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The most fundamental assumptions on which this paper is based are the importance of the concept of organization and the need to seek reasons for instances of organization while avoiding accidental, implicit appeals to homunculi. In the manner of Ashby, Campbell, and other general systems theorists, the concept of selection is seen as the only alternative, a way of explaining the behavior of complex systems whose properties are manifest only when their parts interact without seeking these properties, homunculi, self-contained in the parts. As every new adaptation of a living system obviously does not wait to evolve anew from a primordial substrate, we may think of these systems as having developed an internal ecology of vicarious selectors within which new adaptations can be worked out, remote from environmental exigencies. There are both logical and empirical reasons for supposing that these structures, the determinants of varied adaptive behaviors, show self-maintenance properties involving functional autonomy and spontaneous activity. In individual organisms they range from very global, motivational and emotional programs, operating mainly via elicitation of behavioral tendencies and selection by reinforcement of behaviors, to well articulated skills suited to very specific stimulus inputs. It is proposed that these considerations are relevant to the understanding of stimulus seeking, including humor, imprinting, and the similarities between perception and thinking. The phenomenon of recovery from brain damage is then discussed at some length. It is reasoned that evolution of the brain, ongoing maintenance of order in the brain, and recovery must depend on selection processes rather than on homunculi and that the concept of functional projection provides a more explicit, useful alternative to those of localization, redundancy, and distribution of function in the brain.

This paper is concerned with behaviour possible in an information-flow system intended explicitly as a hypothetical model for comparison with human information-handling system. A statistically self-organizing system is described in which not only normal homeostatic behaviour but also such activities as invention of fruitful hypotheses, imagination of fictitious situations, and like would find a natural place. Discussion is confined mainly to manner of concept-formation and concept-handling in such a system. It has been suggested that correlate of perception (as distinct from reception) is activity which organizes an outwardly directed internal matching response to signals from receptors. This organizing activity amounts logically to an internal representation of feature in incoming signals to which it is adaptive, i.e. feature which is thus ‘perceived’. A hierarchic structure is postulated wherein much of organizing activity is concerned with modifying probabilities of other activity. Abstract concepts and hypotheses are represented by ‘sub-routines’ of such organizing activity. These can in principle be evolved as a result of experience in a manner analogous to-or at least fruitfully comparable with-process of learning and discovery; and it is not necessary for designer to predetermine, nor possible for him to foresee, all conceptual categories in terms of which information received by system may be structured. Particular attention is directed to conditions under which such a process of concept-formation could take place with sufficient rapidity. Some of symptoms of psychopathology find apparent correlates in possible modes of malfunction of such a system. But in this, as in other respects, it is not intended to press resemblances; intention is rather to stimulate critical comparisons, in order that differences between information-flow model and real thing may continually lead to progressive refinement and enlarged understanding.

The basic issue of this paper is the investigation and description of the multicellular and subcellular systems which are essentially involved in the development (organization) of organismic behaviour, and the modelling of the structure of interconnectedness of these system. It is suggested that the basic step is represented by the metazoic programming of cellular programming structures. Both metazoic and cellular programming need a programme language transformation system (the vegetative, and the genetic system respectively) which transforms stored instructions into messages communicable by the controlled system. Apart from the step of cellular programming all other aspects of the development of organasmic behaviour are proposed to be of supracellular order performed by complex supracellular automata which emerge from tessellation of cellular systems. A distinction has been made between organic and organismic properties. The latter (for example, the problem of ontogenesis, the problem of evolution, the problem of self-repair, etc.) are connected to a super-problem and related to the particular aspects of metazoic and cellular programming. The model is developed to provide an instrument for the synthetic investigation of human behaviour. It is proposed that only a model of the organization of organismic behaviour represents a reasonable platform for interdisciplinary discussion in medicine.

General criteria that an experimental model for cellular neurophysiologic studies of learning must satisfy are discussed. It is suggested that defensively-conditioned cardioacceleration in the pigeon provides a preparation with a great deal of potential in this regard. Specific criteria are then established and discussed with reference to this specific preparation. The major emphasis in the paper is upon our approach to developing a suitable vertebrate model, particularly its behavioral requirements and the determination of the neuroanatomical pathways mediating development of the learned response. Experimental results illustrate the approach.

THE PURPOSE of this paper is to consider the similarities among a number of concepts which arose relatively independently in diverse fields of behavioral research. There are two major elements which unite these concepts: first, they derive from the interrelated problem of characterizing both stimuli and individuals; and second, the experimental designs by which the concepts are tested are similar. In particular, we will develop the thesis that the psychophysiological principle of response specificity is a unifying principle because it collects so many seemingly unrelated concepts. Both the various forms of specificity and some of the experimental variables necessary to demonstrate their existence will be described, and then an attempt will be made to show that many different concepts in psychology and psychiatry can be related to one another through the principle of specificity. The most general division of the principle