A Biologically-Consistent Diffuse Semiotic Architecture
for Survivalist Information-Processing

Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson & Roger Vounckx

Abstract

            The adoption of diffuse rationality [1, 2] creates a practical bridge between (bio)semiotics [3, 4] and information-processing [5, 6, 7] in formulating real-world local-to-global self-consistent criteria [8, 9] for the emergence of life and consciousness [10, 11, 12].

            We suggest a computational architecture [5] consistent with evolutionary hierarchical emergence [10], which may serve as a framework for implementing survival-oriented information-processing in real environments. We present an evolutionary model [13] of the relationship between autonomy [14] and dependence across scales, and describe the implications of its alternating complex-rational-complex nature [15, 16] for computational process-closure, enclosure and exposure.

            A query-reflection architecture [5] can model the intermediate region between diffuse and formal rationalities in a manner which is consistent with the abductive emergence of animate and inanimate entities [10, 2]. "Requests" for reaction to external stimuli are formulated as queries propagating across a varyingly dimensionally confined computational structure. Multiple sequentially accessible model planes perform as "reflective" metastatic representations of the temporal or scalar hierarchies characteristic of biological evolution and structure [1], and the systematic process closure required for functional autonomy [14] is provided by the consequent multiple communicative inter-planar reflections. The queries and reflections can be represented either as the interactions of propagating waves with the model-layers, or as the transfer of packets of information between active centres which "sum" information before re-emitting it. In the limit of the difference between successive model planes tending to zero the two formulations are equivalent, and may be described by a single pseudo-one-dimensional equation [5].

            Very simplistically, we can imagine the complete structure as two cross-coupled counter-propagating feed-forward neural networks, where each provides the weighting required for operation of the other through local information-processing model-planes which are equivalent to feed-back neural nets. This interpretation corresponds closely to a proposed "physical" representation of Peircian semiosis [2].

References

[1] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Diffuse Rationality in Complex Systems. InterJournal of Complex Systems Article, 235, 1998.

[2] Edwina Taborsky: private communication.

[3] Taborsky E. Architectonics of Semiosis (Semaphores and Signs). St Martins Press, 1998.

[4] Hoffmeyer J. Life: the Invention of Externalism. Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica: Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy, Order, 187-196, Finnish Academy of Technology, Espoo, 1998.

[5] Langloh N, Cottam R, Vounckx R and Cornelis J. Towards Distributed Statistical Processing - AQuARIUM: a Query and Reflection Interaction Using MAGIC: Mathematical Algorithms Generating Interdependent Confidences. In Smith S D and Neale R F, eds, ESPRIT Basic Research Series, Optical Information Technology, 303-319, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1993.

[6] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Localisation and Nonlocality in Computation. In Holcombe M and Paton R, eds, Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, Plenum Press, New York, 1997.

[7] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Computability as an Evolutionary Context. In The Second German Workshop on Artificial Life, Dortmund, 1997.

[8] Matsuno K. Dynamics of Time and Information in Dynamic Time. BioSystems 46, 57-71, 1998.

[9] Matsuno K. Living Memory and the Internalist Stance. In Closure: Emergent Organizations and their Dynamics, Gent, 1999. To be published by the New York Academy of Sciences.

[10] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Emergence: Half a Quantum Jump? Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica: Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy, Order, 12-19, Finnish Academy of Technology (Espoo), 1998.

[11] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Consciousness: the Precursor to Life? In The Third German Workshop on Artificial Life: Abstracting and Synthesizing the Principles of Living Systems, Verlag Harri Deutsch, Thun, 1998.

[12] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Life as its own Tool for Survival. To be presented at The Forty Third Meeting of the International Society for the System Sciences, Pacific Grove, CA, 1999.

[13] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. A Biologically Consistent Hierarchical Framework for Self-Referencing Survivalist Computation. To be presented at The Third International Conference on Computing Anticipatory Systems, Liège, 1999.

[14] Collier J D. Autonomy in Anticipatory Systems: Significance for Functionality, Intentionality and Meaning. In Dubois D M, ed, Proceedings of CASYS’99, The Second International Conference on Computing Anticipatory Systems, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1999.

[15] Cottam R, Ranson W and Vounckx R. Partial Comprehension in a Quasi-Particulate Universe. In Einstein Meets Magritte, Brussels, 1995.

[16] Lemke J L. Opening Up Closure: Semiotics Across Scales. In Closure: Emergent Organizations and their Dynamics, Gent, 1999. To be published by the New York Academy of Sciences.
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