I followed the link in the wikipedia to the stanford encyc. of
> 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.pdf>
> Even 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])
>> >
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
>
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