From Coinage to Consciousness: On the Limits of Unlimited Associative Learning
Imagine you remember every detail of a lesson that you learned, and in each exploratory movement you attempt, you are carrying along with those details in order to cross-check whether they can be applicable to the new conditions. It is like constantly carrying a book and each time starting from the cover and flipping each page before reaching what you want to cite. Long live Control+F! With the emergence of “a new group of predators and a new group of prey”(Coolidge 2020, pg. 38), associative learning could be explained in terms of facility and necessity in the overwhelming existence of what is and can be learned. Thanks to the increase in oxygen concentration and flooding continental shelf; erosion and increased nutrient flux, the growth and maintenance of the neural tissues facilitating “molecular memory mechanisms” (Ginsburg & Jablonka 2019) gave rise to the evolution of associative learning. Pondering further on Cambrian Explosion, Simona Ginsburg, and Eva Jablonka has coined the term ‘Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) and suggested UAL be “the marker of the evolutionary transition to minimal consciousness, its phylogenetically earliest sustainable manifestation and the driver of its evolution (2016, pg.1). This coinage has triggered various interpretations. Where does Unlimited Associative Learning come from, how it is different from Limited Associative Learning(LAL) and what are the implications of it in terms of the origins of minimal consciousness?
Meanwhile, the lack of evidence on the indispensability of UAL in conscious behavior has shown the relation to be stated ‘too soon’(Birch 2019), other interpretations focused more on the implications of the word, and the term “unlimited” is said to come from the ability to learn more than the span of the organism’s life would allow (Coolidge 2020, pg. 38). Coolidge inferred from this coinage that “consciousness may be considered an exaptation of the basic learning adaptations, which helped to form living things” (pg. 55). This inference is significant, especially the differentiation between Limited Associative Learning and Unlimited Associative Learning is concerned. Coolidge states that “if Bronfman, Ginsburg, and Jablonka (2016) are correct, then virtually unlimited associative learning at that time marked a transition to conscious life entities” and “[proposes] that these associative learning principles represented exaptations of non-associative learning principles”(pg. 234). When the transition between LAL and UAL is concerned, it can as well be proposed that UAL principles appear as an exaptation of LAL principles, blessing especially vertebrates and arthropods with “enormous generativity”(Ginsburg & Jablonka 2019, pg. 347). Supporting this proposal, Bronfman, Jablonka, and Ginsburg state that the capacity for UAL is a positive marker for the sentience of the animal, but the absence of this capacity does not entail the absence of sentience(2016), following the aphorism that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Therefore UAL is not an adaptation born from LAL but its exaptation, creating an extra advantage for survival. This coinage is finally explained by Ginsburg and Jablonka in 2019, enriched with distinctions and differentiations between unlimited and limited. In their terms, limited is not limited to the lifetime but to the environment in which the organism is expected to perform. With UAL, accordingly, “the number of associations within and between modalities that can be learned and recalled is greatly increased” (2019, pg. 225). At the same time in order for UAL to exist, there has to be enormous variation in the system overwhelming enough to lead the organism to go through a reflective feedback loop (Ginsburg & Jablonka 2019) in order to survive the load of innumerable options and actions to be taken based on earlier learned behavior and surprising novel stimuli. The biggest difference drawn between limited and unlimited associative learning is the planning and selection of action based on the number of cues.
Limited Associative Learning enshrines feedback-loop inside the learning mechanism, which enables the organism to have access to a vast number of choices and adaptations during its survival. UAL allows “the recognition and reconstitution of a relevant compound pattern based on partial cues, so not all facets of past experience are required for the retrieval of the learned response”(pg. 348). Let the question of what preceded the Cambrian explosion be aside; there now is a consensus on the existence of “remarkable ecological and morphological diversification”(pg.410). This environment not only necessitated the utilization of new mechanisms especially in terms of protection and reproduction but also created “necessary permissive conditions” (Ginsburg & Jablonka 2010) and facilitated the recruitment of the memory mechanisms for selective advantage. The trajectory of the evolution of associative learning is, therefore, interpreted through the utilization of genetic machinery and the developmental networks that were “already in place in pre-explosion ancestors”(Ginsburg & Jablonka 2010). The emergence of the term Unlimited Associative Learning then indeed does not appear as a novel connection but an exaptation of associative learning in an environment that necessitates utilization of memory systems based on partial cues with the help of feedback loops. There remains one more question to be discussed: where did Bronfman go while Ginsburg and Jablonka sat and tried to explain their collective coinage of Unlimited Associative Learning in 2019?
References
Birch, J. (2019). In search of the origins of consciousness. Acta Biotheoretica, 1–8.
Bronfman, Z. Z., Ginsburg, S., & Jablonka, E. (2016). The transition to minimal consciousness through the evolution of associative learning. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 1954.
Coolidge, F. (2020). Evolutionary Neuropsychology: An Introduction to the Evolution of the Structures and Functions of the Human Brain. Oxford University Press.
Ginsburg, S., & Jablonka, E. (2010). The evolution of associative learning: A factor in the Cambrian explosion. Journal of theoretical biology, 266(1), 11–20.
Jablonka, E., & Ginsburg, S. (2019). The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness. MIT Press.