Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-d8cs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-29T03:03:22.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Networks and Teleology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Edwin Levy
Edwin Levy*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CanadaV6T 1W5
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1973 Niels Kaj Jerne announced an important new hypothesis about the immune system (‘IS’). That suggestion is based on several similarities between IS and the central nervous system. Jerne postulated that IS, like the nervous system, is a network.

I am convinced that the description of the immune system as a functional network of lymphocytes and antibody molecules is essential to its understanding, and that the network as a whole functions in a way that is peculiar to and characteristic of the internal interactions of the elements of the immune system itself: it displays what I call eigen-behavior. (Jerne [1973), 59)

This proposal has a number of implications, including some philosophical ones. Here I focus on the question whether the network hypothesis and subsequent developments shed any light on the use of teleological concepts in biology. In part one I present some of the background story of network ideas in immunology, including a reverse hypothesis to the effect that IS-Net could serve as a basis for modeling the brain. In part two I locate the teleological implications of IS-Net with respect to current mainstream discussions of teleology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 14: Philosophy & Biology , 1988 , pp. 159 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Acknowledgments: L. Angel, P. Apostoli, R. Bunn, M. Chandler, J. Collier, E. Diener, M. Feld, P. Hanson, W. Henry, G. Hoffmann, J. Levy, M. Matthen, M. Reimers

References

Bennett, J. (1976) Linguistic Behaviour (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Cooper, J.M. (1982) ‘Aristotle on Natural Teleology’ in Language and Logos, Schofield, and Nussbaum, , eds., 197-222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demopoulos, W. (1987) ‘On Some Fundamental Distinctions of Computationalism,’ Synthese 70, 79-96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D.C. (1987) ‘Evolution, Error and Intentionality’ in Source Book on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Wilks, Y. and Partridge, D., eds. (Cambridge: Bradford).Google Scholar
Diener, E. and Waters, C.A. (1986) ‘Immunological Quiescence Towards Self: Rethinking the Paradigm of Clonal Abortion’ in Paradoxes in Immunology, Hoffmann, G.W., Levy, J.G., and Nepom, G.T., eds. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), 27-42.Google Scholar
Dretske, F. (1986) ‘Misrepresentation’ in Form, Content and Function, Bogdan, R.J., ed. (Oxford: Clarendon), 87-106.Google Scholar
Fodor, J.A. and Pylyshyn, Z.W. (1988) ‘Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis,’ Cognition (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gass, C.L. (1985) ‘Behavioral Foundations of Adaptation’ in Perspectives in Ethology, vol. 6, Bateson, P.P.G. and Klopfer, P.H., eds. (New York: Plenum Publishers), 63-107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunther, N. and Hoffmann, G.W. (1981) ‘Qualitative Dynamics of a Network Model of Regulation of the Immune System: A Rationale for the IgM to IgG Switch,’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 93, 815-55.Google Scholar
Hanson, P. (1987) Taking Mental Causation Seriously (manuscript).Google Scholar
Hoffmann, G. W. (1982) ‘The Applicability of Stability Criteria in Evaluating Network Regulation Models’ in Regulation of Immune System Dynamics I, DeLisi, C. and Hiernaux, J.R., eds. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), 137-62.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, G.W. (1986a) ‘A Neural Network Model Based on the Analogy with the Immune System,’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 122, 33-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, G.W. (1986b) ‘Neurons with Hysteresis?’ paper presented at the conference ‘Computer Simulation in Brain Science,’Copenhagen, 20-22 Aug. 1986.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, G.W. (1986c) ‘On Paradoxes and Progress in Theoretical Immunology, and Evidence for a New Symmetry’ in Paradoxes in Immunology, Hoffmann, G.W., Levy, J.G., and Nepom, G.T., eds. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press).Google Scholar
Hoffmann, G.W. (1986d) ‘A Teachable Neural Network Based on an Unorthodox Neuron’ Physica 22D, 233-46.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, G.W. (1987) ‘A Response to Cohn's Criticism of Network Theory’ Ann. Inst. Pasteur 137D, 443-8.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, G.W. (1987) ‘On I-J, a Network Centre Pole and AIDS’ in The Semiotics of Cellular Communication in the Immune System, Sercarz, E., Celada, F., Mitcheson, N.A. and Tada, T., eds. (New York: Springer Verlag).Google Scholar
Jerne, N.K. (1973) ‘The Immune System,’ Scientific American 229, 52-63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kihlstrom, J.F. (1987) ‘The Cognitive Unconscious,’ Science 237, 1445-50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCulloch, W.S. and Pitts, W. (1943) ‘A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,’Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5, 115-33. (Reprinted in McCulloch, W.S. [1965] Embodiments of Mind [Cambridge: MIT Press].)Google Scholar
Mackie, J.L. (1974) The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Matthen, M. and Levy, E. (1984) ‘Teleology, Error, and the Human Immune System,’ Journal of Philosophy 81:7, 351-72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthen, M. and Levy, E. (1986) ‘Organic Teleology’ in Current Issues in Teleology, Rescher, N. ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America), 93-101.Google Scholar
Perelson, A.S., ed. (1988) Theoretical Immunology (New York: Addison Wesley).Google Scholar
Rist, J.M. (1965) ‘Some Aspects of Aristotelian Teleology,’ Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 96, 337-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenfield, I. (1986) ‘Neural Darwinism: A New Approach to Memory and Perception’ in NY Review (9 Oct., 1986), 21-7.Google Scholar
Shiffrin, R.M. and Schneider, W. (1977) ‘Controlled and Automatic Information Processing: II. Perceptual Learning, Automatic Attending, and a General Theory,’ Psychology Review 84, 127-90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singhai, R., Hoffmann, G. and Levy, J. (1985) ‘Abrogation and Reconstitution of Nonresponsiveness: A Correlation with High Network Connectivity,’ European Journal of Immunology 15, 526-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorabji, R. (1980) Necessity, Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Tank, D.W. and Hopfield, J.J. (1987) ‘Collective Computation in Neuronlike Circuits,’ Scientific American 257:6, 104-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, C. (1964) Linguistic Behaviour (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Turing, A.M. (1950) ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ Mind 59, 236. (Reprinted in Minds and Machines, Anderson, A.R., ed. [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1964].)Google Scholar