[Oops .. reply did not include friam]
> Very interesting. Where does your version of this distinction come
appears to be within scope. I'd say any features of a time dependent
you know how, are weakly emergent. But features that cannot be
reverse engineered, so to speak, are strong. Thus systems with
> I think this version is different from the same distinction in Bedau,
> which is in the collection we will begin discussing in the "Seminar"
> on
> Thursday afternoon (4pm, DS), but frankly I found the Bedau article so
> tortured I cannot be sure. Bedau distinguishes three different
> "degrees"
> of emergence, if you will; nominal, weak, and strong. Something is
> nominally emergent if it displays properties that cannot be
> displayed by
> its parts. At the other extreme is strong emergence which "adds the
> requirement that emergent properties are supervenient properties with
> irreducible causal powers". Both supervenient and irreducible are
> difficult terms. Supervenient implies to me a causal ratchet in which
> knowing how the parts are arranged tells you how the whole will
> behave but
> knowing how the whole is behaving tells you only that the parts are
> arranged on one of a potentially infinite set of ways. Irreducible
> probably means that the whole can do stuff the parts cant. Neither
> term
> seem to suggest irreversibility, which is the criterion your guy
> suggests.
> Weak emergence is said to occur when the only way you can work out
> what the
> properties of the whole will be is by assembling the parts and
> seeing what
> happens, as in a simulation. What these two have to do with one
> another is
> a mystery to me, so if you have an author with a more lucid version
> of the
> distinction, I am all ears.
>
> Fortunately (or unfortunately) the Bedau article is available on the
> web at
>
http://people.reed.edu/~mab/publications/papers/principia.pdf, so
> you can
> suffer without buying the book.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> Clark University (
[hidden email])
>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Owen Densmore <
[hidden email]>
>> To: <
[hidden email]>; The Friday Morning Applied
>> Complexity
> Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
>> Date: 9/7/2009 8:28:41 PM
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] emergence
>>
>> On Sep 7, 2009, at 6:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>
>>> Owen,
>>>
>>> You wrote:
>>>
>>> I think it's simply the appearance within a time varying aggregate
>>>> system of a feature not apparently derived from its components'
>>>> interactions.
>>>
>>> A perfect example of a non-"out there" definition. "Apparently"
>>> implies
>>> that further understanding, information, knowledge will dispel the
>>> emergence. Many smart people hold that position,, but I am not one
>>> of them
>>> (;-})
>>
>> Well, I was fudging a bit with "apparently". Formal emergence is
>> divided into two domains, weak and strong. If I understand it
>> correctly, irreversible phenomena are the strong emergence types,
>> while reversible are the weak.
>>
>> In plan language, if the emergence is derived from ignorance, it is
>> weak. If it is fundamental (chaos, for example), it is strong.
>>
>> -- Owen
>>
>
>
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College