KC Class 6

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Plotkin : track the world so that the correspondence between the agent and the world is always there in a changing world

primary heuristic

secondary heuristic

anterior forebrain in chicks implicated with imprinting.

Exp. 1: Three groups of chicks, each with separate imprinting stimulus

Group 1: a Fake fowl (colorful and moving)

Group 2: floating colored balloons

Group 3: boxes

forebrain of chicks lesioned after imprinting.

Each chick group is allowed to either follow original imprinted stimulus or a new stimulus.

The group that initially imprinted on fowl continue to imprint on fowl.

the other two groups did not continue to follow the balloons or boxes.

Exp. 2: One Group of chicks. raised for 6-10 hours in darkness. then forebrain lesioned. A control group is raised in darkness and then lesioned in another part of the brain.

Two fake fowls (different in color) introduced. chicks given 200 minutes to imprint. The group with lesioned forebrain showed no preference to the fowls regardless of the 200 minutes and did not stay with the first fowl. However, the other group's lesion did not affect imprinting and thus continued showing a preference to one of the fake fowls.

chicks seem to prefer a fowl even if not the one that was imprinted upon.

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Selectionist Theory:

No distinction between innate and learned knowledge -- a seamless view of knowledge.

Everything proceeds by selection. Whatever knowledge you have is actually already there, a part of the organism from the start.

Learning is not instructionist.

Changeux (cricket guy) and Gazzaniga (split brain guy) and Edelman (AI guy) and Plotkin all Selectionists

Gazzaniga's "Nature's Mind" : The environment selects the built-in options; it does not modify them. All that we do in life is discover what is already built into our brains.

Geertz (anthropology): Our ideas our values our acts even our emotions are like the nervous system itself, cultural products, products manufactured.

Very much like gazzaniga but opposite in a way.

Nervous system example. The immune system must be learning how to fight off invaders. All antibodies present with us when we're born. Daughter cells selected for that are even better suited for fighting particular antigens. -- selectionist story

What is the propaganda for selectionist theory? The simplest way to explain things is the right way.

Instructionalism:

learning is changes in the nervous system - embodiment of the knowledge.

The Baldwin Effect --

Edelman: Theory of Neural group selection: we have everything we need at birth (over proliferation of neural connections at birth -- 150 % more than now), neurons only get strengthened or weakened over time.