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Hey Judith,
I can't pretend to understand
all of what you have said here, but it strikes me as beautiful.
Maybe I have a strange sense of aesthetics.
David
P.S. Jamie, could you get her to do something like
that again?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 2:43
PM
Subject: Re: Reactive vs. Anticipatory in
adaptation/evolution
Hi Jamie,
Comments, interspersed:
Jamie
wrote:
I would prefer being circumspect and -not- link
'optimality'
with these ideas. In the same way that
'improvement' and 'perfection' are
not identical,
'adaptation' (random improvement) and
'optimization'
aren't logical equals.
I don't think
it's possible to be "circumspect" in that way. How else can one account for
the notion of "health" which co-emerges with life? Metabolism and repair have
definite set-points, which are optimality-based. More than that, they are
functions which have a built-in potential for an interactive future to
them. These are capabilities which are entailed and generated before they are
needed. The existence of capabilities like metabolism and repair is
anticipatory and the capabilities, themselves, must be based on some
internally generated value of optimality.
Question: Why do we have
an immune system? Answer: Because it will be necessary. An immune
system is both species-based and individual. It's also interactive and context
dependent. As a component of the function of repair, the immune system also
necessarily has a collection of set-points which are partly based on the
systemic values for optimality but the entailments for optimality are greater
than simply a set-point for health. This has to be true, because the immune
system has entailments allowing the definition of optimality to be altered in
response to certain circumstances; invasion by a pathogen, for instance. Fever
is one of the weapons wielded by the immune system which it only invokes
during a systemic invasion of a certain magnitude. Why so rarely? And why does
even a low fever make us feel so lousy? Because the higher heat is sub-optimal
for the brain. How can this kind of entailment exist without a rather
sophisticated model of optimality?
Improvement and
perfection are human intellectual concepts. Perfection, in particular,
is a human aesthetic value, not a physiologic one. This is why "optimality" is
such a useful word-- it doesn't have any information specific to a particular
species about it but it clearly gets across the idea that there are
constraints involved. In other words; there are parameters which guide the
processes of living such as metabolism and repair.
We can conclude
certain things about these parameters, based on the information we already
have about them, using logic (not the rigid, mathematical term here but the
more all-inclusive version of intellect plus common sense). For example:
Because there are metabolic and repair set-points which are demonstrably
similar by species, and because different species in the same environment have
different species-linked metabolism and repair behaviors/set-points, we can
deduce that the parameters which guide the functional systems of metabolism
and repair aren't generated by the environment. They must be internally
generated, and they must be, at least in part, information-based. How else
could they be genetically linked?
In fact, I think that genetics is
irrefutable proof that encoded information IS part of the organization
of living systems and the existence of genetic functional capability is
further proof that "encoded information" guides or influences a great many
aspects of organism behavior and capability. I think that, while there must
also be other modes of information exchange and encoding at work in addition
to the genetic category, the genetic forms are proof of the existence of
anticipatory models guiding the behavior patterns of living organisms.
It's not as outlandish as some empiricists can make it sound! To wit:
How else shall we account for the fact that a fertilized human embryo has
within itself the entailment to develop into a fully-grown human being? The
process by which it happens is a species-based pattern, always going from
single cell through recognizable stages, to full-term baby, then through
childhood, through puberty, etc. in a pattern we all recognize. Yet each human
being is a unique individual organism as well-- similar to, yet different
than, the two gene pools from which it sprang. There are many interacting
entailments at work here, and the foundation for the whole shebang is
anticipatory (future and past at work in the present). How else could we
explain the fact that human babies are born with their reproductive organs
already developed? The whole entailment is present from fertilization! There's
no way to explain any of this via a reactive paradigm or "random accident" or
"luck". Thus, one of my father's more controversial assertions was that the
entailments of evolution are another aspect of living systems that are
actually quite different from the way science has so far described them... and
yet we are making decisions about the survival, the evolution, of untold
numbers of species... I have to not think about it too much or it begins to
really upset me how our species is just blundering around, smug in our
arrogant assumptions about what we think we know via science.
