Ashby's notion of memory and the ontology of technical evolution

Abstract

In Ross Ashby's cybernetic theory, he proposed an illuminating angle for understanding the notion of memory. While the conventional understanding of the notion of memory for a learning system treats memory in terms of things to remember, Ashby led us to rethink the idea of memory through its relation to an adaptive learning system. That is, we can have a learning machine without the possession of memory as long as the machine can derive required information about the past from the current conditions of its environment. In this paper, we elucidate this notion and argue that memory should be understood as a co-constitution by both a learning machine and its environment through their continuous interactions with each other.

Keywords:

• W. Ross Ashby
• cybernetics
• memory
• evolution

Notes

^1. For example, Ian Hacking's (2002) notion of ‘historical ontology’ argues that history (i.e. the past) constructs potential choices for human agents to form their individual subjectivity (or consciousness) in the present (p. 23). That is, the way in which history manifests itself in the present is through providing (or constraining) the possibilities for choices.

^2. See, for example, Ashby's Design for a brain: the origin of adaptive behavior (1960) and An introduction to cybernetics (1956).

^3. In regard to what constitutes a complete set of variables, we will have a more elaborate discussion in our analysis of Ashby's notion memory.

^4. A step-function, defined by Ashby, ‘has finite intervals of constancy separated by instantaneous jumps’ (Ashby 1960, p. 87). ‘Step-functions occur abundantly in nature’ such as ‘[t]he electric switch has an electrical resistance which remains constant except when it changes by a sudden jump [triggered by a critical state of the occurrence of an electrical pulse]’ (ibid., p. 88).

^5. A genetic analysis focuses on the pre-determined behaviour patterns of an organism; an epigenetic analysis pays attention to the developmental process but concentrates on the evolution of an individual organism; a phylogenetic analysis also focuses on the evolutionary process but considers development as a result of a group activity not that of an individual organism.