2,842 research outputs found
Expanding the modern synthesis II: Formal perspectives on the inherent role of niche construction in fitness
No full textExpanding the modern synthesis requires elevating the role of interaction within and across various biological scales to the status of an evolutionary principle. One way to do this is to characterize genes, gene expression, and embedding environment as information sources linked by crosstalk, constrained by the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory (Wallace, 2010a). This produces an inherently interactive structure that escapes the straightjacket of mathematical population genetics or other replicator dynamics. Here, we examine fitness from that larger perspective, finding it intimately intertwined with niche construction. Two complementary models are explored: niche construction as mediating the connection between environmental signals and gene expression, and as a means of tuning the channel for the transmission of genetic information in a noisy environment. These are different views of the same elephant, in a sense, seen as simplified projections down from a larger dynamic system
New mathematical foundations for AI and Alife: Are the necessary conditions for animal consciousness sufficient for the design of intelligent machines?
No full textRodney Brooks' call for 'new mathematics' to revitalize the disciplines of artificial intelligence and artificial life can be answered by adaptation of what Adams has called 'the informational turn in philosophy' and by the novel perspectives that program gives into empirical studies of animal cognition and consciousness. Going backward from the necessary conditions communication theory imposes on cognition and consciousness to sufficient conditions for machine design is, however, an extraordinarily difficult engineering task. The most likely use for the first generations of conscious machines will be to model the various forms of psychopathology, since we have little or no understanding of how consciousness is stabilized in humans or other animals
Machine Hyperconsciousness
No full textIndividual animal consciousness appears limited to a single giant component of interacting cognitive modules, instantiating a shifting, highly tunable, Global Workspace. Human institutions, by contrast, can support several, often many, such giant components simultaneously, although they generally function far more slowly than the minds of the individuals who compose them. Machines having multiple global workspaces -- hyperconscious machines -- should, however, be able to operate at the few hundred milliseconds characteistic of individual consciousness. Such multitasking -- machine or institutional -- while clearly limiting the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, does not eliminate it, and introduces characteristic failure modes involving the distortion of information sent between global workspaces. This suggests that machines explicitly designed along these principles, while highly efficient at certain sets of tasks, remain subject to canonical and idiosyncratic failure patterns analogous to, but more complicated than, those explored in Wallace (2006a). By contrast, institutions, facing similar challenges, are usually deeply embedded in a highly stabilizing cultural matrix of law, custom, and tradition which has evolved over many centuries. Parallel development of analogous engineering strategies, directed toward ensuring an 'ethical' device, would seem requisite to the sucessful application of any form of hyperconscious machine technology
John Stevens Wallace Correspondence
No full textEntries include brief biographical information, a typed letter from sales manager Bennett on Stephen Daye Press, Inc., Book Publishers, stationery concerning moving the publisher from Vermont to New York City, changes in staff, and a book with several revisions of the working title presumably written by author and illustrator John Stevens Wallace with some biographical information about him, a typed letter from the Maine State Library requesting biographical information about Wallace, a humorous letter of reply concerning Wallace\u27s place of birth from Bennett on revised Stephen Daye Press, Inc., stationery, a typed letter from the Maine State Library requesting a copy of Wallace\u27s book titled Village Down East for the Maine Author Collection, a typed letter from Wallace on personal notepaper with some biographical information and hopes of presenting his original drawings from the book on exhibit at the Maine State Library, a typed letter of reply on receipt of Wallace\u27s book gift for the Maine Author Collection that the Maine State Library had no place to display works of art with suggestions of libraries that did host events of this type, and a letter typed from Jacob of the Maine State Library with an appeal for biographical information and a call for Wallace to pursue an exhibit of his drawings
Marion Wallace Correspondence
No full textEntries include the brief biographical information of fifteen year old Miss Marion Wallace on publishing her first volume of poetry written between the ages of nine and fourteen, a letter typed by the Maine State Library introducing Marion Wallace to the Maine Author Collection and requesting a copy of her book for this collection, a handwritten biographical letter of reply from Marion Wallace, and a typed letter of encouragement from the Maine State Library on receipt of her book of poems Stray Thoughts for the Maine Author Collection
James H. Wallace Correspondence
No full textEntries include brief biographical information, a typed letter introducing Wallace to the Maine Author Collection, a typed letter of thanks from Wallace on plain paper, and an admiring letter typed on receipt of The Gallows Tree and Other Poems from the Maine State Library
General Lew Wallace, 1886
No full textLew Wallace, Civil War general, diplomat, and author of Ben-Hur was born in Brookville, Indiana. He was the son of Indiana Governor David Wallace. David Wallace had moved to Brookville, Indiana in 1817 where he established a successful law practice. While there he married Esther French Test and they had four sons.Franklin County Journe
David Duncan Wallace Papers - Accession 333
No full textThe David Duncan Wallace Papers consist of microfiche copies of the original David D. Wallace family papers, 1866-1951, SCHS 1233.00 held at the South Carolina Historical Society. David Duncan Wallace (1874-1951) was a Professor of History at Wofford College from 1899 through 1947 and was the author of the three volume set titled, History of South Carolina published in 1934. He is considered one of the foremost historians in State. The papers consist of his correspondence, research notes, clippings, and published and unpublished manuscripts related to his publications and areas of research. Also, included is some ephemera and other items.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/1417/thumbnail.jp
Roman roads: The hierarchical endosymbiosis of cognitive modules
No full textSerial endosymbiosis theory provides a unifying paradigm for examining the interaction of cognitive modules at vastly different scales of biological, social, and cultural organization. A trivial but not unimportant model associates a dual information source with a broad class of cognitive processes, and punctuated phenomena akin to phase transitions in physical systems, and associated coevolutionary processes, emerge as consequences of the homology between information source uncertainty and free energy density. The dynamics, including patterns of punctuation similar to ecosystem resilience transitions, are large dominated by the availability of 'Roman roads' constituting channels for the transmission of information between modules
The cultural epigenetics of psychopathology: The missing heritability of complex diseases found?
No full textWe extend a cognitive paradigm for gene expression based on the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory to the epigenetic epidemiology of mental disorders. In particular, we recognize the fundamental role culture plays in human biology, another heritage mechanism parallel to, and interacting with, the more familiar genetic and epigenetic systems. We do this via a model through which culture acts as another tunable epigenetic catalyst that both directs developmental trajectories, and becomes convoluted with individual ontology, via a mutually-interacting crosstalk mediated by a social interaction that is itself culturally driven. We call for the incorporation of embedding culture as an essential component of the epigenetic regulation of human mental development and its dysfunctions, bringing what is perhaps the central reality of human biology into the center of biological psychiatry. Current US work on gene-environment interactions in psychiatry must be extended to a model of gene-environment-culture interaction to avoid becoming victim of an extreme American individualism that threatens to create paradigms particular to that culture and that are, indeed, peculiar in the context of the world's cultures. The cultural and epigenetic systems of heritage may well provide the 'missing' heritability of complex diseases now under so much intense discussion
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