Your post deserves more attention than I have at the moment. If it's not covered by someone else, I'll get to it in the next few days. But since I can respond to this one quickly, I will.
Thus spake Ted Carmichael circa 11/01/2009 05:53 PM: > If you don't like "levels" and prefer "layers," then I'm okay with that. > But I don't really see the distinction. Can you expand on that? Levels require hierarchy. Layers don't. Of course, in the most oft-used example of layers -- the onion -- a hierarchy is there. But it's not necessary. Think of something like a scarf scrunched up at the middle but fully spread out on the ends. In the scrunched up regions, there are many folds. If you view that region at a small enough scale, those folds don't look like folds, they look like layers. In fact, they are layers, without hierarchy. Now, if you're prejudiced or biased and you naturally prefer one side of the small region of scrunched up scarf, then you might say that's the "top" and, as you burrow through the layers, you approach the "bottom". If that's your adopted bias, then it's reasonable to call them "levels". But using the term embeds the bias. It's more accurate to just stick with calling them layers and avoid the bias if possible. I agree that it always SEEMS reasonable enough to talk about how a lower level mechanism generates a higher level phenomenon. But you can never separate out any potential bias if you automatically begin _every_ study assuming that one layer is somehow lower than another layer. So, it's best to make every attempt to remove as much potential bias from the language as possible. If we stop using level and stick to using layer, we are open to the idea that what we used to think of as the higher level might actually be the mechanism for what we used to think of as the lower level. Swapping perspective becomes easier; and that opens the door to more rigorously defined and, ultimately, scientific descriptions. I tend to view it a bit like the reversibility of time. If we'd never expressed dynamics in terms of time reversible equations, we never would have been able to clearly articulate time IRreversible processes. Similarly, if, indeed, there really are things like "downward causation", then we'll never be able to clearly articulate it if we _always_ embed the assumption of upward and downward in all our language. Hence, a clear discussion of emergence has to avoid embedding that assumption... It has to avoid the word "level", at least until we can rebuild it from the more general term "layer". -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
