Posted by
Nick Thompson on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/quick-question-tp3037681p3071299.html
Russell
AFAICT.? My first thought was that it was an insurance company whose
mascott is a duck. I think you dont mean that.
I think of the anthropic principle about the same way I think of the
"planetary" principle. It is true that the planets we see today are those
that have been selected for orbits that have not yet either spun out or
fallen in. Yet, I am hard pressed to think of the present arrangement of
the planets as a cultmination of anything. The culmination, if there is
one, comes when the sun explodes and we all return to the fire from which
we came.
But I probably mispeak. To be honest, the anthropic principle is the sort
of idea that makes me uneasy, so I have probably have always shielded
myself from it and never looked at it straight.
As SS would say: I am not a wise man.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> [Original Message]
> From: russell standish <
[hidden email]>
> To: <
[hidden email]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 6/13/2009 5:50:45 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] quick question
>
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 02:23:03PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> >
> > RS-->""Bedau defines it as emergence with downward causation. For
example, we would say
> > that consciousness is strongly emergent if we felt that we could
> > consciously influence the activities of our neurons, rather than
> > simply our consciousness simply being the result of neuronal activity.
> >
> > I'm not sure this notion has any use in discussions other than
> > consciousness, and even there the notion of epiphenomenalism would say
> > that it is void concept."<--RS
> >
> > OK. We all seem to agree that strong emergence is a reach.
>
> Actually, I'm not as dismissive of it as Bedau is. In particular, I
> see that application of the anthropic principle in a multiverse causes
> the sort of "strange loop" that Hofstadter talks about, and this is
> characteristic of downward causation. Nevertheless, I do concede this
> is rather airy-fairy speculation, so I don't insist.
>
> > But once we have given up on strong emergence, do we need supervenience
for anything? I cannot shake the intuition that the whole reason for
"supervenience" is to defend consciousness against determinism, and this
has always seemed to me a religious, as opposed to a scientific, project.
>
> Supervenience is just a denial of the soul, AFAICT. And yes, it is
> important, in the sense that without it, the anthropic principle
> cannot work in a multiverse, and we would suffer the Occam collapse
> (which we clearly don't). If you've read my book, I talk about this
> stuff there.
>
> >
> > Thanks for your help and patience,
> >
> > Have you both read the Kim and the Wimsatt articles in the same volume?
> >
>
> No - I don't have the volume. Sorry.
>
> > Nick
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> > Clark University (
[hidden email])
> >
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Russ Abbott
> > To:
[hidden email];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group
> > Cc: Russell Standish
> > Sent: 6/12/2009 12:33:26 AM
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] quick question
> >
> >
> > Hi Nick,
> >
> > See below.
> >
> > -- Russ
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<
[hidden email]> wrote:
> >
> > Russell,
> >
> > So, is it Bedau and Philllips you have at hand? I am hoping to get
some of
> > my colleagues in Santa Fe to read that with me next fall.
> >
> > It's Bedau and Humphreys.
> >
> >
> >
> > If that is the source you are using, I also had Bedau's contribution to
> > this volume in mind when I made the comment below.
> >
> > I am going to key in some short passages below so we can go over them
> > together.
> >
> > He writes that [strong] emergent properties are supervenient properties
> > with irreducible causal powers"...some of which are "macro-to-micro"
> > effects[,] termed "downward causation".
> >
> > Supervenience means, as i understand it, that while each member of some
> > enumerable list of microstates is sufficient for the occurence of the
> > emergent macrostate, no one of those states is necessary for its
occurence.
> > So in practice one can have many different micro states that can bring
> > about the macrostate, but no change in the macrostate without some
change
> > in a microstate.
> >
> > The necessary and sufficient part isn't part of the definition of
"supervenient." The definition is simply your last clause: no change in the
macrostate without some change in a microstate.
> >
> >
> >
> > Downward causation means, as I understand it, that some macrostates are
> > sufficient for some microstates. This brings about the loopiness that
some
> > of the authors in the book regard as inspired and others regard as
vicious.
> > [Some will argue that if a microstate is sufficient for A macrostate
and
> > that macrostate is sufficient for a microstate then the macrostate drops
> > out of the equasion and we need simply point out that the first
microstate
> > is sufficient for the second. }
> >
> > Bedau then writes: "Such [macro] causal powers cannot be explained in
> > terms of the aggregationof the micro-level potentialities; they are
> > primtive or "brute" natural powers that arise inexplilcably withthe
> > existence of certain macro-level entitites."
> >
> > Which led to my comment that they are, by definition, inexplicable.
> >
> > I understand downward causation to refer to a new causal power. An
example might be dark energy. It causes changes in the universe even though
there are no micro explanations for it. If it operates only at cosmological
scales (and not just because it is weak at other scales, but it simply
doesn't exist at other scales) then it exhibits downward causation. Another
example is vitalism, were it true. It would say that there are new causal
powers at the biological level that simply come into existence at that
level and are not explicable in terms of lower level forces.
> >
> >
> > Bedau goes on to write, "All the evidence today suggests that strong
> > emergence is scientifically irrelevant." and goes on to argue that no
> > essentially examples exist. In othere words, strong emergence is
possible,
> > it just has never been observed. This seems a very strange resolution
of
> > the argument, since it seems to define emergence in terms of our
inablity
> > to explain something, rather than in terms of some measurable property
of
> > the thing itself. This seems very close to the "surprise" argument that
> > Bedau rejects in the early pages of the same article.
> >
> >
> > His argument is really a rejection of vitalism. No one wants to be a
defender of vitalism, which is the rejected poster boy of downward
causation.
> >
> > I've never seen anyone talk about dark energy in this context. It might
be a more respectable candidate for downward causation. But it's not likely
-- in my opinion. It's conceivable that dark energy is a new force of
nature and that it's different from the other known forces -- gravity,
electromagnetic, strong, and weak.But even if that were the case, if it
could be shown to exist at all scales -- or perhaps like time and gravity
-- to be simply a part of the structure of the universe, it wouldn't
qualify as downward causation. Downward causation requires that the new
force pop into existence when and only when some macro condition holds but
not as a consequence of the micro conditions that make it up.
Complexity
> > Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> > > Date: 6/12/2009 3:17:44 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] quick question
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 07:01:38PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > > > Steve,
> > > >
> > > > My understanding of the meaning of "strong" emergence is
"inexplicable
> > > > emergence".
> > > >
> > > > Is there another meaning?
> > > >
> > > > N
> > >
> > > Bedau defines it as emergence with downward causation. For example, we
> > would say
> > > that consciousness is strongly emergent if we felt that we could
> > > consciously influence the activities of our neurons, rather than
> > > simply our consciousness simply being the result of neuronal activity.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure this notion has any use in discussions other than
> > > consciousness, and even there the notion of epiphenomenalism would say
> > > that it is void concept.
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > >
> >
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> > > Mathematics
> > > UNSW SYDNEY 2052
[hidden email]
> > > Australia
http://www.hpcoders.com.au> > >
> >
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> Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Mathematics
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052
[hidden email]
> Australia
http://www.hpcoders.com.au>
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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