Hello all,
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind
of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how I
think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not sure
though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things for
the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the book is
plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough that
someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
Tomasello
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,I for one would be interested in a summary.
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind
of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how I
think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not sure
though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things for
the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the book is
plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might
if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough that
someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
On 4/5/24 2:13 PM, Arkalen wrote:
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:Thanks for that. Sounds interesting. My greatest immediate apprehension
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,I for one would be interested in a summary.
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that
kind of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still
impacts how I think about human consciousness and social living. I'm
still not sure though how much of that is just being dazzled, or
reading things for the first time that are actually already
well-known, or if the book is plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might
if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough
that someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various levels
of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
* first level of agency - early vertebrates. Basic goal-seeking: a
lizard will have distinct goals at any given time (seeking food,
resting, etc) and their behavior will depend not just on their
immediate environment but also on what their goal is at any given
time. They'll have hardwired behaviors that are deployed to meet the
goal according to the above described feedback loop, with a global
inhibition mechanism that can shut everything down in response to danger.
* second level - early mammals. They have a second layer of
goal-seeking feedback-loop system that pilots the first in order to
not just achieve a goal, but achieve it in the best way possible.
Includes the ability to mentally stage potential behaviors, anticipate
their outcomes and then pick which will work best. Also much finer
inhibition abilities, able to inhibit one behavior and switch to
another in service of the same goal instead of the global shutdown of
lizards. And the ability to generate new behaviors instead of the
earlier hardwiring.
* third level - great apes. I can never remember quite what this one
does so I had to re-skim a bit but basically it's an extra layer
monitoring & controlling the mammalian decision-making one that
results in higher-level reasoning, including controlling not only how
to achieve a goal but which goal to seek to achieve (thus resolving
cases where goals conflict), understanding other's decisions, and
understanding causality - not only the basic mammalian "if I do this,
that will happen" but "if this happens *in general*, that will happen".
* fourth level - humans. Tomasello argues that the human "secret
sauce" is essentially collective agency - reasoning agents like great
apes that are also able to function as parts of a collective
goal-seeking agent that uses the same basic
"goal-perception-behavior-perception" feedback loop as all other
agency. This means simultaneously modelling different kinds of agent -
the "self" agent analogous to great apes (what are your personal
interests) but also the "role" agent (what is your job as a member of
the group) and the collective agent (what are the group's goals), as
well as the "self" agency & "role" agency of collaborators. This also
implies/explains moral dilemmas: whereas other animals only ever need
to worry about one agents' goals (themselves), humans need at every
point to decide whether they'll behave in service of their personal
goals, or those of a group they're part of and if so which one (the
immediate task-oriented team? Their family? Their tribe?).
[Tomasello doesn't mention (but I immediately thought of) how a
species with an innate sense of collective agency where said agency
was both greater than any single individual but also analogous to
their own agentic self might rationalize that sentiment...]
He proposes this happened in two steps, the evolution of pairwise
collaboration somewhere in the hominid lineage, and the evolution of
full group agency in direct Homo sapiens ancestors, with the
development of strong cultural variation & norms that provide a kind
internal regulation to the collective agent and allow collaboration
between strangers that share a culture. He also proposes actual group
selection acting at this point, with groups with strong collaborative
cultures outcompeting others.
[this meshes beautifully with the "social cohesion signalling"
hypothesis for the evolution of music btw]
[another aside - he doesn't say this but it occurs to me that
"arbitrary cultural variation + collaboration" seems like it could
drive the evolution of universal computation (so children can learn
whatever 100% arbitrary cultural baggage is required to function in
their band) as well as truth-seeking (the only grounding on which one
*could* base collaboration in the face of arbitrary cultural
variation), which is kind of the core of what we think of as "our
intelligence"]
He proposes the driver of the evolution of each of these layers is a
kind of unpredictability in the organism's environment. Animals that
live in very stable environments can rely on hardwired behaviors that
change at the speed of evolution. Early vertebrates would have been
hunters that had to quickly adapt to also-evolving prey and
agency/goal-seeking would have allowed that. Early mammals were social
animals that were in competition not only with the prey but with their
peers; an extra control layer to optimize behaviors would give them an
edge. Early great apes that foraged for fruit would have had even
higher competition for this resource that's concentrated in isolated
patches with few access points.
OK maybe that didn't end up that short ;) I hope I didn't mess it up
too badly given it was mostly from memory, but that's basically it.
is that it would take a truly huge amount of experimental and
observational evidence to test the various aspects of the scenario, and
I wonder how much of it has already been done.
Hello all,
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind of
blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how I
think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not sure
though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things for the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the book is plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough that
someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,I for one would be interested in a summary.
