arXiv subjects

Rodrick Wallace

Publications and source records attributed to Rodrick Wallace.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2011

Rate distortion coevolutionary dynamics and the flow nature of cognitive epigenetic systems

We outline a model for a cognitive epigenetic system based on elements of the Shannon theory of information and the statistical physics of the generalized Onsager relations. Particular attention is paid to the concept of the rate distortion function and from another direction as motivated by the thermodynamics of computing, the fundamental homology with the free energy density of a physical system. A unifying aspect of the dynamic framework involves the concept of a groupoid and of a groupoid atlas. From a stochastic differential equation we postulate a multidimensional Ito process for an epigenetic system from which a stochastic flow may permeate through components of this atlas.

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arXiv2004

Consciousness, cognition, and context: extending the global neuronal workspace model

We adapt an information theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to the problem of the global neuronal workspace, the current standard neuroscience picture of consciousness. Tunable punctuation emerges in a natural manner, suggesting the possibility of fitting appropriate phase transition power law, and, away from transition, generalized Onsager relation expressions, to observational data on conscious reaction. The development can be extended in a straightforward way to include the role of psychosocial stress, culture, or other embedding structured contexts in individual consciousness, producing a 'biopsychosocial' model that closely retains the flavor of the standard treatment, but better meets philosophical and other objections to brain-only descriptions.

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arXiv2003

Do reductionist cures select for holistic diseases? Adaptive chronic infection, structured stress, and medical magic bullets

With a generalized language-of-thought argument for immune cognition, we model how population-directed structured psychosocial stress can impose an image of itself on the coevolutionary conflict between a highly adaptive chronic infection and the immune system. We raise the possibility that, for successful 'evolution machines' like HIV and malaria, simplistic individual-oriented magic bullet drug treatments, vaccines, behavior modification, or other interventions that do not address the fundamental living and working conditions underlying disease ecology will fail to control current epidemics and may select for holistic pathogenic life histories which increase disease virulence.

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arXiv2003

Comorbidity and Anticomorbidity: Autocognitive developmental disorders of structured psychosocial stress

We examine interacting cognitive modules of human biology which, in the asymptotic limit of long sequences of responses, define the output of an appropriate 'dual' information source. Applying a 'necessary condition' communication theory formalism roughly similar to that of Dretske, but focused entirely on long sequences of signals, we examine the regularities apparent in comorbid psychiatric and chronic physical disorders using an extension of recent perspectives on autoimmune disease. We find that structured psychosocial stress can literally write a distorted image of itself onto child development, resulting in a life course trajectory to characteristic forms of comorbid mind/body dysfunction affecting both dominant and subordinate populations within a pathogenic social hierarchy.

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arXiv2003

Structured psychosocial stress and the US obesity epidemic

We examine the accelerating 'obesity epidemic' in the US from the perspective of generalized language-of-thought arguments relating a cognitive hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to an embedding context of structured psychosocial stress. From a Rate Distortion perspective, the obesity epidemic is an image of ratcheting social pathology -- indexed by massive, policy-driven, deurbanization and deindustrialization -- impressed upon the bodies of American adults and children. The resulting pattern of developmental disorder, while stratified by expected divisions of class and ethnicity, is nonetheless relentlessly engulfing even affluent majority populations.

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arXiv2003

The cognitive homunculus: do tunable languages-of-thought convey adaptive advantage?

We reexamine the generalized cognitive homunculus, an organism's internalized image of its physiological, psychological, and social state, which, when properly adjusted, can quickly detect subtle deviations from a reference configuration. We particularly seek to extend the treatment beyond 'language-of-thought' systems modeled as ergodic information sources. Such extension would generate an exceedingly rich response repertoire, not limited by fixed patterns of grammar and syntax. Rather, these would themselves be tunable according to the changing short-term contextual demands faced by the organism, possibly providing significant long-term adaptive advantage.

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arXiv2003

Coronary heart disease, chronic inflammation, and pathogenic social hierarchy: a biological limit to possible reductions in morbidity and mortality

We suggest that a particular form of social hierarchy, which we characterize as 'pathogenic', can, from the earliest stages of life, exert a formal analog to evolutionary selection pressure, literally writing a permanent developmental image of itself upon immune function as chronic vascular inflammation and its consequences. The staged nature of resulting disease emerges 'naturally' as a rough analog to punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory, although selection pressure is a passive filter rather than an active agent like structured psychosocial stress. Exposure differs according to the social constructs of race, class, and ethnicity, accounting in large measure for observed population-level differences in rates of coronary heart disease across industrialized societies. American Apartheid, which enmeshes both majority and minority communities in a social construct of pathogenic hierarchy, appears to present a severe biological limit to continuing declines in coronary heart disease for powerful as well as subordinate subgroups: 'Culture', to use the words of the evolutionary anthropologist Robert Boyd, 'is as much a part of human biology as the enamel on our teeth'.

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arXiv2003

Systemic lupus erythematosus in African-American women: Cognitive physiological modules, autoimmune disease, and structured psychosocial stress

Examining elevated rates of systemic lupus erythematosus in African-American women from perspectives of immune cognition suggests the disease constitutes an internalized physiological image of external structured psychosocial stress, a 'pathogenic social hierarchy' involving the synergism of racism and gender discrimination in the context of policy-driven social disintegration which has particularly affected ethnic minorities in the USA. The disorder represents the punctuated resetting of normal immune self-image to a self-attacking excited state, a process formally analogous to models of punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory. Both onset and progression of disease may be stratified by a relation to cyclic physiological responses which are long in comparison with heartbeat period: circadian, hormonal, and annual light/termperature cycles.

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arXiv2003

Resilience reconsidered: Case histories from disease ecology

We expand the current understanding of ecological resilience to include the nested hierarchy of cognitive submodules that particularly, if not uniquely, delineates human ecosystems. These modules, ranging from the immune system to the local social network, are embedded in a cultural milieu which, to take the perspective of the evolutionary anthropologist Robert Boyd, ''is as much a part of human biology as the enamel on our teeth''. We begin by extending recent treatments of cognitive process as associated with characteristic information sources to a certain class of ecosystems through a generalization of coarse-graining. In the spirit of the Large Deviations Program, we then import renormalization formalism via the Asymptotic Equipartition Theorem to obtain punctuated response to parameters of increasing habitat degradation. A Legendre transform of an appropriate joint information permits analysis away from critical points, and generates the expected quasi-stability in a highly natural manner. We interweave the discussion with applications to the public health impacts of the massive deurbanization and deindustrialization presently afflicting the United States.

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arXiv2003

Structured psychosocial stress and therapeutic failure

Generalized language-of-thought arguments appropriate to interacting cognitive modules permit exploration of how disease states interact with medical treatment. The interpenetrating feedback between treatment and response to it creates a kind of idiotypic hall-of-mirrors generating a synergistic pattern of efficacy, treatment failure, adverse reactions, and patient noncompliance which, from a Rate Distortion perspective, embodies a distorted image of externally-imposed structured psychosocial stress. For the US, accelerating spatial and social diffusion of such stress enmeshes both dominant and subordinate populations in a linked system which will express itself, not only in an increasingly unhealthy society, but in the diffusion of therapeutic failure, including, but not limited to, drug-based treatments.

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