#97584
03/04/2003 2:46 AM
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I have no idea what these last 3 words in the first paragraph mean. ...relationships between historically existing disciplines are discussed in ascending, descending, analytical or synthetical manner under headings like "reductionism", "emergentism" or "supervenience". ...
Certainly a chemist cannot do without some parts and some procedures that belong to the realm of physics and a
physicist cannot enter some research fields without chemical knowledge. The same holds for the relationship between biology and chemistry resp. physics. mathematics on the other hand is used by the other sciences as a tool, this fact not meaning however, that mathematics is exhausted in this aiding function or that the "applied" mathematics used by natural scientists coincide with aims,
methods and style of "pure" mathematics. ...
the incorporation of special scientific disciplines in the social context (i.e. the role of the disciplines in the
universities, the industry, and in the general cultural development by providing action-guiding views of the world and of human life) establish themselves at and across the boundaries of the disciplines, as they have been defined from the scientists and the society or as they have practically grown during the scientific enterprise. http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~psarros/erl3.html
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#97585
03/04/2003 3:24 AM
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well, I can make guesses about the first two: "reductionism: the relationship between two disciplines is becoming closer, and the two fields are being reduced into one; or, that they are drifting farther apart,and their relationship is being reduced. "emergentism" the relationship between two disciplines is begatting a new, emergent field. all I know is, I'm sure I have skewered several pronoun rules in the process!(among other things...) 
formerly known as etaoin...
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#97586
03/04/2003 3:25 AM
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"supervenience"
Wal-Mart and Disney combined...
formerly known as etaoin...
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#97587
03/04/2003 5:40 AM
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I think I know what reductionism and emergentism are but have no ideas about supervenience.
As I understand it reductionism means explaining more complicated systems by reducing them to merely the interplay of less complicated systems. An example would be trying to explain psychological processes purely in terms of electrical or biochemical activity in the brain. So psychological phenomena are explainable using biology, biological phenomena are explainable using chemistry, chemical phenomena are explainable using physics, physical phenomena are explainable using mathematics.
Emergentism on the other hand says that beyond a certain level of complexity something new emerges which has to be explained in its own terms and cannot be explained as the interplay of less complex systems. In other words it says you have to explain psychological processes in psychological terms, not as electrical or biochemical activity in the brain. You have to explain psychological phenomena in psychological terms rather than biological ones, biological phenomena in biological terms rather than chemical ones, etc.
As I said, I don't know where supervenience comes in. Presumably something to do with supervening. More complex systems replace less complex ones, perhaps?
Bingley
Bingley
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#97588
03/04/2003 12:50 PM
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formerly known as etaoin...
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#97589
03/04/2003 1:26 PM
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#97590
03/04/2003 2:43 PM
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I think that Davidson is wrong. I don't know why, I just think he is.
other than the fact that you can't have two things physically identical anyway.
maybe, now after reading it several times, I would just say "duh".
sometimes I think philosophers just think too hard.
formerly known as etaoin...
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#97591
03/05/2003 1:08 AM
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Thanks, Faldage; I read the link. I'd like to comment on several parts of it, but I'd either have to take it on faith that everybody's read it, or post nearly the whole thing so people could see what I was referring to, but that would be just too unwieldy. I'll stick with his def.:
supervenience - A set of properties or facts M supervenes on a set of properties or facts P if and only if there can be no changes or differences in M without there being changes or differences in P.
I really wish he hadn't called the non-physical properties mental properties. He uses objects in space in his example; now, to me, objects in space do not have mental properties. They just don't.
By the way, Bingley, you blew me away (yet again) with your explanations of reductionism and emergentism.
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#97592
03/05/2003 9:31 AM
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old hand
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objects in space do not have mental properties. They just don't.
In order to assign the objects to categories (one of the perennial tasks of philosophy), we have to choose something which is more or less common to the objects considered. This becomes the mental property, allowing us to talk of the objects as a class and not just of the unique, individual piece in front of our eyes.
Sometimes this is not so trivial: what mental property allows us to distingish a pear tree from a cherry tree in the middle of winter?
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#97593
03/05/2003 12:44 PM
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My problem is with the term 'mental'. Objects don't think, nor do humans all have the same thoughts about objects; and either of these possibilities is what "mental properties" makes me think of.
