@Constance... fyi Section 3 re-draft.
3 Physiological knowledge and the evolved qualitative relevance of electromagnetic wavelengths
Molecular interactions and catalytic transformations are relatively slow to adapt to new environmental conditions (requiring generations). Nevertheless, the biochemical adaptations of
E. coli to time-sensitive environmental change indicate that there are clear advantages in being able to respond rapidly to and even to
pre-empt real-time environmental change. One can assume that with multicellular organisms, there are benefits to rapid transcellular communication too. Of course, the neuron is an example of a specialized cell that can transmit action potential very rapidly
and over distance. These capabilities have a transformative influence on evolution because they can facilitate
real-time (rather than generational) environmental responsivity. Nevertheless, as with all biochemical mechanisms, the evolutionary advancement of neural mechanisms is still contingent on their qualitative relevance, that is, on their value-added survival impact. But what is meant here by ‘qualitative relevance’ regarding rapidly responsive neural mechanisms? One way of approaching this question is by way of an imaginary species of insect called berrybug and its relation to colour:
Imagine our world simplified, where objects that reflect electromagnetic wavelengths between 526 and 606 THz are ubiquitous and are of no material benefit to a particular insect species called berrybug. Conversely, certain rare objects that reflect wavelengths between 400 and 484 THz are important to berrybug’s survival because of their superior nutritional content. Clearly, there would be an impact on survival pressures were berrybug to evolve innate biochemical and neurological mechanisms that institute a bias for 400–484 THz colorations over other frequencies during the assimilation of sensory stimulation. These inherited mechanisms would, for example, intensify focus in favour of this colour range; augment feedback through perceptual reinforcement; and more accurately direct further sensory exploration and assimilation. Such focal accentuation would facilitate operational economy for more responsive and ultimately rewarding motor activities. Conversely, it would be pertinent for innate mechanisms to be indifferent to the ubiquitous 526–606 THz reflecting objects by attenuating their focal impact. These differentiations would be more dimensional than a greyscale of valencies toward different wavelengths; in a complex world, they would institute a network of potential stances and attitudes toward a range of stimulation types. For instance, if those desirable 400–484 THz objects had the added characteristic of spherical contours (rather than jagged, for instance), any individuals of the species possessing autonomic shape-differentiating neurological capabilities would possess an additional qualifying survival advantage and qualitatively relevant stance. In themselves, these coloured and shaped objects may have
no intrinsic qualitative identity. Nevertheless, the species will tend to evolve increasingly subtle and sophisticated biochemical and neurological mechanisms that assimilate and differentiate the comparative qualitative merits of environmental features when those mechanisms prove relevant to the continuance of the species. This suggests that species have not evolved biochemical mechanisms that respond to an environment that is qualitative. Rather, physiologies themselves have become comparatively relevant and qualitative as an adaptive response to an otherwise qualitatively sterile world. For organism
A, environmental stimulus
X may be bad, while good for organism
B. It is the dynamic and complex mechanisms of
A, in contrast to
B, that determine what the qualitative instantiation of stimulus
X is to be. It is the mechanism itself that determines the nature of the qualitative relevancy of stimulus
X (through selective pressures over generations); the environmental stimulus
X has no qualitative identity in itself.
This indicates that there is a need for an expansionist interpretation of representation, as philosophical orthodoxy does not normally extend representation to biochemical and neurological mechanisms, preferring instead to confine it to semantically evaluable mental objects, such as concepts, ideas, impressions, percepts, rules and thoughts. But, the argument also indicates that physiologies do not represent, as orthodoxy would have it, the truth of what things
are—namely, in this example, the (apparent) qualitative colours and shapes of objects out there in the world. Rather, they represent what environmental features have
come to mean for the survival of the species: biochemical functions tend to evolve in a way that qualifies the qualitative relevancy of environmental interaction. This extends to ideas concerning observer-dependence. The qualitative representational correspondence between a species’ physiologies and the world is dependent on the construction of the observing agency, not on the observed object itself; the apparent qualitative facts of the observed are
entirely observer-dependent. But importantly, in this berrybug example, the observing agency—that is, the agency of discourse—is ‘the species’
not its individual members; the species, therefore, is a class of representational construct, which is distinct from that of its individual members or of the mental content which individuals may possess. This is why there must be different classes both of observational agency and of representational construction.
The relationship between evolved physiologies and their relevance to the environment and to survival indicates why it is that wavelengths ranging between 526–606 and 400–484 THz, whose colours humans refer to as approximating to green and red respectively, and each shape, which humans refer to as spherical and jagged, are potentially both qualitatively differentiated and observer-dependent for any given species—and, importantly, regarding physiologically founded intersubjective variation, further differentiated to some degree amongst individual members of species, being most pronounced in those that are the product of sexual reproduction.
That there is an observer-dependent relationship between physiologies and environmental characteristics suggests that a creature in our imagined simplified world that gains nutritional benefits from blue bananas but none from red berries will possess contrasting valencies to that of berrybug (because its survival would depend on it); it would have evolved physiologies that would be alert to blue colorations at the expense of red such that the creature’s blue would be equivalent to berrybug’s red, though green would be unaltered. Inevitably, this account undermines the view (e.g. Carruthers 1998: 212–3) that it is not possible for organisms that are sensitive to the same range of wavelengths as ourselves to have contrasting valencies. Evolutionary pressures ensure that a species’ physiological mechanisms evolve in a manner that is responsive to its particular nutritional, reproductive, nurturing, reparative, locational needs and priorities: this is the survival precedent.
Critically on this account, in opposition to Dretske’s (1981, e.g. pp. 162–3) influential work, particular spectral frequencies do not carry observer-independent qualitative information that awaits the evolution of decoding mechanisms. This point qualifies the third expansionist parameter, namely, that information in nature should be understood as relating to the
constitution of unified observer-dependent constructs, whose value and informedness are a derivative of ongoing environmental engagement. To clarify,
any agency—be it a living or nonliving construct—reacts physically in a way that is determined by its own dynamic construction. This construction thereby defines the ‘nature of the fact’ of the physical entity with which it interacts: no physical entity has independent informational content by which we might call it ‘a fact of that physical entity’. This view of information differs from its more typical interpretation as an observer-
independent commodity that exists objectively ‘out there’ in the world. For example, we frequently hear that information can be used, detected, processed, acquired, transmitted, received, extracted, embodied, converted, utilized, and stored—the stance taken by Simon (1978: 3) is typical—and orthodoxy has it that knowledge in turn is
built from information (e.g., Dretske 1981: 47). As a commodity that exists out there in the world, observer-independent advocates have it that information awaits the necessary operational systems that are somehow capable of constructing meaning. Those who take this view find that the fundamental question underpinning their naturalist ambitions is how meaning is created from this external pool of environmental information. The alternative presented here, is that there are distinct classes of informational construction and that the meaning attributed to environmental interaction is entirely dependent on the dynamic construction of the discursive observing agency.
