<snipped>...Long but fascinating discusion of intentionality and
metaphysics... </snipped>

For those interested in modeling emergence and understanding some of its
implications, I recommend this paper:

Heylighen F. (1991): "Modelling Emergence", World Futures: the Journal of
General Evolution 31 (Special Issue on Emergence, edited by G. Kampis), p.
89-104.
ftp://ftp.vub.ac.be/pub/projects/Principia_Cybernetica/Papers_Heylighen/Modelling_Emergence.txt

Also see Heylighen's pub list at
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/papers/PapersFH.html for lots of
emergence-oriented thoughts.

There is an interesting notion in these considerations of emergent levels
of behavior: that each new level has its own emergent semantics as well.
This could find application in OO design and in Squeak,. Each new class
defines a new conceptual entity in the programming space, with the names of
its variables and methods (and thier external semantic relations) extending
and enriching the concept being modeled.  The design for a class from a
certain level (above method implementation) defines an extension to the
semantics available to the programmer with which to express his behavioral
intentions for the new application being developed.  The implementation of
the each method, however, relies on the existing semantics provided by
other prexisting classes and methods, with the exception of course of
messages to self that rely on the newly added or soon to be added semantics
of new methods for the new class.  In a sense, each new class and method is
bootstrapping new levels of meaning via recombination of existing semantic
elements.  And while classes and methods in Squeak do not (yet)
autonomously emerge as in complex adaptive systems, it could be very
enlightening to consider the resulting complex network of relationships in
a running Smalltalk application as if they were the result of such a
process.

Perhaps the old saying "the class library whispers the design in your ear"
is more literal than we once thought!

Regards,
Sam

Sam S. Adams, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Research
tie line 444-0736, outside 919-254-0736, email: ssadams at us.ibm.com
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