) is caused by adaptation (E),
whatever THAT is?

Now one solution to the problem would be to strictly separate the two
questions:  Identify some phenomena that we all agree are emergent, and
THEN try to discover the dynamics underlying them.  One might come up with
Emergent (D) = a sudden transformation in the properties of an aggregate
such that the parts act to maintain the identity of the whole and Emergence
(E) =non-linearity in the dynamics amongst the parts.  I don't claim the
problem would be solved, but at least when would know when we were getting
somewhere, no?

But what IF we discovered, as an empirical matter, that we could not find
any phenomena that we all agreed were cases of emergence.  I began to think
we might fail in this way when one of us objected to the example of
Hydrogen, Oxygen making water, which seemed to me about as emergent as
something could get.  At that point, we would still not be skunked, because
we could inquire what exactly is that state of human understanding with
respect to phenomena that leads people to attribute emergence.  At that
point, "emergence" becomes a behavioral state in human observers whose
properties can still be examined materialistically, if we cared to.

Gotta stop now.  I have to go dandle.  

Nick

[glen ep ropella]

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Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> any phenomena that we all agreed were cases of emergence.  I began to think
> we might fail in this way when one of us objected to the example of
> Hydrogen, Oxygen making water, which seemed to me about as emergent as
> something could get.  At that point, we would still not be skunked, because

Was that conversation on this list?  I'd like to go back and read it.  A
Gmane search turned up nothing.

It's odd that one would think of water as emerging from hydrogen and
oxygen.  A question for those who believe that is:  "Then does that make
all molecules emergent?"  There are plenty of complicated processes that
go into the construction of any molecule, many of those are more
complicated than water.

I suspect the question above will seem to miss the point with many
Emergentists (Emergentites?  Emergencies? ... hmmm).  The point being
that emergence and perception are intertwined.  Water is perceived in a
very different way than masses of hydrogen or oxygen are perceived by
humans.  Many people who try to categorize "emergence" will attribute
this to some fundamental role of human expectations.  But, I suspect a
worm, ant, or tree (were we able to communicate with them) would also
grok the difference between water and hydrogen, even without our
neocortex.  This leads many others who like to categorize "emergence" to
talk of physical states of matter.  Water, in massive aggregation, acts
one way.  Water, in isolated molecules, acts another.  Hence "emergence"
is defined in terms of some sort of composition operator (e.g. summation).

In the end, it all boils down to whether or not a thing ("water" can be
a thing) acts or is acted upon as a unit, distinct from the actions (or
reactions) of the things around it or its constituents (water
molecules).  Likewise, the water molecule acts different from the other
molecules around it and from its constituents.  So, when considering
water, there are at least two levels of emergence.

But, so what?  Taken this way _everything_ is emergent.  I even heard a
guy named Terry Bristol claim that the universe is a kind of emergent
cycle where the emergent things at the bottom emerge from the emergent
things at the top in a kind of ourboros.  And that makes the word
"emergent" completely useless.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin

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[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 09:03:55AM -0700, Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
>
> But, so what?  Taken this way _everything_ is emergent.  I even heard a
> guy named Terry Bristol claim that the universe is a kind of emergent
> cycle where the emergent things at the bottom emerge from the emergent
> things at the top in a kind of ourboros.  And that makes the word
> "emergent" completely useless.
>

Only if taken to extremes. Emergence is always relative to a pair of
models. Since there is no evidence that there is a bedrock of physical
reductionism, it would seem that all physical phenomena can therefore be
modelled in such a way that the phenomena in question are emergent.

Yet it is not alway useful to have a pair of models. I have already given the
simple archetype of a gravitationally bound pair modelled as point
masses undergoing Newtonian gavitational attraction. Such a model system
does not exhibit emergence.

