Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.cognitive
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
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Subject: Re: pre-destined learning (was Re: Computers--Next stage in evolution? Hmmmmmm.....)
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Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 09:15:54 +0000
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:27130 comp.ai.philosophy:25230 sci.cognitive:6416

There are regularities which appear across the animal kingdom which are
spontaneously emitted by individual species. Baby birds, famously, imprint
on moving objects which become familiar to them; the young of many species, 
raised in isolation, emit stereotyped, predictable and phased behaviour.

If an organism had to explore the degrees of freedom of all of its physiology 
(from joints to eye focus, from endocrine response to managing it tongue) it
would never get going. In particular, if there were no feedback systems which 
demonstrated to it which combinations of these factors were useful (and what 
constituted usefulness), then it never *could* get going. What appears to be 
innate is, additionally, the predisposition of certain clusters of activity to 
associate (as babies learn had-eye co-ordination through a stereotyped set of 
actions: waving the arms and watching the outcome. It has been 
demonstrated that if you block the connection you lose the growth in co-
ordination.)

How this occurs is moot. There is a strong genetic component: you can breed - 
for example - mice to be better or worse at certain activities. Fish - which 
have a built in "rush to the dark" response which is evoked when they are 
alarmed, can be bred not to have this. Indeed, there is work on isolating the 
gene(s) responsible for this. It seems likely, however, that the brain or a 
fish, mouse or man are similar to the degree that they are modular, that these 
modules are laid down in ways and across pathways that predispose them to fall 
into certain configurations. It is highly likely that reward structures have a 
part to play: pain and pleasure, hunger and the desire for a safe place are as 
real to a mouse as a man; if of a different level of clarity. I suspect that 
the integrating phenomenum that we call "consciousness" is similarly a 
continuous variable: that mice have it, perhaps blurred and indistinct compared 
to a human at peak form, but recognisable; but what a minnow possesses as an 
organising principle is anyone's guess.
 _________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
