Dear Haines,

You ask: "You mention examples of imprinted complex behavior that is learned. "Presumably any innate behaviour is in some sense or other DNA encoded, or is so to some degree". The issue is,  how does this imprinted behavior become encoded in DNA?"  

My point was that imprinted behaviour is not encoded in DNA. What is encoded is the imprinting procedure: follow-whatever-duck-you-see-first; speak-whatever-language-you-hear-in-your-first-few-years, etc. For this reason, though my children speak English by imprinting, their children may speak some other language. Lamarckianism predicts that my children's English-speaking will have an impact on their DNA in such a way that makes it more likely that their children will speak English. That's why it's wrong.

So here's my first point: both deterministic (or sphexish, to use Dennett's term) and flexible behaviours can be encoded in DNA because conditional commands can be DNA encoded: i.e., you can have a DNA-encoded command "If F, then do X". (I think this is what Jo was getting at when he wrote of the DNA determining the disposition -- rather than the behaviour.) Where the antecedent of the conditional is environmentally sensitive, this demands the functional analogue of a sensor to determine when the antecedent of the conditional is satisfied.

You say: "the emergent whole contains more information than that held by its constituents."

I agree. A and B occurring together carries more information than A and B each carry. But here's my second point: I am not sure what you mean when you say that this can't be explained by natural selection. For instance, a rabbit may be deterministically programmed to run north if it hears simultaneous loud noises east and west, but to run east from a loud noise westward, and west from an eastward sound. You could say this is a case of non-reductionistic emergence, but why does natural selection have a problem with it?

Finally: "can the behavior of the parent during the growth of the embro somehow influence or select which variant possible replication is favored, so that the resulting cells are a function of the parent's
behavior?"

I think that in a literal sense, the answer is yes. For instance, the mother can take thalidomide. But Lamarckianism says that the parents' behaviour will replicate itself in the offspring through genetic changes in the DNA. Unfortunately, you can't by ingesting thalidomide produce a baby who is genetically immune from morning sickness (because she is genetically prone to take thalidomide).

best,

Mohan