70 Informational environments
Second, domains may be composed of individuals or aggregates of individuals, for example if we try to follow one specific Condor specimen or population through space and time. Not just any such-shaped and thus-moving shadow
within either California or Andean Condor habitats would do. The observer will
have to use other information within the domain of the specimen, but transmitted through different, independent channels, to identify the shadow as a signal of
the presence of this individual bird. Through various channels, the observer has
to remain focused on, and keep track of, the domain of this individual in order to
properly retrieve and use the information emanating from it. California Condors,
for example for being extremely rare and critically endangered, are subject to a
population recovery programme which includes the marking of individuals with
numbered tags and transmitters – which makes for much easier tracking than having to rely on information collected in the wild. Aggregates of individuals need
not be phylogenetically related though. Depending on the receiver’s needs and
purposes, they even could be simply that in some cases: aggregates of individuals
in specific constellations and at certain times and places that are relevant to him.
In such cases and only in such cases, the regularity governing the domain is partly
constituted by the receiver’s constitution and needs.
Third, domains may owe to universally law-like rather than locally bound
probabilistic regularities on a physical level but are circumscribed by concrete
conditions of realisation that only hold locally. For example a hygrometer will
not convey any information on atmospheric water content when placed on Venus,
nor will there be any use for a barometer or olfactory organs in interstellar space.
The conditions on Venus or in interstellar space do not fall within the range of
values for which the function or functions of the respective detectors are defined.
Under these conditions, although the operation of the instruments and organs can
be expected to accord to universal laws of nature, they will not be able to execute their functions, namely the collecting of natural information. This is not to
say that they do not have any function or lose their function when hence placed
outside their range of operation. The informational relation they are supposed
to detect is not present where they are, and/or the channels they would need for
detect that information are missing or misaligned, all for perfectly law-governed
reasons. Some receivers of natural information might be able to discern between
those regions in space-time where the conditions are in place for the presence and/
or transmission of the information in question and those regions in which they
are not. Or the receiver might be physically constrained to remaining within the
region or merely happen never to leave the region in which it holds.
Dretske’s famous magnetotactic bacteria may serve as a paradigm of lawfully
bounded domains of the latter kind (Dretske 1986, 26–28): For those anaerobic
marine bacteria, about the only relevant variable in their environment is the oxygen content in the waters they inhabit, which is strictly, and rather lawfully, correlated with depth below the water surface. With increasing depth, the concentration
of oxygen they will encounter reduces. Magnetotactic bacteria, however, do not
have any sensors for oxygen content in their surroundings. They do not perceive
it; nor is even the most simple of stimulus-response mechanisms involved. What
Second, domains may be composed of individuals or aggregates of individuals, for example if we try to follow one specific Condor specimen or population through space and time. Not just any such-shaped and thus-moving shadow
within either California or Andean Condor habitats would do. The observer will
have to use other information within the domain of the specimen, but transmitted through different, independent channels, to identify the shadow as a signal of
the presence of this individual bird. Through various channels, the observer has
to remain focused on, and keep track of, the domain of this individual in order to
properly retrieve and use the information emanating from it. California Condors,
for example for being extremely rare and critically endangered, are subject to a
population recovery programme which includes the marking of individuals with
numbered tags and transmitters – which makes for much easier tracking than having to rely on information collected in the wild. Aggregates of individuals need
not be phylogenetically related though. Depending on the receiver’s needs and
purposes, they even could be simply that in some cases: aggregates of individuals
in specific constellations and at certain times and places that are relevant to him.
In such cases and only in such cases, the regularity governing the domain is partly
constituted by the receiver’s constitution and needs.
Third, domains may owe to universally law-like rather than locally bound
probabilistic regularities on a physical level but are circumscribed by concrete
conditions of realisation that only hold locally. For example a hygrometer will
not convey any information on atmospheric water content when placed on Venus,
nor will there be any use for a barometer or olfactory organs in interstellar space.
The conditions on Venus or in interstellar space do not fall within the range of
values for which the function or functions of the respective detectors are defined.
Under these conditions, although the operation of the instruments and organs can
be expected to accord to universal laws of nature, they will not be able to execute their functions, namely the collecting of natural information. This is not to
say that they do not have any function or lose their function when hence placed
outside their range of operation. The informational relation they are supposed
to detect is not present where they are, and/or the channels they would need for
detect that information are missing or misaligned, all for perfectly law-governed
reasons. Some receivers of natural information might be able to discern between
those regions in space-time where the conditions are in place for the presence and/
or transmission of the information in question and those regions in which they
are not. Or the receiver might be physically constrained to remaining within the
region or merely happen never to leave the region in which it holds.
Dretske’s famous magnetotactic bacteria may serve as a paradigm of lawfully
bounded domains of the latter kind (Dretske 1986, 26–28): For those anaerobic
marine bacteria, about the only relevant variable in their environment is the oxygen content in the waters they inhabit, which is strictly, and rather lawfully, correlated with depth below the water surface. With increasing depth, the concentration
of oxygen they will encounter reduces. Magnetotactic bacteria, however, do not
have any sensors for oxygen content in their surroundings. They do not perceive
it; nor is even the most simple of stimulus-response mechanisms involved. What