?> Teleodynamics

Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining Information Pt. 1

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: information theory

Abstract: A scientifically adequate theory of semiotic processes must ultimately be founded on a theory of information that can unify the physical, biological, cognitive, and computational uses of the concept. Unfortunately, no such unification exists, and more importantly, the causal status of informational content remains ambiguous as a result. Lacking this grounding, semiotic theories have tended to be predominantly phenomenological taxonomies rather than dynamical explanations of the representational processes of natural systems.  This paper argues that the problem of information that prevents the development of a scientific semiotic theory is the necessity of analyzing it as a negative relationship: defined with respect to absence.  This is cryptically implicit in concepts of design and function in biology, acknowledged in psychological and philosophical accounts of intentionality and content, and is explicitly formulated in the mathematical theory of communication (aka “information theory”). Beginning from the base established by Claude Shannon, which otherwise ignores issues of content, reference, and evaluation, this two part essay explores its relationship to two other higher-order theories that are also explicitly based on an analysis of absence: Boltzmann’s theory of thermodynamic entropy (in Part 1) and Darwin’s theory of natural selection (in Part 2). This comparison demonstrates that these theories are both formally homologous and hierarchically interdependent. Their synthesis into a general theory of entropy and information provides the necessary grounding for theories of function and semiosis.

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Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining Information Pt. 2

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: information theory

Abstract: A scientifically adequate theory of semiotic processes must ultimately be founded on a theory of information that can unify the physical, biological, cognitive, and computational uses of the concept. Unfortunately, no such unification exists, and more importantly, the causal status of informational content remains ambiguous as a result. Lacking this grounding, semiotic theories have tended to be predominantly phenomenological taxonomies rather than dynamical explanations of the representational processes of natural systems.  This paper argues that the problem of information that prevents the development of a scientific semiotic theory is the necessity of analyzing it as a negative relationship: defined with respect to absence.  This is cryptically implicit in concepts of design and function in biology, acknowledged in psychological and philosophical accounts of intentionality and content, and is explicitly formulated in the mathematical theory of communication (aka “information theory”). Beginning from the base established by Claude Shannon, which otherwise ignores issues of content, reference, and evaluation, this two part essay explores its relationship to two other higher-order theories that are also explicitly based on an analysis of absence: Boltzmann’s theory of thermodynamic entropy (in Part 1) and Darwin’s theory of natural selection (in Part 2). This comparison demonstrates that these theories are both formally homologous and hierarchically interdependent. Their synthesis into a general theory of entropy and information provides the necessary grounding for theories of function and semiosis.

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Holism and Associationism in Neuropsychology: An anatomical Synthesis

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Consciousness

INTRODUCTION

Neuropsychological theories make implicit assumptions about brain organization and the relationships between structure and function. These include assumptions about the movement and representation of information within brain structures and neural circuits and about the phylogenesis and development of these substrates. Unfortunately, our knowledge of human neuroanatomy remains incomplete and is particularly lacking in detailed information about the patterns of axonal connections-the basic circuits of the brain. As a result, the anatomical assumptions of neuropsychological theories are often represented by no more than diagrams of logical relationships between operationally defined functions, where the relationships are attributed to connections and the functions are assigned to areas.

The last decades have seen remarkable advances in experimental neuroanatomy using nonhuman species. Since the discovery of autoradiographic and peroxidase axonal tracer techniques in the 1970s, the development of information concerning the connectional patterns of monkey, cat, and rat brains has proceeded at an explosive rate. It is probably not too ambitious to expect that the details of the connectional anatomy for the brains of these model laboratory species will be thoroughly catalogued well before the turn of the next century. Although we still lack the means to directly analyze human brain circuitry at a comparable level of detail, the remarkable similarity in cellular and connectional anatomy in mammalian brains makes it possible to apply many of these general findings to the problem of understanding human brain anatomy.

If the 19th century “diagram makers” were guilty of inventing, singling out, or oversimplifying neural connections to fit their psychological models of brain processes; neuropsychological theories at present are guilty of ignoring the growing body of “diagrams” of empirically identified neural connections. Maps of the direct and indirect pathways through which information can be transmitted within the brain, and of the general patterns these pathways exhibit, can provide rigorous constraints within which to guide development of models of brain function. Perhaps for the first time in the study of the human brain it is possible to ask what sort of neuropsychological theories are suggested by the anatomy rather than the other way around.
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What connects the map to the territory

Posted by Ty Cashman on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Methodology, Purpose

