Public Affairs; Konrad Lorenz: Innate Basis Of Learning

If it sticks nicely it uses the same orbit again. And the releasing situation suddenly is furnished by a great number of specifications and the jackdaw to use exactly the right kind of wig which very many little birds that would stick with night and so on and a very definite material is then preferred. And this information is contained in the motor pack and not that I find mechanism that all of those which have a complete aften mechanism about what kind of thread to use for mass and they don't learn anything by the motor patterns and the motor pattern is completely adapted as a close program to one particular kind of nesting material and if you see a weaver bird like a queen which does not have that to build with and you see

performing this motor pattern without the gas making a knot into a gas which it isn't then you think that the animal is hallucinating which Very probably it is. Well then information like this that in building a nest. A number of independent motor patterns. Which consists in. Patching and caring and if it doesn't have anything to fetch and carry it to its nest place it runs. The state of Paris back and puts it down. If you cut off its tail it does so well is even more frustrating. The second mortar is heaping up of nesting material under the food mortar is a post I think patting the inner surface of this war smoke a third money splitting

material now and unexperienced that which is often a nesting material for the first time can be in at once. But having what we call a threshold Lord. At them up of these motor patterns it is very anxious to do all of this in a frenzy to fit a fit by definition is going is the similar Dana's going off of competitive motor patterns we don't have a great kind of conflict the more the better. Then having carried two slips of paper that proceeds to heap them up through the heaping up movement in empty air which doesn't give it a nicely efforts because that's frustrating without anything to eat up and mix. Next to form the poor thing movement. The patting down moved. So every one of these motor patterns is completely in a completely closed system.

But then after it's been which sequence to do that it learns that heaping up doesn't give the right friends until there is something. Nor does Pat. And this you can see with with films which were made in cities and that the more photographic and the same from the first moment of the sequence which is done. The search for the place in which that information is sick is sitting is one of the nice and interesting detective work you have to do. You may get the most surprising the greatest surprise. Let me give you I'm now running into examples but I'm finished and I'm on page penned as one page more page 11. There's one in Princeton did the experiments. He took white count song sparrows only at them hearing them in

a soundproof room where the bird never heard his own species. These birds develop. Something like quite a nice approximation to the species species song. Like when I was a white town song sparrows song and perfectly normal carloads fly no aggressive notes were quite acquittals and I would think all these things in the way that this is this is bordered by the city of the same kind of information. If you definite. This bird. So that he never gets any feedback from what with all of the sounds after us it turns out that flight color warning color and so on making color young feeling color motor patterns which are completely present in the more toy parts of the central nervous system and it does not know how to sing. It

produces only a weird monotonous twittering. And further experiments show that experiments with its witness until it achieves a song which corresponds approximately Dagenham which is situated in its receptor in its essence. And that's why it chooses the right some primitive and what it does in isolation is a sort of sense imitation use it or put doing and imitating what more what corresponds best to its afferent idea. You quote what the sum should be like this is a very good example of how similar things can be a similar path A similar things can be based on entirely different sorts of information. The feedback which tells you what to do and what not to do

is very often relayed back to the left hand side with a similar situation. You know where to do this and where not to do it. It's much later that the feedback is fed back swab the system into the motor skills themselves about much about motor skills in people. But if you have a petition modification of behavior I need go do this here. On the other hand this may be the information may be coached in extremely simple terms. It is home who has seen the relief of tension such acts as reinforcement and that's a very good innate information to give your organism that whatever it has to do with it once to properly whether it wants to run away from me or whether it's VERY hungry or very thirsty there's always a tension and relief of tension is an advisable thing in most. Cases so it's quite understandable

that this is a very general principle to make to why release of tension back as a reinforcement. Of course all of these mechanisms can miscarry and the relief of tension mechanism miscarries pathetically because of course it reacts and reinforce everything which affords a relief of tension. For instance time when I was little. So this miscarrying not. Counter-arguments but actually a very good illustration to how these mechanisms work. Now there are higher levels of information gaining mechanisms which I already want to mention. I knew that I wouldn't have time for them.

And which again bring about entirely new systemic bookit is one of them. Appetite for. Apathy searching behavior wired on to learning situations. The animal suddenly gets interested in every situation in which it can learn something new. That's what you call exploratory behavior or as many psychologists term Lekan drone the characteristic of liberal thinking is that look for is that an animal dies out all the motor patterns at its disposal with any new object if you get anything new. He will first act as if this was a potential and I porting it gingerly picking at it and finally getting more probably just telling the pieces and hiding. He treats every

think as if it were a potential enemy and a potential prey. There is a very interesting motivation of this of this by doing this that and the metal gates nor that whether or not this thing is in principle or dangerous. So the book Does This explore the behavior is very closely allied play because the enemy only explores when it's not time you're not afraid. As policy in the Fed if there is no appetite in other words the animal who the bird who does that leave it with does eating motor batteries or for being much more about the earth doesn't want to eat nor does he want to freak. He wants to know if. On principle this thing is something from which to free this objectivity. This is other data that has given a very good description of this kind of behavior in his book damage.

