Project: "Autonomy: A Dynamical Account"

I use autonomy, which means the state of self-governance, to distinguish the active independence of organisms and intellects from the passive independence of rocks and planets. There are autonomic artifacts and parts or products of biological systems, but the origin of their self-governance lies outside themselves. Autonomous systems are open, independent systems that both produce their own governance and use that governance to maintain themselves. A system is autonomous if an only if the organization of internal system processes is the dominant factor in the system’s self-preservation, making the processes that contribute to its autonomy functional, and the autonomous system an agent.

Autonomy has been neglected in much of the literature in biology and cognitive science until recently, with the notable exceptions of the autopoiesis of Maturana and Varela (Autopoiesis), and the closure to efficient causation of Robert Rosen (Life Itself). Both of these ideas emphasize closure, the first to information or control, and the second to a way of modeling causation. Both approaches ground individuation and functionality in a closure condition, and give some basis for a dynamical understanding of these central biological and cognitive concepts. In tension with this closure is the requirement that autonomous agents must interact with the world, and their fundamental closure must include some sort of interactive closure, or else they are not open to worldly influences. The problem is to give an adequate account of closure that still permits openness to the world, and which enables functionality and individuality.

These two problems, 1) grounding autonomy transparently in its infrastructure, and 2) allowing its agency while retaining a degree of openness, can be resolved with a dynamical open systems theory approach to autonomy that integrates information and energy processing into a common account, such as the one I and my colleagues have developed for a more general understanding of causation, organization, individuation, functionality and intentionality in dynamically emergent.

References:

Collier, John (1999) Autonomy in anticipatory systems: significance for functionality, intentionality and meaning. In: Computing Anticipatory Systems, CASYS'98 - Second International Conference, edited by D. M. Dubois, American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, New York, AIP Conference Proceedings 465, pp. 75-81.

Collier, John (2000a) Autonomy and Process Closure as the Basis for Functionality. Closure: Emergent Organizations and their Dynamics, edited by Jerry L.R. Chandler and Gertrudis van de Vijver, Volume 901 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Science: 280-291,

Collier, John (2000b) Information Theory as a General Language for Functional Systems, Anticipatory Systems: CASY’99 - Second International Conference, edited by D. M. Dubois, American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, New York, AIP Conference Proceedings, 2000.

Collier, John (2001) Dealing With the Unexpected, Anticipatory Systems: CASY 2000 - Third International Conference. D.M. Dubois (ed). American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, New York, AIP Conference Proceedings.

Collier, John (2002) What is Autonomy? Anticipatory Systems: CASY’01 - Second International Conference, edited by D. M. Dubois, American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, New York, AIP Conference Proceedings.

Collier, John (2004) Self-organization, Individuation and Identity. Revue Internationale de Philosophie.

Collier, John and Mark Burch (2000) Symmetry, Levels and Entrainment, Proceedings of the International Society for Systems Sciences.

Collier, John and C.A. Hooker (1999) Complexly Organised Dynamical Systems. Open Systems and Information Dynamics, 6: 241-302.

Collier, John and Scott Muller (1998) The Dynamical Basis of Emergence in Natural Hierarchies, in George Farre and Tarko Oksala (eds) Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy and Organization, Selected and Edited Papers from the ECHO III Conference, Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica, MA91 Espoo: Finish Academy of Technology.

Talks at the KLI

"Function in Open Autonomous Systems"
KLI Brown Bag Discussions 2002

"Evolutionary Moral Realism"
KLI Brown Bag Discussions 2002

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Last modified: March 17, 2006
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