Notes for week 14

Barbara

Shimon

Gould

Szathmary and Maynard Smith

• Digital codes: DNA and language (cf. the efficiency of ADIOS in both domains).
• Issues in subsumption-like brain evo-devo mirror those that arise in the major "complexification" transitions in biology: how to keep what's already there when innovations abound.

Kauffman and Clayton

• The emergence of agency:
  • for work to be possible, the environment has to possess some minimal structure; what about computation? (cf. the box jellyfish larva);
  • (cf. minimal machines, as in the "leave-me-alone" box).
• On the underdetermination of the computational by the biological (or, the multiple realizability of computation).
• Tricky concepts:
  • Epistemic vs. ontological emergence (cf. Sloman's notion of causally effective virtual-machine entities; also multiple realizability).
  • Downward causation.
  • The need for a taxonomy of tasks ("We peal the carrots") (cf. Sloman on Gibson, etc.).

Could all this be relevant to understanding brains? If yes, how?