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then the observer will also lose predictability. In order to regain predictability, the
observer would need to add an extra observable that was roughly correlated with
the output of the device's new sensor. Thus if the observer needs to add a sensor
to continue to track the device, then it can be inferred that the device itself has
effectively evolved a new sensor.
The general principle involves what modifications the observer needs to make
in his or her modelling framework to maintain the ability to track the behaviour of
the system. If this involves rearrangement of existing states, then the system under
observation appears to be combinatorically-emergent. If it requires increasing the
dimensionality of his or her observational frame, then the system under observation
appears to be creatively emergent. The new dimensions in the observer's complexi-
fying modelling frame coevolve with the creation of new primitives in the observed
system.
15.5 New Signal Primitives in Neural Systems
A third, and last strategy for creative emergence is to attempt to understand and em-
ulate the creative processes inside our brains. We humans are the most formidable
sources of creativity in our world. Our minds are constantly recombining existing
concepts and meanings and also creating entirely new ones. The most obvious pro-
cess of the construction of new concepts is language acquisition, where children
reportedly add 10-15 new word meanings per day to their cognitive repertoires,
with the vast majority of these being added without explicit instruction. It seems
likely that this “mundane creativity” in children's brains operates through adaptive
neural processes that are driven by sensorimotor and cognitively-mediated interac-
tions with the external world (Barsalou and Prinz 1997 ). Although most of these
processes may well fall under the rubric of the combinatorics of syntactic, seman-
tic, and pragmatically grounded inference engines, there are rarer occasions when
we experience epiphanies associated with genuinely new ways of looking at the
world.
One can contemplate what creation of new signal primitives would mean for
neural networks and brains (Cariani 1997 ). Essentially we want an account of how
combinatoric productivity is not only possible, but is so readily and effortlessly
achieved in everyday life. We also want explication of how new concepts might be
formed that are not simply combinations of previous ones, i.e. how the dimensional-
ity of a conceptual system might increase with experience. How might these creative
generativities be implemented in neuronal systems?
We have to grapple with the problem of the primitives at the outset. Even if the
brain is mostly a combinatorically creative system, the conceptual primitives need to
be created by interactive, self-organising sensorimotor integration processes, albeit
constrained by genetically mediated predispositions.
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