Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior

Abstract

In this article, we propose some fundamental requirements for the appearance of adaptivity. We argue that a basic metabolic organization, taken in its minimal sense, may provide the conceptual framework for naturalizing the origin of teleology and normative functionality as it appears in living systems. However, adaptivity also requires the emergence of a regulatory subsystem, which implies a certain form of dynamic decoupling within a globally integrated, autonomous system. Thus, we analyze several forms of minimal adaptivity, including the special case of motility. We go on to explain how an open-ended complexity growth of motility-based adaptive agency, namely, behavior, requires the appearance of the nervous system. Finally, we discuss some implications of these ideas for embodied robotics.Keywords naturalist approach to normativity · autonomous systems · adaptivity · minimal agency · decoupling of the nervous system · definition of adaptive behavior

What makes biological organisation teleological?

“…In particular, closure is the circular causal regime that adequately grounds intrinsic teleology and, consequently, normativity. As it has been recently argued (Barandiaran & Moreno, 2008;Mossio et al, 2009) the goal of a closed organisation has an intrinsic relevance for the system, which generates a criterion for determining what norms the system is supposed to follow: the system must behave in a specific way, otherwise it would cease to exist. The intrinsic goal of a system realising closure becomes its norm or, maybe more precisely, its conditions of existence are the intrinsic (and naturalised) norms of its own activity.…”

Aesthetics as an Emotional Activity That Facilitates Sense-Making: Towards an Enactive Approach to Aesthetic Experience

“…However, some agents are motivated in the course of interaction to preserve their autonomy in a different way, or/and even to enhance their autonomy, and to satisfy their preferences (Barandiaran & Moreno 2008;Arnellos et al 2010). We would like to emphasize this complementary point of view, according to which agents do not only appreciate things in respect to a negative tendency, but on the contrary, they appreciate the conditions that lead them to viability; i.e.…”

“…Adaptive autonomous agents engage in interactive cycles with their environment (Barandiaran & Moreno 2008). These interactive cycles provides agents with the ability to create new distinctions (actions) based on previous ones, to evaluate their distinctions, and to increase their autonomy by creating new meanings.…”

Autonomy and Enactivism: Towards a Theory of Sensorimotor Autonomous Agency

“…A naturalized account of norms (or normative functionality) in terms of the viability constraints of an autonomous organization has been developed at length in biology, mostly in opposition to evolutionary or adaptationist accounts of normative function (Barandiaran and Egbert 2013;Barandiaran and Moreno 2008;Christensen and Bickhard 2002;Mossio et al 2009). We have proposed that this account of normativity can be relatively easily transferred, by analogy, to mental life, through the notion of a self-sustaining network of habits and its coherentist dynamical demands.…”

“…the function that made that trait an adaptation), autonomists naturalize norms within the context of the very working of the organism. The normative function of a trait or part of an organism is defined by the specific way in which it contributes to the self-maintenance of the system (Barandiaran and Egbert 2013;Barandiaran and Moreno 2008;Christensen and Bickhard 2002;Di Paolo 2005;Weber and Varela 2002). The normative nature is justified as a condition of possibility: were structure S not functioning according to the norm presupposed by the organization of the system, both the organism O (and the structure S it upholds) would not persist.…”