Abstract
I look back at my 1996 book Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature, responding to papers by Pamela Lyon, Fred Keijzer and Argyris Arnellos, and Matt Grove.
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Notes
Complexity described a general principle about the function of cognition, and also tried to do something in the history and sociology of ideas. I argued that similar kinds of debate take place in many fields when oppositions between more externalist and more internalist theories arise. I still think there's a large-scale pattern visible across many debates of this kind, and still think there's value to the ECT, but I think it was a mistake to tie the two themes together in the way I did. The problem wasn't having both themes in one book, but arguing that the ECT lives on one side of the externalist/internalist divide described in the diagnostic parts of the book. This was another aspect of Sterelny's message in his review of Complexity (Sterelny 1997).
For simplicity I will only talk about bacteria here, but archaea are also part of the picture, though they have not been studied as closely.
I discuss these issues in more detail in Godfrey-Smith (2016b).
The challenge for the ECT is whether the origins of the animal sensorimotor organization—on which ECT depends—can be most suitably explained by environmental complexity or that an IC account has the better cards.
Grove tends to discuss cultural adaptation and individual learning together in this context, contrasting both with genetic evolution. I think culture and individual learning have roles that are more distinct than he suggests, in relation to the ECT, but I leave this point aside here.
If the value of the environmental variable is 0.5 and the value of an individual’s genotype is 0.4, that individual will perfectly match the environment providing it has a plasticity level of ≥0.1.
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Godfrey-Smith, P. Complexity revisited. Biol Philos 32, 467–479 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-017-9569-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-017-9569-z