You ask what mental property allows us to distingish a pear tree from a cherry tree in the middle of winter? I have no idea. Whichever kind of tree it is, it isn't sending me clues by ESP. If I were asked how I could distingish a pear tree from a cherry tree in the middle of winter, I would say by the bark; possibly by size, shape, location, or seeds left on the ground (assuming no fruit was left hanging on the tree).
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#97594
03/05/2003 12:56 PM
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So to clarify, the word "mental" properly refers to those of us thinking about objects, it's not the objects themselves that are thinking? Is that what you mean, wsieber?
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#97595
03/05/2003 2:10 PM
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word "mental" properly refers to those of us thinking about object
I think that's what it means. Of course, in real life the pear tree and the cherry tree have plenty of differences, even if we are unable to perceive them. One of the articles I found in my googlssey for "subservience" referred to the Riddle of the Stopped Clock, and seemed to be saying that, since the Stopped Clock was no longer indicating the passage of time that it was somehow "outside of time." Either I was misinterpreting what I had read or the author is in bad need of a philosphectomy.
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#97596
03/05/2003 4:38 PM
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Emergentism on the other hand says that beyond a certain level of complexity something new emerges which has to be explained in its own terms and cannot be explained as the interplay of less complex systems. In other words it says you have to explain psychological processes in psychological terms, not as electrical or biochemical activity in the brain. You have to explain psychological phenomena in psychological terms rather than biological ones, biological phenomena in biological terms rather than chemical ones, etc.
No idea about supervenience. I agree with Bingley about the reductionism. Reductionism is in opposition to holism. Reductionism attempts to explain something in terms of it's constituent parts. It works well when one is trying to explain phenomena in which one actually does know what the parts are, how each of them functions, and what the interrelationships are between the components. Think of this in terms of trying to explain things causally.
Holism (not the quack medicine, but the philosphical) is an attempt to explain a thing as it relates as an individual entity to its environment. An example of holism might be Skinnerian psychology - but it's not a particularly good example. (I'm afraid I'm in a rush at the moment and don't have time to give this the attention it deserves.) Holism works when either we don't know what all the important components are, we don't understand them well, or their interrelationships are intractable to current analyses.
I don't think this differs too much from what Bingley said. However, where I don't think we agree is in the meaning of emergence. Emergence - at least in a computer sciece / complexity theory context - is what happens when you get an apparently complicated (or complex) or emergent behavior from very simple rules.
The paradigmatic example is the flocking of birds which is based on three very simple rules.
http://www.mgtaylor.com/mgtaylor/jotm/spring97/flock.htm
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
More recently there was an article about a guy at MIT who built a set of robotic bees that worked together. (Not having read the original paper, I've no idea whether the experimenter has observed emergent behaviors in his cyber-bug society.)
k
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#97597
03/06/2003 4:42 AM
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Well, FF, I read about this a long time ago, so the fallibility is probably on my part. I may have misremembered or misunderstood, or my source may have been using the word differently. I bow in acknowledgement to someone who knows what they're talking about.
Bingley
Bingley
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#97598
03/06/2003 4:35 PM
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My lack of reticence in stating my opinion does not mean it should carry any more weight than yours. I've done some reading on the stuff and have written some trivial software in a related area (evolutionary programming and neural nets), but I actually gave bad info. It's not part of complexity theory, but of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory. (See, that comes from not knowing jack about it, or at least for being very rushed - maybe both.) For all I know, your comments and mine butt rumps on the same coin.
k
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#97599
03/07/2003 11:53 AM
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Of course, in real life the pear tree and the cherry tree have plenty of differences, even if we are unable to perceive them. The issue I was hinting at was the following: What enables a trained person to select those properties which distinguish a pear tree from a cherry tree inspite of the fact that there are also plenty of differences between individual cherry trees. Or look at the variety of animals we all call "dog". (of course you will say we know them by the bark  ).Mental properties, as I would define them, apply to classes of objects which we have named by a common term. Such classes are not physically given, but even culture-dependent.
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#97600
03/07/2003 1:50 PM
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apply to classes of objects which we have named by a common term.
Ah, the humanity...
formerly known as etaoin...
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