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind
of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how
I think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not
sure though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things
for the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the
book is plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might
if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough
that someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move the
goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the goal
is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various levels
of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
* first level of agency - early vertebrates. Basic goal-seeking: a
lizard will have distinct goals at any given time (seeking food,
resting, etc) and their behavior will depend not just on their immediate environment but also on what their goal is at any given time. They'll
have hardwired behaviors that are deployed to meet the goal according to
the above described feedback loop, with a global inhibition mechanism
that can shut everything down in response to danger.
* second level - early mammals. They have a second layer of goal-seeking feedback-loop system that pilots the first in order to not just achieve
a goal, but achieve it in the best way possible. Includes the ability to mentally stage potential behaviors, anticipate their outcomes and then
pick which will work best. Also much finer inhibition abilities, able to inhibit one behavior and switch to another in service of the same goal instead of the global shutdown of lizards. And the ability to generate
new behaviors instead of the earlier hardwiring.
* third level - great apes. I can never remember quite what this one
does so I had to re-skim a bit but basically it's an extra layer
monitoring & controlling the mammalian decision-making one that results
in higher-level reasoning, including controlling not only how to achieve
a goal but which goal to seek to achieve (thus resolving cases where
goals conflict), understanding other's decisions, and understanding
causality - not only the basic mammalian "if I do this, that will
happen" but "if this happens *in general*, that will happen".
* fourth level - humans. Tomasello argues that the human "secret sauce"
is essentially collective agency - reasoning agents like great apes that
are also able to function as parts of a collective goal-seeking agent
that uses the same basic "goal-perception-behavior-perception" feedback
loop as all other agency. This means simultaneously modelling different
kinds of agent - the "self" agent analogous to great apes (what are your personal interests) but also the "role" agent (what is your job as a
member of the group) and the collective agent (what are the group's
goals), as well as the "self" agency & "role" agency of collaborators.
This also implies/explains moral dilemmas: whereas other animals only
ever need to worry about one agents' goals (themselves), humans need at
every point to decide whether they'll behave in service of their
personal goals, or those of a group they're part of and if so which one
(the immediate task-oriented team? Their family? Their tribe?).
[Tomasello doesn't mention (but I immediately thought of) how a species
with an innate sense of collective agency where said agency was both
greater than any single individual but also analogous to their own
agentic self might rationalize that sentiment...]
He proposes this happened in two steps, the evolution of pairwise collaboration somewhere in the hominid lineage, and the evolution of
full group agency in direct Homo sapiens ancestors, with the development
of strong cultural variation & norms that provide a kind internal
regulation to the collective agent and allow collaboration between
strangers that share a culture. He also proposes actual group selection acting at this point, with groups with strong collaborative cultures outcompeting others.
[this meshes beautifully with the "social cohesion signalling"
hypothesis for the evolution of music btw]
[another aside - he doesn't say this but it occurs to me that "arbitrary cultural variation + collaboration" seems like it could drive the
evolution of universal computation (so children can learn whatever 100% arbitrary cultural baggage is required to function in their band) as
well as truth-seeking (the only grounding on which one *could* base collaboration in the face of arbitrary cultural variation), which is
kind of the core of what we think of as "our intelligence"]
He proposes the driver of the evolution of each of these layers is a
kind of unpredictability in the organism's environment. Animals that
live in very stable environments can rely on hardwired behaviors that
change at the speed of evolution. Early vertebrates would have been
hunters that had to quickly adapt to also-evolving prey and agency/goal-seeking would have allowed that. Early mammals were social animals that were in competition not only with the prey but with their
peers; an extra control layer to optimize behaviors would give them an
edge. Early great apes that foraged for fruit would have had even higher competition for this resource that's concentrated in isolated patches
with few access points.
OK maybe that didn't end up that short ;) I hope I didn't mess it up too badly given it was mostly from memory, but that's basically it.
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various levels
of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 2:13 PM, Arkalen wrote:
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
. . .Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various
levels of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
. . .* first level of agency - early vertebrates. Basic goal-seeking: a
lizard will have distinct goals at any given time (seeking food,
. . .* second level - early mammals. They have a second layer of
goal-seeking feedback-loop system that pilots the first in order to
not just achieve
more snipping* fourth level - humans. Tomasello argues that the human "secret
sauce" is essentially collective agency - reasoning agents like great
apes that
Thanks for that. Sounds interesting. My greatest immediate
apprehension is that it would take a truly huge amount of experimental
and observational evidence to test the various aspects of the
scenario, and I wonder how much of it has already been done.
Seems to me that it's very anthropocentrically biased.
The suggestion that nemotodes don't have goals as described is odd.
They seek food, seek mating. Hell, bacteria have goal seeking behavior
in terms of seeking food,
or fleeing toxins via chemotaxis. Just because we understand some
of these things in terms of simpler biochemistry means what?
