Posted by
glen e. p. ropella-2 on
Nov 02, 2009; 4:19pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Crutchfield-s-Is-anything-ever-new-tp3917261p3932791.html
Your post deserves more attention than I have at the moment. If it's
not covered by someone else, I'll get to it in the next few days. But
since I can respond to this one quickly, I will.
Thus spake Ted Carmichael circa 11/01/2009 05:53 PM:
> If you don't like "levels" and prefer "layers," then I'm okay with that.
> But I don't really see the distinction. Can you expand on that?
Levels require hierarchy. Layers don't. Of course, in the most
oft-used example of layers -- the onion -- a hierarchy is there. But
it's not necessary. Think of something like a scarf scrunched up at the
middle but fully spread out on the ends. In the scrunched up regions,
there are many folds. If you view that region at a small enough scale,
those folds don't look like folds, they look like layers. In fact, they
are layers, without hierarchy.
Now, if you're prejudiced or biased and you naturally prefer one side of
the small region of scrunched up scarf, then you might say that's the
"top" and, as you burrow through the layers, you approach the "bottom".
If that's your adopted bias, then it's reasonable to call them
"levels". But using the term embeds the bias. It's more accurate to
just stick with calling them layers and avoid the bias if possible.
I agree that it always SEEMS reasonable enough to talk about how a lower
level mechanism generates a higher level phenomenon. But you can never
separate out any potential bias if you automatically begin _every_ study
assuming that one layer is somehow lower than another layer. So, it's
best to make every attempt to remove as much potential bias from the
language as possible. If we stop using level and stick to using layer,
we are open to the idea that what we used to think of as the higher
level might actually be the mechanism for what we used to think of as
the lower level. Swapping perspective becomes easier; and that opens
the door to more rigorously defined and, ultimately, scientific
descriptions.
I tend to view it a bit like the reversibility of time. If we'd never
expressed dynamics in terms of time reversible equations, we never would
have been able to clearly articulate time IRreversible processes.
Similarly, if, indeed, there really are things like "downward
causation", then we'll never be able to clearly articulate it if we
_always_ embed the assumption of upward and downward in all our
language. Hence, a clear discussion of emergence has to avoid embedding
that assumption... It has to avoid the word "level", at least until we
can rebuild it from the more general term "layer".
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
http://agent-based-modeling.com============================================================
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