Emergence
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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
The origins of information and the embodiment of teleology
Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence
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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Autocell Movie: A brief introduction
Posted by Jeremy Sherman on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence
The Aesthetic Faculty
Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence
This chapter asks the question: Why is it that only human beings spend time and effort to produce and acquire aesthetic experience? It focuses on the role of juxtapositions, bisociations, and blends in human cognition, and proposes that symbolic abilities are a critical basis for this kind of juxtaposition. Symbolic juxtapositions force further juxtapositions of correlated emotional responses, which are presumably independent of the logic of symbolic juxtaposition. These symbolic juxtapositions can thereby induce emergent and highly novel emotional experiences.
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Reciprocal Linkage between Self-organizing Processes is Sufficient for Self-reproduction and Evolvability
Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence
A simple molecular system (”autocell”) is described consisting of the reciprocal linkage between an autocatalytic cycle and a self-assembling encapsulation process where the molecular constituents for the capsule are products of the autocatalysis. In a molecular environment sufficiently rich in the substrates, capsule growth will also occur with high predictability. Growth to closure will be most probable in the vicinity of the most prolific autocatalysis and will thus tend to spontaneously enclose supportive catalysts within the capsule interior. If subsequently disrupted in the presence of new substrates, the released components will initiate production of additional catalytic and capsule components that will spontaneously re-assemble into one or more autocell replicas, thereby reconstituting and sometimes reproducing the original. In a diverse molecular environment, cycles of disruption and enclosure will cause autocells to incidentally encapsulate other molecules as well as reactive substrates. To the extent that any captured molecule can be incorporated into the autocatalytic process by virtue of structural degeneracy of the catalytic binding sites, the altered autocell will incorporate the new type of component into subsequent replications. Such altered autocells will be progenitors of “lineages” with variant characteristics that will differentially propagate with respect to the availability of commonly required substrates. Autocells are susceptible to a limited form of evolution, capable of leading to more efficient, more environmentally fitted, and more complex forms. This provides a simple demonstration of the plausibility of open-ended reproduction and evolvability without self-replicating template molecules (e.g., nucleic acids) or maintenance of persistent nonequilibrium chemistry. This model identifies an intermediate domain between prebiotic and biotic systems and bridges the gap from nonequilibrium thermodynamics to life.
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The pattern which connects pleroma to creatura: the autocell bridge from physics to life
Posted by Jeremy Sherman on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence
Abstract: By his own standards Gregory Bateson was unsuccessful in his life-long quest to explain how the informational or living realm (creatura) could emerge out of the energetic or physical realm (pleroma). Drawing upon recent insights in self-organization theory, the authors suggest a missing link connecting the realms; a simple spontaneouslyarising, non-living, yet evolvable molecular system called an “autocell” consisting of the reciprocal linkage between an autocatalytic cycle and a self-assembling encapsulation process (modeled on viral encapsulation) where the molecular constituents for the capsule are products of the autocatalysis. Autocells are shown to have the rudiments of individuality, end-directedness, function, and valuation; thus bridging the critical initial gap between pleroma and creatura.
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Bateson’s Method: Double Description. What is it? How does it work? What do we learn?
Posted by Julie Hui on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Emergence
Julie Hui, Tyrone Cashman, Terrence Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Anthropology
Berkeley, CA 94720-3710
Introduction:
In his book Mind and Nature, Gregory Bateson presents a method of analysis that he believes is critical to sorting out some of the fundamental questions of biology. He argues that this method is largely unrecognized and underutilized, and yet it is essential for investigations within the realm of creatura, i.e. the living world in which information processes, not just material-energetic processes, are relevant. He describes his method as “double description”. More than mere comparison, double description includes elements of both Charles Sanders Peirce’s abduction and Bertrand Russell’s logical types, although neither term is used in their original senses. The historical origins of this concept and its relationship to other analytical concepts such as these will not be explored here. The purpose of this paper is to examine what Bateson means by double description, how it works as an analytic tool in Bateson’s hands, and what Bateson believes can be achieved by its careful application (where possible to determine). In particular, we hope to critically develop the logic of this analysis to the point where we can reconsider an exemplary challenge that Bateson poses at the beginning of Mind and Nature (which involves multiple levels of double description) in light of more recent developments in evolutionary and developmental biology. He asks:
What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and to the back-ward schizophrenic in another? (Bateson 1979 )
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Evolution and intelligence: beyond the argument from design
Posted by Terrence Deacon on 29 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Consciousness, Emergence, Methodology
Terrence W. Deacon
Biological Anthropology
Boston University, Boston, MA 02215
From A. Scheibel & Wm. Schopf, eds. (1997) “The Origin and Evolution of Intelligence,” Jones and Bartlett publishers, pp. 103-135. Revised post-publication April 2000 (originally written in 1995-6).
The persistence of top-down explanations in biology
When the theory of natural selection was first presented to the scholars of the last century, many found it to be too implausible to believe. The incredulity of many great thinkers at the time, from brilliant biologists to articulate theologians, was based on a well-reasoned common sense understanding of the world: Left to chance, things tend to get less organized, not more. Millennia prior to Darwin, this same reasoning led Aristotle to criticize the natural philosophy of his contemporary, Empedocles, who argued that all natural processes are the actions of blind chance and that organisms arise out of the preservation of useful accidents (see Aristotle’s Physics). Aristotle easily found innumerable examples of end-directed design in nature that he felt could on no account be explained from such a minimalist perspective. But Aristotle was wrong about this, and only after more than twenty centuries of musing about this conundrum, did scientists come to realize the power of the opposed conception for explaining biological phenomena. When the logic behind Empedocles’ insight was rediscovered and given a more substantive interpretation by Darwin and Wallace, it revolutionized biology by providing an answer to this counterintuitive problem. This has become widely appreciated, not just by biologists, but by the general lay public educated in basic biology.
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