Steps to an ecology of emergence

To begin to take steps to a mental ecology of emergence we first establish two fundamental assumptions from the methodology of transformational grammar-the centrality of human judgment based on direct experience and the proposition that the systematic nature of human behavior is algorithmically driven. We then set a double criterion for understanding any formalism such as emergence: What is formalism X, that a human may know it; and a human, that a human may know formalism X? In the cybernetic sense, the two are defined in relation to each other. In answer to the first question, we examine emergence as a formalism, using Turing's work as a defining case and an NK Boolean system as a specific working model. In answer to the second question, we frame the knowing of emergence in a Batesonian epistemological approach informed by modern developments in discrete dynamic systems. This epistemology specifies mental process as the transformation of differences across a richly connected network. The relational reference point which integrates the two sides of the cybernetic question is human judgment of perceptual similarity which links emergent hierarchies in a formal NK Boolean model to hierarchies of perceptual similarity based on direct experience.