Artificial Life and Natural Intelligence

Abstract. This paper reviews the neuroscience literature to sculpt a view of intelligence from the artificial life (ALife) perspective. Three key themes are used to motivate a journey down the low road to cognition. First, the origins of brain structures and dynamics exhibit considerable emergence at phylogenic, epigenetic, and ontogenetic levels. Second, AL-ife complexity measures have interesting parallels in theoretical neuro-science. Finally, the cerebral internalization of sensory stimuli and motor control explain, respectively, a) semantics in terms of differential com-plexity, and b) how neural evolution has overcome the limitations of simple emergence.