Abstract
Two broad features are jointly necessary for autonomous agency: organisational closure and the embodiment of an objective-function providing a ‘goal’: so far only organisms demonstrate both. Organisational closure has been studied (mostly in abstract), especially as cell autopoiesis and the cybernetic principles of autonomy, but the role of an internalised ‘goal’ and how it is instantiated by cell signalling and the functioning of nervous systems has received less attention. Here I add some biological ‘flesh’ to the cybernetic theory and trace the evolutionary development of step-changes in autonomy: (1) homeostasis of organisationally closed systems; (2) perception-action systems; (3) action selection systems; (4) cognitive systems; (5) memory supporting a self-model able to anticipate and evaluate actions and consequences. Each stage is characterised by the number of nested goal-directed control-loops embodied by the organism, summarised as will-nestedness . Organism tegument, receptor/transducer system, mechanisms of cellular and whole-organism re-programming and organisational integration, all contribute to causal independence. Conclusion: organisms are cybernetic phenomena whose identity is created by the information structure of the highest level of causal closure (maximum ), which has increased through evolution, leading to increased causal independence, which might be quantifiable by ‘Integrated Information Theory’ measures.
Highlights
Life As a Challenge to PhysicsIt is generally accepted that life is an elaboration of chemistry [1], with the implication that at a molecular level, living processes are seamlessly a part of the non-living cycles of Earth chemistry and of the universe
The physical boundary is obviously its tegument, but does this qualify as a causal boundary, given that all living things are materially and thermodynamically open systems? When we extend to a eukaryotic cell that belongs to a multicellular organism, it seems that its boundary cannot provide causal autonomy because each cell must obey the control of the whole organism, which is a community of such cells
I have argued that agency is a special feature of organisms and that it is enabled by the combination of autonomy and purpose, the latter being defined by a goal in an objective function
Summary
It is generally accepted that life is an elaboration of chemistry [1], with the implication that at a molecular level, living processes are seamlessly a part of the non-living cycles of Earth chemistry and of the universe. The set of inter-relations among the components is an abstract, purely organisational, phenomenon that transcends the material composition of the components, in the sense that we can think of it without referring to them and sometimes can translate it from one medium to another, e.g., making a computer using water pipes and mechanical valves, or more subtly, a cell forming a signalling pathway having a choice of proteins This functional information embodied among interactions is what I term a transcendent complex. More practical estimators have been developed in response by Balduzzi and Tononi [44] and further by Barrett and Seth [43], who offered methods to estimate φ from a time-series of states (dynamic behaviour) of a network that may be either continuous or discrete and is not restricted to be Markovian This has opened the way to quantifying the extent to which biological systems embody more functional information than is to be found in their component parts. As well as reaction kinetics, the topological (in practice, spatial) arrangement of these networks determines the cause-effect relations, as illustrated by the examples of Koseska and Bastiaens [35] where realistic biochemistry connected in different topologies results in rich and diverse dynamics
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