Name
Abstract | ||
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Ab stract: The prob lem of evo lu tion ary emer gence is par tic u larly well ex em pli fied in the o ries of the or i gins of life and of lan guage. To ad e quately ad dress these evo lu tion ary prob lems re quires not only de ploy ing the full re sources of bi o log i cal sci ence but also de vel op ing a gen eral the ory of emer gent phe nom ena that treats bi o log i cal in for ma tion and nat u ral se lec tion as a de rived, not prim i tive, fea - tures. Cur rently pop u lar ap proaches that give ge netic reductionism and com pu ta tional anal o gies pri - mary roles in their de scrip tion of the es sen tial or ga ni za tion that con sti tutes life or mind, ig nore the role of self-organization and self-reconstitution in epigenetic sys tems ex cept as mere ex pres sions of adap tive ge netic in for ma tion. The pres ent ap proach par tially in verts this per spec tive. We show how use of com plex sys tems dy nam ics, in the con text of de vel op men tal sys tems the ory, can pro vide a gen eral ac count of evo lu tion ary emer gence, in which dis trib uted sys temic fea tures can serve as the pre cur sor to lo cal ized in for ma tion rep li ca tion mech a nisms and the nat u ral se lec tion pro cesses these can be come en meshed in. Fol low ing ideas ex plored by Weber and Depew (1996; and Weber 1999), we first ap ply this ap proach to the prob lem of the or i gin of life. In this hy poth e sis ge netic in for ma - tion emerges as an artifactual mo lec u lar re-presentation of the dis trib uted pro cess reg u lar i ties and self-organization of a dissipative ther mo dy namic sys tem. The evo lu tion of the de pend ence of the ther mo dy namic self-organization of cells on the ge netic re-presentation of as pects of these pro - cesses, and vice versa, arises spon ta ne ously as this in for ma tional re dun dancy masks se lec tion and causes a par tial deg ra da tion of the au ton omy of com po nent pro cesses. These same fun da men tal prin ci ples are also seen in some ways of con stru ing the Baldwin ef fect and its role in men tal evo lu - tion. Un der stood more gen er ally as a be tween-levels evo lu tion ary dy namic in which higher or der reg u lar i ties in flu ence lower-order com po nent dy nam ics, this ef fect can be seen as a crit i cal con trib - u tor to emer gent tran si tions in many as pects of evo lu tion. Fol low ing Dea con's (1997) ar g u ment that the co-evolutionary emer gence of brain and lan guage was driven by Baldwinian pro cesses, the pres - ent anal y sis sug gests that the emer gence of sym bolic com mu ni ca tion in hu man evo lu tion greatly am pli fied this top-down in flu ence so that it be came the dom i nant fac tor driv ing the evo lu tion of hu - man cog ni tion. In sum mary, the Baldwin ef fect might not be an anom a lous vari ant of nat u ral se lec - tion but rather one ex am ple of a class of gen eral mech a nisms for evo lu tion ary emer gence that can be ap plied across lev els from the or i gins of life to the or i gins of the hu man mind. |
Year | Venue | Keywords |
|---|---|---|
2000 | Cybernetics and Human Knowing | thermodynamics,top down,self organization |
Field | DocType | Volume |
Cognitive science,Psychology,Thermodynamic cycle | Journal | 7 |
Issue | Citations | PageRank |
1 | 0 | 0.34 |
References | Authors | |
1 | 2 | |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bruce Weber | 1 | 16 | 2.83 |
| Terrance Deacon | 2 | 0 | 0.34 |