Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:

> "John Wilkins"  wrote in message
> news:c7o7jc$2jp9$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> > Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:
> > > Let us look at John's example of the emergent wetness of water as an
> > > example of what I have just expounded.  A reductionist explanation of
> > > liquid water might postulate a "fluid mosaic"
model, with small
> > > domains of crystaline water separated by boundary regions of gaseous
> > > water.  The dynamics is that water molecules are continually moving
> > > from the crystaline phase to the gas phase and back.  That is, we have
> > > a three-level description - molecules, crystaline domains, and the
> > > liquid system as a whole.  And, there is just no way to collapse this
> > > to a two-level description and throw out the properties - emergent and
> > > otherwise - of the middle level.  Similarly, it would be impossible to
> > > do a hydrodynamic model of stream flow at the molecular level, because
> > > emergent properties of liquid water (viscosity, surface tension, etc.)
> > > have been lost.
> >
> > is the "no way" here a matter of computational
limitations, or are you
> > claiming that there is no substrate-based explanation of liquidity even
> > for God?
> 
> In order to answer this question, I am going to have to make
> some reductionist assumptions regarding God's mental processes.
> I assume from the question that you will not object to my assumption
> that God's mind can be modeled as based on mechanisms similar to
> that of a human brain or a digital computer, only bigger and faster.

Yes. An omnicompetent scientist...
> 
> Now, let us imagine a scientist (perhaps another god) examining a
> trace of the neural firings of the original God as she computes the
> consequences of the interactions of 10^23 water molecules using
> brute force epistemology.  This scientist will notice that the same
> microcomputation is performed over and over.  Investigating
> further, he will see that this happens because certain hydrogen
> bonds between molecules are particularly persistent.  In fact, the
> set of all hydrogen bond instances in God's computation can be
> naturally divided into two subpopulations - the transient ones and
> the persistent ones.  Investigating further, the scientist will see that
> the persistent hydrogen bonds (that is, the patterns of repeat neuron
> firings in God's computation) are caused by the existence of
> microcrystaline arrays of molecules in the simulation.
> 
> Now I used the word "existence" here, which means that I am
> trespassing from my starting domain of epistemology into the
> more metaphysical domain of ontology.  Be aware that I am
> untrained in philosophy, so my terminology will probably not
> be standard.  But it seems to me that if a particular level of
> explanation (my microcrystals) arises afresh in the investigations
> of any epistemologist, then that level exists ontologically.  And
> in my example, I am claiming that they arise even though an
> attempt was made to hide them in the traces of a brute force
> molecular-level computation that did not make use of that
> intermediate level.
> 
> So, yes, in the sense I have just explained, there is no way to
> remove the middle level, even for God, assuming that God
> submits her computations for peer review.  I am claiming that
> almost any epistemologist, even a god, will recognize that the
> middle level of explanation is "really there" ontologically.

Ummm... you missed your calling. However, unless you make the water
bonds in our sample dependent upon the neural activity of our
Superscientist, the case is not analogous. But at no point do I insist
that the intermediate steps or levels are not ontologically there. They
must be there - if the lower level phenomena that comprise the higher
level phenomena exist, then so too do all combinations of them.

What I am asking here is this: If liquidity exists (and I assume it
does) is there any aspect of it that remains uncaptured by a model
composed solely of [representations of] water molecules, and the
attendent atomic and subatomic particles?
-- 
Dr John S. Wilkins, www.wilkins.id.au
"I never meet anyone who is not perplexed what to do with their
 children" --Charles Darwin to Syms Covington, February 22, 1857
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 5/11/04 5:21:04 PM