Making an environment 89
organisms’ particular perspective. What they are restricted to is the domain of
ecological and selective environments, and these can be described only in relation
to the organisms inhabiting them. If a population moves to a different place, for
example in response to depletion of resources, it will establish a new territory that
will be demarcated by its members’ behaviours, which will possibly include the
use of some signals to the effect of marking the boundaries of the territory. Hence,
environmental entities constituted in such fashion are independently observable,
although by different means than direct physical modifications, namely by proxy
of the behaviours of the organisms and their effects.
3
In this respect, observing
and describing constitutive relations to an environment parallels observing and
describing intrinsic information in perception.
Godfrey-Smith’s distinction between organisms constructing and constituting
features of the environment, although not identical with the distinction between
physical and informational properties of the environment, stands in an instructive relation to the latter. Taken by themselves, physical conditions directly affect
behaviour, and are directly affected by it. Completion of a beaver dam will quite
directly improve conditions of success for the beaver’s foraging behaviour, and
hence will act positively on his reproductive chances. Cattle and beaver may be
able to collect information on the physical changes they purposefully or inadvertently brought about. Some of the world affairs they encounter will then serve as
signals of these changes. The animals might even be aware, to some extent, of the
effects of these changes on themselves. Although the ability to use information on
self-induced physical changes in the environment – on the possibilities and the
consequences – is common currency among higher animals, there is a necessity
for doing so only in a subset of cases. The animals may fail to grasp the changes
they induce and still get along well (although not in the case of overgrazing cattle, but these are not constructive activities in Godfrey-Smith’s sense anyway). In
contrast, the constitution of features of the environment is always informationally
based, because it by definition involves treating these features as something in
relation to the organism himself, for example as being part vs. not being part of
one’s territory. The degree to which the uptake of information is involved in either
case depends both on the number of variables an organism has to rely on and the
degrees of variance in these relevant variables.
Not least for their orthogonal relation to the kind and amount of natural information involved, constitution and construction are strategies that are not correlated
with degrees of organic complexity, let alone a presumed hierarchy in the tree of
life between primitive and advanced organisms. Although building artefacts, on
the face of it, may look like more of an accomplishment than moving to where
the conditions are right or treating an area as a territory, many higher animals,
too, will be found to follow the strategy of constitution rather than construction
in order to cope with the vagaries of their environments. As examples, GodfreySmith’s contrasts cockroaches, hawks and dolphins as followers of the constitutive strategy with termites, beavers and human beings as constructors (1996a,
146). Animals of different degrees of complexity in organic and behavioural traits
may follow either strategy.
organisms’ particular perspective. What they are restricted to is the domain of
ecological and selective environments, and these can be described only in relation
to the organisms inhabiting them. If a population moves to a different place, for
example in response to depletion of resources, it will establish a new territory that
will be demarcated by its members’ behaviours, which will possibly include the
use of some signals to the effect of marking the boundaries of the territory. Hence,
environmental entities constituted in such fashion are independently observable,
although by different means than direct physical modifications, namely by proxy
of the behaviours of the organisms and their effects.
3
In this respect, observing
and describing constitutive relations to an environment parallels observing and
describing intrinsic information in perception.
Godfrey-Smith’s distinction between organisms constructing and constituting
features of the environment, although not identical with the distinction between
physical and informational properties of the environment, stands in an instructive relation to the latter. Taken by themselves, physical conditions directly affect
behaviour, and are directly affected by it. Completion of a beaver dam will quite
directly improve conditions of success for the beaver’s foraging behaviour, and
hence will act positively on his reproductive chances. Cattle and beaver may be
able to collect information on the physical changes they purposefully or inadvertently brought about. Some of the world affairs they encounter will then serve as
signals of these changes. The animals might even be aware, to some extent, of the
effects of these changes on themselves. Although the ability to use information on
self-induced physical changes in the environment – on the possibilities and the
consequences – is common currency among higher animals, there is a necessity
for doing so only in a subset of cases. The animals may fail to grasp the changes
they induce and still get along well (although not in the case of overgrazing cattle, but these are not constructive activities in Godfrey-Smith’s sense anyway). In
contrast, the constitution of features of the environment is always informationally
based, because it by definition involves treating these features as something in
relation to the organism himself, for example as being part vs. not being part of
one’s territory. The degree to which the uptake of information is involved in either
case depends both on the number of variables an organism has to rely on and the
degrees of variance in these relevant variables.
Not least for their orthogonal relation to the kind and amount of natural information involved, constitution and construction are strategies that are not correlated
with degrees of organic complexity, let alone a presumed hierarchy in the tree of
life between primitive and advanced organisms. Although building artefacts, on
the face of it, may look like more of an accomplishment than moving to where
the conditions are right or treating an area as a territory, many higher animals,
too, will be found to follow the strategy of constitution rather than construction
in order to cope with the vagaries of their environments. As examples, GodfreySmith’s contrasts cockroaches, hawks and dolphins as followers of the constitutive strategy with termites, beavers and human beings as constructors (1996a,
146). Animals of different degrees of complexity in organic and behavioural traits
may follow either strategy.