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| date | 2000-11-13:21:29 |
| Metaphysics |
Locke's Chessboard John Locke in his essay talks about identity at one point in terms of chess boards. This is in Book II, Chapter 8, Section 8, where he's talking about place, and how the chess pieces are "in the same place" when they are on the same squares. I want to use this as an example of EMERGENT IDENTITY, which is the identity a thing has in terms of its EMERGENT PROPERTIES, which are its EMERGENT CAUSES. ==================== EMERGENT IDENTITY: The identity of an entity in terms of its EMERGENT PROPERTIES. ==================== EMERGENT PROPERTIES: The properties of an entity that are not possessed by its constituents and that do not consist in simply having those constituents. Comments: this is weak. It is definition by negatives, which is bad. The latter clause is intended to exclude, for example, "Having eyes" from the emergent properties of a human, as none of the constituents of a human have the property of "having eyes". This needs work. ===================== EMERGENT CAUSES: EMERGENT PROPERTIES viewed as causes. Do they cause EMERGENT BEHAVIOR? I think they must. Yes. ===================== EMERGENT BEHAVIOR: Behaviors that involve changes in EMERGENT PROPERTIES. ===================== CAUSE and PROPERTY and ACTION: An ACTION is a change in a PROPERTY. A PROPERTY is a CAUSE of ACTION. Round and round and round we go... ===================== An Example: 1 Temperature is an emergent property. There are two views of temperature: a statistical one, given previously, in which it is viewed as a measure of how many energetically-identical micro-states are available to a collection of particles. The other is a mechanical or kinetic one, in which it is viewed as a measure of the distribution of particle velocities in a collection of particles. The two are derivable from each other: starting with one, you can get to the other. ==================== An Example: 2 Consider a block of matter that has a constant temperture, uniform throughout. As time (and not very much of it) passes, every atom in the material gets jostled by its neighbors so that every atom has a different velocity than it had a moment ago. The block is different in every microscopic respect. But it has the same temperature. It's temperature is identical to its temperature a moment ago. =================== An Example: 3 Consider the block put in contact with another block of different temperature. Heat energy flows from the hotter to the colder. This flow of energy is an action of the block, and it is caused by the temperature of the block. This--the laws of thermodynamics--is an example of emergent causation, I think. =================== Locke's Chessboard again: Consider a chessboard set up so that white has mate in two. This is a property of the setup. Clear the board, and set up different chess peices on a different board in the same configuration. It is still white's mate in two. This also is an example of emergent causality, I think. =================== Cause and effect: Emergent causuality is a case where, if we look at it from the microscopic perspective (the pre-emergent perspective) there is nothing in common between things that are identical from the post-emergent perspective. And if we look at the effect from the post-emergent perspective (heat flowing from one block to another, for instance) and the cause from a pre-emergent perspective (the velocities of individual atoms, for instance) we have a situation where totally unrelated causes (completely different sets of atomic velocities) give rise to identical effects. If we look at the effect pre-emergently, and the cause post-emergently, we have identical causes (the same temperature) giving rise to totally different effects (different changes in the velocities of individual atoms.) What does this mean? =============================== Realism: How do I avoid the sense that pre-emergent causes are "more real" than post-emergent ones? They are not, and indeed one could as well explain the motions of atoms in terms of temperature as temperature in terms of the motions of atoms. We don't do so because it would make Ockham unhappy, but Ockham is not the arbiter of what is real. |
| Creatures |
Pretzel the Cat had her teeth cleaned today, which is a major undertaking for a cat. It's done under a general anesthetic, which I find a bit strange because part of my job involves being present in the OR during surgery--I spent an hour this morning observing a total knee replacement--and most of them are not done under a general. This is one of the many benefits of being able to communicate conceptually: we can't tell animals, "Hold still, relax, it's for your own good." We can tell humans that, so they can avoid being unconscious during surgery--although despite the enormous physiological benefits of avoiding a general anesthetic, the psychological consequences must be pretty unpleasent. Based on my own experience in a recent minor procedure, I don't like knowing people are cutting me, even if I can't feel it. Most people take it pretty well: humans are tough. It's not uncommon for patients to joke, ask when they get a coffee break, and the like. Pretzel hates being transported, and meows loudly all the way to the vet's, all the way back and apparently all the time she was there, except when she was actually asleep. This evening she's still a bit staggery, and having trouble keeping her back legs and front legs in sync, so mostly she's interested in finding a quiet place to curl up and sleep it off. By tomorrow morning she'll be back to her own self, although on past form it'll be a few days before she quite forgives me for this outrage. On the weekend I took all the cats to the vet for their shots, and it was a day and a half before any of them would even say hello to me after that. |
| Reading |
Bruce Alexander's book Blind Justice is a perfectly readable mystery story, although I find the genre a little tiring. Walking through the formula has never appealed to me that much, and despite the touches of local color he gives the London of 1758 or so (I was mistaken yesterday when I wrote it was set after the American Rebelion) this is still a formula mystery, right up to the "You're probably wondering why I've gathered you all here" ending. The greatest challenge facing the historical novelist is to make the characters at all likable. This gets more difficult the closer in time and culture they come to us, and pre-Chartist England was a really nasty place full of really nasty people by modern standards. Post-Chartist England was too, but at least by that time there was a sizeable minority of people with recognizably modern ideas. The problem is just that people in different times and places are not like us and are likely to hold ideas and have motivations that we find repugnant. The odd anachronism is acceptable, such as the seaman who hates the slave trade in Blind Justice, but too many of them become improbable. The average seaman of 1758 had little trouble with the slave trade, so long as he wasn't one of the slaves. There are at least two legitimate routes out of this difficulty: one is to wrap up all your anachronisms in a single character, who is likely to be the main character simply because of how interesting a person becomes when completely out of step with the times. This gives the reader at least one sympathetic focus, and justifies other characters with more palatable beliefs because people with like ideas do tend to hang out with each other. The other solution is to portray them as they are, warts and all. This makes for a much better story. Patrick O'Brien's characters are almost all thoroughly unlikeable. Aubrey is a conservative tool of a brutal political and military machine. Maturin is crabby, obsessive and intemperate. Sophie is wet and Diana is vain and childish. But they are still wonderful stories for all of that, because the characters are true to their times, and we're drawn into their times, seeing the world briefly through alien eyes. This is one of the best things literature can do. Rosalind Miles' I, Elizabeth is an extreme example of this approach. I defy anyone to like Elizabeth I after reading this book. She was grasping, power-hungry, easily angered, foolishly blind where her favorites were concerned, and every inch the king she proclaimed herself to be, an entirely nasty creature who built one of the most fearful police states of its time. Yet the book is still fascinating reading, despite one's growing realization that it is the autobiography of a monster, because it helps us understand the world that produced such monsters, which is the world that eventually begat our world. |