http://popups.lib.uliege.be/1373-5411/index.php?id=1071 Publications of Auteurs John Collier fr 0 http://popups.lib.uliege.be/1373-5411/index.php?id=1748 A system is autonomous if it uses its own information to modify itself and its environment to enhance its survival, responding to both environmental and internal stimuli to modify its basic functions to increase its viability. Autonomy is the foundation of functionality, intentionality and meaning. Autonomous systems accommodate the unexpected through self-organizing processes, together with some constraints that maintain autonomy. Early versions of autonomy, such as autopoiesis and closure to efficient cause, made autonomous systems dynamically closed to information. This contrasts with recent work on open systems and information dynamics. On our account, autonomy is a matter of degree depending on the relative organization of the system and system environment interactions. A choice between third person openness and first person closure is not required. Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:03:38 +0200 Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:03:53 +0200 http://popups.lib.uliege.be/1373-5411/index.php?id=1748 http://popups.lib.uliege.be/1373-5411/index.php?id=1068 Typically, we think of both artificial and natural computing devices as following rules that allow them to alter their behaviour (output) according to their environment (input). This approach works well when the environment and goals are well defined and regular. However, 1) the search time for appropriate solutions quickly becomes intractable when the input is not fairly regular, and 2) responses may be required that are not computable, either in principle, or given the computational resources available to the system. It may seem that there is no way to deal with these conditions, but if we think of systems as dynamical nonequilibrium autonomous entities, there are ways to deal with the unexpected and irregular by taking advantage of self-organising and self-preserving capacities of such systems. A generalised force acting on a system far from equilibrium will cause the system to reorganise itself in the direction of the generalised force in such a way as to minimise its effects (Nicolis and Prigogine, 1977), but there can be unpredictable effects in different generalised directions in the system's phase space. In order to preserve system integrity, these effects must be damped or used for further self-reorganisation, possibly starting a cascade effect that leaves the system in a substantially different state in which it can handle further instances of this sort of information. This model is similar to and extends the theoretical model of accommodation and assimilation of Piaget, derived from his observations of the development of intelligence in children. Fri, 05 Jul 2024 11:19:46 +0200 Mon, 07 Oct 2024 15:28:41 +0200 http://popups.lib.uliege.be/1373-5411/index.php?id=1068