Abstract: Bateson left an unresolved ambiguity in his explanation of the relationship of the mind to the world, the map to the territory. This ambiguity is related to his failure to develop a theory of intentionality, reference, “aboutness.” However, he left us all the tools necessary to resolve this ambiguity and to lay the groundwork for a theory of intentionality. In using these tools, a different emphasis is placed on the relationship between change and difference. A proposal is made for an understanding of the rudiments of abstraction. Finally, the ambiguity is addressed and the groundwork of a theory of intentionality proposed, through an understanding of the distinction between (a) the indirect access of creatural mental process to the pleromic world and (b) the direct access of our pleromic hands to the pleromic world. It is through the interplay and alternation of indirect perception/cognition of the world and direct action on the world in manually-operated experiments that Bateson’s problem of “maps, of maps, of maps, ad infinitum” is solved and a theory of mediate realism can be derived from his work, linking to an understanding of the roots of intentionality.


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Transient phenomena in learning and evolution: Genetic Assimilation and Genetic Redistribution

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence

Abstract: Deacon has recently proposed that complexes of genes can be integrated into functional groups as a result of environmental changes that mask and unmask selection pressures. For example, many animals endogenously synthesize ascorbic acid (vitamin C), but anthropoid primates have only a nonfunctional version of the crucial gene for this pathway. It is hypothesized that the loss of functionality occurred in the evolutionary past when a diet rich in vitamin C masked the effect of the gene, and its loss effectively trapped the animals in a fruit-eating lifestyle. As a result, the complex of abilities that support this lifestyle were evolutionarily bound together, forming a multilocus complex. In this study we use evolutionary computation simulations to explore the thesis that masking and unmasking can transfer dependence from one set of genes to many sets, and thereby integrate the whole complex of genes. We used a framework based on Hinton and Nowlan’s 1987 simulation of the Baldwin effect. Additional gene complexes and an environmental parameter were added to their basic model, and the fitness function extended. The simulation clearly demonstrates that the genetic redistribution effect can occur in silico, showing an initial advantage of endogenously synthesized vitamin C, followed by transfer of the fitness contribution to the complex of genes that together allow the acquisition of vitamin C from the environment. As is well known in the modeling community, the Baldwin effect only occurs in simulations when the population of agents is ‘‘poised on the brink” of discovering the genetically specified solution. Similarly, the redistribution effect occurs in simulations under specific initial conditions: too little vitamin C in the environment, and its synthesis it is never fully masked; too much vitamin C, and the abilities required to acquire it are not tightly integrated. The Baldwin effect has been hypothesized as a potential mechanism for developing language-specific adaptations like innate universal grammar and other highly modular capacities. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance of genetic assimilation and genetic redistribution to the evolution of language and other cognitive adaptations.


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Towards a semiotic cognitive science

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence, Slide presentation

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The origins of information and the embodiment of teleology

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence

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Monkey homologues of language areas: computing the ambiguities

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence

The ‘language-readiness’ of human brains most probably resulted from modification of structures present in non-human primate brains, but identifying such homologues and the nature of their modifications has been highly problematic. In a recent article, Arbiband Bota suggest that these problems can be overcome using a neuroinformatics approach. But its assumptions ignore many non-local, activity-dependent, regressive, and allometric effects of neurodevelopment that violate assumptions of classic homology. What if these effects are what matter most?


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Memes as signs in the dynamic logic of semiosis: Molecular scienc meets computation theory

Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: information theory

Abstract The concept of meme misidentifies units of cultural information as active agents, a shorthand similar to what misleads our understanding of genes and obscures the dynamic logic of evolution; but the concept does offer hope by contributing something missing from many semiotic theories. In treating memes as replicators, Dawkins fails to distinguish mere patterns from information (and replication from interpretation), which leads to the problem encountered in all realms of information processing: what counts as information is context dependent. Nothing is intrinsically meaningful, to be so it must be interpreted. In the evolution of both genes and words, replication has always been a multilevel affair in a dynamic system, from which what we conceive as “adapted” or “interpreted” units emerge. Memes are replicas not replicators, and I suggest that the iconic function of signs, as identified by Peirce, is the essence of the meme concept. As in sign function, both gene and meme functions are informed by whatever relationship exists between the physical pattern of the token and the system of processes in which each is embedded (so these are semiotic relationships). I argue that two, not-clearlyarticulated aspects of the meme concept could rescue semiotic from mere descriptive taxonomy and lead the way for a general theory of semiosis and a unifying methodology for the semiotic sciences to emerge.


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Autocell Movie: A brief introduction

Posted by Jeremy Sherman on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence


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