Posted by
Russell Standish on
Jun 18, 2007; 11:30pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Seminal-Papers-in-Complexity-tp524047p524067.html
Yes, there is an enormous amount of confused writings about
emergence, but no this doesn't mean emergence isn't a well-defined and
meaningful term.
I think the best introduction to this topic is my paper "on complexity
and emergence", precisely because it is concise and to the
point. However, there are other good expositions of emergence, such as
Jochen Fromm's book (a sometimes lurker on this list). Mark Bedau has
also written some stuff which is well thought out.
Cheers
On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 11:56:46PM +0200, G?nther Greindl wrote:
> Hello Russell,
>
> > "Sum of the parts" is more metaphoric than literal. IMHO, the key to
> > the kingdom is emergence, and nonlinearity is only necessary to
>
> I used to throw around the word "emergence" around until I noticed
> that I used it there where I did not understand what was really going
> on, like in: "consciousness? - simple - an emergent process"
> Since then I have stopped using the word - it is, in fact, vacuous to
> call something emergent - whereas ie. nonlinear has definite meaning.
>
> The problem is that emergence seems to be the opposite of a
> mechanistic or an algorithmic process; or an analytical one.
> So it becomes a stop-gap concept for all processes which elude
> our common problem solution techniques.
>
> But no new explanation is obtained when one calls a process
> emergent - on gets instead a false sense of security, of having
> grasped something which in reality still eludes our understanding.
>
> Best Regards,
> G?nther
>
> --
> G?nther Greindl
> Department of Philosophy of Science
> University of Vienna
> guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
>
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/>
> Blog:
http://dao.complexitystudies.org/> Site:
http://www.complexitystudies.org>
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