Russell, So, is it Bedau and Philllips you have at hand? I am hoping to get some of my colleagues in Santa Fe to read that with me next fall.
If that is the source you are using, I also had Bedau's contribution to this volume in mind when I made the comment below. I am going to key in some short passages below so we can go over them together. He writes that [strong] emergent properties are supervenient properties with irreducible causal powers"...some of which are "macro-to-micro" effects[,] termed "downward causation". Supervenience means, as i understand it, that while each member of some enumerable list of microstates is sufficient for the occurence of the emergent macrostate, no one of those states is necessary for its occurence. So in practice one can have many different micro states that can bring about the macrostate, but no change in the macrostate without some change in a microstate. Downward causation means, as I understand it, that some macrostates are sufficient for some microstates. This brings about the loopiness that some of the authors in the book regard as inspired and others regard as vicious. [Some will argue that if a microstate is sufficient for A macrostate and that macrostate is sufficient for a microstate then the macrostate drops out of the equasion and we need simply point out that the first microstate is sufficient for the second. } Bedau then writes: "Such [macro] causal powers cannot be explained in terms of the aggregationof the micro-level potentialities; they are primtive or "brute" natural powers that arise inexplilcably withthe existence of certain macro-level entitites." Which led to my comment that they are, by definition, inexplicable. Bedau goes on to write, "All the evidence today suggests that strong emergence is scientifically irrelevant." and goes on to argue that no essentially examples exist. In othere words, strong emergence is possible, it just has never been observed. This seems a very strange resolution of the argument, since it seems to define emergence in terms of our inablity to explain something, rather than in terms of some measurable property of the thing itself. This seems very close to the "surprise" argument that Bedau rejects in the early pages of the same article. More on this tomorrow, I hope. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > [Original Message] > From: russell standish <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Date: 6/12/2009 3:17:44 PM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] quick question > > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 07:01:38PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > > Steve, > > > > My understanding of the meaning of "strong" emergence is "inexplicable > > emergence". > > > > Is there another meaning? > > > > N > > Bedau defines it as emergence with downward causation. For example, we would say > that consciousness is strongly emergent if we felt that we could > consciously influence the activities of our neurons, rather than > simply our consciousness simply being the result of neuronal activity. > > I'm not sure this notion has any use in discussions other than > consciousness, and even there the notion of epiphenomenalism would say > that it is void concept. > > Cheers > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Mathematics > UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [email protected] > Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ 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
