Re: A question for the emergentists among you

Posted by Russ Abbott on Oct 11, 2009; 10:44pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/A-question-for-the-emergentists-among-you-tp3799888p3805185.html

With aggregativity defined that way, Wimsatt notes that "Very few system properties are aggregative."  Then what? Is the point that "emergence, defined as failure of aggregativity"  has now been fully characterized? Problem solved? I wouldn't agree with that. I think there is more to say than just a negative definition.

An interesting example to which this approach might be applied is an ideal gas. Such a gas satisfies all the aggregativity conditions. Yet it has properties (the gas laws) that the individual components lack.

-- Russ A

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger, Well said. 

But there is a further question.  Can anything be added to your (Mill's) statement that when you combine some things (e.g., combining a bunch of cows into a herd) the result has properties that the components lack. That is, what, if anything, can one say about those phenomena that exhibit this property? Do those phenomena have anything in common?

Wimsatt lists four heuristics for establishing "aggregativity" of properties:  swap "identical" parts in the aggregate; increase or decrease the number of parts in the aggregate;  take the aggregate apart and reassemble it; and freedom from non-linear interactions between parts.  The heuristics aren't necessarily independent of each other, but neither are they necessarily dependent.  So, there are four kinds of emergence which fail just one heuristic, six kinds which fail two different heuristics, four kinds which fail three different heuristic, and one kind which fails all four heuristics.  So that's 15 different flavors of emergence, which is perhaps an overestimate, but Wimsatt is still soliciting for additional heuristics.

-- rec --

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