Re: A question for the emergentists among you
Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Oct 10, 2009; 5:17pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/A-question-for-the-emergentists-among-you-tp3799888p3800527.html
Doug,
Thou protests too much.
You know the story of the two monks from an austere order that were walking in the woods and encountered a damsel at the banks of a muddy brook. One of the monks picked her up and put her across the brook. The damsel thanked him and the two monks continued on their walk.
After a few moments of silent walking, the other monk, said to the monk who had helped the woman, "you know, brother, our order forbids us to have any contact with women."
"Contact?" Said the first monk. "I put her down a hundred yards back; you carry her in your arms still!"
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 10/10/2009 9:16:37 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
Robert,
It's supposed to be *my* job to ask embarrassing practical questions.
The answer, of course, is to provide a vehicle around which to hold at-length discussions on whether, or not, the term "emergence" applies to said phenomenon.
Silly. You should have known that.
--Doug
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Robert Holmes
<[hidden email]> wrote:
What's the point of determining whether a phenomenon is emergent or not? What useful stuff can I actually do with that knowledge?
In other areas of my life, classification can have actionable consequences. For example, I can use the sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms and heuristics embedded in my brain to work out that the three animals wandering through my house can be categorized as "cats" and not "dogs". And that is useful, because it tells me that I should buy cat food and not dog food when I go to PetCo.
So what is an equivalent example with emergence? Once I've attached the "emergent" label to a phenomenon, then what?
-- Robert
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org