Sender-Receiver Systems within and between Organisms

Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some puzzles about “genetic information” can be resolved by seeing the genome as a cell-level memory with no sender.

[1]  Arnon Levy.  Information in Biology: A Fictionalist Account 1 , 2011 .

[2]  Vivien A. Casagrande,et al.  Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons , 1999 .

[3]  J. Donahoe.  Man as Machine: A Review of Memory and the Computa tional Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience by C. R. Gallistel and A. P. King , 2010 .

[4]  D. Kimbrough Oller,et al.  Evolution of communication systems : a comparative approach , 2004 .

[5]  Rosa Cao,et al.  A teleosemantic approach to information in the brain , 2012 .

[6]  Carl T. Bergstrom,et al.  The transmission sense of information , 2008, 0810.4168.

[7]  K. Sterelny,et al.  Two Modes of Transgenerational Information Transmission , 2010 .

[8]  R. Kirk.  CONVENTION: A PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY , 1970 .

[9]  Armin W. Schulz.  Signals: evolution, learning, and information , 2012 .

[10]  Peter Godfrey-Smith,et al.  On the Theoretical Role of "Genetic Coding" , 2000, Philosophy of Science.

[11]  Kevin J. S. Zollman,et al.  Evolutionary Dynamics of Lewis Signaling Games: , 2007 .

[12]  C. Gallistel,et al.  Memory and the Computational Brain , 2009 .

[13]  R. Lewontin,et al.  The Ontogeny of Information , 2000 .

[14]  Jay F. Rosenberg,et al.  Language, thought and other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism , 1987 .

[15]  Cailin O'Connor,et al.  Evolving Perceptual Categories , 2014, Philosophy of Science.

[16]  R. Kirk.  Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories , 1985 .

[17]  B. Skyrms.  Evolution of the social contract , 1996 .

[18]  James H. Moor,et al.  Knowledge and the Flow of Information. , 1982 .

[19]  William P. Alston,et al.  Knowledge and the Flow of Information , 1985 .

[20]  Charles R. Gallistel,et al.  Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science will Transform Neuroscience , 2009 .

[21]  R. Axelrod,et al.  Evolutionary Dynamics , 2004 .

[22]  Nicholas Shea,et al.  Representation in the genome and in other inheritance systems , 2007 .

[23]  Peter H. Salus,et al.  Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism , 1987 .

[24]  E. Wagner.  Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning , 2012, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[25]  C. G. D.,et al.  Man as a Machine , 1916, Nature.

[26]  J. Morgan,et al.  Cheap Talk , 2005 .

[27]  Richard C. Francis.  Why Men Won't Ask for Directions: The Seductions of Sociobiology , 2004 .

[28]  Charles Randy Gallistel,et al.  RESPONSE TO DONAHOE REVIEW , 2010 .

[29]  Christof Koch,et al.  Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons (Computational Neuroscience Series) , 1998 .

[30]  B. Skyrms.  The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure , 2003 .

[31]  K. Danziger.  Marking the Mind. A History of Memory , 2009, History & Philosophy of Psychology.

[32]  Sang Joon Kim,et al.  A Mathematical Theory of Communication , 2006 .

[33]  P. Griffiths.  Genetic Information: A Metaphor in Search of a Theory , 2001, Philosophy of Science.

[34]  D. L. Nanney,et al.  EPIGENETIC CONTROL SYSTEMS. , 1958, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[35]  B. Brookes,et al.  Biological information , 1974, Nature.

[36]  David Haig,et al.  Conflicting messages: genomic imprinting and internal communication , 2008 .

[37]  Richard Dawkins,et al.  Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder , 1998 .

[38]  Peter Godfrey-Smith,et al.  Communication and Common Interest , 2013, PLoS Comput. Biol..

[39]  Senders, receivers, and genetic information: comments on Bergstrom and Rosvall , 2011 .

[40]  N. Shea.  Two Modes of Transgenerational Information Transmission , 2010 .

[41]  David P. Hughes,et al.  Sociobiology of communication : an interdisciplinary perspective , 2008 .

[42]  Brant Pridmore.  Representation in the genome , 2013 .

[43]  Peter Klopfer,et al.  The Ontogeny of Information , 1985 .

[44]  Kevin J. S. Zollman,et al.  Evolutionary dynamics of Lewis signaling games: signaling systems vs. partial pooling , 2007, Synthese.

[45]  P. Godfrey‐Smith.  Darwinian populations and natural selection , 2009 .

[46]  Caleb Gattegno.  Evolution and Memory , 2010 .

[47]  Ulrich E. Stegmann,et al.  Genetic Information as Instructional Content* , 2005, Philosophy of Science.

[48]  G. Jékely.  Origin and early evolution of neural circuits for the control of ciliary locomotion , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[49]  S. Jacyna.  Man as Machine , 2008 .

[50]  Arnon Levy,et al.  Information in Biology : A Fictionalist Account , 2011 .