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What must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf?
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What must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf?
If all free living organisms are autonomous agents, what does their existence mean for science, particularly physics? Stuart Kauffman responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request to futurists to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are."
Originally published January 2002 at Edge. Published on KurzweilAI.net January 21, 2002. Read Ray Kurzweil's Edge question here.
In our ordinary life, we ascribe action and doing to other humans, and lower organisms, even bacteria swimming up a glucose gradient to get food. Yet physics has no "doings" only happenings, and the bacterium is just a physical system. I have struggled with the question "What must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf?" Call such a system an autonomous agent. I may have found an answer, such systems must be able to replicate and do a thermodynamic work cycle. But of course I'm not sure of my answer. I am sure the question is of fundamental importance, for all free living organisms are autonomous agents, and with them, doing, not just happenings, enters the universe. We do manipulate the universe on our own behalf. Is there a better definition of autonomous agents? And what does their existence mean for science, particularly physics?
Copyright © 2002 by Edge Foundation, Inc.
www.edge.org
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Re: What must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf?
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I agree with Ricardo, autonomy does not require reproduction. Kurzweils definition of autonomy describes conditions that are sufficient to produce an autonomous system, but they are not necessary for an autonomous agent.
It is common sense to see that a manufactured creature that was unable to reproduce could behave autonomously. Take the Mule for instance, unable to reproduce, yet certainly autonomous.
But Kurzweil wasn't talking about Mule-sized objects, he was referring to smaller machines, or beings. How could a non-replicating molocule, or group of molocules, interact with the environment in such a way as to show autonomy?
The question is unanswerable without making assumptions about the environment of the supposedly autonomous agent. Since the environment surrounding the agent determines it's ability to reproduce and create thermodynamic reactions, the environment has as much to do with whether the agent is autonomous or not.
Looking at a system, one is able to identify autonomous agents because they multiply and they create thermodynamic reactions. If this definition holds, a given physical configuration would be an autonmous agent in some environments, and a dead molocule in others.
A bacteria reproduces and creates thermodynamic reactions, but only within environments that support bacterial life. One could try to say that the bacteria is an autonomous agent, but it will only behave autonomously in a given environment. This pairing of agent with environment, in every situation that can be observed, leads me to believe that the secret to determining the smallest autonomous agent is moot, since environments determine the autonomy, not the structure of the agent itself.
Perhaps the scientist interested in creating the smallest autonomous agent would be well served to create the smallest environment, some sort of closed system where only certain reactions could occur.
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