Re: Emergence Seminar IV: Bedau on "Weak" Emergence
Posted by
Mikegolf on
Oct 01, 2009; 12:07pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Emergence-Seminar-IV-Bedau-on-Weak-Emergence-tp3733657p3748613.html
I am sorry not to have been more active with the
reading group but my return trip (25 hours door to door from Santa Fe to
Lancester Hotel House in the UK) added to the jetlag was difficult for
me; in addition I had to take care of many details which were waiting for my
return. I remotely follow your mails.
Cordialement
Michel
Bloch
33(0)1 46 37 01 93
http://www.mountvernon.fr/Sciences_complexite.htm
This week's reading is Mark Bedau's "Downward Casaton and Autonomy in
Weak Emergence" "Weak" emrgence, Bedau makes clear in a footnote, is the
only emergence worth having. It stands betwqeen "nomical emergence"
(emergence in name only), which arises because the terms by which tha whole is
described are incommensurate with the terms by which its parts are described,
and "strong emergence", which is said to have irreducible causal powers
but which Bedau thinks is "scientifically irrelevant". A property of a
whole is weakly emergent if it cannot be derived from the properties of the
parts except by simulation. For Friam list members, Bedau's chapter may be
the most interesting so far because it makes extensive use of examples from the
complexity literature. One problem we readers will have is deciding
whether the designation "weak" refers to some distinct kinds of events in the
world (and is therefore ontological) or whether it refers to the state of our
explanatory skills (in which case it is epistemological). The
distinction is important because we might expect ontological distinctions to
survive indefinitely, whereas epistemological ones should be eliminated with the
progress of science. Bedau seems to think his distinction is ontological,
but his argument for that position seems a bit shabby.
As before, we invite Friam readers to read along with us and to comment on
this thread only if they have done the reading mentioned in the subject heading.
Take care, everybody,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
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