[Bruce Nevin (950810 17:35 EDT)]
(Bill Powers (950806.2300 MDT)) --
Replying to (Avery Andrews (950807))
In standard natural selection, there is only one error: death.
No: failure to replicate.
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Reorganization in a control system like a human is brought about by actions
of cells within the control system. Each of the cells is an autonomous
control system. These actions are their means of controlling inputs that
matter to them as autonomous control systems.
Error in the control system (made up of cells) is different from error in
the cells. A nerve cell probably does not control its rate of firing,
that's a behavioral output of the cell; the rate of firing is probably its
means of controlling something else that matters in its cellular
metabolism. It might even be an incidental byproduct of control, and not a
means of control at all.
It may be that the cell cannot even perceive a rate of firing or a firing
spike per se, much less control it.
The perception that is being controlled by the control system (intensity
perception X, sensation perception Y, whatever it is) is certainly not
something that the cell can control, any more than we can control the
cell's inputs.
It is necessary that cells constituting our control systems not themselves
control any perceptions that we do, nor any of the means by which our
control functions are implemented (e.g. rate of firing). If they did so,
their autonomous control of these variables would interfere, maybe fatally,
with our control of them. An organism in which the perceptions and means of
implementation at one order of control are "nonexistent" in the perceptual
universe at the adjacent level of control is much more likely to survive
than one in which there is the possibility of such interference, even by
accident.
We are made up of autonomous control systems. Cells, by controlling things
that matter to them, have evolved into mutual arrangements that constitute
multicellular control systems of great complexity. (Cells are already
pretty complex!) These "social" arrangements of the cells enhance the
likelihood that the arrangements, and some representative population of
cells, will replicate and survive. Reorganization is an adjustment of those
arrangements. Reorganization must have a different significance to cells
and to the higher-order systems that their actions, in ways unknown and
probably unknowable to them, create, maintain, and adjust.
Cells are of one order of control systems, multicellular organisms are of
another, higher order of control systems.
In reorganization, cells do things (which result in adjustment of their
"social" arrangements, and reorganization of the higher-order systems) for
reasons of their own, not in response to error in the higher-order control
systems. Why should error at the higher level matter at all to cells at the
lower level? Perhaps comparators are so constructed as to produce chemical
byproducts of error. Something in the shared environment of the cells at
the location of error, something which slowly spreads as error persists.
Chronic error long enough, maybe you get cancer cells, who knows?
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If we humans, as autonomous control systems, have evolved or are in process
of evolving into mutual arrangements that constitute control systems of a
higher order, certain characteristics of our relationship to those
higher-order systems seem likely.
Error in a human is of a different order from error in a multi-human
control system. Outputs by which we control, or which are incidental
byproducts of control, would be analogous in function to the rate of firing
in a nerve cell, the means by which higher-order control functions are
implemented. These outputs probably are not even be perceptible to us--if
the higher order of control is to survive.
By controlling things that matter to us, as autonomous control systems, we
may have evolved into mutual arrangements that constitute higher-order
control systems. Those higher-order control systems do not impose control
upon us as autonomous control systems, any more than we as humans impose
control upon the cells of our bodies. The "social" arrangements of humans
(imperceptible to us) enhance the likelihood that the arrangements, and
some representative population of humans, will replicate and survive.
Reorganization, as an adjustment of those arrangements, must have a
different significance to humans and to the higher-order systems that our
actions, in ways unknown and perhaps unknowable to us, create, maintain,
and adjust.
In reorganization, then, we humans do things (which result in adjustment of
our "social" arrangements, and reorganization of the higher-order systems)
for reasons of their own, not in response to error in the higher-order
control systems. Why should error at the higher level matter at all to us
humans at the lower level? Perhaps there are environmental byproducts of
higher-order error, so that the error itself remains invisible, but an
uncomfortable indicator of its existence and persistence is perceptible.
Something in the shared environment of the humans at the location of error,
something which slowly spreads as error persists. Chronic error long
enough, maybe you get sociopaths, who knows?
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Anthropology and sociology have historically had an uneasy concubinage,
anthropology as the handmaiden of empire, sociology that of the makers of
social policy. These "applied" interests presume that control of other
humans is possible (surely), desireable albeit difficult, and capable of
improvement, and it is largely on the basis of this last presumption that
the social sciences have been funded.
Is a cellular perspective politically viable (fundable)?
Is any other perspective literally viable?
Bruce Nevin