Generative Mechanisms: The mechanisms that implement codes

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).