Re: Behaviorism vs. evolutionary psychology


"JGCASEY" <jgkjcasey@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1184189928.832191.210900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<snip>

JC:
If I knew what those constraints were I would be a clever fellow
indeed. For example the shape of a protein molecule is controlled
by more than its genetic code [ref Life's Other Secrets].

Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (Vienna
Series in
Theoretical Biology) by Robert G. B. Reid ,
contains much clever stuff that explains the right stuff. Take a look.




JC:
Mutation is the "shaking the bits about" and natural selection
is the forces acting on those parts. An important constraint
is the ability to hold together the parts. That is what a magnetic
button has over a coin. It is not however sufficient. I am talking
about what is sufficient, what is required, for things to evolve
into ever more complex things by shaking the parts?

DG:
Are you getting at how genotypes (DNA) turn into phenotypes
(the large-scale appearance of an individual organism)? It's
pretty cool, and pretty complex, but is it really as big a
mystery as you seem to be suggesting?

JC:
Darwin really only showed that if parts could come together
they could be selected by forces that started pulling them
apart. Each stage would become more resistant to being
pulled apart (become selected by the destructive forces).

But this doesn't explain why it was possible in the first
place only that it must have been possible and being possible
would happen as a result of this selective process.

You must be reading Reid's work now! Your comments are what drives his
work.


Things that are too stable and cannot be pulled apart will cease
to evolve (like a column of magnetic buttons). Things that are
too unstable and easily pulled apart will cease to evolve (like
a column of coins). It is the survivors along the edge of chaos
that evolve. They have the right stuff to hold themselves together
against the forces pulling them apart. They have the right stuff
to evolve into more dynamic stable systems resisting destruction.

One observation is that living things consume energy. What other
way can they resist the energies pulling them apart except with
energies utilized to hold them together?

Yes - an d one of the "rith stuff" things, or constriants, is that many
biological processes conserve as much energy as possible - a minimization
function exists.



Actually life has honed a fine balance between static and dynamic
structures via natural selection. And it has honed a fine balance
between mutation (so as to keep evolving) and stability against
mutation (so it doesn't fall to bits before it reproduces).

Order Out of Chaos is Prigogine's contrbution in this area.
As well, check out Alwyn Scott's work on dynamic processes and how emergence
of new operators occurs (actual operators that do something to the "bits in
the bag" and are captured as mathematical operators in the various equations
that describe dynamical systems.)




The other important element is that the environment includes other
evolving systems competing for the same resources. Thus we cannot
find the precursors of life as they were long ago wiped out by
the ever increasing complex systems that exceeded them. Should they
accidentally occur again (and maybe this happens all the time) they
would quickly be pulled apart by complex systems for their
components.

I see an analogy here with more complex social systems wiping out
less complex social systems. Simple societies can no longer compete
with complex societies for the available resources.

We cannot necessarily extend that concept to societies of agents, of minds,
that exist as symbiots rather than adversaries. The simple (e.g., bacteria
in the gut) exist alongside the multi-celled animal containing them (e.g.,
us)







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