Combining Historical and Philosophical Approaches to Understand the Concept of Information in Animal Behaviour Research – YouTube (Santa Fe Institute)

[Benjamin P. Taylor]

https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/11/03/combining-historical-and-philosophical-approaches-to-understand-the-concept-of-information-in-animal-behaviour-research-youtube/

Colleagues might be interested in this - extract from abstract:

"By analyzing the way scientists design and interpret experiments to justify claims about information, I clarify the norms guiding scientists’ ascriptions of content to produce a pragmatic definition of information. I argue that the norms guiding scientists’ ascriptions of content bear some resemblance to formal information theory, that they rely upon a cybernetic notion of biological function, and that they have practical value for scientists. Second, I adjudicate the cognitive map debate in animal navigation studies. Mammalian navigation researchers have long held the cognitive map hypothesis to be an established fact. However, the cognitive map hypothesis has engendered an ongoing, decades-long debate among insect navigation researchers, especially those referenced in the last paragraph. By attending to the personal histories of the scientists leading the debate and the broader history of animal behavior research, I show how older debates about instinct vs. learning that were supposedly neutralized in the 20th century continue to motivate this debate over how insects process information. Finally, I ask a question that encompasses both problems addressed so far: What ever happened to cybernetics? In the late 1940s, the information age was most clearly heralded by the newly mobilized science of cybernetics, which promised to synthesize human, animal, and machine behavior using recently formalized notions of information, feedback, and control. As the 21st century drew nearer, most academics came to regard cybernetics as a dead movement. Nevertheless, some behavioral scientists continue to see revolutionary potential in the concept of information for synthesizing understandings of behavior, and although researchers continue to grapple with the problem of comparing animal and machine behavior, biologically-inspired advances in artificial intelligence seem to be realizing the cyberneticians’ prophesy."

Benjamin P. Taylor
www.bentaylor.com

In a personal capacity

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