Glen, Thanks for your thoughts, here.
The correspondence got so untidy below that I thought best to restate the position as sharpened by your critique. I would say that, contra Atkins Physical Chemistry and many other experts, a system is more than just any old thing we happen to be talking about. To be a system, the thing we are talking about must be *organized*. Another way of saying this is that all systems have emergent properties: i.e., properties that arise from the *internal* arrangement or ordering of their parts. Arrangements or ordering of parts that are true of all of those parts are not internal. I don't think your critique is specific in any way to the problem of defining the emergent properties of things It relates generally to the definition of the primitive, "any old thing". Is a lens cloud an object? Is an ocean wave an object? A sand dune? An organism, for that matter? It comes up any time we try to justify the use of any concrete noun. I believe that "Thing" can be a primitive and we can still have a useful discussion of what the emergent properties of a thing are, or are not. An insistence on rigorous closure would be the end of all conversation, because we never would be able to meet the standard. Which, come to think of it, may be your point. You are arguing that the conversation we are trying to have is impossible? If you want to see the verbal train wreck that preceded this summary, look below, but I don't recommend it. Oh by the way: do you have the Bedau and Phillips book? Do you think it might be possible to have an international webSeminar on it? Colloquium? What would that look like? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > [Original Message] > From: glen e. p. ropella <[email protected]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Date: 7/9/2009 11:06:37 AM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Emergence and explanation > > Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 09-07-09 06:52 AM: > > Also, it depends on a clear understanding of what it is to be a > > "property of a part". I think to be a property of a part means that > > you cannot mention any other part in the description of that part. > > Excellent! This demonstrates quite well why it is incoherent to say > that a systemic property is non-emergent. nst==>Right! But doesnt this mean we have to somehow get our colleagues to stop using word "system" to refer to "whatever we are talking about". <==nst It is logically impossible to > describe a _part_ of a system without describing the context or > environment into which that part fits, namely the other parts of the system. > > Further, to describe any _unit_... any object with a boundary around it, > you must distinguish that unit from the ambience around it. I.e. you > can't describe the object without at least partially describing the > NOT-object. So, the root of the incoherence of "emergent" lies in an > inability to define a closure. (Unleash the Rosenites! ;-) nst==> Sorry, I didn't follow this last bit. Let's assume that we can get the rest of the world to go along with our understanding of "system". Are you arguing here that every object has to be a system? I.e., every object has emergent properties? Hmm. I am wondering whether I agree with this..................................... I am tempted to argue that an object is a "pile of stuff that moves around together" Hmmmm. No, Too weak, because if a bulldozer comes along and picks up my pile of stuff and moves it to a new place, I may be tempted to claim that this object is no object at all because "accidental". Is a sand dune an object? Is a lens cloud an object? When I claimed that an emergent property of a whole is one that arises from the arrangement or ordering of the presentation of its parts I was not speaking of any arrangement that is true of all the parts. So, for instance, if all the parts are accelerating at the same speed relative to other wholes, this does not consist of an arrangement or ordering for the purposes of the definition. <===nst. > > > So, "being on the left" or "being added to the pile first" are not > > properly properties of parts. > to > And neither is position or momentum because they both have to be defined > _relative_ to something, trivially to an arbitrary vector space origin, > non-trivially to other particles. nst==><==nst e. Unless you're treating the particle > as a system, itself. And then position and momentum are emergent > properties of the sub-particle components. So, either way, they are a > result of the systems organization and the interaction of their components. > > Emergence is a trivial (but not entirely useless) word except in the > sense of emergency: "A serious situation or occurrence that happens > unexpectedly and demands immediate action", which boils down to "poorly > understood" or, at least, unpredictable. > > -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > > ============================================================ > 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 ============================================================ 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