We can induce mating behavior in sea slugs with peptide hormones,
or they can induce those hormones themselves through other pathways.
It seems an attempt to over-emphasize the use of central nervous system control which downgrounds gut level control or other physiological
control schemes as inferior. But why?
Again, smells anthropocentric.
We can recall that many significant neuropeptide hormones stem from
what were first gut peptide hormones. Is there some innate advantage
across all life to relocating control systems?
Sure, it's worked out well for those who currently have done so, but
it seems to be working well in those creatures who haven't.
It would be curious to simply test these ideas with observations
of ants. A botanist who studies complex communities might also
have some interesting commentary.
Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> writes:
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
If we substitute the ultimate goal, which is to survive, instead of
various means to an end type goals, then agency becomes life. But...
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various levels
of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
The robot lawnmower doesn't plan either. Although some planning went
into making it no doubt. I think the animal does have a goal here, which
is to survive, and behaviours like eating and avoiding are a means to
that goal.
Some animals have not progressed to more complexity. In fact I don't
think it is necessarily progress, it depends on whether it achieves the
goal. There are still bacteria for example, doing quite well without the complexity of the human brain.
On 4/5/2024 4:13 PM, Arkalen wrote:
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,I for one would be interested in a summary.
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that
kind of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still
impacts how I think about human consciousness and social living. I'm
still not sure though how much of that is just being dazzled, or
reading things for the first time that are actually already
well-known, or if the book is plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might
if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough
that someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various levels
of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
You have to go back to single celled microbes to have "no agency", and
then it would be trying to define what you are talking about.
If you
want to define agency as something that requires a brain and that type
of decision making, you can do that, but that is just an extension of
what organisms were doing before they had brains.
Take a simple
behavior undertaken by bacteria. There is something called the SOS response. A bacterium finds itself in an unfavorable environment, a physiological response is started that results in genetic mutations
occurring faster than normal. The bacterium does this because it
obviously has worked to improve the individuals situation at a high
enough frequency that the bacterial lineage survives as a population.
Bacteria can use their flagellum to move to better environments, and
they have sensors and decision making apparatus in terms of changing direction and moving towards that better environment. Nematodes have a
more sophisticated system to do the same thing. Humans have an even
more sophisticated system to do the same thing. Chimps and humans have group agency, they can form hunting parties more sophisticated than wolf packs and lion prides, but wolf packs and lion prides still have less sophisticated group agency. Have you watched Planet Earth on the BBC channel? They show group agency among sea creatures. Sea snakes and
fish cooperate in order to be more successful in hunting prey. They
also show octopus and fish cooperating in order to hunt prey. They show group agency among fur seals to trap fish, and they show dolphins and
whales cooperating with each other to be more efficient predators.
Agency just seems to have levels of being able to interact with the environment. It is a general aspect of life because organisms that can
do it have an obvious advantage. Life has evolved more sophisticated
means to interact with the environment, and it has resulted in what we
call consciousness.
Ron Okimoto
On 06/04/2024 13:14, LDagget wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 2:13 PM, Arkalen wrote:. . .
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various
levels of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
. . .* first level of agency - early vertebrates. Basic goal-seeking: a
lizard will have distinct goals at any given time (seeking food,
. . .* second level - early mammals. They have a second layer of
goal-seeking feedback-loop system that pilots the first in order to
not just achieve
more snipping* fourth level - humans. Tomasello argues that the human "secret
sauce" is essentially collective agency - reasoning agents like great
apes that
Thanks for that. Sounds interesting. My greatest immediate
apprehension is that it would take a truly huge amount of experimental
and observational evidence to test the various aspects of the
scenario, and I wonder how much of it has already been done.
Seems to me that it's very anthropocentrically biased.
The suggestion that nemotodes don't have goals as described is odd.
They seek food, seek mating. Hell, bacteria have goal seeking behavior
in terms of seeking food,
or fleeing toxins via chemotaxis. Just because we understand some
of these things in terms of simpler biochemistry means what?
The word "agency" can mean many things and the book is clearly about
defining a specific set of phenomena; the fact the word "agency" is used
by other people to mean something different doesn't impact the substance
of the argument, at most it could make one question the wisdom of the >vocabulary choices.
Here the difference he proposes between organisms with and without
"agency" isn't that we know the biochemistry in one case and not in the >other, it's a specific claim about how they function and how many
degrees of freedom the individual organism has with respect to their >evolutionary hardwiring.
