Abstract
Anticipation is an inevitable characteristic of life. Instead of asking whether this or that organism reveals some form of anticipation as it is often done in biology and psychology today, it is more fruitful to ask in which ways different organisms anticipate future. In this chapter Anokhin’s Functional Systems Theory is taken as a starting point to proceed with the analysis of how psychic and cultural mechanisms of anticipation have evolved over the history of mind. Grounded also on Vygotsky’s and Lotman’s theories, it is concluded that there are nine different developmentally ordered mechanisms of thought and correspondingly nine different forms of anticipation. Knowing the basic mechanisms of thinking, it becomes possible to evaluate research in anticipation from a new perspective. Limitations of less developed forms of anticipation can be recognized and replaced with more efficient hierarchically higher-order forms of anticipatory thinking.
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Notes
- 1.
Some ideas from this chapter were also presented at the conference Anticipation: Learning from the Past (September 1–3, 2014, Delmenhorst, Germany) organized by Nadin [3] at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg/Institute for Advanced Study. It was suggested by a participant of the workshop that Anokhin’s theory might be out of date due to its predominant leaning on cybernetic modelling, as opposed to non-equilibrium (anti-entropic) aspects of life stressed by other Soviet authors such as Bernstein. Some of Anokhin’s secondary ideas might be out of date or need supplementation. Yet, his general approach, which I have called structural-systemic, is rather ahead of time, even today. Anokhin’s Theory of Functional Systems, as a theory of the structure of purposeful acts, is also timely. Even most recent data, which I cannot describe in detail in this chapter due to space limitations, support the distinctions proposed by Anokhin in the components of action structure. I agree that this structure can be elaborated, as I am also doing in this chapter. Yet this does not refute any of the principal ideas of his theory. A theory of the structure of the studied phenomenon (e.g., a theory of a molecule or of a gene,) is out of date only when it is shown that the elements or their relationships are described incorrectly. According to that criterion, Anokhin’s theory is fully up to date.
- 2.
Quality is one of the terms that must be explicitly and consistently defined, in order to understand the following discussion. Quality, as I have defined it, is the potential of a structure to become into relationship with another structure ([6], p. 283). Thus in this particular case, as an example, qualitative difference between nonliving and living forms of matter refers to special ways the living can relate to its environment, the kinds of relationships that do not exist in the nonliving world.
- 3.
This idea was rediscovered by Rosen (cf. [8]). Even though he was familiar with some of Anokhin’s works, he did not mention Anokhin’s contribution in that particular context.
- 4.
I am not aware of any result-oriented action that would need only one step to achieve the expected adaptive end-result. By “as a rule” I leave open a possibility that such actions may exist. In those cases, this argument does not suggest the need for more than one form of anticipation.
- 5.
It is worth mentioning that the simplest form of changing the environment is movement in space, i.e., changing a position in space. Environment is not determined by some absolute characteristics, independent of the organisms. Rather, environment is always relative to the organism. So moving from one position to another leads to a change of the environment for the moving organism. In addition, I think exchange of matter between the organism and its environment—which is also an absolutely necessary characteristic of life, because every action requires energy—is another primitive form of changing environment. With every breath, for example, we inhale a certain amount of gas that was part of our environment and becomes part of us. By inhalation we have changed our environment—the gas we inhaled is not surrounding us anymore. Exhalation, in turn, adds something to the environment.
- 6.
Several phylogenetically old vegetative functions, such as respiration, are, according to Anokhin, also built as functional systems containing all universal components I shortly described above. Such functions, as was pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, may seem to have an Acceptor of the Result component that is also built into the system of respiration and not constructed specifically for achieving specific results. Also it may seem that such systems are not specific but function similarly across individuals, often in widely different species and environments. I argue, however, that the Acceptor of the Result is created as expectation of the result of very specific movements that comprise very specific actions in very specific environmental circumstances. First it is important to understand that such old functions may be universally present but still specific. Namely, such functions are specific not in respect of other organisms but in respect of other functional systems built for achieving other adaptive goals of the same organism. Second, every adaptive function of an organism needs to some degree a flexible Acceptor of the Result. Anokhin was clear here: “The universality of decision making in the functions of the organism can be seen not only from the behavioral acts, but also from purely vegetative functions. For example, the amount of inhaled air at a given moment corresponds to the organism’s needs for oxygen supply and carbon dioxide elimination. Any change in these needs is immediately met by a decrease or an increase in the air take” ([20], pp. 225–226).
Thus respiration must change flexibly to meet changing needs of the organism. These needs, in turn, are determined both by the state of the organism, level of oxygen in the blood, for example, and by the conditions of the environment. In higher altitudes it is necessary to breath more frequently in order to achieve the same level of oxygen in the blood. It is important to realize here that functional systems are not isolated entities in the organism with their own goals and adaptive reactions. Functional systems do not have needs themselves—needs characterize the organism as a whole. As the needs of the organism change when its state or environment changes, all functional systems, even the vegetative, must allow flexibility in their functioning to meet specific needs of the organism that correspond to organism’s specific state and specific environmental conditions at any given time. It does not follow, however, that all functional systems must have the same degree of flexibility. Some environmental conditions are relatively stable and functional systems for adapting to those conditions can be less flexible than others, which ground adaptation to relatively variable environmental conditions.
