ELECTION NIGHT

Florida just fell into the Bush column. I can't stand the suspense. I'm 67 for goodness sakes!

MORE ORIGIN OF MINDS

The following is a longish excerpt from “The Origin of Minds” which reveals the core of Peggy La Cerra’s ideas about the evolution of minds. Her explanation of how the mind evolved its capacity for a self and for causation is both deterministic and, yet, allows for the uniqueness of the individual mind. It cuts out a wide swath for nurture in the underbrush of genetic determinism:

pp. 50-53: “...all mammalian intelligence systems... are constantly monitoring the energetic costs of behavior and weighing them against the benefits (goods).

“How does the bee track these changes in environment and successfully navigate toward the goods? [Like us] the bee has evolved an integrated neuronal system that guides foraging behavior. One part of this system is instinctual, reflecting the regularities of the foraging problem. But there’s a new element... that enables it to go beyond the ‘if A, then B’ survival logic of E. Coli. It has a rudimentary cortex—a swatch of functionally plastic neural tissue—that can encode critical information about previously novel features of the environment and how they relate to the bottom line activity of getting the goods. It enables the bee [and us] to learn from past experience (the blue flowers were full of nectar on the last trip), make predictions about future rewards in variable environments (but they seem to have dried up; maybe I’d better try the yellow [flowers]), and execute fitness enhancing behavior on-line (Ah! Much better. I’ll take my pollen-delivery service to the yellows for awhile...). The bee’s intelligence system enables it to learn the new market environment quickly and home in on the nectar....

If you understand the mechanism that the bee uses to learn each new market environment and form associations between various floral features and ‘the goods’, you can understand the basic logic of your mind.

“Look at the key components of the bee’s guidance program. First, it needs a core instinctual mechanism. An evolved connection between a sensory stimulus in the environment (...sugary sweetness of the nectar) and a specific behavioral response (extension of the proboscis—the nectar-sucking tube).... In the early stages of development, your intelligence system relies on an analogous instinct—simply substitute the sucking reflex for proboscis extension and mother’s milk for nectar.... As you begin to navigate your path in the markets of life, these instincts are the first step in the creation of your customized representations.

“In addition to this instinct, the bee needs sensory systems, such as visual and olfactory systems, that can detect and record features of the environment that were previously arbitrary (... color or odor of a particular flower) but have become associated with the availability of food. (Just as your visual system allowed you to form an association between a bottle and milk.)

“Third, it needs a plastic neural substrate—like your neocortex—in which these new associative network connections (‘adaptive representations’) can be formed. Finally, it needs a neural mechanism to build and modify these representations in light of experience. (Remember, these representations automatically self-adapt with the outcome of each relevant experience, increasing or decreasing their strength as a function of the value of the acquired ‘goods’.)

“In the bee, the plastic neural substrate is found in structures called the mushroom bodies and protocerebral lobes of its brain—the bee’s equivalent of your neocortex. The neural mechanism that forms new representations is a special neuron (called ‘VUMmx1’) that projects from the life history regulatory system [LHRS] (the part of the system that ‘knows’ whether or not the bee just got food) to the plastic part of the brain. When the goods have been registered, this neuron ensures that the sensory information—which just came into the brain—will be associated with the appropriate foraging and eating behavior.

“Our intelligence system works in much the same way.... [Humans have an analogous mechanism for the VUMmx1 of the bee. See Chapter Five.]”

So, there you are! The basic system upon which, according to La Cerra, we build our selves and our sense of causation, our very personalities by which we can function in groups to gain the sustenance we need in order to survive and thrive.
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"To my embarrassment, I was born in bed with a lady." —Wilson Mizner