He defines a "feedback-control system" for agency that has the following >features:
- a goal
- behavior(s) suitable to reaching the goal
- perception that verifies whether the goal is achieved
- a feedback loop between them to repeat the behavior until the goal is >achieved
The thing is, living things don't *have* to function with this kind of >organization. You could have an organism that chemotaxes towards
nutrients & absorbs all it encounters and chemotaxes away from toxins or >chemicals associated with predators/bad environments and reproduces once
it's reached a certain size, and evolutionarily speaking that's a
perfectly cromulent organism; if it can survive and spread this way it
will. Insofar as it has the "goal" of eating or breeding or avoiding >predators however that goal is evolution's goal more than the
individual's. The nature of the goal and the specific behaviors it
engages in to meet it change over the generations via evolutionary
processes. Insofar as there is a feedback loop between perception and >behavior that optimizes things towards the goal, the "perception" is
"how does this organism interact with its environment" and the feedback
loop is "is this organism reproductively successful".
But if you have a living thing that *does* have this kind of
organization then "goals" have a different definition for it.
"Evolution" still has the "goal" of it eating but the way this is >behaviorally implemented means the individual itself can be described as >having this goal in a completely different sense, that manifests
differently. You can even get differences between "evolution's goals"
and "the individual's goals" - usually not with eating but for example
you can have goal-driven animals evolve the drive to have sex, although
from an evolutionary point of view the actual goal is reproduction.
Now whether these different behavioral organizations actually occur in >different animals the way the book claims is a different question but it >seems a reasonable claim to me. Although it's true he is a bit ambiguous >about nematodes; here is his discussion of them after introducing early >animal filter-feeders as an example of the former [disclaimer: I said >"nematodes", it's actually C elegans which may well not be a nematode at
all in which case my bad]:
"Not only do the chemosensory neurons detect either good or bad things
and 'signal' the motor neurons to produce bodily contractions that
propel the organism either forward or away from those things, but C
elegans also uses the rate at which it is ingesting food, typically
bacteria, to detect the location of richer and less rich clumps (Scholtz
et al., 2017). Moreover, if a behavior such as forward movement brings a
bad result (e.g., a noxious chemical), the creature can perform one of
two actions to move away (Hart, 2006). C. elegans finds its food by
moving around in its environment actively, sometimes even learning the >location of food in novel environments after several encounters (Qin & >Wheeler, 2007).
The behavior of C. elegans would thus seem to be organized in a more
complex manner than that of unicellular organisms. The have different >mechanisms for sensing things in the world and acting in response. >Classically, the function of a nervous system is to connect separate >mechanisms of perception and action, and ganglia are seats of this >integration, so it would seem that the separate mechanisms of perception
and action are integrated in C. elegans (and also, by inference, in
early bilaterians). However, it is unlikely that there is also a
comparison with some kind of internal goal to create direction: their >locomotion is mostly random or stimulus driven (Scholz et al., 2017).
And these organisms do not seem to exhibit anything that we would want
to call behavioral control: they do not inhibit or otherwise control
action execution, and what they learn is simply the location toward
which to direct their hardwired movements. It is thus unlikely that
early bilaterians, as modeled by C. elegans, were goal-directed, >decision-making agents, only animate actors."
We can induce mating behavior in sea slugs with peptide hormones,
or they can induce those hormones themselves through other pathways.
It seems an attempt to over-emphasize the use of central nervous system
control which downgrounds gut level control or other physiological
control schemes as inferior. But why?
"Inferior" is your take, not the book's. The book is also razor-focused
on behavior, only mentioning nervous systems in the context of
describing behavior. You could claim that the author betrays an
illegitimate preference for central nervous systems in their choice of
model animals; that lizards have much higher behavioral flexibility than
C. elegans and also have a much more complex brain which makes it look
like the two are associated but the author could have described the
exact same behavioral differences using sea slugs instead of lizards.
I'm guessing that this claim would be incorrect though, and that central >nervous systems are in fact associated with higher behavioral
complexity. It seems like you might disagree ?
Again, smells anthropocentric.
We can recall that many significant neuropeptide hormones stem from
what were first gut peptide hormones. Is there some innate advantage
across all life to relocating control systems?
Are you aware of this paper on a hypothesis for the evolution of neurons
? It's possible you do as it does include a link between digestive
molecules and neurotransmitters.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12461
As for an advantage to using nervous systems for control systems an
obvious one seems to be the ability to link up different functions of
the organisms in arbitrary ways instead of function-constrained ones. I
don't think hormonal systems can do that as flexibly but I'm happy to be >proved wrong ("can induce mating behavior with hormones" definitely
isn't sufficient).
--Sure, it's worked out well for those who currently have done so, but
it seems to be working well in those creatures who haven't.
To a first approximation anything any species does works well by virtue
of that species existing. "Working well" isn't the standard. This book
looks at behavioral complexity/flexibility. It doesn't cast judgement on >different kinds of behavioral organization being good or bad, it
discusses what they are.
It would be curious to simply test these ideas with observations
of ants. A botanist who studies complex communities might also
have some interesting commentary.
