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Sender-Receiver Systems within and between Organisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Peter Godfrey-Smith
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Abstract

Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some puzzles about “genetic information” can be resolved by seeing the genome as a cell-level memory with no sender.

Type
Signaling Theory in Biological and Cognitive Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 866 - 878
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This paper was presented at PSA 2012, San Diego, as part of the symposium “Signaling within the Organism,” with Nicholas Shea, Rosa Cao, Brett Calcott, and Rory Smead.

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