Since I won't be there, let me suggest a pre-requisite activity. Discuss why do you (or anyone else) want to define emergence?
In saying that I'm not suggesting that *emergence *should not be defined -- although I now think that it is unfortunate that the word has become so widely used. What I want to do is to prompt you to talk about what it is that leads you to want to define *emergence* in the first place. It seems to me that it's impossible even to begin to answer the questions listed below until one has developed for oneself an intuitive idea about what it is that one wants the word *emergence *to capture. That's where I would suggest you start: what is your possibly vague sense of the sorts of things you want the word *emergence *to refer to. Once you have clarified that for yourself I think the questions below will be easier to deal with -- as will the papers in the book. -- Russ On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > All, > > The emergence seminar, such as it is, will have its first meeting this > thursday (tomorrow) at Downtown Subcription (which is at Garcia and Agua > Fria). I suggest that we devote the seminar, at least in its early stages, > to the collection, EMERGENCE. Why a collection? Why a seminar? Because, > as I keep saying (sorry), I want to articulate the different views on the > subject. One thing I noticed about academics is their desire to exclude > ways of thinking from discussions. So academics tend to scoff. I think the > mark of a truly educated (smart, knowledgeable) person is the ability to > hold more than one idea in his or her head at once..... to compare and > contrast. Bedau and Humphreys, in their introduction, invite us to engage > in this kind of analysis by bearing in mind a set of seven questions, as we > read each of the authors. These are: > > 1. How should emergence be defined? (by reference to irreducibility, > unpredictability, ontological novelty, conceptual novelty, and.or > supvenience (whatever that is?) > 2. What can be emergent: properties, substances, processes, phenomena, > patterns laws, or something else? > 3. What is the scope of actual emergent phenomena? (Is emergence a rare > phenomenon, or broadly distributed in physics and biology as well as in > psychology?) > 4. Is emergence an objective feature of the world, or is it merely in the > eye of the beholder. > 5. Should emergence be viewed as static and synchronic, or as dynamic and > diachronic, or are both possible? > 6. Does emergence imply or require the existence of new levels of phenomena > with their new causes and effects? > 7. In what ways are emergent phenomena autonomous from their emergent > bases? > > Tomorrow, as a warm up; it would be interesting to see what preconceptions > we hold on these questions. > > > Nick > > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology an d Ethology, > Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/> > > > > > > ============================================================ > 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 >
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