Tomasello thinks ants and other social insects are also goal-directed
agents, it's one of the examples of potential convergent evolution of
the trait he mentions. Interestingly, that suggests he thinks other
insects aren't. I think it's a subject that would definitely merit
developing and challenging but it's not done in the book.
On 06/04/2024 16:15, RonO wrote:
On 4/5/2024 4:13 PM, Arkalen wrote:
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 4:13 AM, Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,I for one would be interested in a summary.
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ? >>>>>
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that
kind of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still
impacts how I think about human consciousness and social living.
I'm still not sure though how much of that is just being dazzled,
or reading things for the first time that are actually already
well-known, or if the book is plain wrong and if so on what.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still
might if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long
enough that someone else might actually have read it and have takes. >>>>>
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various
levels of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
You have to go back to single celled microbes to have "no agency", and
then it would be trying to define what you are talking about.
Yes. Doing so is the book's point.
If you want to define agency as something that requires a brain and
that type of decision making, you can do that, but that is just an
extension of what organisms were doing before they had brains.
The book doesn't define agency as requiring brains, it defines it as a specific type of behavioral organization. It admittedly takes it so much
for granted that this organization requires a brain that it doesn't even mention it (that I recall), but it's really not relevant to the book's argument.
After all the book itself says the kinds of agency it discusses evolved convergently in different lineages. If we showed some brainless creature displays the kind of internal organization & resulting behavioral
complexity characteristic of one of the kinds of agency defined in the
book, the fact it doesn't have a brain wouldn't matter at all. If it had
the kind of internal organization without the types of behavior
Tomasello associates with them or vice-versa, that would indeed go
against his thesis.
Take a simple behavior undertaken by bacteria. There is something
called the SOS response. A bacterium finds itself in an unfavorable
environment, a physiological response is started that results in
genetic mutations occurring faster than normal. The bacterium does
this because it obviously has worked to improve the individuals
situation at a high enough frequency that the bacterial lineage
survives as a population.
Bacteria can use their flagellum to move to better environments, and
they have sensors and decision making apparatus in terms of changing
direction and moving towards that better environment. Nematodes have
a more sophisticated system to do the same thing. Humans have an even
more sophisticated system to do the same thing. Chimps and humans
have group agency, they can form hunting parties more sophisticated
than wolf packs and lion prides, but wolf packs and lion prides still
have less sophisticated group agency. Have you watched Planet Earth
on the BBC channel? They show group agency among sea creatures. Sea
snakes and fish cooperate in order to be more successful in hunting
prey. They also show octopus and fish cooperating in order to hunt
prey. They show group agency among fur seals to trap fish, and they
show dolphins and whales cooperating with each other to be more
efficient predators.
Agency just seems to have levels of being able to interact with the
environment. It is a general aspect of life because organisms that
can do it have an obvious advantage. Life has evolved more
sophisticated means to interact with the environment, and it has
resulted in what we call consciousness.
Ron Okimoto
Yes, and the book presents a specific classification of those levels,
arguing it corresponds to specific kinds of internal organization that
result in specific behavioral patterns. I can't really tell if you
disagree with the book (or my summary of it at least) and think what you
just wrote is a refutation of it, or if you agree with it but think what
you just wrote is a better way of describing the system than the book's.
Arkalen
/snip
Arkalen wrote:
On 06/04/2024 13:14, LDagget wrote:big snip
John Harshman wrote:
On 4/5/24 2:13 PM, Arkalen wrote:
On 05/04/2024 16:02, John Harshman wrote:
Are you aware of this paper on a hypothesis for the evolution of
neurons ? It's possible you do as it does include a link between
digestive molecules and neurotransmitters.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12461
As for an advantage to using nervous systems for control systems an
obvious one seems to be the ability to link up different functions of
the organisms in arbitrary ways instead of function-constrained ones.
I don't think hormonal systems can do that as flexibly but I'm happy
to be proved wrong ("can induce mating behavior with hormones"
definitely isn't sufficient).
apologies for the huge snip but your excellent post remains elsewhere.
Part of the reason for the snip is the system I'm using is poor at
handling large posts. I also am disinclined towards many interposed
comments. And in particular, I haven't read the book, you have, so
my further comments get too meta. Suffice that your points are well
taken and I won't quibble (more) without having read the book.
Beyond that, I looked into the cite above. Haven't read it but will.
Glanced through the refs, most are past the time I paid much attention
to the gut/brain connection. I did note a ref to a paper I plan to
look up. It could help me catch up. Kaelberer, M. M., & Bohorquez, D. V. (2018). The now and then of gut-brain signaling.
Brain Research,1693, 192–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2018.03.027
Thanks for the leads.
