Integral model of being. Column in ComputerreOnline #64
The logic of our development can be understood by examining the evolution of reality models in the psyche of highly organized animals. It can be assumed that initially these models simply describe the positions of objects that are important in terms of nutrition, protection, and locomotion.
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Dmytro Shabanov
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Competition or Control? A Holistic Model of Being Orientation by an Internal Map
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N.N.: Does it ever happen to you: you walk into a room and completely forget why you came? M.M.: Well? N.N.: I have the feeling that dogs live their entire lives like that. (excerpt from someone's unknown conversation) Another person's soul is darkness. We make mistakes again and again trying to guess what's going on in another person's head. How much harder is it to look into the psyche of other animals! Whatever they say, all the data we have today are more grounds for speculation than solid facts. Perhaps, striving for rigor of reasoning, we should abandon the interpretation of the inner reality of representatives of other species once and for all? There is a point to this decision, but I don't like it anyway. Trying to look into the brain (or, for example, the superesophageal ganglion) of other animals is worthwhile at least to better understand what is happening in our own skulls. I am currently conducting field practice for second-year zoology students of vertebrates. We are living at a biological station I once told you about, going on excursions, and doing educational research. During this activity, I recently showed the students how frogs become stunned. I'm showing you too. You take a frog in your hands, turn it onto its back on a flat surface, press its arms and legs to its body, and... voilà! The green frog is stunned. It will lie like that until some stimulus brings it out of this state. Why doesn't the frog move? A lot has been said about this, and poorly coordinated versions have been proposed. I will present the one that seems logical to me, but I will not claim it to be the ultimate truth. The behavior of frogs, like that of many other animals, is governed by quite simple mechanisms that work on an "action-reaction" principle. Various types of reactions are triggered by surprisingly simple stimuli. Retinal cells react to changes in light levels. If the frog is motionless and nothing around it changes, its visual cells quickly adapt to the established light level distribution and stop generating signals transmitted to the nervous system. Something changes in the world around the frog. The boundaries of object projections on the retina shift, cells react to changes in illumination, and the signals they generate are analyzed by the neural network of the eye itself. Special ganglion cells collect information from a specific area of the retina and react only if a clearly defined pattern of excitation dynamics is registered in that area. It turns out that the eye itself performs the initial analysis of the visual image. Small moving objects with rounded edges are interpreted as potential food. Large ones – as danger. Another category of cells reacts to a decrease in illumination and continuously analyzes whether the shadow of an approaching predator has fallen on the frog. Finally, there are ganglion cells in the retina that react to continuous contrast boundaries (the horizon, for example); they are probably important for spatial orientation. As a result of this complex of cells, not only information about changes in retinal illumination but also the results of its preliminary processing go to the brain. An object classified as potential prey causes both eyes to focus on it; the brain decides whether to attack or not. Probable danger will lead to alertness, and perhaps to a jump into the water from the bank – whatever happens. The frog will respond to different types of actions (stimuli) with different reactions. Everything around is motionless – the frog sees nothing. It moved – and a whole world appeared in its visual perception. The frog froze – the image of this world in its psyche faded and disappeared. What happens if the frog, for example, sits on a lily pad that is rocking in the waves? Its eyes make movements that compensate (probably not completely, but significantly) for the oscillations of the support. There is a cruel experiment. It used to be part of the standard biology curriculum, and now it has become unpopular (and it's good that it has become unpopular!) due to the spread of bioethical ideas. The frog is decapitated (the head is cut off with scissors), and then, for example, a little acid is dripped onto its belly (or it is pinched there with tweezers). The hind leg of the headless frog will try to flick away the irritant, performing a movement surprisingly similar to that of a normal, intact individual. This means that such a cleaning movement is controlled by the spinal cord. And here we see "action-reaction" control of behavior. What happens if the frog receives no significant signals? Nothing! It will sit as it was sitting. One of the complex functions performed by our nervous system (our: both human and frog!) is related to posture control. The posture of a sitting (or floating in water; or hidden at the bottom) frog is not accidental – it is a convenient starting point for movements that are probable for an animal in this position. A sitting frog can jump. Its entire body, almost all its skeletal joints, will move, but this complex of movements itself will also be largely automatic. The long, long legs begin to extend, pushing the body forward and upward. Before the tips of the longest toes push off from the support, the extension of the legs will increase the frog's jump speed. What happens in