Re: A question for the emergentists among you

Posted by Robert Holmes on Oct 11, 2009; 2:21am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/A-question-for-the-emergentists-among-you-tp3799888p3801948.html

Wow, I post a question, go on a 6-hour hike and this is what I come back to...

I still don't feel that I've got a straight answer to my question, other than Doug's (which I suspect is the most accurate) and Russ's (which I really hope isn't true). So let me try again: once I've established that a phenomenon is emergent by using a yet-to-be developed metric (Owen's formalism) or philosophic enquiry (Nick's & other's approach) - then what?

In fact, let's not limit ourselves to the present situation (because I suspect that the current answer is simply "Nothing. Identifying emergence is an end in it's own right"). What would you like to be able to do once you'd attached the "emergent" label to a phenomenon? What's your best case, your grand vision? Imagine the best of all possible worlds and tell me: what would you want to be able to do once that "emergent" label gets attached?

-- Robert

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