Measuring autonomy and emergence via Granger causality

Concepts of emergence and autonomy are central to artificial life and related cognitive and behavioral sciences. However, quantitative and easy-to-apply measures of these phenomena are mostly lacking. Here, I describe quantitative and practicable measures for both autonomy and emergence, based on the framework of multivariate autoregression and specifically Granger causality. G-autonomy measures the extent to which the knowing the past of a variable helps predict its future, as compared to predictions based on past states of external (environmental) variables. G-emergence measures the extent to which a process is both dependent upon and autonomous from its underlying causal factors. These measures are validated by application to agent-based models of predation (for autonomy) and flocking (for emergence). In the former, evolutionary adaptation enhances autonomy; the latter model illustrates not only emergence but also downward causation. I end with a discussion of relations among autonomy, emergence, and consciousness

Big Data as a Technology-to-think-with for Scientific Literacy

This research aimed to identify indications of scientific literacy resulting from a didactic and investigative interaction with Google Trends Big Data software by first-year students from a high-school in Novo Hamburgo, Southern Brazil. Both teaching strategies and research interpretations lie on four theoretical backgrounds. Firstly, Bunge's epistemology, which provides a thorough characterization of Science that was central to our study. Secondly, the conceptual framework of scientific literacy of Fives et al. that makes our teaching focus precise and concise, as well as supports one of our methodological tool: the SLA (scientific literacy assessment). Thirdly, the "crowdledge" construct from dos Santos, which gives meaning to our study when as it makes the development of scientific literacy itself versatile for paying attention on sociotechnological and epistemological contemporary phenomena. Finally, the learning principles from Papert's Constructionism inspired our educational activities. Our educational actions consisted of students, divided into two classes, investigating phenomena chose by them. A triangulation process to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods on the assessments results was done. The experimental design consisted in post-tests only and the experimental variable was the way of access to the world. The experimental group interacted with the world using analyses of temporal and regional plots of interest of terms or topics searched on Google. The control class did 'placebo' interactions with the world through on-site observations of bryophytes, fungus or whatever in the schoolyard. As general results of our research, a constructionist environment based on Big Data analysis showed itself as a richer strategy to develop scientific literacy, compared to a free schoolyard exploration.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figures, 8 table

System odpornościowy, ja immunologiczne. Wprowadzenie

[Przekład] Pogląd głoszący, że układ odpornościowy rozróżnia to, co swoje, od tego, co obce, był jednym z centralnych założeń immunologii w drugiej połowie XX wieku. Pogląd ten miał wpływ na projekty eksperymentalne i interpretowanie danych. Jednakże w obliczu nowych dowodów empirycznych konieczny jest w immunologii nowy aparat konceptualny

Imagining Emergent Metadata, Realizing the Emergent Web

Citation: Bengtson, Jason. "Imagining Emergent Metadata, Realizing the Emergent Web." Journal of Library Metadata 12.4 (2012) : 345-361. Print.While metadata is a key ingredient of machine-semantic technologies, it has drawbacks. As it is currently formed, metadata lacks dynamic responsiveness and requires top-down system modeling. The author proposes a schema and process of emergent metadata that will, if successful, allow metadata to respond to environmental conditions dynamically and to exhibit self-organizational features

MEDIUM EMERGENCE – Part One – The Personalist Theory of Emergence

Today the concept of emergence is quite popular, but its original meaning—a proper medium ontological conviction between dualism and materialist monism—has faded. An epistemological, weak understanding of emergence has arisen and the possibility of ontological emergence is called into question. With a detailed examination of the ontological consequences of the notion of reduction, I will argue, that, contrary to materialist conviction and interpretation, reduction and emergence are not each other’s rivals but on the contrary, and that epistemological or weak emergence is not a kind of “metaphysically innocent” materialism, but one of the two Janus faces of one medium emergence—the other being ontological or strong emergence. These faces are inseparable, and together they form the one proper medium ontological conviction between dualism (or vitalism, creationism, etc.) and materialist monism

