On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 07:51:37AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 8:24 PM, Roger Clough <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi everything-list > > > > The current paradigm for understanding the brain and mind > > and their relationship appears to be "bottom-up" theories > > and calculations, that is, starting with the body and > > hoping to reach I'm not sure what. > > > > Eventually in these theories one reaches a state of complexity > > that apparently can only be overcome by the emergence of > > new properties. If this isn't magic, I don't know what it is. > > You put together pieces of metal, plastic, hydrocarbons and you get - > a car! If this isn't magic, I don't know what is. >
Sarcasm aside, Roger does have a point. It is very difficult, bordering on impossible, in general, to specify the microphysical layer in just such a way as to reproduce a particular macrophysical phenomenon of interest. This problem is faced everyday by practitioners of agent-based modelling, and to a lesser extent by artitifical life researchers (ALife researcher at least have the liberty of researching any interesting emergent phenomenon without having any particular emergent phenomenon in mind). Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.