the psyche of a motionless sitting frog? Probably, nothing. No, something is there, but it resembles the visual image when the body is motionless: a stable picture onto which new signals will be superimposed if they arrive. In a motionless sitting frog, the level of certain motivations may increase. Hunger, increasing as energy is depleted, will lower its perception threshold for small moving objects – potential food. Drying skin will increase the probability that the amphibian will move towards higher humidity. Prolonged silence of a male during spawning leads to an increasing desire to emit a mating call; sooner or later, some external signal will trigger the corresponding behavioral reaction. All these external or internal (e.g., hormone levels) stimuli are not accidental. Over a long evolutionary period, the ancestors of any frog were selected for their ability to respond to them optimally. Action-reaction... Look again at the photo of the overturned frog. It receives no significant signals, and the content of its psyche is similar to the visual image in a motionless eye. When something happens (a fly lands on it or simply flies by, someone steps nearby, the wind blows, etc.), the frog will start moving, reacting to the stimulus. Its movements will reveal the unusualness of the position it is in. The frog's mechanism for turning over into a normal position will be activated, and eventually, it will switch to normal operating mode. Does our psyche function the same way? No. Although the basic mechanisms (in particular, those ensuring reactions to various actions) are the same in us, we have moved to a higher level of psychic functioning, which requires continuous perception and self-perception. Does the visual perception of the world stop when a person is motionless? No. And it's not that the cells of our retina are different from frog's, but that we constantly move our eyes. By the way, if a small object is attached to our eye, making its projection on the retina motionless, the visual perception of this object will be drastically impaired; sometimes it will become completely invisible, and sometimes it will "appear" distorted, visible in parts. What prevents us from stopping the continuous "dance" of our eyes when there is nothing interesting around us? Among other things, the fact that our psyche (when awake) builds and continuously maintains, corrects the model of the world around us. Don't think that a continuous model in the psyche is only our property. Based on the fact that a dog's eyes move approximately the same way as ours, it can be assumed that its psyche, like that of highly developed mammals and birds, undergoes similar processes. I think that an animal with high intelligence needs a continuous model of its physical environment. If something happens that requires energetic action, it will be too late to figure out where the organism is. It's better to know this in advance; therefore, one must continuously maintain a model of one's environment – for what purpose? But is the model of reality in our psyche or a dog's psyche truly continuous? There is one important exception – sleep. When a person sleeps, special mechanisms block the transmission of commands from the brain to the muscles that ensure voluntary movements. The person is not paralyzed: the cardiac and respiratory muscles, the muscles ensuring intestinal peristalsis, do their job. But if a sleeping person dreams that they are running and waving their arms, their limbs, fortunately, do not perform corresponding running movements. During sleep, the model of reality begins to live its own life, detached from the sensory stream that corrects it. Why? I once proposed a hypothesis (without claiming priority). During sleep, neural networks that ensure adaptive behavior are formed, but these networks are trained not under "combat" conditions, but on a model – again, a model! I wonder what this explanation looks like from the perspective of specialists today? ...I was writing this column disconnected from the internet. While finishing it, I checked online whether I had correctly explained the peculiarities of the frog's eye. It turns out that the logic of my column strongly echoed the logic of one part of Valentin Turchin's wonderful "Phenomenon of Science"! This is probably not a coincidence, but inheritance – I once read Turchin's book. Valentin Fyodorovich discusses the structure of the frog's eye and the human eye and moves from discussing them to the models we create. But for some reason, he immediately starts talking about models created by our language, supported by our culture. It seems to me he is "skipping ahead." The stream of visual information is one of the mechanisms for maintaining that internal psychic model of reality that does not require words. Of course, in you and me, this model has been strongly influenced by culture, but its foundation is likely closely related to the dog's model and significantly differs from the frog's fragmented model. I believe that the very emergence of culture can be seen as a consequence of the logic of the development of internal psychic models! I have already talked about a conclusion that is important to me. The logic of our formation can be understood by examining the evolution of reality models in the psyche of highly organized animals. Using frogs as an example, we can assume that initially, these models simply describe the location of objects important for feeding, defense, and movement. They become more complex, continuous, and are supported by a continuous stream of sensory information. What are the next stages of their development? More on that later.
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Dmytro Shabanov
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Competition or Control? A Holistic Model of Being Orientation by an Internal Map
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