Thus spake glen e. p. ropella circa 09-10-12 04:41 PM: > By contrast, a property is inherent in the system and exists regardless > of any perspective (a.k.a stance) from which it may appear, be > perceived, or be observed.
Just to be clear, I get this (perhaps peculiar) definition of "property" from the IE root per and entry VI(3)(b) in American Heritage's list of IE roots: "b. proper, property; appropriate, expropriate, proprioception, proprioceptor, proprium, from Latin proprius, one's own, particular (< pr prv, in particular, from the ablative of prvus, single; pr, for; see V. 4.)." Note that "proprioceptive" is VERY close to what I mean by circular causality, the difference being that I think proprioception is totally ordered in time with the order being applied by the "self", which is doing the perceiving. When I talk about circular causality, I'm talking about a system with inherent ambiguity like that achieved by parallel, distributed systems that can reach deadlock. Of course, what do I know about things like proprioception? Well, nothing, of course, which is why this is all speculation on my part. ;-) The POINT is that "emergent phenomena" makes total sense to me whereas with my definition of "property", "emergent property" sounds like total nonsense to me. -- 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