On Jan 27, 9:52 am, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jan 26, 1:19 am, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote: > > > of my own here: no properties can emerge from a complex system that > > are not present in primitive form in the parts of that system. There > > What about gliders emerging from the rules of Game of Life? There are > no primitive form gliders in the transition table, nor in static cells > of the grid.
My axiom is clumsy shorthand. Of course there are are no primitive form pumps in heart cells either (well, maybe there are in the cellular mechanism, but that is not the point), but pumps are completely explainable in terms of the properties of the parts, and there is no mystery whatsoever in going from the one to the other. On the other hand, nobody has logically connected qualia to the properties of matter. Of course, complex behaviour in an organism (including intelligent behaviour) can be seen as an emergent property of nerve cells and muscles etc, but only in the 3p sense. There is no line of explanation from 3p to 1p. As for 'gliders', now I'd really be impressed if actual gliders emerged from a computer program, but the fact that patterned arrangements of pixels resembling gliders emerge hardly blows my world apart. The emergence of this type of phenomena may be unexpected at first, in the sense that the glider wasn't deliberately programmed to appear, but 'emerged' out of secondary implications of the program, but, as we used to say in high school, 'whoopie-do'. That hardly constitutes a refutation of my axiom, because the emergence can easily be traced back to the properties of programs, computers, screens, etc. You say below that 'all emergent phenomena are in the eye of the beholder but that doesn't make them less real', or words to that effect. Sure - if by emergent phenomena you mean complex patterns that appear out of iterative processes of a simple system. Nobody is saying they aren't real. But the crucial point relates to consciousness. Not complex, intelligent behaviour. Consciousness. So the problem is where the 'beholder' appears, not anything in his or her eye. By eliding the distinction between consciousness and intelligent behaviour - or between 1p and 3p perspectives - you can of course reduce 'consciousness' to an emergent phenomenon, and that seems to be all anyone who seeks to explain away qualia has ever done. The same sleight of hand tricked up in a variety of guises, but amounting always to the same manoeuvre. > > -- > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
