Quote:
Originally Posted by Interesting Ian  Looking here it states that the definition of strict emergentism:
"a property P of composite object O is emergent if it is metaphysically possible for another object to lack property P even if that object is composed of parts with intrinsic properties identical to those in O and has those parts in an identical configuration".
So in that cast p-zombies would be logically possible. Something which the reductionist has to deny.
I wasn't aware of a looser definition of emergentism. One of the major problems I have is that materialists have different definitions of words that I do, leading to endless pointless exchanges. |
This is why I was careful to specify that I was speaking about the classic concept of an emergent system. Most of the people in the field of complex systems use it in this sense, something surprising and unexpected arising from the processes of the lower-level system rather than something unexplainable.
Hofstadter in "I Am a Strange Loop" uses a simple example from his life. He bought a large box of mailing envelopes from a discount store (if I remember the details of his story). Much later he grabbed the whole bunch of envelopes and pulled them out of the box. He discovered, much to his surprise, that someone -- presumably one of his children -- had dropped a marble into the middle of the pile of envelopes. While he couldn't see the marble, it being covered by the envelopes, he could feel a distinct, distinctly spherical object of the right size. For a long time he didn't bother to get that marble out. Perhaps you have guessed where this is going -- there was no marble. What was indistinguishable from a small, spherical object was the result of the increased thickness caused by the overlap of the folded flaps (loose to allow sealing and glued to form the closed body of the envelopes) piling up. The result had a distinct shape, size and hardness that happened to be the same size and shape and hardness of a marble. His identifying the object as a marble was an error -- but the fact that there was a distinct "thing" there that he could feel that was as real a thing as, say, an eddy in a river (which is, after all "merely" a pattern in the water -- though not so mere if it capsizes your kayak). Apparently he takes this sheaf of envelopes with him on lectures so people can feel the "marble."
No one has demonstrated the existence of a real world phenomenon that emerges not just unexpectedly but unexplainably from a complex lower-level system. The best that has been done is to point at a phenomenon that we do not fully understand how it could arise point out how very unexpected it is that it would arise and declare that it therefore
could not have arisen. They have not proved that it could not have arisen.
The real significance of Wolfram's work -- ignoring all the grandiose hype and inflated claims that he makes for it -- is that it makes a very clear demonstration of the (already well known) fact that very complex and surprising yet organized behavior can emerge from the interaction of a large number of elements operating at a lower level according to quite simple rules. Furthermore, those behaviors may not be predictable, even in principle, from the low-level rules except by applying them and seeing what occurs.
05-07-2008, 07:32 AM
Chemicals can have all sorts of effects.
Linear Mode
