Re: [Fis] The timings of meaning

From: <[email protected]>
Date: Sat 10 Apr 2004 - 01:36:45 CEST

Greetings,

I am yet another newbie to this discussion. By way of introduction, I
am an evolutionary biologist interested in the complexity imposed on
evolutionary dynamics and pattern formation by spatial context. This
interest has led me to consider information theoretic interpretations
of the spatial self-organization of gene pools, and a thermodynamic
perspective on the process of evolution, as well as the sub-process of
natural selection.

On Mar 31, 2004, at 1:08 AM, S�ren Brier wrote:

> As I see it then Ted Gorenson's and Robert Ulanowicz general approaches
> stands for the two opposite paradigms we have discussed. 1. One that
> want to introduce the concept of communication into nature such as the
> biosemioticians and 2. one that wants to fit an information concept
> into
> the existing materialistic mechanistic view of nature that science so
> far has build on. Many of these have partly acknowledged Prigogine's
> claim for a paradigm of complexity and irreversibility opposing
> material
> mechanicism, but they still view nature as dead and rules by universal
> laws of nature. Some add an idea of systems, evolution and emergence on
> this view, using the emergence idea to explain the creation of life,
> first person experience and later consciousness. To me emergence is a
> description not a (causal) explanation.

Could you please expand on this distinction? I don't see why these
would be mutually exclusive (description vs. explanation). Emergence
seems to mean different things to different people, so this may be the
source of my confusion. Let's take the example of the emergence of a
convection cell (thunderstorm) in the atmosphere. The emergence
involves structural self-organization, the development of physical
forces like wind due to the growing coherent mass of entrained gases,
and the functional facilitation of moving surface heat across the
thermal gradient into the cold upper atmosphere, among other things.
Emergence of structure could be said to cause an increase in the flow
of heat across the gradient. The emergence of entrainment could be
said to cause the self-organization of structure, and so on.

In my view, the most interesting way in which emergence could be said
to be causal is that it results in the origin of an entity that is an
agent of effect. In other words, the emerged agent is a source of
causation, so emergence could be said to provide a fundamental sort of
causal explanation.

Despite my defense of emergence as a causal explanation, I would agree
that emergence describes a kind of process phenomenon. Hence my
curiosity about posing "description" as an alternative to "explanation"
in this context.

Regards,

Guy Hoelzer

Department of Biology
University of Nevada Reno
Reno, NV 89557

Phone: 775-784-4860
Fax: 775-784-1302

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Received on Sat Apr 10 01:45:58 2004

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