---- By J. L. S.
---------------- NOTHING, really. But I thank L. J. Kramer for his comment in "Selfish Memes?", THIS BLOG. He writes about Sphex ichneumoneus, brilliantly, and just on time
He writes:
"[I]t's probably time to bring out
Gödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstader has
a lot there about
[Sphex ichneumoneus], which acts
in a genetically fixed way". ...
"Hofstader coined the term "sfexish"
for that sort of behavior."
Beautiful. I see it's in his Metamagic Themata, repr. his (1982), and was taken up by once Oxonian philosopher D. Dennett.
"you must either read GEB or
explain why you haven't mentioned it yet!"
Egsactly. Perhaps I spent too much time, looking, rather than reading, the first bits of Bennett's Linguistic Behaviour -- a bore in comparison! (I love Bennett!). Bennett, like Grice, seems to be mainly onto
creatures to which we can ascribe a 'goal'.
In what Grice calls his "Grand Plan" for the William James lectures, which I have excerpted elsewhere, he indeed writes to the effect that he'll be interested in precisely those
"creatures where it makes _sense_
to say they aim at a goal"
or something. I was amused by this, because this was pre-1967, and while goal-oriented simulations were common by then, one may not expect an Oxford philosophy don to care much about them.
Bennett makes the important point that this is where rationality sort of starts. Bennett, who was also Oxford-educated had a previous book on Rationality _simpliciter_. Grice always respected Bennett (intellectually and personally) and credits him in Foreword of 1989, for example.
---- So back to Escher.
The locus classicus for 'sphexishness' is then
Hofstadter, D. R. (1982).
Can creativity be mechanized?
Scientific American, 247, 20-29.
---
Hofstadter is then playing with the Genus sphex.
As he cleverly notes, instead of the scholastic notion of 'liber arbitrium', beloved of William James, he prefers, "a perhaps more vexish mouthful of a word,": anti-sphexishness.
This is not your average free-will but your escape from infinite regresses (of the type I have analysed elsewhere as mise-en-abyme):
An online dictionary thus defines:
antisphexishness: Not sphexish;
capable, as the higher animals are,
of monitoring one's own thought processes
and avoiding pitfalls such as
infinite loops.
(that the digger wasp will not).
I like Hofstadter's idea of the "highest possible degree" to refer to this sort of anti-mise-en-abyme iterated propositional attitude:
I believe that p, I believe that I believe that p, I believe that I believe that I believe that p, etc.
Hofstadter:
"I propose to call the quality here portrayed sphexishness, and its opposite antisphexishness, ... and then I propose that consciousness is
simply the possession of antisphexishness
to the highest possible degree."
----
Consciousness is such a trick, that I guess any way of elucidating or attempt at elucidating the problem should be welcome.
---
Since Grice enjoyed ethology (watching squarrels (sic) hobble nuts), here is the Woodridge descript of the digger wasp that inspired Hofstadter and Dennett:
"When the time comes for egg laying,
the wasp Sphex builds a burrow for
the purpose."
"Then, the wasp will seek out a cricket.
She stings the cricket in such a way as to
paralyze but not kill it."
"She then drags the cricket into the
burrow."
"She then lays her eggs alongside."
"She then closes the burrow."
"She then flies away, never to return."
---- THE AFTERMATH:
"In due course, the eggs hatch and
the wasp grubs feed off the paralyzed
cricket, which has not decayed, having
been kept in the wasp equivalent of deep
freeze."
----- WHEN THE LOOP COMES IN:
"IF the cricket is moved a few inches
away while the wasp is inside making
her preliminary inspection, the wasp,
on emerging from the burrow, will
bring the cricket back to the threshold,
but not inside, and will then repeat the
preparatory procedure of entering the
burrow to see that everything is all right."
"If, again, the cricket is removed a few
inches while the wasp is inside, once
AGAIN she will move the cricket up to
the threshold and re-enter the burrow
for a check."
----
"On one occasion this procedure was
repeated
40 times."
(Woodridge, 1963, p. 82) -- the thing has also been analyzed by ... Dawkins!
---
What one learns from wiki:
WHO FRAMES THE SPHEX?
The wicked human!
---
For there is a wicked experimenter behind. These people, usually granted by state-run universities, don't seem to have anything more serious to do (e.g. join the Grice Circle) but move crickets out of wasps's nests. In-blooming-credible!
From the wiki, 'digger wasp':
"During the wasp's inspection of the nest
an experimenter"
--- usually called "Jack" --
"can move the prey a few inches away
from the opening of the nest. When the
Sphex emerges from the nest ready
to drag in the cricket, it finds it missing."
"The Sphex quickly locates the moved cricket,
but now its behavioural "programme" has been reset."
--- And Jack gets a renewal for his grant.
"After dragging the cricket back to the
opening of the nest, once again the Sphex
is compelled to inspect the nest, so
the cricket is again dropped and left
outside during another inspection of the
nest."
"This iteration can be repeated again and again,"
--- Until the officer of scholarship and state-governed research finds out, and Jack is found redundant.
"with the Sphex never seeming to notice what
is going on"
--- or the general public. (Because Jack wears dark glasses).
"never able to escape from its programmed sequence of behaviours."
Well, yes.
As J. Kennedy notes, "the logical structuring of a research paper".
It's sphexishness of the scholar! Leave the ethos alone!
