RE: [-empyre-] the heart of the matter

[Paul Brown <paul@paul-brown.com>]

> This is a very good question.
> Before going off in that direction, the question is whether that model
> really emulates a organic form of neural interaction, with the same
> dynamics, etc.  Also, are we looking at computationalism as a rhetorical
> model, a philosophical model, or a cognitive model, or other?  I think
> that the frame in which computationalism is considered is very
> important.  As a rhetorical model, it sounds fine, but as a concrete
> analogue of digital and organic function, I have reservations.  But
> then, I was wrong about CD's...

My experience here is mainly of using them to model cognitive behaviour.
This was at the CCNR which was referred to several times in the posts
about alife and art in November.  I think you would be interested in their
program and am appending an invitation to a talk there (on Wednesday)
for those in the Brighton, UK region.

> Is Randy Beer related to Stafford Beer?  I'm more familiar with his work
> in organizational synergy.

Don't think so.  Yes Stafford Beer has been a major influence since
I discovered his work when he was working for Allende in the 1960's.
Everyone should read his "Designing Freedom":

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0887845479/qid=1102291745/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6522346-6807150?v=glance&s=books

and Platform for Change:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471948403/qid=1102291890/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-6522346-6807150?v=glance&s=books

Randy Beer is here:

http://vorlon.cwru.edu/~beer/

Appended invitation is here:

Alergic Talk Wed 8 Dec 16:30 in ARUN-401
(University of Sussex, Brighton)

Xabier Barandiaran,
University of the Basque Country and visiting researcher, CCNR, Sussex

will speak on:

Behavioural Adaptive Autonomy. A milestone in the Alife route to AI?

ABSTRACT: While central to robotics, biology and cognitive science, the
concept of autonomy remains still difficult to make operative in the realm
of Alife simulation models of cognitive agents. Its deep significance as a
transition concept between life and cognition (a milestone on the Alife
route to AI) remains obscured in the intricate relation between
metabolic/constructive processes and behavioral adaptive processes in
living systems. Within a naturalized and biologically inspired dynamical
approach to cognition a definition of behavioral adaptive autonomy is
provided: homeostatic maintenance of essential variables under viability
constraints through self-modulating behavioral coupling with the
environment, hierarchically decoupled from metabolic (constructive)
processes. This definition allows for a naturalized notion of behavioral
adaptive functionality (that defines a proper level of modelling within
Alife), structurally and interactively emergent: the mapping of the
agent-environment systems state space trajectories into the viability
subspace of the essential variables of the organism.

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Paul Brown          PO Box 413, Cotton Tree QLD 4558, Australia
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