Generative Mechanisms: The mechanisms that implement codes

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of generative mechanisms as processes that implement codes across biological and linguistic systems, distinguishing them from selectionist mechanisms and illustrating with diverse examples.

Contribution

It provides an abstract framework for understanding generative mechanisms and differentiates them from selectionist models, with examples from genetics, linguistics, and embryonic development.

Findings

Generative mechanisms implement codes in biological and linguistic systems.

They are distinct from selectionist mechanisms like evolution.

Examples include DNA-RNA machinery, language acquisition, and embryogenesis.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to abstractly describe the notion of a generative mechanism that implements a code and to provide a number of examples including the DNA-RNA machinery that implements the genetic code, Chomsky's Principles & Parameters model of a child acquiring a specific grammar given `chunks' of linguistic experience (which play the role of the received code), and embryonic development where positional information in the developing embryo plays the role of the received code. A generative mechanism is distinguished from a selectionist mechanism that has heretofore played an important role in biological modeling (e.g., Darwinian evolution and the immune system).