A problem with evolutionary theory?

Top-down and bottom-up genetics looks ok. But reading recent stuff by "intelligent designists" I've begun to realise just how vast the gap between the two is... so vast that it looks like we may never understand how on Earth - or in Heaven - the amount of information locked up in our cells and bodies ever got there. It is truely vast.

At 6 bit bytes, for there are 64 codons in DNA, and 3 billion base pairs, or 1 billion codons, the human genome contains a maximum of 6 billion bits of information. (That's a very crude calculation, i'm sure it could be substantially compressed). With 5.5 GB, over 1 DVD of pure data! That is a bit for every 8 months of the existence of life on Earth. Its mad meaningless calculation, but it gives some idea of the amount of information accumulated and the questions that arise over the idea that was generated by evolution.

Anyway I'm writing a genetic algorythm to investigate evolution, especially whether it is gradual or punctuated ... the question raised by the discontinuous fossil record. And of personal interest this oldest question of the difference between "data" and "code".

Information is never 1 dimensional. You may have a book, but the words can't read themselves. They need a context, and that context cannot be the same type of thing as the words.

More substantially this is present in computers. Data and Code are both recorded in identical bytes. However the CPU (processor) is split into data and code registers which take bytes but do fundamentally different things with them. Code registers are wired to switch on the variety of different curcuits on the CPU that do processing. This processing performs logical operation on the contents of the data registers. And then it is all shipped around memory and stuff happens. Its only possible because "code" and "data" have different meaning in a world that neither can ever know about.

It is the feature of symbols (and knowledge generally) that it is seemingly always dependent upon some other level which has always intrigued me. Is there such a system which can encode itself... what in logic is called a "well formed langauge".

A similar analogy seems to be present in consciousness. Consciousness seems to be not just about awareness, but in particular awareness of itself. Not just a reactive seeing like an intelligent computer, but a seeing that knows that it is seeing, a reflective seeing; Being with a relationship to itself, in Heideggars words. But Consciousness trying to observe, or study itself, is like a dog chasing its tail. Is the "viewer" or the "viewed" which is consciousness? Is it "what I am aware of" or "that I am aware of it" that constutes consciousness? One depends upon the other as Descartes discovered so happily in his meditations... just the very act of awareness of a thing was eventually enough to dispell all doubts of his existence. "Our" existence is a deeper question, not to be covered here.

So I turn to evolutionary theory. The theory proposes that all characteristics in an organism can be traced to unique sequences of DNA that cause those characteristic. These are called genes. If a gene creates beneficial characters then those organisms having it, then they will have more children. The children are likely to carry the gene and so it spreds through a population after a number of generations. On the other hand less productive characters have less children and so the genes fall out of the population. That's the simplest view of evolutionary biology.

A potential problem that has been emerging in my mind. Consider Hawkish or Dovish behaviour i.e. agressive or passive. Traditionally Evol. Biologists say things like "a gene for hawkish", or a gene for "passive".

However consider what Hawkish and Dovish mean? They are not like Mendelian beans where simple proteins can make the pea intrinsically tall or short. Rather Hawkish and Dovish are responses to the external environment. They are features of a "processing machine". Gene's can make the machine but they are not involved in its activity. But it is the activity which is hawkish/doveish not the machine. It is the same as saying: Gene's can make the blue-print for a computer, but they are not involved in the processing.

Its a subtle point I grant. In building a genetic algorythm I need to write a procedure to handle the response to each of the codons in the artificial genes. It is easy with intrinsic factors like "move left", "move right" and I have been testing it with "bugs" who are evolving the best walking pattern to pick up food around the arena.

What if 2 bugs meet? I have been ignoring that until now. One way forward is to make 2 more procedures one that backs off - the Dove, and one that fights - the Hawk. The bugs get their own Dungeon and Dragons with dice throws and skill points etc.

Now program that! The "gene" needs "information" about its environment. But genes are just "1 way" information sources, they build proteins blindly, or build the machinery of the cell and body blindly. It is central to darwinian dogma that the gene does not have "conditional" information that in some way could make it respond directly to its environment. That would be like saying that the gene in the famous Galapagos tortoises made the shell rims high on arid islands and shallow on wet islands. When the whole point of the theory is to explain the data in the tortoise genes purely in terms of selection. Genes simply cannot know. They are "blind watchmakers" fashioned from the outside by innumerable trials and errors.

So how do you code for Hawkish and Dovish behaviours that in their essence require information about the environment, that in their essence are the software on a machine while the genes build the hardware? Can a machine be built by a blind man, which itself can see? Somewhere between the bottom up world of blind genes, and the top down world of responsive world of organisms one presumes there is a meeting?

Its an issue to solve...