Gary,

The knowledge encoded in genes is not specified in language or in what we might call an ontology. But it's encoded in methods of interacting with the world and the kinds of things and events we encounter. The knowledge we encode in language (verbal or gestural) is invented by us to communicate, and that involves many level of encoding in genes for language, for communication, and for interacting with other humans and beasts. An infant is born with genes that can enable such learning, but there are many, many kinds of things that must be learned befor that ability can be activated.

GBC: One might ask if there is human a priori knowledge via say evolution for ideas such as space and time if Kant would argue for any immediately relevant a priori knowledge of what we now talk about via models in quantum physics or the notion of space-time in relativity."

Ideas are not encoded in genes. A new-born infant has the ability to register sensations and the ability to move around. By trial and error, it discovers which actions have favorable results, which ones are painful, and which ones get milk, warmth, and good feelings.

There is a huge amount of pre-verbal learning in the first few months. The first interactions are with a warm soft milk source. After a while, baby learns that the milk source comes and goes, and other similar things don't provide milk. That is the first step in distinguishing mama from daddy.

GBC: But I would hazard the argument that we can distinguish QM probabilistic aspects, say quantum uncertainty, as more recently developed cognitive tools developed as part of collective, social and scientific experiences building models.

Baby has no idea about QM vs Newton. By age 3, the child is a very long way from being a baby, but he or she is nowhere near the level that could distinguish a Newtonian world from a QM world.

I would guess that a child that could appreciate the story of Alice in Wonderland would be able to distinguish QM effects from Newtonian effects. But that ability would have to be learned from some kind of unusual experience, not intuited from everyday experience.

And the words for describing it would be "book learning" or something taught by a special kind of teacher.

Basic point: There is a huge jump from learning a language to learning the use the technical terms for grammar and semantics. Another huge step: learning to deal with things that behave differently from one time to another and learning that some behaviors involve an abstract notion of probability.

GBC: After more than a century from its birth, Quantum Mechanics (QM) remains mysterious.

Yes, but people have learned how to use it for better AND worse.

John

From: "Gary Berg-Cross" <gbergcross@gmail.com>

John,

A few quick thoughts in response to your " Every species from bacteria on up inherits a huge amount of knowledge about space, time, edible items, dangerous items, and species-specific methods for dealing with them. "

Which was in response to my :

"Every species from bacteria on up inherits a huge amount of knowledge about space, time, edible items, dangerous items, and species-specific methods for dealing with them.

One might ask if there is human a priori knowledge via say evolution for ideas such as space and time if Kant would argue for any immediately relevant a priori knowledge of what we now talk about via models in quantum physics or the notion of space-time in relativity."

Certainly evolution prepares organisms to survive in the world which includes navigating space and having some sense of time. Systems biology among other things gives us a bit more of a dynamic idea of some of things going on here. Even simple autonomous agents are able to distinguish and select external entities by virtue of a simple chemistry that hosts and affords cognitions like symbols and signs. (but also hypotheses and models not inherited) One conceptualization uses the idea of a processing system. Evolution has developed what some call innate “programmed in” software operating on inherited hardware as the result of natural selection. But natural selection also allows learning via systems such as self-organizing maps that optimize the results of try and error behaviors (such as your bee example).

This system's view is one that combines an innate view and an empirical/experiential one where “becoming” is as much or more meaningful than just “innate/natural being”. But innate infrastructure provides affordances. Self-organizing maps are perhaps just one simple example of reflective loops that provide/afford higher sign-creating activity and eventually symbolic thinking that allows building useful models of perceived reality.

And certainly we have inherited reasoning methods that can deal with probabilities. Probability seems to provide a rich framework for vision and motor control, as well as higher order functions for learning, language processing, and reasoning (Tenenbaum, Joshua B., et al. "How to grow a mind: Statistics, structure, and abstraction." science 331.6022 (2011): 1279-1285.) So we can say that an agent learns what is likely to happen if they do X. But I would hazard the argument that we can distinguish QM probabilistic aspects, say quantum uncertainty as more recently developed cognitive tools developed as part of collective, social and scientific experiences building models. As D’Ariano says “Quantum Mechanics (QM) is a very special probabilistic theory...After more than a century from its birth, Quantum Mechanics (QM) remains mysterious. (D’Ariano, Giacomo Mauro. "Probabilistic theories: what is special about quantum mechanics." Philosophy of quantum information and entanglement 85 (2010): 11.)

Gary Berg-Cross

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770

On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 5:43 PM John F Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:

Gary,

There is evidence of a priori knowledge in the genome. It's knowledge that is learned by the species and encoded in genes rather than neurons: The total genome of any species has an enormous amount of information. And very little of that information has been decoded.

Gary B-C: One might ask if there is human a priori knowledge via say evolution for ideas such as space and time if Kant would argue for any immediately relevant a priori knowledge of what we now talk about via models in quantum physics or the notion of space-time in relativity.

Every species from bacteria on up inherits a huge amount of knowledge about space, time, edible items, dangerous items, and species-specific methods for dealing with them.

For example, just consider honey bees. The methods for finding honey-bearing flowers and bringing back both honey and pollen are extremely complex, and there is no way that a newly born bee could have learned that method by experience or by teaching from other bees. There are also complex methods by which a returning bee communicates the distance, direction, and amount of honey by a dance back in the hive.

There is also evidence of learning how to communicate better. Bees that forage outside the hive acquire larger amounts of brain tissue that is devoted to memory of spatial distance and direction than their fellow bees that work inside the hive.

Furthermore, the regions of a honeybee's brain for spatial info are analogous to regions of the hippocampus in mammals. Guess what? Humans and squirrels who need to remember large amounts of spatial info also acquire enlarged regions in the hippocampus.

For humans, this fact was discovered by observing London taxi drivers who had to memorize a huge amount of information about streets and locations. They had significantly larger regions in their hippocampus. But now that taxi drivers use computer displays for that information, there is no enlargement of the hippocampus.

For squirrels that bury nuts in autumn and must remember the locations for several months, their hippocampus grows larger in autumn and decreases in size in the spring.

Re quantum mechanics and relativity: A critical aspect of QM computation is the need for reasoning about probabilities. That would imply that humans would need to have inherited reasoning methods that can deal with probabilities. But such reasoning methods would be useful for many non-QM reasoning as well. Reasoning about space time is also essential, and it's hard to distinguish QM aspects from the many other factors involved.

John