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first considered in the framework of a taxonomy of adaptive, self-constructing cy-
bernetic robotic percept-action systems. One can then also consider what such an
open-ended functional framework might mean for envisioning new kinds of neural
networks that are capable of forming novel internal informational primitives. In this
framework, adaptively-tuned neuronal assemblies function as self-constructed inter-
nal sensors and signal generators, such that new signal types associated with new
concepts can be produced. The new signals then serve as internal semantic tags that
function as annotative additions to the input signals that evoked their production.
Emergence of new signal types in such a system increases the effective dimension-
ality of internal signal spaces over time, thus bringing new conceptual primitives
into action within the system.
15.2 Emergence and Creativity
Emergence concerns the means by which novelty arises in the world. Intuitively,
emergence is the process by which new, more complex order arises from a simpler
or more predictable preceding situation. As such, images of birth, development, and
evolution infuse our notions of emergence. These images provide intuitive expla-
nations for how novelty, spontaneity, and creativity are possible and how complex
organisations arise and become further elaborated.
All around us we see the complex organisations that are the emergent products
of biological, psychological and social processes, and as a result, our current dis-
courses on emergence encompass a wide range of phenomena. Novelty appears in
the form of new material structures (thermodynamic emergence), formal structures
(computational emergence), biological structures and functions (emergent evolu-
tion), scientific theories (emergence vs. reduction), modelling relations in observers,
percepts, ideas, notational systems, and economic and social relations. Novelty and
innovation are integral processes in natural and social worlds, and are coming to
play ever-larger roles in artificial worlds as well.
Two fundamental kinds of emergent novelty can be distinguished, which we can
call
combinatoric emergence
and
creative emergence
. Lloyd Morgan (
1931
)inhis
topic “Emergent Evolution” made a similar distinction, labelling new combinations
“resultants” and new primitives “emergents”. This distinction became central to my
work on epistemology and evolutionary robotics, which developed an operational
systems-theoretic methodology for distinguishing one process from the other (Car-
iani
1989
). Some of my earliest inspirations came from considering the nature of
novelty in biological evolution, where creation of new combinations of existing ge-
netic alternatives and refinements of existing functions (“microevolution”) can be
contrasted with creation of entirely new genes, species, morphologies, and func-
tions (“macroevolution”). The combinatoric/creative distinction also parallels Mar-
garet Boden's division of explorative vs. transformational creativity (Boden
1990a
;
1994
;
1994b
;
2006
).
The two kinds of combinatoric and creative novelty reflect different deeply diver-
gent conceptions of order and its origins, “order-from-order” vs. “order-from-noise”