These would be the ancestors of perception, processing, actionpotentials & neurotransmitters
As a final thought, that he considered ants might induce me to read
the book. My knowledge there is at best superficial but I like them
as a model organism to decode chemical _effectors_ of behavior.
Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> writes:
Maybe really short to start with:
Tomasello defines "agency" as a kind of goal-seeking system: a system
that has a goal, is capable of perceiving the environment, verifying
whether the goal is met, if not deploying a behavior that would move
the goal forward, and looping between verification/behavior until the
goal is met. Analogy is a robot lawnmower.
If we substitute the ultimate goal, which is to survive, instead of
various means to an end type goals, then agency becomes life. But...
He argues that animal evolution has seen progressive complexification
of agency that basically involves adding layers, with higher ones
monitoring/controlling the lower ones. He focuses on the history of
human evolution specifically and takes some example organisms from
lineages that presumably match the level of agency a human ancestor
would have had (he acknowledges convergent evolution of various levels
of agency in other lineages but leaves it at that).
The levels he describes are:
* no agency - nematodes. There isn't goal-seeking, just
stimulus-response. The animal eats food if it runs into it, escapes
danger if it's present etc but doesn't really *plan* or anticipate
beyond its immediate environment
The robot lawnmower doesn't plan either. Although some planning went
into making it no doubt. I think the animal does have a goal here, which
is to survive, and behaviours like eating and avoiding are a means to
that goal.
Some animals have not progressed to more complexity. In fact I don't
think it is necessarily progress, it depends on whether it achieves the
goal. There are still bacteria for example, doing quite well without the complexity of the human brain.
I believe most biologists would argue that the ultimate goal is not
survival but reproduction. The two are not at all identical. Just look
at the feeding behavior of male mayflies.
Here the difference he proposes between organisms with and without
"agency" isn't that we know the biochemistry in one case and not in the other, it's a specific claim about how they function and how many
degrees of freedom the individual organism has with respect to their evolutionary hardwiring.
He defines a "feedback-control system" for agency that has the following features:
- a goal
- behavior(s) suitable to reaching the goal
- perception that verifies whether the goal is achieved
- a feedback loop between them to repeat the behavior until the goal is achieved
The thing is, living things don't *have* to function with this kind of organization. You could have an organism that chemotaxes towards
nutrients & absorbs all it encounters and chemotaxes away from toxins or chemicals associated with predators/bad environments and reproduces once
it's reached a certain size, and evolutionarily speaking that's a
perfectly cromulent organism; if it can survive and spread this way it
will. Insofar as it has the "goal" of eating or breeding or avoiding predators however that goal is evolution's goal more than the
individual's. The nature of the goal and the specific behaviors it
engages in to meet it change over the generations via evolutionary
processes. Insofar as there is a feedback loop between perception and behavior that optimizes things towards the goal, the "perception" is
"how does this organism interact with its environment" and the feedback
loop is "is this organism reproductively successful".
But if you have a living thing that *does* have this kind of
organization then "goals" have a different definition for it.
"Evolution" still has the "goal" of it eating but the way this is behaviorally implemented means the individual itself can be described as having this goal in a completely different sense, that manifests
differently. You can even get differences between "evolution's goals"
and "the individual's goals" - usually not with eating but for example
you can have goal-driven animals evolve the drive to have sex, although
from an evolutionary point of view the actual goal is reproduction.
Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,
hello too! It's so nice to have you back!!
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind
of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how I
think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not sure
though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things for
the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the book is
plain wrong and if so on what.
I haven't read this one (but on the reading list now), I knew his work
mainly from the debate he had with Chomsky, and his rejection of the
idea of an innate universal grammar in favour of a social learning
model. I thought at the time that while the idea of shared intentionality
was very appealing and plausible, and explains a lot, on its own
I could not see how it overcomes the "poverty of the stimulus problem"
(but this was ages ago that I read it tbh)
What I also found really interesting, for my day job, was his discussion
on third-party punishment (which he claims is uniquely human)
I'd toyed with the idea of doing a book report here, and still might
if motivation arises, but I figured now it's been out long enough that
someone else might actually have read it and have takes.
Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
[snip]
Degrees of freedom is one notion Dennett explores to bootstrap “free will”.
Here the difference he proposes between organisms with and without
"agency" isn't that we know the biochemistry in one case and not in the
other, it's a specific claim about how they function and how many
degrees of freedom the individual organism has with respect to their
evolutionary hardwiring.
Hmmm, is this evolution’s goal stemming from Tomasello himself?
