Owen, At the risk of further confirming your distaste for philosophy, my problem is not with SFI types, who by and large seem to accept an Juarrero-esque take on emergence. It's those philosophers who are suspicious of it that I am struggling with. NOT Wimsatt, by the way who makes perfect sense. Here is the kind of problem that bothers philosophers: let a, b, and c constitute macro-entity E and let the behavior of E. be controled by the properties and intereactions of a, b and c. Now, let one of the behaviors of E to control the behavior of a, b, or c. Is there a problem here?
Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > [Original Message] > From: Owen Densmore <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Date: 4/28/2009 9:30:35 PM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] emergence, again > > Well, you might also look at Miller/Page's Complex Adaptive Systems > book. It has quite a bit on emergence. As does our standard source: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence > > The Bedau and Humphreys book you've found looked promising. > > It's interesting that looking for emergence in Amazon shows several > SFI related authors and books. Holland's Emergence: From Chaos to > Order, and Hidden Order both show up, as does Morowitz: The Emergence > of Everything, and Strogatz's Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos. > > I'd not suggest Yet Another Physics Is Unreal Rant. Physics is real. > I live in it. "Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts?" sounds > fishy. OK, I'm biased. > > -- Owen > > > On Apr 28, 2009, at 8:38 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > > I am told on Higher Authority that I cannot think about emergence > > any more before I have read the following reference: > > > > Cartwright, Nancy D. "Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts?" > > Pacific Philosophy Quarterly, 61, 1980 (pp 64-75). Reprinted in The > > Philosophy of Science Reader, 1980, Yuri V. Balashov (ed). > > Routledge Press. Reprinted in Philosophy of Science: The Central > > Issues, 1998, Martin Curd and J.A. Cover (ed). Norton & Company Inc. > > Also in Readings on Laws of Nature, 2004 J.W.Carroll (ed). > > University of Pittsburgh Press. > > > > Does anybody have a copy? Ingenta has it, but they want big bucks > > for it. > > > > N ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
