creators_name: Wallace, Rodrick creators_id: wallace@pi.cpmc.columbia.edu type: preprint datestamp: 2009-11-14 11:42:22 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:30 metadata_visibility: show title: Roman roads: The hierarchical endosymbiosis of cognitive modules subjects: neuro-mod subjects: cog-psy subjects: bio-evo subjects: comp-sci-art-intel full_text_status: public keywords: cognition, endosymbiosis, free energy, information theory, phase transition, rate distortion abstract: Serial endosymbiosis theory provides a unifying paradigm for examining the interaction of cognitive modules at vastly different scales of biological, social, and cultural organization. A trivial but not unimportant model associates a dual information source with a broad class of cognitive processes, and punctuated phenomena akin to phase transitions in physical systems, and associated coevolutionary processes, emerge as consequences of the homology between information source uncertainty and free energy density. The dynamics, including patterns of punctuation similar to ecosystem resilience transitions, are large dominated by the availability of 'Roman roads' constituting channels for the transmission of information between modules. date: 2009-10-22 date_type: submitted refereed: FALSE citation: Wallace, Rodrick (2009) Roman roads: The hierarchical endosymbiosis of cognitive modules. [Preprint] document_url: http://cogprints.org/6660/1/roman41.pdf