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Finding or Creating a Living Organism? Past and Future Thought Experiments in Astrobiology Applied to Artificial Intelligence

Helman, Daniel (2022) Finding or Creating a Living Organism? Past and Future Thought Experiments in Astrobiology Applied to Artificial Intelligence. [Preprint]

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Abstract

This is a digest of how various researchers in biology and astrobiology have explored questions of what defines living organisms—definitions based on functions or structures observed in organisms, or on systems terms, or on mathematical conceptions like closure, chirality, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, or on biosemiotics, or on Darwinian evolution—to clarify the field and make it easier for endeavors in artificial intelligence to make progress. Current ideas are described to promote work between astrobiologists and computer scientists, each concerned with living organisms. A four-parameter framework is presented as a scaffold that is later developed into what machines lack to be considered alive: systems, evolution, energy and consciousness, and includes Jagers operators and the idea of dual closure. A novel definition of consciousness is developed which describes mental objects both with and without communicable properties, and this helps to clarify how consciousness in machines may be studied as an emergent process related to choice functions in systems. A perspective on how quantization, acting on nucleic acids, sets up natural limits to system behavior is offered as a partial address to the problem of biogenesis.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Helman, Danieldanielhelmanteaching@yahoo.com0000-0003-1808-2529
Additional Information: A draft of this manuscript was originally submitted to the Australasian Conference on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence (ACALCI) 2016.
Keywords: definition of life; Darwinian evolution; biosemiotics; thermodynamics; quantum mechanics; chirality; systems; ecology; artificial life; consciousness; nucleic acid; Axiom of Choice
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology
Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Specific Sciences > Complex Systems
Specific Sciences > Computation/Information
Specific Sciences > Artificial Intelligence
Depositing User: Dr. Daniel Helman
Date Deposited: 09 May 2022 04:05
Last Modified: 09 May 2022 04:05
Item ID: 20534
Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10441-0...
DOI or Unique Handle: 10.1007/s10441-022-09438-2
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology
Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Specific Sciences > Complex Systems
Specific Sciences > Computation/Information
Specific Sciences > Artificial Intelligence
Date: 28 April 2022
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20534

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