Re: Paper by ~MM on distributed self-awareness



4) The perceptual process shifts over time from being
highly parallel, random, and bottom-up, to being more
focused, deterministic, and top-down. As in (3), this shift
is not pre-programmed, but rather is an emergent effect
of collective behavior in the system.



As I mentioned, compare #(4) especially to Prigogine's statement that
... "...
self-organization processes in far-from-equilibrium conditions
correspond to a delicate interplay between chance and necessity,
between fluctuations and deterministic laws....".

The next sentence is "... We expect that near a bifurcation,
fluctuations or random elements would play an important role, while
between bifurcations the deterministic aspects would become dominant".
Melanie's describing a classical complex system, ala complexity theory.



Forgot to mention, there is also the concept in complexity theory from
Per Bak ["How Nature Works"] and other places of "phase transitions",
related to your comment above.

.