The End of ( Traditional ) Emergence : Introducing Reactive Emergence
by computer hardware . Of course , computer hardware is subject to deterioration . However , the energy used to maintain it does not depend on the symbolic entities within ( Abbott , 2010a ). Symbolic entities live in a charmed world of immortal symbols — you cannot break a bit — and pure structure .
The same reasoning holds for mental symbolic constructions . A melody is held together by its composer ( if any ), its performers ( if any ), and its listeners ( if any ). Its integrity is no more dependent on the physical medium on which it is recorded than the integrity of a computer program depends on its recording medium . In both cases , some recording mechanism is required — even if it is the ability of human minds to remember — but its record does not define the entity as an object .
Symbolic entities rely on symbol processing systems like computers or human ( or animal ) minds . They cannot exist on their own . Abbott ( 2010b ) called them subsidized .
3.5 Type Creation Mechanisms
Software has been the source of extraordinarily creativity . This section explores
parallels between mechanisms that programming languages make available for building new entities and the mechanisms discussed above . Modern programming languages categorize values as types . In a statically typed programming language , the only way to create a new value is with a constructor , which produces a value of a known type . As a result , it is not possible to have a value without a type or a value whose type is not known . Every value is of a known type .
One might think of nature in terms of a similar regime . A simple example would declare AtomicElement as a type with subtypes hydrogen , helium , etc . AtomicElement might have a so-called factory method that takes objects of the ( subatomic ) types proton , neutron , and electron and produces an Atomic Element . The constructor is parameterized and may produce a different subtype of Atomic Element depending on how many subatomic particles of each subatomic type of are provided . Besides building elements from subatomic particles , one would also have constructors that took objects of various element types and produced objects of other element types as in fusion or fission . Chemistry might be characterized similarly : an H 2
O constructor takes two hydrogen instances and an oxygen instance and produces an H 2
O instance .
In software development , the primary reason to create a new type is to allow for objects that have properties that differ from those of other types . Each type illustrates emergence in the sense of having new properties . In software , properties are not expressed as predicates . Instead , each type includes functions . A type ’ s collection of functions implicitly defines the properties of the type .
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