Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:

> "John Wilkins"  wrote in message
> news:c7hmdk$hu9$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> > Guy Hoelzer  wrote:
> > > in article c79l1b$11bb$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Wirt Atmar at
> > > wirtatmar{at}aol.com wrote on 5/4/04 7:54 PM:
> > >
> > > > Whenever emergent properties are introduced into a philosophy of
> > > > evolutionary design, a higher-order mysteriousness is
simultaneously
> > > > introduced into the process that treads dangerously close to
> > > > vitalism.
> > >
> > > [snip] I see vitalism as something to be explained by science, rather
> > > than avoided as if it must represent a falsehood.  I suspect that the
> > > term "vitalism" connotes different things for us.
> 
> > I think you are anachronistically interpreting
"vitalism" the term.
> >
> > Wirt is exactly right about emergentism. It is a claim that a property
> > occurs at a physical level or scale which cannot be reduced to the
> > properties of the components. Hence, for example, consciousness is the
> > paradigmatic case of an emergent property, because it is supposed to
> > have features that cannot be explained as the vector sum of all the
> > dynamics of neurons and their environmental inputs. But each new
> > discovery shows this to be false. Likewise with evolution. Each emergent
> > property turns out to be either a cause for a research program to
> > decompose it into its substrate, or can already be explained that way.
> > People who rest satisfied with emergent properties do, indeed, tread
> > close to mysticism and vitalism.
> > >
> > > I also take issue with your assertion that when
"emergent properties
> > > are introduced into a philosophy of evolutionary design, a
> > > higher-order mysteriousness is simultaneously
introduced."  Mysteries
> > > are almost always parts of our models, especially in the study of such
> > > high-order phenomena as evolutionary biology.  That is what
> > > assumptions are all about.  Even our assumptions are usually about
> > > very high-order phenomena, which themselves would require hefty
> > > assumption sets to explain.  I do not see the introduction of emergent
> > > properties [note that this is VERY different from the notion of
> > > emergent systems] as introducing either mystery or vitalism into
> > > theory.  Pressure, for example, is an emergent property of a
> > > collection of atoms, which is not definable for a single atom in
> > > isolation.  Would you say that introducing the concept of pressure
> > > into physical theory invoked additional mystery and
"treads close to
> > > vitalism?"
> >
> > The primary claim made by emergentism is that you cannot account for the
> > property in terms of its parts without remainder. Pressure can indeed be
> > so accounted for - there is no emergence here. The classical example,
> > introduced by Mill in his 1837 System of Logic, is the liquid properties
> > of water, which he said could not be deduced from the properties of
> > hydrogen and oxygen. But we do exactly that these days - you can model
> > quite accurately the dynamics and microproperties of water on a computer
> > using only the known properties of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It only
> > took a computer that was more powerful than Mill had to hand.
> 
> I have no desire to defend Guy Hoelzer's reading of
"vitalism", but I do
> wish to take issue with John Wilkins' reading of
"emergentism".  However,
> since John knows much more about the history of the use of this word than
> I do, prudence dictates that I should coin a new term for the variant form
> of emergentism that I wish to defend.  Therefore, I will call myself an
> "emergence-oriented reductionist".  I suspect that most scientifically
> literate persons interested in emergence adhere to this ideology.
> 
> An "emergence-oriented reductionist" definitely does NOT
believe that you
> cannot account for the emergent property in terms of the properties of the
> system components and their interactions.  If an "emergent
property" is
> discovered that is not yet explained in those terms, then that is
> motivation for the creation of a reductionist research programme to find
> the missing explanation.

So far so good. This sense of emergence is legit so far as I see. I
would call this "emergencism" to distinguish it.
> 
> But if all "emergence" exists only to be explained away, you
may ask, why
> does the "emergence-oriented reductionist" go out of his way to call
> attention to "emergent properties"?  Good question.  The
answer requires
> that we consider a three-level description of a system.
> 
> Consider a top-level system S which can be decomposed into mid-level
> subsystems M_sub_1, M_sub_2, ..., M_sub_i, ...  Suppose that there is a
> property S_EP that is emergent in the sense that the explanation of S_EP
> is only possible reductionistically by considering the properties of all
> the M_sub_i subsystems AND their interactions.
> 
> Now, assume that the M_sub_i subsystems are further broken down into
> lower-level subsystems L_sub_i_sub_j, and that the properties of the
> mid-level subsystems (both emergent and nonemergent) are
> reductionistically explained by the low-level properties and their
> interactions.
> 
> The question now arises: can we eliminate the middle level of subsystems
> and interactions from our explanatory structure?  In theory, this should
> be possible, as long as we can come up with a way of describing all of the
> interactions - M to M, L to L, and M to L - in the same language.  But,
> this attempt to translate all of the interactions into a single low-level
> language may fail because we have impoverished our descriptive vocabulary.
> We have eliminated all of the properties that were emergent at the
> mid-level! So, how do we translate the original description of M to M
> interactions into descriptions of L to L interactions?
> 
> At the very least, an "emergence-oriented reductionist"
views the task of
> eliminating explanatory level M with distaste.  On a day when he is
> feeling intransigent, he may even claim that the elimination of the middle
> level of explanation is impossible in principle.

So far you have explicated a position proposed by Alexander Rosenberg.
He claims that what makes (practical) science emergencist (remember: my
term, not his) is that we cannot in practical terms do the computation
that allows us to each time deal with higher level phenomena. In effect,
the problem is not the ontology, but the epistemology - there is
insufficient time in the universe for the fastest computer to do the
reduction for each event or process that is emergent in that way.

This is fine for me - if emergence is a fact about our abilities to
compute what we recognise at a particular scale, then this is "harmless
emergence". Emergencism is fine. In fact, it is an epistemic necessity.
If I want to investigate psychological states, it is of no benefit to me
to have to wait until we know and can make the inferences from the
structure at the molecular level of the neurological systems of humans.
In fact, we'd also need to incorporate a complete description of the
environment in which those systems were employed. It makes epistemic
economic sense to approach things at the relevant level.

That said, emergence is not an excuse for failing to go looking at the
componential makeup of the systems that evidence that phenomenon in such
a way that the phenomenon is explained. If I find that people who use
mercury in their profession exhibit symptoms similar to schizophrenia,
the explanation is not complete until we know how mercuric oxide (from
memory) affects neuronal behaviour and neurochemical production, and the
like. Where we stop is a matter of convenience, but no metaphysical
conclusions can be drawn from this, as is the case historically and
contemporaneously in emergen*t*ism.
> 
> 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?
-- 
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
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