It does mean that emergence is a broader concept than usually
conceptualised, but I disagree that it is so broad as to be
useless. Also, there are a number of attempts at refining emergence
into stronger concepts - eg Bedau's "weak emergence", or Wolfram's
"computational irreducibility" that go to the heart of your
criticism. I'm not sure how successful they are, but such is the way
of philosophical debate.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone [phone] (mobile)
Mathematics                        
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Merle Lefkoff]

Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:

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>
> Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>  
>> any phenomena that we all agreed were cases of emergence.  I began to think
>> we might fail in this way when one of us objected to the example of
>> Hydrogen, Oxygen making water, which seemed to me about as emergent as
>> something could get.  At that point, we would still not be skunked, because
>>    
>
> Was that conversation on this list?  I'd like to go back and read it.  A
> Gmane search turned up nothing.
>
> It's odd that one would think of water as emerging from hydrogen and
> oxygen.  A question for those who believe that is:  "Then does that make
> all molecules emergent?"  There are plenty of complicated processes that
> go into the construction of any molecule, many of those are more
> complicated than water.
>
> I suspect the question above will seem to miss the point with many
> Emergentists (Emergentites?  Emergencies? ... hmmm).  The point being
> that emergence and perception are intertwined.  Water is perceived in a
> very different way than masses of hydrogen or oxygen are perceived by
> humans.  Many people who try to categorize "emergence" will attribute
> this to some fundamental role of human expectations.  But, I suspect a
> worm, ant, or tree (were we able to communicate with them) would also
> grok the difference between water and hydrogen, even without our
> neocortex.  This leads many others who like to categorize "emergence" to
> talk of physical states of matter.  Water, in massive aggregation, acts
> one way.  Water, in isolated molecules, acts another.  Hence "emergence"
> is defined in terms of some sort of composition operator (e.g. summation).
>
> In the end, it all boils down to whether or not a thing ("water" can be
> a thing) acts or is acted upon as a unit, distinct from the actions (or
> reactions) of the things around it or its constituents (water
> molecules).  Likewise, the water molecule acts different from the other
> molecules around it and from its constituents.  So, when considering
> water, there are at least two levels of emergence.
>
> But, so what?  Taken this way _everything_ is emergent.  I even heard a
> guy named Terry Bristol claim that the universe is a kind of emergent
> cycle where the emergent things at the bottom emerge from the emergent
> things at the top in a kind of ourboros.  And that makes the word
> "emergent" completely useless.
>
> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
> temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
>
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>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> What's all the fuss about?  Emergence is a property of a system - any system- resulting from interactions of the constituents following a set of local rules.
>  

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Santa Fe, N.M.

[Phil Henshaw-2]

I handle the 'what' problem two ways, 1) what's useful to call emergent
for the consideration at hand (since there are way too many interlocking
emergent processes to consider them all at once anyway) and 2) what
about them act and interact as wholes is the 'process of emergence', not
the 'state of being emergent'.  The process of emergence always, as far
as I can tell, is a continuous identifiable local complex developmental
cellular accumulative process, an evolving individual network.   A
'state of being emergent' is much more often a fragile definitional
construct.  

Is everything 'emergent', making the word useless and meaningless?   I
don't think the fact that you can consider the process by which anything
meaningful emerges makes considering it meaningless.  You need the word
to distinguish between the plastic/evolving aspect of things and the
framework/fixture aspect of things.  It's one of the distinctions needed
in exploring a world that is more complicated than we'll ever quite
understand.  When I need to, or prefer to, consider things as fixed, I
just remember that each coin has those two sides, all the coins.   Isn't
that simpler, just sometimes checking to see if there are any coins you
don't allow to turned over and seen the other way, as evolving, or
fixed, and why, otherwise see them all as both?  



Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com    

> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Glen E. P. Ropella
> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 12:04 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] emergence as stop gap
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > any phenomena that we all agreed were cases of emergence.  
> I began to
> > think we might fail in this way when one of us objected to
> the example
> > of Hydrogen, Oxygen making water, which seemed to me about
> as emergent
> > as something could get.  At that point, we would still not
> be skunked,
> > because
>
> Was that conversation on this list?  I'd like to go back and
> read it.  A Gmane search turned up nothing.
>
> It's odd that one would think of water as emerging from
> hydrogen and oxygen.  A question for those who believe that
> is:  "Then does that make all molecules emergent?"  There are
> plenty of complicated processes that go into the construction
> of any molecule, many of those are more complicated than water.
>
> I suspect the question above will seem to miss the point with
> many Emergentists (Emergentites?  Emergencies? ... hmmm).  
> The point being that emergence and perception are
> intertwined.  Water is perceived in a very different way than
> masses of hydrogen or oxygen are perceived by humans.  Many
> people who try to categorize "emergence" will attribute this
> to some fundamental role of human expectations.  But, I
> suspect a worm, ant, or tree (were we able to communicate
> with them) would also grok the difference between water and
> hydrogen, even without our neocortex.  This leads many others
> who like to categorize "emergence" to talk of physical states
> of matter.  Water, in massive aggregation, acts one way.  
> Water, in isolated molecules, acts another.  Hence
> "emergence" is defined in terms of some sort of composition
> operator (e.g. summation).
>
> In the end, it all boils down to whether or not a thing
> ("water" can be a thing) acts or is acted upon as a unit,
> distinct from the actions (or
> reactions) of the things around it or its constituents (water
> molecules).  Likewise, the water molecule acts different from
> the other molecules around it and from its constituents.  So,
> when considering water, there are at least two levels of emergence.
>
> But, so what?  Taken this way _everything_ is emergent.  I
> even heard a guy named Terry Bristol claim that the universe
> is a kind of emergent cycle where the emergent things at the
> bottom emerge from the emergent things at the top in a kind
> of ourboros.  And that makes the word "emergent" completely useless.
>
> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a
> little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
> -- Benjamin Franklin
>
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> iD8DBQFGeU/rZeB+vOTnLkoRAhNTAKCcqrSzOEzUiqcE3gaukqcw6HEA4gCfQOdg
> off7M1XNCmRaWnxMOBtnZuE=
> =KWrT
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

[glen ep ropella]

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Phil Henshaw wrote:
> I handle the 'what' problem two ways, 1) what's useful to call emergent
> for the consideration at hand (since there are way too many interlocking
> emergent processes to consider them all at once anyway) and 2) what
> about them act and interact as wholes is the 'process of emergence', not
> the 'state of being emergent'.  The process of emergence always, as far
> as I can tell, is a continuous identifiable local complex developmental
> cellular accumulative process, an evolving individual network.   A
> 'state of being emergent' is much more often a fragile definitional
> construct.  

- From your description (to the extent that I understand it), it strikes
me that we already have a perfectly good word for "process of
emergence":  "evolution".  Why toss in another word?

> Is everything 'emergent', making the word useless and meaningless?

To be clear, I was referring to Terry Bristol's talk, which implied (to
me) that everything was emergent.  And if that were the case, then the
word would be useless.

>   I
> don't think the fact that you can consider the process by which anything
> meaningful emerges makes considering it meaningless.  You need the word
> to distinguish between the plastic/evolving aspect of things and the
> framework/fixture aspect of things.  It's one of the distinctions needed
> in exploring a world that is more complicated than we'll ever quite
> understand.  When I need to, or prefer to, consider things as fixed, I
> just remember that each coin has those two sides, all the coins.   Isn't
> that simpler, just sometimes checking to see if there are any coins you
> don't allow to turned over and seen the other way, as evolving, or
> fixed, and why, otherwise see them all as both?

Absolutely!  It is extremely handy to pop on and off different
perspectives when considering some interesting thing.  So far, I've only
used the word "emergence" in situations where I think using the word
will help my audience understand what I'm saying.  But, I don't use it
in my own internal dialog because it doesn't have any large meaning,
i.e. there doesn't seem to be a solid referent for it as an English
symbol (English being the semi-formalism we are continually developing).
 And in that sense, I actively flip in and out of the dual perspectives
of:  1) novel things emerge in the course of the ever-present churning
of ambient goo around us versus 2) there's nothing new under the sun.

But, flip-flopping between duals does not make one a dualist.  It merely
makes one a rhetorical opportunist who will exploit any formalism if it
might help communicate a concept.

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
Seek simplicity, and distrust it. -- Alfred North Whitehead

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