Toward an ethics of autopoietic technology: Stress, care, and intelligence

Witkowski, Olaf; Doctor, Thomas; Solomonova, Elizaveta; Duane, Bill; Levin, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2023.104964

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…[ 121 ]. This impacts both biological applications of the autopoietic construction of the Self–world boundary (for evolutionary developmental biology, regenerative medicine, and psychiatry [ 122 , 123 , 124 ]), and the social/personal impact of increasing understanding of what we really are [ 125 , 126 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Principled Limitations on Self-Representation for Generic Physical Systems

Fields,

Glazebrook,

Levin

2024

Entropy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The ideas of self-observation and self-representation, and the concomitant idea of self-control, pervade both the cognitive and life sciences, arising in domains as diverse as immunology and robotics. Here, we ask in a very general way whether, and to what extent, these ideas make sense. Using a generic model of physical interactions, we prove a theorem and several corollaries that severely restrict applicable notions of self-observation, self-representation, and self-control. We show, in particular, that adding observational, representational, or control capabilities to a meta-level component of a system cannot, even in principle, lead to a complete meta-level representation of the system as a whole. We conclude that self-representation can at best be heuristic, and that self models cannot, in general, be empirically tested by the systems that implement them.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Principled Limitations on Self-Representation for Generic Physical Systems

Fields,

Glazebrook,

Levin

2024

Entropy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In general, adaptive development and behaviour are driven by perceived mismatch between what-is and what-should-be, making the definition of what-should-be (i.e. goal definition) a fundamental adaptive consideration [70]. On our proposal, it is the prenatal example of foetal buoyancy which constitutes the foundational definition of what-should-be (the 'training data') with respect to antigravity balance.…”

Section: Is 'Uprightness' Fundamental?mentioning

confidence: 96%

Hanging in there: Prenatal origins of antigravity homeostasis in humans

Wilkinson,

Ikegami,

Ciaunica

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

All life on Earth must find a way to manage the continuous perturbation of gravity. From birth, and even before, humans exhibit effortful ‘antigravity’ work to enact bodily, postural and behavioural form despite gravity. Indeed, observable antigravity behaviour is a standard diagnostic indicator of neonatal sensorimotor health. Antigravity behaviour has been investigated extensively in its biomechanical details. Yet its motivational structure has not been a focus of research. What drives the human body to expend energy on this effortful behaviour? It is widely understood that thermic homeostasis in humans is organised around conserving core body temperature at a set-point of ~37oC. There is currently no equivalent concept of a general homeostatic set-point driving antigravity effort. In this theoretical paper, we aim to establish such a concept. We make the case that the core developmental set-point for human antigravity homeostasis is “neutral buoyancy” (gravity and buoyant force are balanced), which is afforded to the foetus by its approximately equi-dense amniotic fluid medium in utero. We argue that postnatally, the general task of human antigravity balance is to emulate the conditions of neutral buoyancy, based upon prenatal experience thereof. Our aim in this paper is to sketch a high-level outline of a novel characterisation of ‘antigravity balance’ as conservative homeostasis, and lay out some implications and predictions of this model, with the intention of spurring wider research and discussion on this hitherto little explored topic.

show abstract

The Nonconvex Second-Order Cone: Algebraic Structure Toward Optimization

Alzalg,

Benakkouche

2024

J Optim Theory Appl

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Toward an ethics of autopoietic technology: Stress, care, and intelligence

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

Principled Limitations on Self-Representation for Generic Physical Systems

Principled Limitations on Self-Representation for Generic Physical Systems

Hanging in there: Prenatal origins of antigravity homeostasis in humans

The Nonconvex Second-Order Cone: Algebraic Structure Toward Optimization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About