And perhaps one point more. I am not suggesting that creation of the Acceptor of the Result requires every time establishing completely new structural relationships between the elements of the functional system. Obviously, in case of organisms with a CNS, there is no need to create new synapses to connect neurons every time an Acceptor of the Result—or actually the whole functional system—is dynamically created. Rather, the functional system must be plastic; it must be possible to modify it according to the state of the organism and the state of the environment—which are constantly changing. There is evidence to suggest that this principle applies indeed, even in the case of relatively simple organisms. In Drosophila, for example, four GABAergic interneurons were recently identified, which control the amount and quality of the intake of water and nutrients [21]. In terms of Anokhin’s TFS, these neurons belong to the Acceptor of the Result. It is noteworthy that the system is plastic, its state can be modulated. Depending on the activity level of the interneurons intake of all compounds can become indiscriminate and excessive in case of inactivation; acute activation of the same interneurons, conversely, suppresses consumption of water and nutrients.
- 7.
Numerous examples of such actions can be found in recent human history. Among them, for instance, use of the insecticide DDT, which eventually turned out to have several unexpected side effects, and the use of Thalidomide, which relieved some uncomfortable effects of pregnancy, but also caused phocomelia (malformation of the limbs) in thousands of children.
- 8.
I prefer to use the term ‘psyche’, because the term ‘mind’ is in modern mainstream psychology usually used as an attribute of an organism as if isolated from the environment. Historically the term ‘psyche’ is also contaminated—by questionable theories of psychoanalysis. Yet the term ‘psyche’, psychoanalytic speculations left aside, is free of fragmented and both ontologically and epistemologically problematic meanings that characterize modern mainstream psychology (see, e.g., [13, 14, 24, 25], for the discussion of these fundamental problems). So I stick to ‘psyche’, even though ‘mind’ can be considered a synonym.
- 9.
Perhaps it is useful to elaborate a little, why I suggest that emergence of psyche requires nervous system. Anokhin suggested that in a certain sense, all evolution of organisms can be understood as an evolution of anticipatory reflection of reality. Indeed, organisms survive only because of a potential to anticipate future states of an environment. The more it is possible to anticipate, the better are the possibilities to adjust to the changes of the environment. One possibility to acquire a potential to anticipate a novel kind of change is through the emergence of another intraorganismic chain reaction that corresponds to a sequence of environmental events and is triggered by the first event in this change. I suggest that this requires an emergence of a novel receptor, because the same receptor cannot without additional information ground qualitatively different anticipatory chain-reactions on the basis of its activation alone. Obviously there has to be another possibility, because novel anticipations do emerge without emergence of qualitatively new receptors also. It is important that environmental events are characterized by numerous characteristics. Each of these characteristics, separately taken, can characterize many qualitatively-different environmental events that can also be parts of different repetitive sequences of environmental changes. Anticipation of future events on the basis of such nonspecific characteristics alone is often erroneous or even impossible. If, however, it is possible to anticipate not on the basis of single characteristics of events but on the basis of their constellations, increasingly specific events can be distinguished and therefore increasingly specific forms of anticipation become possible. However, there is one constraint here on combining intra-organismic anticipatory chain-reactions. As far as it is possible to tell today, there is barely anything actually known about intracellular molecular mechanisms of anticipation; there doesn’t seem to be a principle that determines the composition of the chemical chain-reactions that correspond to qualitatively different sequences of environmental changes. Thus it depends only on chance whether such different intracellular chains, triggered by activation of different receptors, can be chemically combined or not. In other words, intracellular anticipatory reactions for different environmental events are represented in qualitatively different “codes” that are mutually untranslatable.
Psyche, or learning on the basis of individual experiences, thus, could in principle be based either on emergence of novel receptors or on combining information from qualitatively different receptor systems. The first possibility, emergence of a novel receptor, would require biotic reorganization of the organism and therefore cannot ground individual learning. The second possibility, establishment of relationships between qualitatively different receptor systems is, however, limited and in many cases impossible because the information is represented in qualitatively different “codes”. This limitation disappears with the emergence of the nervous system where activations of fundamentally different receptor systems are all coded into the same code of nervous impulses. Thus in the nervous system there is no constraint on combining information from different receptor systems. This is why nervous system is necessary for the psyche to emerge.
- 10.
Vygotsky usually used the term ‘word’ in a wide sense referring to all kinds of linguistic signs, not only oral speech. I use the term ‘word’ in this chapter in the same wide sense.
- 11.
‘Concept’ is another term, which Vygotsky often used as synonymous to ‘word’ or linguistic sign. I use the term ‘concept’ as referring to linguistic signs exclusively.
- 12.
It should be noted that I am going to use terms to name every of the stages, which only partly overlap with those I proposed earlier. These older terms just feel a little clumsy to me now.
- 13.
I am switching here from the examples of child development to examples of the evolution of humanity. Theoretically, semiotically mediated thought develops through the same stages in both phylogenesis and ontogenesis. So both child development and human history provide examples of anticipations that emerge together with a new stage of development of the semiotically mediated thought.
- 14.
Mainstream psychology is, as I have defined it, “an approach to the science of mind accepted by the majority of psychologists and defined by ontological and epistemological qualities questioned by representatives of non-mainstream psychology.” See for a justification of this definition [14].
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This research was supported by Estonian Research Council Grant No IUT03-03 (Academic and Personal Development of an Individual in the System of Formal Education).
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Toomela, A. (2015). Towards Understanding Biotic, Psychic and Semiotically-Mediated Mechanisms of Anticipation. In: Nadin, M. (eds) Anticipation: Learning from the Past. Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19446-2_26
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