Re: Emergence - the concept, and evolution

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Thu May 11 2000 - 03:03:54 BST

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Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 19:03:54 -0700
From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Emergence - the concept, and evolution
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    Dear John,

    > A better term is Kim's supervenience - any two identical physical
    > systems (in all possible worlds) will have the same supervenient
    > properties,

    How so? Supervenient properties are extraneous, so identical
    systems in different worlds will normally have different
    supervenient properties. No?

    > Elliot
    > Sober in his _Nature of Selection_ and his 1993 argued that "fitness" is
    > a supervenient property of organisms (hence also memes?) because the
    > physical causes of fitness of genes and traits are different case by
    > case but similar if the organisms are similar.

    Fitness is indeed a supervenient to organisms, relying upon the
    relation between the organisms and their environment. It
    shouldn't be considered as a property of the organisms.

    > but the same supervenient properties can be realised in
    > different phsyical systems (identical brains have identical minds, but
    > identical minds might also arise in computers, for example).

    Or two different people might share the same sense of humor.

    Best,

    Bill

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