Or he thinks there which is correct. Since this explore kind of objective exploration is exclusively human which it isn't. I only mention the new principal that comes into play when the organism in its Explorer to search for new objects to investigate it suddenly gets itself into the picture which is which is specifically that self exploration and that's where psychology where at least the laws of the game. And this is not America. This is nothing new. I mean no new parts come into existence yet. There's a feedback for my exploratory behavior to itself which of course brings up an entirely new I should see if this is where man begins. This is where we find something which is entirely new in the organic world in which

specific and human and further harm may be very much on the basis of the safest exploration with communication we have that right and that you we have language and on top of this that's the Titian but not the addition of conceptual thought and conceptual thought. Again brings about something entirely not non existence and that's nothing less and nothing more than the inheritance of acquired characters. If a man invents born or steals it from a neighboring henceforward he is not only his family but his tribe his culture. We'll have these instruments the likelihood of their being forgotten is by no means greater that of a highly adaptive organ becoming and this is again a command with feedback and that is exactly

this appearance. You don't have one see the very clever catalyst which is linguistically different to express that something generally doesn't the code is often brought home to you only when it's exceptional. A copious shows how it would be for this article. Look at that I would say to me. Now. That coughing up. All of. The coming into existence. So there's no other book of inheritance of acquired characters in human culture has consequences which I argue against Lamarckism. More stronger than anything else because that's how quick evolution would run. If they're way. Apart from it's going to get specialized for this. How quick evolution would take place if there were a inheritance of acquired characters.

Ladies and gentlemen I have talked three minutes more than an hour and I'm at an end. Most of all I have to say it is a methodological. If we want to approach what Dr. Maya has rather too quickly say we have already achieved have begun. It is the method of a systems analysis which does justice to individual information and to their interaction. Some of you will have noticed that in my way of speaking and thinking I am using the. Model of the mental diagram of the black

box of cybernetics the black box diagram is permissible if you use it with sufficient restrictions. If we speak of a motor pattern of a unique releasing mechanism. We must be aware that we do not know what do you happens we just get up a function. And put to make a conception of it and put it in a little black box and. We are reassured in our justification of doing so. When this subsystem shows the same functional properties whether wired do this or that or the other thing. And they need to be very much the same properties whether it's wired to NOT a certain similar situation which must be for Phillip in order to let the animal less appetite for questions. More to come

out of this me or current or me why be wired to the patent or the motor pattern may be of such a kind that it brings about a new releasing situation and you and you would have this organization of which didn't Ben has done a tin back and barons have done a number of quite convincing analysis. In short we are justified in thinking of terms of these black boxes. The more the assumption of black boxes. Inventor musician of functions is something which is indispensable if you have to do with the system which you do not know. It is characteristic of a system that you can understand its spots or look at the are not at all if you try to explain the working of a gasoline engine to something has no idea about it.

You should begin with a connecting about because you can do histrionics about the banks and see that now when this goes down the piston sucks mix out of the cabinet. All these things are black boxes per listener. You hope that the other black box carbonate and the black box business on because you can only understand the function of the crankshaft of the cabinet and so on. When he has understood the interaction of all of this is always so with what you call a system. If you understand the comma or the connecting rod because before you have understood. That's one major force behind the system to Major full force. Actually one is atomism and the other is explanatory money and these two things are different for

this truck over there. Let's suppose a pep talk for the sake of argument and I have got a new name to 11:59 long the big man turns. Plus times small. Now I maybe anatomist and see another and anatomist but at the list. Save Now let's see. I know the essence of this and all the laws of the pendulum. I know the law of the lever and so on. I may sit down and invent a clock if I'm lucky. This is atomism atom is by definition. Neglecting struct. If you have a highly sophisticated electronic engineer. And you ask him to repair a computer I'll bet you that he won't try to invent a new computer.

But he started this dark. Get the wiring of the thing before it ties to the pit. So. I commision. When investigating a very complicated system is just bad strategy. It's not just that's that. If you look at it then you may invent the system. That's all the data that you and then when your mom says I do you don't know how much the model code corresponds. This is veterans the 7 x that the kind of model going to get you through the questions and the questions are completely in agreement or you don't know whether the organism is still in the. Guts. So now. Quite. Different atomism. I'm honest I find the system.

And yes let's let's detach something. And I find here not in the book. The particular detail I see how another book and I go home and try to listen to it has a system going up in the book. And this is Ted. This is just plain stupid simple because any any system has parts which are as different from each other as a connector is different from the fruit in a cabinet. And for the same reasons as different as a female from a live and the former inventor is in the single function you get at the function. Easier as at the structures because you don't know the structure. The functions are easy to detach. That's where the plaque book system is just the first step of course you hope if you speak of the unique releasing mechanism which fit the stimuli.

Then you hope that somebody like that in them and mark well we come along and tell you how it's done. In one single case of this project in a book which shows exactly what we need which is exactly the analyst's of that black box of what we call the increasing literacy. So explanatory monism. Atomism to this explanatory model is what is much more obvious prehensile what we have to do is to invent to write understand the word system and in studying the system we must also be as biologists. We must be aware of the genesis of the fight of genetics and of the ontogeny of the systems. When we started learning when learning like all our mortification all exchanges of machine of growth what experiment to embody all of this is core

induction. And the methods of approach must be very similar. I won't say in my book adaptation and modification of behavior that we are not experimental embryologist that we start at the beginning of behavior. I think that I'd like to pick back that statement. It has been misunderstood by many people indeed. We heard to go about with them and a bad approach of. Something very like experimental embryologist So in that in studying learning and children we have not to do with embryos and learning in adult scientists we have not to do with embryos but still I think that we shall meet comprehensive understanding a comprehensive study of behavior which.

Satisfying us the learning cycle as well as the bell of hope lies in studying behavior as a system with methods of systems analysis and with strict about logical methods of experimental embryology. You know that the dichotomy includes of learning and innate has been controversy not only between American psychologists but among its oldest themselves. Cautious people to use the term only look for everything which is genetically programmed. This is of course correct as far as it's go but it tells only half the story.

What is innate. In other words the genetical problem is not only what is not learnt but what must be there in order to make learning possible. Thus consciously and intentionally paraphrasing the man will Kant's definition of I play or that I should like to. Define the innate as opposed to the law. I think you are or touch one.