Complex emergence and the living organization: an epistemological framework for biology

In this article an epistemological framework is proposed in order to integrate the emergentist thought with systemic studies on biological autonomy, which are focused on the role of organization. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the observer’s activity, especially: (a) the different operations he performs in order to identify the pertinent elements at each descriptive level, and (b) the relationships between the different models he builds from them. According to the approach sustained here, organization will be considered as the result of a specific operation of identifi- cation of the relational properties of the functional components of a system, which do not necessarily coincide with the intrinsic properties of its structural constituents. Also, an epistemological notion of emergence—that of “complex emergence”—will be introduced, which can be defined as the insufficiency, even in principle, of a single descriptive modality to provide a complete description of certain classes of systems. This integrative framework will allow us to deal with two issues in biological and emergentist studies: (1) distinguishing the autonomy proper of living systems from some physical processes like those of structural stability and pattern generation, and (2) reconsidering the notion of downward causation not as a direct or indirect influence of the whole on its parts, but instead as an epistemological problem of interaction between descriptive domains in which the concept of organization proposed and the observational operations related to it play a crucial role

Emergence Without Limits: the Case of Phonons

Recent discussions of emergence in physics have focussed on the use of limiting relations, and often particularly on singular or asymptotic limits. We discuss a putative example of emergence that does not fit into this narrative: the case of phonons. These quasi-particles have some claim to be emergent, not least because the way in which they relate to the underlying crystal is almost precisely analogous to the way in which quantum particles relate to the underlying quantum field theory. But there is no need to take a limit when moving from a crystal lattice based description to the phonon description. Not only does this demonstrate that we can have emergence without limits, but also provides a way of understanding cases that do involve limits

Is the creation of artificial life morally significant?

AbstractIn 2010, the Venter lab announced that it had created the first bacterium with an entirely synthetic genome. This was reported to be the first instance of ‘artificial life,’ and in the ethical and policy discussions that followed it was widely assumed that the creation of artificial life is in itself morally significant. We cast doubt on this assumption. First we offer an account of the creation of artificial life that distinguishes this from the derivation of organisms from existing life and clarify what we mean in asking whether the creation of artificial life has moral significance. We then articulate and evaluate three attempts to establish that the creation of artificial life is morally significant. These appeal to (1) the claim that the creation of artificial life involves playing God, as expressed in three distinct formulations; (2) the claim that the creation of artificial life will encourage reductionist attitudes toward the living world that undermine the special moral value accorded to life; and (3) the worry that artificial organisms will have an uncertain functional status and consequently an uncertain moral status. We argue that all three attempts to ground the moral significance of the creation of artificial life fail, because none of them establishes that the creation of artificial life is morally problematic in a way that the derivation of organisms from existing life forms is not. We conclude that the decisive moral consideration is not how life is created but what non-genealogical properties it possesses

Making Room for Emergence

We try to provide in outline an understanding of emergent properties, which should possibly make the idea of emergence not just plausible but compelling. It is our conviction that the core truth of emergentism is neither especially exotic nor counterintuitive, while its apparent eccentricity is essentially due to some prejudicial ontological assumptions. In the first half of the paper our argument develops through Jaegwon Kim\u2019s rejection of emergentism. We argue that Kim\u2019s use of both the \u201ccausal inheritance principle\u201d and the \u201ccausal closure principle\u201d in his criticism of emergence is unwarranted. In the second half of the paper we develop a positive account of emergence through a restoration of the ontological notion of quality. We contend that any monistic ontology, in order to account for experience, must make room for irreducible qualities and that efficaciousness cannot be denied to them. The novelty of emergent properties amounts to a priori unpredictability, due to the very nature of combination. Their efficaciousness is interpreted in terms of qualifying thresholds modulating the mode of efficaciousness