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Re: anticipation

Tim,
Thanks a lot. This fits pretty much with my picture of it as well but I
needed confirmation that this was how us "Rosen followers" (as I
objected to being characterized) are thinking. The difficulty I was
pondering (apologies for not revealing the full context - it was
intentionial to elicit an unbiased response) is how we can distinguish
experimentally between the two explanations, as they pretty much yield
the same observed result without detailed experiments which have not
been done. Hence, the argument in favor of the functional view has to
cite some evidence elsewhere - either in higher organisms or at the
molecular level, or on the basis of pure reason (never a strong case)
for the importance of functions, then having established their presence,
the argument about seasonal adaptation in plants can be made to the
effect of proposing a more efficient process to the same end, rather
than a different end. But to merely assert that the functional view is
the case in this isolated instance itself, would be unsupported by
evidence. It is only the preponderance of evidence for functional
involvement that tells us it should be there, and then to perhaps write
a different evolutionary story - does that make sense?

My speculation beyond this is to then ask if any different result from
the existence of a functional specification (irrespective of its
associated mechanisms) can be detected. Can we, for example, show that
evolution acting on functions is more efficient than evolution acting
reactively (essentially on only the realized structures)? I can imagine
- have been imagining - making this argument regarding plants. While, as
you say, the results may be equally explainable from the reactionary
paradigm, my guess is that the number of "dumb luck" successes would be
very low. The selective theory presumes all these occurr and essentially
get weeded out by selection. Is there any way to calculate how much
biomass would thus be weeded out and what percentage of that would be
expected to have had "dumb luck" and then result in the organisms we
see? My guess is it would be such a large disparity as to be tantamount
to a claim that an extremely rare mutation has swept the entire
population at lightning speed - something that is not likely to have
happened. In other words, less luck would prevail simply because of the
numbers and the fact, now widely accepted, that optimization through
competition is not nearly as ubuiquitous or intense as once believed.
In other words, I'm thinking there could be real experimental evidence
produced to show that adding a functionally abstract ability, however
small, in organisms, including those without ganglia, will allow them to
reinforce functional paths that do indeed constitute "solutions to
problems." By the very tenants of selection theory, a very small
capacity in this regard, well below anything we would associate with
developed thinking abilities, as in the human case, would nevertheless
have an amplified effect in optimizing the evolutionary pathways and
bringing such good solutions to the fore. The experiement would be
difficult, however, as it would involve somehow quantifying all the
losers as well as the winners. It would have to be a very controled
experiment with a rapidly evolving species, or a computer simulation
that merely shows the greater efficience involved in adding a
non-reactionary abstract functionality.

Tim Gwinn wrote:

Well, here are my thoughts on it, for what its worth......

My first thought is that, as I understand it, 'fitness' in the traditional
view is only an externally imposed measure. That is, there is nothing
intrinsic in the organism which -is- fitness; but rather, fitness is an
external measure of how successful those organism's behaviors are. If so,
then 'fitness' does not explain -why- an organism succeeds, it is merely a
measurement - after the fact - of whether it does or not.

As to -why- an organism succeeds, I suppose in the "reactive paradigm", as
Rosen called it, one would argue that a fortunate random genomic mutation
occurred somewhere in the plant's lineage that allowed a certain reaction to
occur in response to (say) a certain change in temperature or daylight
patterns. As viewed from outside, that mutation fortuitously happened to
increase the chance of success of the plant surviving the winters, and
therefore it improved it's fitness.

In the anticipatory paradigm, the above can still all be true. If we ask
"why the reaction (by the plant)?", we can still answer "because the
temperature changed" or "because of this genomic arrangement". But we can
also answer "because it will help the plant survive certain negative
environmental changes in the winter". That answer is a final cause, in
Aristotelian terms, which is forbidden in the reactive paradigm: it seems to
reek of anthropomorphism. But this final cause is the function of the
reaction. And if we allow that functional descriptions for things like
metabolism and repair are valid, then equally so is this it seems. So I
think it moves us from a mechanistic description of activity to a larger,
functional one.

Moving to this functional description also abstracts us from the specific
nature of the reaction mechanism. The organization of this functional
description can remain the same regardless whether the plant is reacting to
changes in daylength or temperature or activity levels of its symbiotes. In
fact, the effects of the three different kinds of reactions might even be
different behaviors. But as long as those behaviors resulted in
survivability in the winter, then all of these cases would result in equally
'fit' variants of the plant. This makes sense since they all would be
instances of the same functional organization.

Viewed from the reactive paradigm,  there would be three entirely different
causes of three very different kinds of reactions and maybe three entirely
different kinds of behavioral responses. It probably would not be unusual to
offhandedly say that "these three variants all found different ways of
solving the same problem". But I would imagine that in the reactive paradigm
such a statement would have no place since plants, from this view, do not
solve problems - they just react. Even in an evolutionary sense, there is no
solving of problems, only a multitude of random mutations and their
consequences, which play out as either adaptive or maladaptive. Being a
'fit' species is just a matter of dumb luck. Therefore, from this view there
is no commonality at all apparent between these three adaptations, except
for their external measures of fitness.

The analogy would be with the relational functional organization of the
(M,R)-system. To say that an (M,R)-system is a correct description of the
functional organization of an organism does not invalidate chemical
descriptions or vice versa. Similarly, a functional description which
includes predictive qualities does not invalidate descriptions of the
constituent reactive mechanisms, or vice versa. But each kind of description
answers different questions and is useful for different purposes.

I think in the question you pose, the situations where an anticipatory
description would be useful are those where "throwing away the matter and
keeping the organization" is desired. As in the example above, where "each
variant solves the same problem differently" might actually mean that they
all possess some common functional organization with respect to that aspect
of their existence. Working at the level of functional organization might
possibly simplify and explain patterns of similarity of fitness where the
specific mechanisms have no commonality.

Anyway, those are my thoughts late tonite. :)
Tim




-----Original Message-----
From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of John
Kineman
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 8:53 PM
To: ***
Subject: anticipation


No, not the Carly Simon song...

This is related to a recent discussion off list - what views do those on
the list have regarding the following:

Does the kind of anticipation we see in plants, for example preparing for
winter, extend beyond what traditional mechanistic adaptation via natural
selection can explain? If so, in what way?

Note: In a sense all adaptive behavior is "anticipatory" in the
traditional
view, as it is defined in terms of fitness (which extends even to success
of offspring, certainly a future event). So, in what sense would Rosennean
anticipation be different??? What would it add? What would it explain that
traditional theory doesn't?



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© 2004 John J. Kineman
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