I would
put it more bluntly than my father did: It seems to me that life as we
know it would be an impossibility in a purely reactive
universe.
Judith
Web address:
http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of
general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Nov 8, 2005, at 10:24 AM, James N Rose
wrote:
Judith,
I would prefer being circumspect and -not-
link
'optimality' with these ideas. In the same way that
'improvement'
and 'perfection' are not identical,
'adaptation' (random improvement) and
'optimization'
aren't logical equals.
A bomb exploding - doesn't
optimize or improve
its -form- - even though it does envolve
an
entailed 'achieved-goal'; where an alternative
set-of-circumstances
is arrived at.
And, backtracking to pick up your phrase
"Environments don't adapt to organisms",
I'd
suggest that an environment's repertoire
-does- include adaptation (not
just adjustment).
Adaptation has only to do with process plateaus
-
majoritive consistency of integrated performances.
One of my
favorite examples is one I encountered
as a college student studying
comparative anatomy.
Very wise professor; there are more typically than
not
no -direct- cause and effect events in evolution,
just attained
abilities -- from tendencies and combined
circumstances.
Throw a
fish on land and it dies - it doesn't 'evolve'.
Give it lungs; no
evolution. Fins that become walking
appendages; no evolution. Skin that
retains moisture;
no evolution. Food gatherings behaviors; no
evolution.
But add in with those (neccesary) aspects, a crucial
-internal whole metabolism restricturing- that includes
kidneys which
processes water - fresh water - in a new
way than saline ocean water;
and suddenly there is suffient
integrated systemics to support living in
gaseous air
rather than water.
The way I put it in UIU is, it took
a fundamental
change of life's relationship with water to
eventually
enable it to have a relationship with fire. And humans
know
just how important fire is (compact appliable energy)
for our success and
level of civilly achieved evolution.
--more tonight. leaving for
work.
Jamie
Judith Rosen wrote:
Jamie Rose wrote:
So..... the important aspect of
dynamic entities within
dynamic extended environments .. is their
ability to
encounter and cope with .. options & options
spaces.
More so than it is for entities to be
behaviorally
consistent
Yes, with one nitpick: "Dynamic"
entities... I'm not sure
how you mean it. My experience of that word
is that it can
refer to any changing systems, including simple ones.
In his
published work, my father used the phrases; "dynamical
systems,"
"dynamical equations," and "classical dynamics" when
describing
simple systems and the approach of contemporary physics for
dealing with them. So, I see a need to clarify a bit. The thing
is,
adaptation is not purely a reactive-- or even interactive--
behavior.
Environments don't adapt to organisms, although
environments do
interact with organisms, organisms have more
ptions: they can react or
interact, but they can also adapt to
environments and they can also
actively change the environment
to suit their own requirements. In
either case, the agent of
change is coming from the organismal side.
This is partly why
the explanation for evolution as developed
post-darwin is not
explaining the evidence adequately: it's all
developed within "a
reactive paradigm" where all systems are only
capable of reacting.
In order to adapt, either physically or
behaviorally, to a
changing environment, a system would have to be
capable of
something more than merely reacting to change. Adaptation
has
to do with optimality and the only systems capable of adaptation
are systems with an internally generated value for "optimality"--
anticipatory systems.
Organisms.
Judith
Web
address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal
of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Nov 8, 2005, at 12:36 AM, James N Rose wrote:
Judith
Rosen wrote:
"Negative" and "Positive" are in the eye of the
beholder;
it's all relational and it's context
dependent.
[snipped]
I think it's all part of the capability
that being organized as an
anticipatory system can achieve in an
interactive, relational universe.
Judith
So..... the
important aspect of dynamic entities within
dynamic extended
environments .. it their ability to
encounter and cope with .. options
& options spaces.
More so than it is for entities to be
behaviorally
consistent - or as modern science would prefer it
-
perfectly 'repetitive' and free of 'alternate
performances' (which are
define by current science as "errors").
How many children have
there been born with 6 fingers per hand?
chopped off in the delivery
room as an anomaly.
Can you image the side species of 12 fingered
humans ..
and how they would play piano or any fingered instrument??!
Wow!
J2
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