Re: ears and legs

[John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>]

la lojbab. cusku di'e

> You might if "emergent properties" of the mass of two are present.
                ^^^^^^^^
>
> Imagine two people are lost in the woods, and you have reason to believe
> they might be together.  You know one is wearing a bright blue garment.
> You and others are looking, and you spot through the underbrush,
> something bright blue and appropriately sized moving.  You might yell to
> the others "I see them", even though you actually have not seen any
> piece of any person, but merely the garment of one of the people, and
> even though you don't actually know that the second person is with the
> blue-garbed one.
>
> The bright-blueness is an emergent visually-detectable property of the
                            ^^^^^^^^
> mass of the two people in that we can attribute it to the mass even
> though it is really a property of one indivdual.

[remainder of argument omitted]

I think this argument is perfectly sound in itself, but it is muddled by
misuse of "emergent", which need not be here at all.  If one component of
a mass is bright blue, then the bright-blueness of the mass is a resultant,
not an emergent, property.

A simple example of an emergent property:  nitric acid will not dissolve gold,
nor will sulfuric acid, but a mixture of the two (so-called "aqua regia")
will do so.  Furthermore, if the nitric acid happens to be fuming nitric
acid, the resulting gas will require you to evacuate the room.  (This example
stolen from Alfred Bester's sf novel >The Computer Connection<.)

--
John Cowan                                              cowan@ccil.org
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.