Emergent properties: fact? fiction? fickle?

Sarah,
You said:

Your hemispheres-to-sphere example makes the same mistakes that Phil's examples did, i.e. claiming that a perfectly predictable property, such as rolling, is unpredictable.

And you're not paying any attention to Hong or Jeff. Talk less, listen more.

The hemisphere example was related by me, not Robert, and was due to Binswanger. In post #53, in a response to Hong, Robert said:

I think I spoke too soon, about Binswanger's example of the two hemispheres being put together to form a sphere. The sphere can roll; the hemispheres can't roll; the same theory could explain both properties. Not a strong example of emergence, anyway.

Perhaps you should "listen" a little more carefully.

Glenn

Post 61

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 4:29pm

Merlin,
Having studied Physics in graduate school for several years, I'm familiar with double pendula and Chaos theory. (The latter was one of my particular favorites.) I disagree with Mr. Hazelton's conclusion, but have to cop out and say I don't have time right now to give as full a reply as is deserved.

One point I'll make is that to the best of my current knowledge, the alleged unpredictability is due to uncertainty in specifying the initial condition, not that it follows the same path given the same initial conditions. (Of course, recreating the initial conditions with infinite precision is impossible.)

If the requirement for predictability is that I be able to specify an infinitely precise position at an infinitely precise time, then no the path is not predictable. But then, Platonic requirements are out on other grounds. I can however predict the behavior of the system -- that's what Chaos theory is all about.

IOU one response better than this one.

Jeff

Post 62

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 5:07pm

Robert C
>Daniel, I am indeed an emergentist.

Top man. Proceed....;-)

- Daniel

Post 63

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 5:37pm

Oops. I was reading quickly and all I could see was Robert C. everywhere on page 2. Sorry about that.

Sarah

Post 64

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 6:42pm

Robert C
>Daniel, I am indeed an emergentist.

Just an additional note. Having debated this topic sometimes at length here and elsewhere, I find that it is not one that is very well studied nor the problems understood. Most people have a kind of off-the-top-of-my-head-I-think... approach to it. Which is fine, but it means a lot of extra work for the person putting forward the theory,as they end up having to clarify not just their position, but *their critics' positions* too...;-) I suggest if you intend to defend what is roughly called an 'emergent' theory of consciousness, people who question that view should briefly state *their* particular theories. Thus they have to clarify their own thoughts on the topic at least somewhat before launching in, and this makes for a much better debate. Otherwise you tend to get what I call the "Accidental Determinist" syndrome ...;-)

- Daniel

Post 65

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 7:46am

Jeff,

Ok, I'll try it with that example. The flame 'maintains itself' (i.e. continues to burn) because its identity, in conjunction with that of the wax candle, air, in Earth's gravity, at rest in the frame of the room, etc is such that the chemical/weak plasma reaction that constitutes the flame can do so and will do so because that's what it is. If you're thinking that, in essence, all I've said is that a flame is a flame, this is true. And learning more and more about what causes a flame 'to maintain itself' is to learn more and more about what it is. As to predictions, I predict that under the aforementioned conditions (and, no doubt, many others which I didn't specify) the flame will continue to burn.

I'm not questioning that the flame has an identity. But surely no one is content to stop there, without trying to discover what it is about the flame that enables it to do what it does.

In particular, what are the processes that are (at least partly) constitutive of a flame and that enable it to keep going?

How does a flame differ from something that does not have to maintain itself under far from equilibrium conditions? Is the flame's ability to maintain itself a property qualitatively different from the properties of the air, the (unlit) wax candle and wick, and so on? Is downward causation operating while the flame keeps going?

As to your point about biological evolution... isn't that a species of argument from ignorance? That we don't currently know sufficiently well the mechanism by which species evolve, how does it follow that it's (inherently) unpredictable?

In what level of detail would you need to know, not just the red and black tree frog genome, but also the environment in which red and black tree frogs live, in order to predict their future evolution? (Such as the arrival of species that compete with red and black tree frogs for food, possible displacement of trees that red and black tree frogs thrive on by trees that don't provide such a good home for them, future floods, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts, and on and on and on.) What level of detail would you need to know--even without considering that human beings are part of the red and black tree frog's environment, and taking human contributions into account would require predicting future human action?

Robert Campbell

Post 66

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 8:30am

Daniel,

I agree wholeheartedly that the discussion will be more productive if those contributors who disagree with emergentism--or don't see any importance in it--would try to be as specific as they can about their own positions.

I expect these to be highly variable. Agreement or disagreement with Rand aside, her writings don't spell out a philosophy of mind. She rejected substance dualism (the view that mind and matter are different kinds of stuff) and eliminative reductionism. At least one 1960s article by Nathaniel Branden rejected epiphenomenalism (as did Peikoff in his taped lectures on modern philosophy), although neither source got into a whole lot of depth about what is wrong with it.

Meanwhile, I've encountered Randians who interpret Rand's Axiom of Consciousness to mean that awareness, knowledge, mental activity and so forth are unique sorts of things that could not have emerged from anything non-mental.

I've encountered others who endorse Daniel Dennett's philosophy of mind--and despite his role as champion of evolution, Dennett veers between reductionism about the mind and positions (like Noam Chomsky's views on language) that effectively make out knowledge to be something unique that could not have emerged from systems that lack it.