He defines a "feedback-control system" for agency that has the following
features:
- a goal
- behavior(s) suitable to reaching the goal
- perception that verifies whether the goal is achieved
- a feedback loop between them to repeat the behavior until the goal is
achieved
The thing is, living things don't *have* to function with this kind of
organization. You could have an organism that chemotaxes towards
nutrients & absorbs all it encounters and chemotaxes away from toxins or
chemicals associated with predators/bad environments and reproduces once
it's reached a certain size, and evolutionarily speaking that's a
perfectly cromulent organism; if it can survive and spread this way it
will. Insofar as it has the "goal" of eating or breeding or avoiding
predators however that goal is evolution's goal more than the
individual's. The nature of the goal and the specific behaviors it
engages in to meet it change over the generations via evolutionary
processes. Insofar as there is a feedback loop between perception and
behavior that optimizes things towards the goal, the "perception" is
"how does this organism interact with its environment" and the feedback
loop is "is this organism reproductively successful".
But if you have a living thing that *does* have this kind of
organization then "goals" have a different definition for it.
"Evolution" still has the "goal" of it eating but the way this is
behaviorally implemented means the individual itself can be described as
having this goal in a completely different sense, that manifests
differently. You can even get differences between "evolution's goals"
and "the individual's goals" - usually not with eating but for example
you can have goal-driven animals evolve the drive to have sex, although
from an evolutionary point of view the actual goal is reproduction.
Not liking
the idea of evolution having goals. First the outcome of evolution itself
can stem from several factors, selection being one. Given drift, neutral evolution, and the prevalence of junk DNA in humans and other organisms, evolution seems too happenstance for goals. Goal directed evolution is the stuff of orthogenesis or omega point. Complexity of human brains or
evolution of complexity itself if I recall Gould on this is a drunkard’s walk constrained against a lower boundary.
Insofar as there is a feedback loop between perception and
behavior that optimizes things towards the goal, the "perception" is
"how does this organism interact with its environment" and the
feedback loop is "is this organism reproductively successful".
That said teleology should be watered down to teleonomy (Mayr) or apparent goal direction in organisms due to their “programming” and is an outcome not a target. One needs to differentiate also between the proximal focus
and distal (ultimate) when looking at evolutionary outcomes. Proximate causation happens at the level of physiology and so called “goals” obtain here as organisms negotiate their environment for food and such. Failures resulting in reduced reproductive output will “reprogram” future generations away from those failures.
Said reprogramming may result in long term trends over generational time,
but that trending (eg- cognitive complexity) cannot be interpreted as an evolutionary goal as trends can result in devastating dead ends especially
if the ecological context or fitness landscape shifts dramatically.
Sure humans and octopods have converged upon cognitive complexity, but so many other species haven’t.
And this is where adaptive evolution is being considered. I dare say most evolution is not adaptive.
[snip rest]
On 06/04/2024 11:53, Burkhard wrote:
Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,
hello too! It's so nice to have you back!!
Thanks :)
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind
of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how I
think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not sure
though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things for
the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the book is
plain wrong and if so on what.
I haven't read this one (but on the reading list now), I knew his work
mainly from the debate he had with Chomsky, and his rejection of the
idea of an innate universal grammar in favour of a social learning
model. I thought at the time that while the idea of shared intentionality
was very appealing and plausible, and explains a lot, on its own
I could not see how it overcomes the "poverty of the stimulus problem"
(but this was ages ago that I read it tbh)
What I also found really interesting, for my day job, was his discussion >> on third-party punishment (which he claims is uniquely human)
Was that debate live/recorded or written ? I'd be interested in seeing
it. I'm honestly surprised to hear he was rejecting innate universal
grammar in favor of social learning because I'd have thought the first
is a more logical outgrowth from what he presents "The Evolution of
Agency". For example I'm pretty sure he presents aspects of human
cooperation like basic altruism, coordinating via eye movements and
pointing etc as specific adaptations we have and chimpanzees don't or
much less so. I'd have thought "innate universal grammar" fit
comfortably in there. But I'm also not familiar enough with the debate
to be sure all the terms mean what I think they mean.
That reminds me though, I was thinking about the issues of teaching
animals language shortly after reading the book and this hypothesis kind
of fits with that too. Plenty of animals seem fine associating symbols
with things and expressing themselves that way but the resulting speech
lacks pronouns ("Koko want birkin bag; jealousy professor" not "I want a birkin bag; you're jealous") and differentiating things like actor/acted
upon (we know Koko wants the birkin bag because the opposite doesn't
make sense but she could have ordered those words any which way to
express that meaning, with no way of lifting the ambiguity if context
didn't allow us to guess who's doing what).
And those differences seem pretty critical to the task of *coordinating
roles within a collaboration*. There's really no way to disambiguate [Sally/John/Timmy/Jane/get groceries/pick up/mow/pool/lawn] into "I'll
get the groceries & you'll pick up Timmy at the pool, Jane can mow the
lawn" without true grammar!
In terms of the cognitive abilities every specific claim in the book is backed by experimental evidence on model organisms that seems to hold
up, especially at the lower levels. But as you say it's wide-ranging
enough that it does ask more than that.
