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such an assemblage: the conductances between electrodes in the electrochemical ar-
ray correspond to connection weights in a connectionist neural network. His intent,
however, was to show how a device could produce emergent functionality. Instead of
switching inter-electrode connectivities, the thread structures could be steered and
selected to become sensitive to other kinds of perturbations, such that they could be
tuned with the appropriate rewards. By rewarding conductance changes associated
with a particular kind of environmental disturbance, the assemblage could evolve its
own sensitivities to the external world.
In the preface to Pask's topic
An Approach to Cybernetics
(Pask
1961
), Warren
McCulloch declared: “With this ability to make or select proper filters on its inputs,
such a device explains the central problem of epistemology. The riddles of stimulus
equivalence or of local circuit action in the brain remain only as parochial prob-
lems.” The central, most fundamental problem in epistemology is how to obtain the
right observables needed to solve a particular problem. Once these are found, ev-
erything else is a matter of searching through the possibilities that these observables
afford.
15.3.5 Organisational Closure and Epistemic Autonomy
Creativity and learning both require some degree of autonomy on the part of the sys-
tem in question. The system needs to be free to generate its own novel, experimental
combinations and modifications independent of pre-specification by a designer. The
more autonomy given the system, the greater the potential for novelty and surprise
on the part of the designer. The less autonomy given, the more reliable and unsur-
prising the system's behaviour.
When a device gains the ability to construct its own sensors, or in McCulloch's
words “this ability to make or select proper filters on its inputs”, it becomes
organ-
isationally closed
. The device then controls the distinctions it makes on its external
environment, the perceptual categories which it will use. On the action side, once
a device acquires the ability to construct its own effectors, it thereby gains control
over the kinds of actions it has available to influence the world. The self-construction
of sensors and effectors thus leads to attainment of greater
epistemic autonomy
and
enactive autonomy
, where the organism or device itself can become the major de-
terminant of the nature of its relations with the world at large. Structural autonomy
and organisational closure guided by open-ended adaptive mechanisms lead to func-
tional autonomy.
These ideas, involving adaptive self-construction and self-production link with
many of the core concepts of theoretical biology and cybernetics, such as se-
mantic closure (Pattee
1982
;
2008
,Stewart
2000
), autopoiesis and self-production
(Maturana and Varela
1973
, Maturana
1981
, Varela
1979
, Rosen
1991
, Mingers
1995
), self-modifying systems (Kampis
1991
), regenerative signalling systems
(Cariani
2000
), and self-reproducing automata (von Neumann
1951
). Life entails
autonomous self-construction that regenerates parts and organisations.