It's totally UNFAIR to provide theory-laden observation like THAT!
It's like Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle!
the poor
POOR
POOR
little waspie!
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I should have checked the animal I was talking about. I read Metamathemagica shortly after GEB, so they are a blur, as was the insect in question, which went from wasp to moth, etc. Sorry about that. The "sf" is due to too much recent time spent trying to learn Italian.
ReplyDeletePoor little waspie? Seems to me it's the cricket that's having the bad day.
The 5-second rule. I don't know if that rule is univerally observed, but many people I know have adopted a strategy whereby if a piece of dry food falls on a dry floor and stays there less than five seconds, it's ok to eat.
What if the sphex has no time-clock in his head? In that case, he has no idea what has happened to his burrow while he was out retrieving the cricket. So, of course, he has to check the burrow. I mean, what are the odds that the cricket will move again? Is his name Sphisyphus? (Think of the actuary who carries a bomb onto the plane because the chance of their being two bombs on one plane are infinitesimal.)
What if Jack were to move the cricket a smaller distance each time to discover how far is too far - how the wasp's 5-second rule works. It seems to me not too far a stretch for the wasp to evolve an exertometer that chemically tracks his effort to get the cricket to the burrow and reboots the "check the burrow" routine if enough exertion occurs. But, of course, selective pressure would be needed for that, and nature doesn't seem interested. Hence, no reason for the wasp to have a clock in its head. But riddle me this: how does the wasp know that the cricket a few inches away is hers and has been adequately dosed? Why does she only go back to the "drag the cricket" stage of the process and not the "find a chirping cricket" stage. After all, an inert cricket could be dying.
Perhaps the wasp knows a dosed cricket when she sees one. Here is a computer program for the wasp. Note that the program operates by exception, i.e., the first steps in the process are the last steps in the program.
1. Put the dosed cricket that is at the doorstep in the clean burrow.
2. If 1 is impossible because the burrow is not known to be clean, check the burrow and restart.
3. If 1 is impossible because there is no dosed cricket on the doorstep, find a dosed cricket, drag it to the doorstep and restart.
4. If you encounter a non-dosed cricket before encountering a dosed cricket, dose the cricket and restart.
Or, the wasp is fully intelligent but just doesn't know how long it took to fetch the moved wasp and so prudentially checks out the burrow.
Looks like Jack'll be up late working tonight. At least he'll get a lot of sphex.
Thanks. I'm pasting below Kramer's program to elaborate.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the cricket. It's "Sfsysiphus' the nickname, and the cognomen should appeal to Dawkins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._darwini
Gryllus darwini is an insect, not to be confounded with Grypotherium darwini, an extinct giant ground sloth species.
--- I like the idea of the programme as involving a loop, as they call it, and I'll try to elaborate on it. And thanks for the ref. to "the 5-second rule." -- yes, one wonders.
(I suppose 'sphex' is just Grecian for 'wasp' but for some reason my online Liddell/Scott lexicon does not allow me to search. I wonder if there's a better site to consult).
From Kramer then:
Programme for Genome of FEMALE Sphex ichneumoneus
--- the male seems to be cricketing-out somewhere.
Step 1:
Put the dosed Gryllus darwini, that is at the doorstep, inside your clean burrow.
Step 2.
If (Step 1) is impossible (or unfeasible) -- on account of the burrow not assumed to be too clean, please have the courtesy to check the burrow (and clean it, since you're there) and restart.
[Flow Chart] Step 3 (Or Step 2'?). On the other hand, if (Step 1) is impossible (or unfeasible) on account of there *not* being a dosed Gryllus darwini on the doorstep, find a dosed Gryllus darwini, drag it to the doorstep and restart.
Step 4.
If you encounter a *non*-dosed Gryllus darwini before encountering a *dosed* Gryllus darwini, dose the Gryllus darwini and restart.
---
Kramer is suggesting variants on the 'loop' vis a vis modifications in the genome, which he finds 'non-beneficial' to Nature as a whole
("selective pressure would be needed for that, and nature doesn't seem interested").
The Gricean perspective (e.g. "Grice on adaptiveness", THIS BLOG) may be interesting to consider. We have to view this from a genitorial perspective. Dawkins would HATE that, but it's Grice's metaphor! He talks of the 'genitor' or the pro-genitor, as the designer (not necessarily blind), as he injects this or that genome in this or that pirot.
So the variants for 'time' and 'space' considerations that Kramer takes into account seem to be relevant:
TIME-CONSTRAINTS. Kramer: "[S]elective pressure would be needed for that, and nature doesn't seem interested. Hence, no reason for the wasp to have a clock in its head." I like the use of 'reason' above. The type of 'reason' Grice asks about things: ratio essendi, sort of thing.
SPACE-CONSTRAINTS. "[H]ow far is too far [?]"
Kramer seems to conclude (and rightly so, but then why wouldn't he?) that while "[i]t seems ... not too far a stretch for [Sphex
ichneumoneus] to evolve an exertometer that chemically tracks [her] effort to get the [Gryllus darwini to the burrow and reboots the "check the burrow" routine if enough exertion occurs."
But Jacks (or shall we say Johns?) are not that common, and, as Kramer notes,
"selective pressure would be needed for that, and nature doesn't seem interested."
Will try and elaborate further Gricean points at a later stage. Thanks for input.