Re: Fundamental theorems, dilemmas, fitness, and information.


"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:d9qdas$qhh$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:d9p9bg$cvq$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > The SPECIES can "sense" that the environment is cold and getting
>> > colder even if the individual ORGANISMS that constitute the species
>> > are clueless regarding temperature.
>>
>> This strikes me as an abstraction with no useful purpose or connection to
>> me, so if it is not I would appreciate explanation as to how and why.
>
> Well, actually it is my key point with connection to you. So I suppose
> I am obligated to explain. Here goes:
>
> Your reference to "genetic internalization of information" suggests that
> you are thinking about the idea that information about the environment
> becomes captured in the genome. This is a standard idea. Your choice
> of nervous-system examples suggests that you are going even further.
> You are interested in how information about how to perceive the
> environment
> and react to that perception becomes captured in the genome. Still
> quite standard ideas, though a little more controversial. You may wish
> to read up on Waddington's ideas regarding "canalization" or read about
> the "Baldwin Effect".

Thank you for the info. However, I went out of my way NOT to mention
the genome, for a reason -- being that I have no certainty that the earliest
duplicable pre-life or life forms HAD any genes, and I hope to raise that
issue only when it presents in the conceptual hierarchy.

What I have not yet gotten across is that I am not trying to pose a finished
theory and biological dictionary to replace all existing ones, for crying
out
loud, I am trying to start from scratch and articulate (yes, clearly in each
and every step) a way that makes sense to me. Once I have found a way to
impart THIS strange goal, then maybe it will not be so tempting to try to
cram me into a stereotypical pigeon hole as to an issue that will not come
until later on up the road.

The primary problem so far is that I have failed utterly to set out to
anyone's
ability to comprehend, that I do not have a finished idea, but a huge
concept
the most important characteristic of which I plan to make malleable -- that
is,
not etched in stone, but capable of responding to dilemmas presented by
nature itself and by what is NOT KNOWN today, and what lies beyond any
evidence that has been reconstructed from the past.

This is MY FAULT, that I am unable so far even so much as to get across
what I am after, and am walking into landmines of predilictions and pigeon
holes that are the VERY things I want to address, once I can pull together a
methodology that does not lend itself to objections based on where I will
not get to for a considerable number of prior conceptual baby steps.

Indeed, if my first shot was a fiasco, I must learn from that, and pick
myself
up and start over again, seeking a better methodology. The feedback is
good.
It shows me just how hot and heavy will be the land mines, and informs me
of the necessity -- if I am EVER to get off the ground -- for a methodology
that is less subjective, less adversarial, less offensive, more interactive
.... and
the like.

My new start -- FROM SCRATCH -- will attempt to state issues and then
discuss what I know, and what my intuitive interpretations of the evidence
is -- where I DO NOT KNOW all the evidence -- but I know some of it
(assuming even that is correct), and some of it NOBODY KNOWS, and I
would like to try to draw some lines between what is somewhat established
and what is somewhat (or totally) speculative. But there I go looking too
far forward too soon, again. It's hard to bite my tongue and keep from just
setting up more lightening rods that will get set up in due time, if I can
just
discipline myself and not respond to every shove that tries to push me to
an issue that is way up the road.
> But it seemed to me, as I struggled to interpret your meanderings
> regarding
> "filters", that you were making the incorrect assumption that simple
> "genetic
> internalization of information" requires that the information first be
> perceived/perceivable by an individual organism. It does not. That was
> my point about the species being able to learn, even if the individual
> organisms that constitute the species are not capable of sensing the
> stimulus.
>
Hmmmmm. The more I think about it, if you think I am up to the point of
discussing issues of genetic filters, that is because I had not realized I
needed
to disclose the contrary.

Gotta keep that in mind: disclosing what I am not yet far enough along (in
what I am trying to do) to address that.

But I have the feeling everything I say, at this point, is just equivalent
to
instigating more and more predilections...

Not your fault, but if I don't stop trying to answer questions which seem to
me at the outset equivalent to "Why haven't you put a roof on this house,"
when I don't even have the slab poured yet, I'll never get the slab poured.


g


.

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