On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 04:10:20PM -0700, glen e. p. ropella wrote: > Thus spake russell standish circa 09-09-21 04:02 PM: > > Bedau's weak emergence. So what you're proposing sounds to me just > > like a stronger notion, possibly even akin to Bedau's strong > > emergence. I give an example of a loopy structure in my book (page > > 162) which I think is an example of strong emergence. > > Except I'm not defining "emergence", here. I'm defining "complexity". > As I've said, "emergence" seems like a useless concept to me. >
I would say the two terms in essence mean the same thing. I would say a "complex system" is one that exhibits "emergence". BTW, I technically use the term complexity to refer to a measure - it is a numerical quantity, usually closely related to information. But I do recognise that it could be used to describe a quality - ie that which makes a complex system complex. If the first sentence is true, then complexity would be the quality of exhibiting emergence :). I think the difference between our approaches is you would prefer to give up emergence to the the obfuscating mysterians, and invent a new term "complexity" for the concept, or similarly related, whereas I would prefer to reclaim the term for a perfectly well-defined technical meaning. Your approach is not wrong, per se. For instance I've given up attempting to assign a meaning to the term "realism" (from our other thread :). -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