Still others recommend Paul Churchland, whose earlier work, at least, is an outright gleeful promotion of eliminative reductionism.

To make matters more complicated, there are professional philosophers of mind who aren't entirely clear about their own positions. Dennett's commitment to anti-emergentism is something he's never acknowledged in print; it follows from his endorsement of Chomsky. Owen Flanagan, one of whose books I reviewed in that Navigator piece, comes down on the side of epiphenomenalism without ever quite saying that he's doing it.

Because questions about emergence cross over from philosophy to several different sciences, and they have genuine technical content, I really think that the best way to focus this discussion would be to center it on one or more readings. I'm partial to the Bickhard articles that I cited previously (and it helps that Richard Campbell is a philosopher of physics, while Mark Bickhard has forgotten a lot more physics than I've ever learned). But the Laughlin book (recommended in William Schudlich's second post) might serve as well, if not better.

Robert Campbell

Post 67

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 8:47am

Adam,

Your point about post-1970 Objectivism is well taken. Though I still marvel at how Peikoff, in OPAR, seems to have forgotten much of what he knew about Herbert Spencer, back when he gave his lectures on modern philosophy.

On the other hand, pre-1970 Objectivism was integrated with evolution and a great deal of contemporary science besides. The "Barometer Argument" that integrates Happiness as the goal, with Life as the "Standard," depends on the biological evolution of emotions and consciousness. And Rand's definition of what she means by "Standard" is based on the theory of optimization, as that theory is used in contemporary economics and engineering.

When I first read Rand in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I read her appeals to biology in an evolutionary context--and I don't buy the occasional criticism of Rand as committed to an Aristotelian ontology of fixed species.

But I wonder how much of an explicit commitment to evolution Rand really made.

As for the "emotional barometer," I always took that to be metaphorical. I'm particularly interested in your notion of meeting "life as standard" as a form of optimization. Rand often talked as though happiness is a single dimension, and there is a single hierarchy of values in terms of how they promote life. But I realize that comparing and contrasting Rand with the ancient eudaimonists, who do not always seem to have been treating happiness or flourishing as a single dimension, is really a topic for another thread.

Robert Campbell

Post 68

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 9:26am

Robert,

"Barometer" metaphorical? I don't think so. The barometer is a measuring instrument - once I understood the role of measurement in Rand's epistemology, it was clear to me that it is used as an analogy, not a metaphor. Happiness is, in Rand's view, the present scalar output of an evolved measuring instrument. Optimization requires a "figure of merit," and therefore, in order to optimize its pursuit of life, the organism needs a faculty that functions as an instrument measuring how well the organism is doing at the pursuit of life - pleasure at the somatic, animal level; happiness at the cognitive level.

Of course, as Ron Merrill pointed out, an evolved faculty of measurement would measure inclusive fitness - Rand's Objectivism is not complete in this regard.

I think that there is a whole article on this waiting in my mind to be written, but other things have priority at this time.

Post 69

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 10:59am

Adam,

I'm keenly looking forward to that article, when you get a chance to write it.

Robert Campbell

Post 70

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 3:35pm

Robert
>I expect these to be highly variable. Agreement or disagreement with Rand aside, her writings don't spell out a philosophy of mind.

Hi Robert,

I agree entirely. In fact, she says things that are quite contradictory on the issue when you look at them closely. However, her emphatic rejection of the mind/body dichotomy is enough to make Objectivists rather nervous about positing anything remotely 'spooky', so they tend to be reflexively physicalist without having seriously thought thru the consequences of this - and thus the 'Accidental Determinist' syndrome.

My reading of her rejection of the mind/body dichotomy is that it is primarily an attack on religious mysticism; and as Christianity adopted so much of Plato and Aristotle the issue of abstract or non-physical properties got hopelessly tangled up in religious faith. Of course her dismissal of such mysticism is quite correct. But I feel the issue of non-physical properties ends up getting thown out with the religious bathwater. Even though Rand talks about 'abstracting' all the time, there seems to be a reluctance to accept that such properties exist, with the vague assumption that 'abstractions' such as concepts or consciousness are reducilble basically to chemical and electrical interactions in the brain. In other words, *abstractions are really physical events*. But from this position I feel it is almost impossible to escape a strict determinism, other than by playing with words to somehow blunt the problem or positing that there are some yet undiscovered physical things that nonetheless do not obey any laws of physics!

In contrast to this, my position is influenced by Karl Popper. His theory is that non-physical things like consciousness or concepts are real, and there is a interactive (upward and downward causal) relationship between them and the physical world. This view is not religious in the least - he hypothesises they are unexpected, emergent products of evolution. And while they sound somewhat Platonic, they differ in significant respects - for example, they are our products, the physical world precedes them, not the other way around. Anyway, you are no doubt familiar with Popper's view, and very likely disagree. Which is fine, as this hypothesis is fairly radical. It's just so you know where I am coming from (I am not an Objectivist).

I am familiar with some but not everyone you recommend but will have a look when I have a moment.

>Because questions about emergence cross over from philosophy to several different sciences, and they have genuine technical content, I really think that the best way to focus this discussion would be to center it on one or more readings.

I would be interested in whatever readings you suggest.

- Daniel

Post 71

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 11:11am