Molecular Ethology, An Immodest Proposal for Semantic Clarification - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 135

FIGURE 2. Closed heterarchical definition structure for verbs. (Verbs are at nodes;
arrow heads: definiens; arrow tails: definiendum.)
The essential difference in the cognitive processes that allow for identi-
fication of forms and those of change of forms is not only reflected in the
entirely different formalisms needed for representing the different defini-
tion structures of nouns [Eq. (1)] and of verbs [Eq. (2)], but also by the fact
that the set of invariants that identify shape under various transformations
can be computed by a single deductive algorithm (Pitts and McCulloch,
1947), while identification of even elementary notions of behavior requires
inductive algorithms that can only be computed by perpetual comparison
of present states with earlier states of the system under consideration (Von
Foerster et al ., 1968).
These cognitive handicaps put the ethologist at a considerable disadvan-
tage in developing a phenomenology for his subject matter when compared
to his colleague the geneticist. Not only are the tools of expressing his phe-
nomena devoid of the beautiful isomorphism which prevails between the
hierarchical structures of all taxonomies and the definition of nouns that
describe them, but, he may fall victim to a semantic trap which tempts him
to associate with a conceptually isolable function a corresponding isolable
mechanism that generates this function. This temptation seems to be par-
ticularly strong when our vocabulary suggests a variety of conceptually sep-
arable higher mental faculties as, for instance “to learn,” “to remember,”
“to perceive,” “to recall,” “to predict,” etc., and the attempt is made to iden-
tify and localize within the various parts of our brain the mechanisms that
learn, remember, perceive, recall, predict, etc. The hopelessness of a search
for mechanisms that represent these functions in isolation does not have a
physiological basis as, for instance, “the great complexity of the brain,” “the
difficulty of measurement,” etc. This hopelessness has a purely semantic
basis. Memory, for instance, contemplated in isolation is reduced to
“recording,” learning to “change,” perception to “input,” and so on. In other
words, in separating these functions from the totality of cognitive processes,
one has abandoned the original problem and is now searching for mecha-