Posted by
Nick Thompson on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/emergence-tp3586728p3604482.html
Owen and Russ,
I have spent some time trying to reread Bedau and have lost patience with
him. With normal human effort, I have not been able to articulate his
categories, weak and strong emergence. The reference to reduction in the
definition of strong emergence really gets us nowhere because reduction
isnt nailed down in the article.
I guess I would like to come to an understanding with you guys: Either we
give up on the distinction between strong and weak emergence, or we agree
to spend some time in Bedau's text explicating his meaning. My suspicion
is that Bedau's presentation is not coherent: i.e., while his distinction
between weak and strong is central to his argument, he does not go to the
effort to articulate that distinction, i.e., to define weak and strong in
the same terms so that we can see the contrast between them. If the
distinction is foundation to either of you, then help me to understand it
by pointing to some part of the text that you find particularly lucid.
The "Bedau" I am referring to is that found in the Bedau and Humphreys
collection. Another version of that article up on the web at
http://people.reed.edu/~mab/publications/papers/principia.pdfEven tho one is cited as a reprint of the other, I think I have detected
some important differences, so we would have to be careful.
We could agree to have read the article by a particular time and "meet" and
open a thread on the article when we have all done so. A real webinar or,
better still, a WBB (Web Brown Bag). Each of us could be required to have
a bottle of beer open beside our computer.
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]>
> Date: 9/8/2009 9:46:07 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] emergence
>
> The Truth Sez:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_emergence>
> It Must Be True.
>
> <strong-russian-accent>
> I spit me of any other kinds!
> </strong-russian-accent>
>
> -- Owen
>
> On Sep 7, 2009, at 10:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> > I think you have that wrong. He says that the halt of the growth of
> > an
> > R-pentomino is WEAKLY emergent because you cannot anticipate it from
> > the
> > early behavior of the automata. You just have to run the sucker.
> > If you
> > can calculate it, it's only nominally emergent or perhaps not
> > emergent at
> > all. Unfortunately that passage is not in the version of the ms
> > that is in
> > the pdf I sent. Merde. In short,I think what you are callling
> > strongly
> > emergent is what he is calling weakly emergent, and what you are
> > calling
> > weakly emergent is at best nominally so.
> >
> > N
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> > Clark University (
[hidden email])
> >
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