I think my own concern, that was crystallized a bit going over the
summary and confronting once again just how hard it is for me to
remember various bits, is to what extent this framework is a solid
hypothesis that generates predictions as opposed to a superficially satisfying but empty rephrasing of what's already known. (which wouldn't prevent it being a good read insofar as it's read by someone who doesn't already know it - I didn't know how different we are from chimpanzees in terms of cooperative attitudes for example).
So I guess what I'd like to see is if one can define each agency level rigorously enough to predict behavior from it, potentially find neural correlates, and come up with new behavioral experiments to test specific aspects of the proposed inner workings, and/or accurately predict the performance of as-yet-untested species in such experiments based on
their presumed agency type.
Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
On 06/04/2024 11:53, Burkhard wrote:The book seems good enough so far. Got me interested in feedback control systems and their complexification across taxa. He teased me with a shout
Arkalen wrote:
Hello all,
hello too! It's so nice to have you back!!
Thanks :)
Has anyone here read "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ?
I thought it was a really interesting (and very short) book that kind
of blew my mind, and months later I can confirm it still impacts how I >>>> think about human consciousness and social living. I'm still not sure
though how much of that is just being dazzled, or reading things for
the first time that are actually already well-known, or if the book is >>>> plain wrong and if so on what.
I haven't read this one (but on the reading list now), I knew his work
mainly from the debate he had with Chomsky, and his rejection of the
idea of an innate universal grammar in favour of a social learning
model. I thought at the time that while the idea of shared intentionality >>> was very appealing and plausible, and explains a lot, on its own
I could not see how it overcomes the "poverty of the stimulus problem"
(but this was ages ago that I read it tbh)
What I also found really interesting, for my day job, was his discussion >>> on third-party punishment (which he claims is uniquely human)
Was that debate live/recorded or written ? I'd be interested in seeing
it. I'm honestly surprised to hear he was rejecting innate universal
grammar in favor of social learning because I'd have thought the first
is a more logical outgrowth from what he presents "The Evolution of
Agency". For example I'm pretty sure he presents aspects of human
cooperation like basic altruism, coordinating via eye movements and
pointing etc as specific adaptations we have and chimpanzees don't or
much less so. I'd have thought "innate universal grammar" fit
comfortably in there. But I'm also not familiar enough with the debate
to be sure all the terms mean what I think they mean.
That reminds me though, I was thinking about the issues of teaching
animals language shortly after reading the book and this hypothesis kind
of fits with that too. Plenty of animals seem fine associating symbols
with things and expressing themselves that way but the resulting speech
lacks pronouns ("Koko want birkin bag; jealousy professor" not "I want a
birkin bag; you're jealous") and differentiating things like actor/acted
upon (we know Koko wants the birkin bag because the opposite doesn't
make sense but she could have ordered those words any which way to
express that meaning, with no way of lifting the ambiguity if context
didn't allow us to guess who's doing what).
And those differences seem pretty critical to the task of *coordinating
roles within a collaboration*. There's really no way to disambiguate
[Sally/John/Timmy/Jane/get groceries/pick up/mow/pool/lawn] into "I'll
get the groceries & you'll pick up Timmy at the pool, Jane can mow the
lawn" without true grammar!
out to Piaget’s behavioral driven evolution, but kinda shifts from Papa Jean’s favored Baldwin effect. Tomasello could have really fucked up for me in how he addresses MacLean’s obsolete triune brain schema.
He says: “In terms of brain bases for these new motivational mechanisms, classic views attribute to reptiles a completely nonemotional reptilian
brain that lacks a limbic system, which contrasts with the emotional brain
of mammals (P. MacLean, 1990). Modern research now downplays the
differences between reptilian and mammalian brains (e.g., Naumann et al., 2015), but it is still the case that the “limbic system” (however that is now conceptualized) seems to play a more important role in mammalian than
in reptilian behavior.” From The Evolution of Agency
He cites this interesting article that starts off showing a von Baerian divergence from a shared Bauplan over the Haeckelian mode of MacLean’s version of the “reptile brain”: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)00218-3
The article cites Sagan rather than MacLean, starts off pretty good then loses the plot for me. Is there still a so-called reptile brain then or a basal amniote brain at least that mammals and great apes complexify a bit?
Above Tomasello puts “limbic system” in requisite square quotes. His book seems more a look at behavioral systems than neuroanatomy and its function, so I don’t know how much Tomasello is aware of Joe LeDoux’s arguments against a coherent limbic system, which he kinda deconstructed out of existence. Limbic systems and triune brains belong in the dustbin.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 307 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 68:33:28 |
| Calls: | 6,915 |
| Files: | 12,379 |
| Messages: | 5,431,885 |