2.4 Holes and Parts


"Are life and mind so much more thatn the `sum of their parts' that it is useless to search for them?" How does a box contain a mouse, when none of its boards show "containment"? Containment is a property that emerges from properly arranging the boards!

"Like boxing-in, words like living and thinking are useful for describing phenomena that result form certain combinations of relationships. But mind still holds its mystery -- because we still know so little about how mental agents interact to accomplish all the thing they do."

Again, the theme is that mysteries surrounding though (remember the list of questions in Chapter 1.1) will lose their mystique, because they will be seen as emergent properties of agencies (or societies of agencies!). This brings to mind Searle' nice discussion of emergence, when he talks about wetness and water molecules.


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