Information-Theoretic Teleodynamics in Natural and Artificial Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we employ the method of computational philosophy, the use of computational techniques to aid in the discovery of philosophical insights that might not be easily discovered otherwise, to show that it is not unreasonable to suggest 1) that there are genuine teleological causes in nature, 2) that such causes can be computed from Newtonian ("push") causation, provided that other architectural and environmental conditions are met, and 3) that it is possible to do so without recourse to semantics by taking an information-theoretic approach to measuring information flow in a system.