On Memory 1 - sensori-behavioral control cycles

Reflections on Memory

Organisms with nervous systems are able to perceive regularities in their environment within the reach of their senses, and modulate their movement, including the further control of sensory organs. Movement results in different perceptions, and provides the basis for control of movement. This feedback cycle with the environment is selected by evolution since it permits differential reproductive success.

Animals have evolved with multiple sense organs: chemosensory (smell and taste related to successful feeding), tactile (at the interface of the skin with the environment, visual, and auditory (and for some animals that produce sounds, phonological). Kinesthetic proprioception, including balance, provide neural feedback on movement. The integration of sensory signals allows the individuation of regularities in the environment through multiple modalities, and more effective classification of individuals into some kind of unified scheme of individuation.

Animals are able to perceive other animals, and to classify them in ways that modulate their own behavior. This has obvious selectional value for reproductive success, including mating behavior and predator-prey interactions. Interaction between adult organisms and their juvenile offspring leads to survival success, and many larger animals have elaborate maternal behavior that plays an important and even essential role in the survival of offspring. A large number of animals have evolved social behavior which is necessarily regulated by their perception and classification of the presence and behavior of conspecific individuals in their shared perceived environment. Since conspecific organisms are genotypically very similar (phylogenetic evolution), their schemes of individuation are innately similar. Organisms are also able to develop highly elaborated schemes of individuation in the course of their phenotypic growth (ontogenic development). Especially for social animals, there is selectional value for the convergence of these acquired schemes of individuation into a shared scheme of individuation that allows them to classify their shared environment, including the behavior of other animals such as conspecifics.

• Attention.
  
• Continuous variation, discrete classification.
  
• Experience, planning. Origins of memory in shared schemes.
  
• Social communication and shared schemes. Interpreting the behavior of conspecifics (and other animals) in terms of perception and memory of other individuals. Displays
  
• Thought experiment grounded in observation: chimp troop and Deaf village. Iconic signs, arbitrary signs.
  
• Vocal displays and shared schemes. Phonic displays and phonemic schemes. Discrete individuation.
  
• Thought experiments: autistic village (non-linguistic Asperger's syndrome). Role of consciousness, scheme for other minds. Mentally retarded village, with language.
  
• Models of conceptual memory, logical models like Sowa's concpetual graphs, situation theory
  
• Models of lexical memory, semantics