Unlimited Associative Learning: What It Is, Characteristics And How It Is Expressed
It has long been known that organisms learn. There are various stimuli in the environment and, when a living being is exposed to them, it internalizes information about it.
However, not all organisms learn equally and much less can they learn the same thing. A human, dog, or bird can learn that the sound of a bell means food, while a microbe, sea sponge, or plant does not.
Unlimited associative learning is an idea that arises from a novel approach in animal cognition and aims to study the evolutionary origins of consciousness. This type of learning could be a marker of the transition from non-conscious to conscious life, a question we will explore below.
What is consciousness? What can be considered a conscious organism? Currently there is a certain consensus in considering a conscious system as that which has the capacity to experience, to have its subjective point of view of the world and its own body. This system must be able to generate an elusive property that philosophers have called phenomenal consciousness to be considered.
Human beings are conscious. We are animals that at some point in evolutionary history have gone from being non-conscious organisms to conscious organisms, however, the line that separates both types of lives is highly debated. That frontier has to exist but finding it remains the greatest challenge of modern science and philosophy.
Yes, a volcano, a stone, a cyclone or my computer are quite likely not aware of their existence (although a panpsychist would not think the same) but what about a dog? and with a plant? and a jellyfish? There is no doubt that they are life forms, but are they conscious beings? and if so, to what extent? The debate is still open but thanks to the work of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka this issue seems to be approaching a solution with a new concept: unlimited associative learning.
The central postulate of unlimited associative learning is that those organisms that can carry it out are living systems capable of learning about the world and themselves in an unlimited way, in the sense that they are free to interact with the environment and manifest a wide range of responses This idea has been explained in his recent work, “The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness” from 2019.
Before going into more depth about unlimited associative learning and its importance as a key to establishing the line between non-conscious and conscious life, let’s do a brief review of the types of learning that exist. Although there are many different types, learning can be grouped into two broad categories: non-associative learning and associative learning, the latter being the most sophisticated.
Non-associative learning
Non-associative learning is the type of learning common in all (or almost all) forms of life, including unicellular organisms. In the case of animals, this type of learning takes place in the peripheral nervous system, although it is true that there are certain learnings that would be included in this category that involve the activation of the central nervous system. It should also be noted that not all animals have an equivalent to our nervous system.
Non-associative learning includes habituation and sensitization Habituation is the phenomenon that occurs when a sensory receptor responds less frequently to a constant or repetitive stimulus. For example, habituation is what occurs when we stop noticing the touch of the clothing we are wearing or, also, when we no longer notice the frame of the glasses on our nose and ears.
Awareness is just the opposite of habituation. It occurs when there is no certain stimulus for a long time, making the sensory neuron in charge of that stimulus more likely to respond when the stimulus suddenly appears again. That is, the more time that passes without receiving stimulation, the more sensitive the neuron becomes to it. Sensitization can also occur when an unexpected stimulus occurs, such as noticing a mosquito bite.
Associative learning
Historically, associative learning has been divided into two types: classical or Pavlovian conditioning and operant or instrumental conditioning
Classical conditioning is also called Pavlovian because it is this type of learning that the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov investigated with his famous dogs. He initially observed that dogs salivated when presented with food (unconditioned stimulus) so he decided to ring a bell (conditioned stimulus) every time he presented that food and see if they associated both stimuli. After several attempts he managed to get the dogs to associate the sound of the bell with food and when they received this sound stimulus they began to salivate, even if they had no food in front of them.
Operant conditioning involves the association between an action and a reinforcing stimulus, whether positive or negative. For example, if we have a rat in a cage, it will be freely exploring the space until it finds a button that it accidentally presses. Each time you press the button you receive a piece of food, causing the animal to associate your action with positive reinforcement. For reinforcement to influence behavior, it must have some type of value for the organism, whether attractive (e.g., food) or aversive (e.g., electroshock).
Features of unlimited associative learning
Having seen all this, it is time to talk directly about unlimited associative learning. Ginsburg and Jablonka introduced a new nomenclature in their work when referring to different types of learning , among them calling classical conditioning “world learning” because it involves associating external stimuli (unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus). Regarding operant conditioning, they call it “self-learning” because in this case it does involve the association of an individual’s own action with the reinforcement (stimulus).
These two authors postulate that for associative learning to occur to a lesser or greater extent, there must be a minimally complex neurological system, a brain or something similar, and for this reason this learning is not found in all animal species because not all of them meet this criterion. For example, jellyfish do not have anything similar to a brain and the only learning they have been seen to be able to do is non-associative.
There are some very primitive creatures that manifest something similar to associative learning: limited associative learning This type of learning involves very simple associations that are very far from being considered consciously by the organism that carries them out, but that in some way or another comes close to the line that separates non-conscious life from non-conscious life. aware.
The next level of complexity is unlimited associative learning. This involves associations between compound stimuli coming from various sensory modalities, such as hearing, sight, taste, and so on. These stimuli are integrated and awaken very varied motor actions. As we progress along the phylogenetic scale, the ability to integrate different perceptual stimuli and the behavioral range grows, becoming something that is virtually unlimited.
And this is where we end up talking about unlimited associative learning, which is considered to be would be behind consciousness and would be the key indicator element of a minimum of consciousness in an animal species The more varied the response that an animal can emit to the same stimulus, being able to adapt to it in various ways, it makes sense to think that behind its behavior there is a minimum of intentionality and understanding, something that resembles in one way or another our idea of consciousness.
conscious animals
According to this idea, dogs are conscious because they can associate the same stimulus in many ways and can also perform all types of behaviors in response to it In fact, thanks to their “awareness” we can make them learn many tricks or prevent them from misbehaving by applying negative reinforcement every time they do an unwanted behavior. On the other hand, a sea sponge, a much simpler organism, cannot associate different stimuli, which would be indicative of the absence of consciousness.
Along the same lines as what we have just discussed, both Ginsburg and Jablonka and other experts in animal cognition consider that There are several animal species that must have a minimum of awareness , especially those that in laboratory conditions have been shown to be capable of associating different sensory stimuli. It is agreed that all vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds), some arthropods (e.g., hymenoptera) and very few cephalopods (mainly octopuses) have consciousness since they have manifested unlimited associative learning.
Likewise, although this type of associative learning may be key to identifying a species with consciousness, it does not mean that the organism itself can be conscious. The research is still open and the idea of unlimited associative learning is too novel to claim that it is a good delimiter of the line between non-conscious living beings and conscious living beings. However, this concept has helped to clear up this debate a little more and it seems that in the coming years it will be possible to establish more clearly the extent to which a living being is or is not conscious.
