Runeson's EP and FAPs 3

The third thing I wonder regarding EP and FAPs is this idea that agents, such as fish, perceive affordances.  But, it looks like what the fish perceive is red spot, not male stickleback.  But,  red spots are not "meaningful" to the fish; male sticklebacks are "meaningful" to the fish.

On this topic, tomorrow I'll jump to an example (or maybe two) of sharks from Turvey, Shaw, Reed, & Mace, 1981 ....

Runeson's EP and FAPs 2

FAPs are fixed action patterns.  The wikipedia gives this description (which is about all I know of them):

Another example of fixed action patterns is the red-bellied stickleback (fish). The male turns a bright red/blue colour during the breeding season. During this time they are also naturally aggressive towards other red-bellied sticklebacks, another FAP. However anything that is red, or has the appearance of being red, will bring about this FAP. The proximate response to this is that due to the stimuli, a nerve sends a signal to attack that red item. The ultimate cause of this behavior stems from the fact that the stickleback needs the area in which it is living for either habitat, food, mating with other sticklebacks, or other purposes. This is an inherited behavior, but it is has been found that this behavior may be more flexible than scientists thought at first. This interaction was studied by Niko Tinbergen. The threat display of male stickleback (fish) is also a fixed action pattern triggered by a stimulus.

Now, FAPs, to my mind, raise a couple of interesting questions vis a vis EP.  Here's another.

Suppose that the sticklebacks using a "smart" mechanism in the sense of one that "capitalize[s] on the peculiarities of the situation and the task".  That is, the sticklebacks rely on the fact that, by and large, the only things with red patches on them in the stereotypical stickleback environment is a male stickleback.

Yet, this is what cognitivists, I think, will often describe as relying on an "assumption" about the environment.  It might be what cognitivists call an implicit assumption, one that is not coded as a line in a program or as a data structure, but an assumption nonetheless.

Now, I don't have text to cite, here, but I think at least one thing EPists don't like
"assumptions" is that they don't like them construed as representations or what cognitivists might call "explicit assumptions".  But, perhaps non-representational, "implicit assumptions", are ok.  Indeed, I take it that Runeson's account of the information a person uses in state Ames room viewing relies on what cognitivists might call "implicit assumptions".

Runeson's EP and FAPs 1

FAPs are fixed action patterns.  The wikipedia gives this description (which is about all I know of them):

Another example of fixed action patterns is the red-bellied stickleback (fish). The male turns a bright red/blue colour during the breeding season. During this time they are also naturally aggressive towards other red-bellied sticklebacks, another FAP. However anything that is red, or has the appearance of being red, will bring about this FAP. The proximate response to this is that due to the stimuli, a nerve sends a signal to attack that red item. The ultimate cause of this behavior stems from the fact that the stickleback needs the area in which it is living for either habitat, food, mating with other sticklebacks, or other purposes. This is an inherited behavior, but it is has been found that this behavior may be more flexible than scientists thought at first. This interaction was studied by Niko Tinbergen. The threat display of male stickleback (fish) is also a fixed action pattern triggered by a stimulus.

Now, FAPs, to my mind, raise a couple of interesting questions vis a vis EP.  Here's one.

Maybe FAPs are both rote and smart, i.e. "specialized".  Does the red-bellied stickleback have a mechanism just for detecting males?  Although the wikipedia doesn't mention a dedicated neural circuit, other accounts of other FAPs do:

Fig. 2. Female goose behavior of picking eggs up. When it sees an egg outside the nest (key stimulus), it begins a repeated movement of dragging the egg with its beak and neck. However, if the eggs slides off or if it is removed by the researcher, the goose continues to repeat the stereotypic movements even if the egg is absent, until it reaches the nest, when then it does it all over again. FAP seems to correspond to a fixed neural circuitry elicited by the overall trigger stimuli.  (italics added)

So, FAPs could be examples of mechanisms that are both rote and smart.