The Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life – IAS-Research Talk by Randall BeerThe Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life – IAS-Research Talk by Randall BeerThe Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life – IAS-Research Talk by Randall Beer

Prof. Randall D. Beer (Cognitive Science Program, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, USA) will be giving an IAS-Research Talk entitled “The Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life” on Tuesday the 15th January 2013 at 11.00am at B14 Room at the Carlos Santamaría Building. Prof. Randall D. Beer (Cognitive Science Program, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, USA) will be giving an IAS-Research Talk entitled “The Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life” on Tuesday the 15th January 2013 at 11.00am at B14 Room at the Carlos Santamaría Building. Prof. Randall D. Beer (Cognitive Science Program, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, USA) will be giving an IAS-Research Talk entitled “The Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life” on Tuesday the 15th January 2013 at 11.00am at B14 Room at the Carlos Santamaría Building.

ABSTRACT: This talk will examine in some technical detail the application of Maturana and Varela’s biology of cognition to a simple concrete model: a glider in the Game of Life cellular automaton. By adopting an autopoietic perspective on a glider, the set of possible perturbations to it can be divided into destructive and nondestructive subsets. From a glider’s reaction to each nondestructive perturbation, its cognitive domain will then mapped. In addition, the structure of a glider’s possible knowledge of its immediate environment, and the way in which that knowledge is grounded in its constitution, will be fully described. The notion of structural coupling will then be explored by characterizing the paths of mutual perturbation that a glider and its environment can undergo. Finally, a simple example of a communicative interaction between two gliders will be given.

ABSTRACT: This talk will examine in some technical detail the application of Maturana and Varela’s biology of cognition to a simple concrete model: a glider in the Game of Life cellular automaton. By adopting an autopoietic perspective on a glider, the set of possible perturbations to it can be divided into destructive and nondestructive subsets. From a glider’s reaction to each nondestructive perturbation, its cognitive domain will then mapped. In addition, the structure of a glider’s possible knowledge of its immediate environment, and the way in which that knowledge is grounded in its constitution, will be fully described. The notion of structural coupling will then be explored by characterizing the paths of mutual perturbation that a glider and its environment can undergo. Finally, a simple example of a communicative interaction between two gliders will be given.

ABSTRACT: This talk will examine in some technical detail the application of Maturana and Varela’s biology of cognition to a simple concrete model: a glider in the Game of Life cellular automaton. By adopting an autopoietic perspective on a glider, the set of possible perturbations to it can be divided into destructive and nondestructive subsets. From a glider’s reaction to each nondestructive perturbation, its cognitive domain will then mapped. In addition, the structure of a glider’s possible knowledge of its immediate environment, and the way in which that knowledge is grounded in its constitution, will be fully described. The notion of structural coupling will then be explored by characterizing the paths of mutual perturbation that a glider and its environment can undergo. Finally, a simple example of a communicative interaction between two gliders will be given.

This entry was posted in Talks and tagged , , , by Xabier Barandiaran. Bookmark the permalink.
Xabier Barandiaran

About Xabier Barandiaran

I consider myself a situated and embodied philosopher, which means that I situate my philosophical practice in close interaction with scientific environments and embodied in the conceptual apparatus that emerges from this interplay. The sciences on which I feel embedded are those meeting in the multidisciplinary crossroad of cognitive sciences and artificial life: particularly the origins of agency, simulation of adaptive behaviour (evolutionary robotics and computational neuroethology), and large scale neuroscience.