Exploring Autopoietic Self: The Essence of Agency and Unity

1. What’s life got to do with it? -Why an artificial self might have to be ’autopoietic’ (or ’autonomous’ or ’self-maintenant’) Tom Ziemke Department of Computer Science University of Skövde, Sweden tom@ida.his.se

2. Theories of the Self (Gallagher, 2002) • The psychological approach • ”the only thing about the brain relevant to the … self is the psychological information (or syntactical functions) it instantiates” • ”… psychological rather than physical continuity is what counts in the constitution of the self” • ”dismiss[es] the body as an important element for explaining the self” • The bodily or biological approach • ”embodiment contributes in essential ways to the contribution of the self” • ”physical nature of the body, and how the body operates, completely conditions conscious activities”

3. ”Autonomous agents”

4. How many agents are there in this picture?

5. The talk in a nutshell … • Living systems have a particular organization • autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela) • autonomy (Christensen & Hooker; von Uexküll) • self-maintenance (Bickhard) • i.e. they are self-constructing and self-maintaining, which gives them a particular cohesion, and puts them in a special relation to their environment, • and this is a necessary condition • for agency in general, and • for a (pre-reflective) self in particular.

6. Clarification • Does this imply some form of dualism? • Of course it does not. • Living systems are machines / material systems (with a particular organization). • Does this imply some form of vitalism? • Of course it does not. See above. • Can artefacts be autopoietic, autonomous, self-maintenant? • Of course they can, at least in principle. • Today’s artefacts are not though.

7. Organisms vs. Mechanisms (1) • Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) identified three main differences between organisms and man-made mechanisms (of his time): • there is no growth (adaptation) in mechanisms, they do not have a ‘historical basis of reaction’ • mechanisms do not make use of signs (or representations) • mechanisms are constructed centripetally (parts first), whereas organisms ‘construct’ themselves centrifugally(the ‘whole’ comes first)

8. Organisms vs. Mechanisms (2) • “Every machine, a pocket watch for example, is always constructed centripetally. In other words, the individual parts of the watch, such as its hands, springs, wheels, and cogs, must always be produced first, so that they may be added to a common centerpiece. • In contrast, the construction of an animal, for example, a triton, always starts centrifugally from a single cell, which first develops into a gastrula, and then into more and more new organ buds. (von Uexküll, 1940/82)

9. Autopoiesis • Maturana & Varela distinguish between • organization (~ von Uexküll’s Bauplan) • “those relations that must exist among the components of a system for it to be a member of a specific class” • e.g. autopoietic organization of living systems • structure • “the components and relations that actually constitute a particular unity, and make its organisation real”

10. Autopoietic Organization • The organization of an autopoietic machine is constituted by the relations between the components that define it as a unity of a particular kind. • These relations are a network of processes of production that, through transformation and destruction, produce the components themselves. • It is the interactions and transformations of the components that continuously regenerate and realise the network of processes that produced them. • A living system is autonomous, i.e. an autopoietic machine whose function it is to create/maintain the unity that distinguishes it from the medium in which it exists.

11. The Cognitive Self • “... the cognitive self is the manner in which the organism, through its own self-produced activity, becomes a distinct entity in space, though always coupled to its corresponding environment from which it remains nevertheless distinct. • A distinct coherent self which, by the very same process of constituting itself, configures an external world of perception and action.” (Bourgine and Varela 1992, p. xiii)

12. Examples of autopoietic systems • Cells • First-order autopoietic unities • Organisms • Second-order autopoietic unities • Social systems ? • States, societies, etc. (Luhmann) • Third-order autopietic unities ?

13. Allopoietic Organization • The organization of an allopoietic machine is given in terms of a concatenation of processes. • These processes are not the processes of production of the components that specify the machine as a unity. • Instead, its components are produced by other processes that are independent of the organisation of the machine. • I.e. it is not truly autonomous, but heteronomous.

14. Christensen & Hooker on Autonomy • Naturalistic theory of intelligent agency as an embodied feature of organized, typically living, dynamical systems • Agents are entities which engage in normatively constrained, goal-directed, interaction with their environment • ”Living systems are a particular kind of cohesive system … in which there are dynamical bonds amongst the elements of the system which individuate the system from its environment.”

15. Cohesion – Examples (1) • A gas • has no internal cohesion • shape and condition are imposed by the environment • A rock • has internal bonds and behaves as an integral whole • cohesive bonds are • passive, rigid: stable deep energy well interactions constraining constituents spatially • local: no essential constraints on boundary

16. Cohesion – Examples (2) • A cell • has cohesive bonds and acts as an integrated whole • but those bonds are • active: chemical bonds formed by shallow energy well interactions; continually actively remade • flexible: interactions can vary; sensitive to system and environmental changes • holistic: binding forces depend on globally organized interactions; i.e. local processes must interact globally to ensure the cell’s survival • Autonomous systems • cohesive systems of the same general type as the cell

17. Examples of autonomous systems(Christensen & Hooker, 2000) • Cells • Molecular catalytic bi-cycles • Organisms • Species • Colonies

18. Autonomy (C & H) vs. Autopoiesis (M & V) (Christensen & Hooker, 2000) • Both concern material self-reproduction • Autopoiesis • paradigm is the system that produces all its components within itself • Autonomy • emphasizes agent-environment interaction • ”directive organisation .. induces pattern-formation of energy flows from the environmental milieu into system-constitutive processes” • i.e. environment participates, but the system’s directed processes channel parts of the environment into system-constituive processes

19. Summary • Living systems have a particular organization • autopoietic / autonomous / self-maintenant • i.e. they are self-constructing and self-maintaining, which gives them a particular internal cohesion, and puts them in a special relation to their environment. • If this indeed is a necessary condition • for agency or subjectivity in general, and • for a (pre-reflective) self in particular, • then today’s robots, ’software agents’, etc. are neither agents nor candidates for self-hood or consciousness.

20. Implications for Artificial Consciousness • Need living / autonomous / autopoietic systems necessarily be biological / organic ? • There does not seem to be any principle reason why we should assume so. • In Maturana & Varela’s terms, it is about the organization, not the structure realizing it: • “… the phenomena they generate in functioning as autopoietic unities depend on their organisation and the way this organisation comes about, and not on the physical nature of their components (which only determine their space of existence).“

21. Conscious robots should be … • self-learning, self-organizing, self-governing • many robots do that today • self-maintaining, self-repairing • e.g., energy management • e.g., work on self-repairing materials • self-growing ? • e.g. robotics work on self-(re)-assembly from simple ’building blocks’ • a possible route towards second-order autopoietic systems based on non-autopoietic first-order unities?