From: Oliver Sparrow 
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 09:12:54 +0100
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs

  "Phil Roberts, Jr."  writes:

.......to the subject of the thread, unlike the Quine-chatter which seems
to block all channels, these days.

However, having evoke the interesting concept of the 'straw dog' - presumably
a running dog with feet of clay? - he spoils it.

>  So is the "theory" cited by Oliver Sparrow earlier in this thread.

The general view amongst evolutionary biologist is thatthe organism is a mixture
of modules - homeobox-specified algorithms, if you like to see it that way - that
are the consequences of random selections between non-random attractors. That
is, there is an adaption space open to the members of a species, set by the interaction
of their operating environment and the phenotypic repertoire that they can express. 
Individual members of the species are exposed to different environments and have 
slightly different repertoirs of response. In this context, there are a number of rival 
accomodiations which can be arrived at: the attractors. Groups of individuals hill
climb towards one of these, usually the closest. If another group hill climbs towards
another, then the initial species is now differentiated into three: the original, hill one
and hill two. Hill One and Hill Two are distinct ways of answering a challenge but 
they may not compete with each other. The Hill One population may eventually be 
eliminated, leaving a niche open to invasion by others, amongst them Hill Two. 

That is, whether the mammalia should have settle on a pentadactyl, tridactyle or
sesquihexadecadigitated limb is, indeed, a matter of chance. That having five
fingers (and the seal, whale etc five bones in their fins) should be a good solution to
the Ur problem that caused that particular Hill One to be climbed is not a matter of
chance: it worked; whilst whatever alternatives happened to be thrown up did not 
work so well, or was eliminated by being sat on by a volcano at some later stage. 
This does not make the five finger hand a good structure for whales, but it's what
they are stuck with in their algorithmic plumbing. Its arrival on the scene is, however,
completely described by contemporary theory: Eigen and so forth.

Now: the point at issue was whether mental states could influence evolutionary processes.
I suggested that one could see this in action through co-operative behaviour amongst
closely related animals, such as those locked in dominance hierarchies. This generated
a number of mama I don't *like* spinach -type responses. Perhaps putting matters in 
engineer-speak, as above, may make the matter clearer to non-biologists. Mind has
an effect on selection: sighted animals evade, predate, feed, mate, better than those 
without equivalent senses. Selection thus encourages the emergence of mind, however
rudimentary; and builds from the blocks layed down by hill climbing, laying down mental
equivalents to the pentadactyl limb. These may not be fitted for purpose as well as one
would design them ab initio, but they are that with which we have to deal. These artefacts
are, like all biological systems, arranged in layers. There is the encoding layer, the control 
dynamics layer, the structural layer and, in the case of information processing, the emergent
structural layer. This OSI protocol is driven much as the telephone system is driven, by 
events at the topmost layer. Genes (the lowest layer) are shoved around the phenotype
interaction with the operating environment of the moment. That is, mind interacting with
what is happening to the environment in which mind finds itself. That all of this is not 
optimised is the result of many random hill climbs in he last 1300 million years.

_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk