Johannes Jaeger
"Ontogenesis, Organization, and Organismal Agency"
(forthcoming book chapter)
(preprint published in Jun 2022)
______
At first sight, the empirical study of ontogenesis and the theoretical study of organismal agency seem to have little in common. This essay discusses why this initial impression is incorrect.
First of all, ontogenesis and agency are indirectly connected at the level of the whole organism, since they are co-dependent on the peculiar organization that characterizes living systems. While ontogenesis is constrained by its own requirement to maintain living organization in the form of organizational closure throughout the life cycle, agency is grounded in the same phenomenon of organizational continuity.
Second, cellular agency contributes more directly to important processes of multicellular development in organisms with multiple levels of organization. This leads to a view of ontogenesis that emphasizes agency and variation in the underlying cellular dynamics, focusing on stability and reproducibility of ontogenetic processes as its main explanatory targets.
We examine how these insights can help us bridge the explanatory gap between reductionist mechanistic empirical approaches and theoretical considerations of the organization of the whole organism. We conclude that both approaches are best used in a complementary manner. Only by contextualizing ontogenetic mechanisms in the larger context of the evolving life cycle, will we gain a true understanding of their functionality and evolution.
"Ontogenesis, Organization, and Organismal Agency"
(forthcoming book chapter)
(preprint published in Jun 2022)
______
At first sight, the empirical study of ontogenesis and the theoretical study of organismal agency seem to have little in common. This essay discusses why this initial impression is incorrect.
First of all, ontogenesis and agency are indirectly connected at the level of the whole organism, since they are co-dependent on the peculiar organization that characterizes living systems. While ontogenesis is constrained by its own requirement to maintain living organization in the form of organizational closure throughout the life cycle, agency is grounded in the same phenomenon of organizational continuity.
Second, cellular agency contributes more directly to important processes of multicellular development in organisms with multiple levels of organization. This leads to a view of ontogenesis that emphasizes agency and variation in the underlying cellular dynamics, focusing on stability and reproducibility of ontogenetic processes as its main explanatory targets.
We examine how these insights can help us bridge the explanatory gap between reductionist mechanistic empirical approaches and theoretical considerations of the organization of the whole organism. We conclude that both approaches are best used in a complementary manner. Only by contextualizing ontogenetic mechanisms in the larger context of the evolving life cycle, will we gain a true understanding of their functionality and evolution.
Andrea Roli, Johannes Jaeger, and Stuart A. Kauffman
"How Organisms Come to Know the World: Fundamental Limits on Artificial General Intelligence"
Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution 9: 806283 (January 2022).
(preprint published in October 2021)
______
Artificial intelligence has made tremendous advances since its inception about seventy years ago. Self-driving cars, programs beating experts at complex games, and smart robots capable of assisting people that need care are just some among the successful examples of machine intelligence. This kind of progress might entice us to envision a society populated by autonomous robots capable of performing the same tasks humans do in the near future. This prospect seems limited only by the power and complexity of current computational devices, which is improving fast.
However, there are several significant obstacles on this path. General intelligence involves situational reasoning, taking perspectives, choosing goals, and an ability to deal with ambiguous information. We observe that all of these characteristics are connected to the ability of identifying and exploiting new affordances — opportunities (or impediments) on the path of an agent to achieve its goals. A general example of an affordance is the use of an object in the hands of an agent.
We show that it is impossible to predefine a list of such uses. Therefore, they cannot be treated algorithmically. This means that “AI agents” and organisms differ in their ability to leverage new affordances. Only organisms can do this.
This implies that true AGI is not achievable in the current algorithmic frame of AI research.
It also has important consequences for the theory of evolution. We argue that organismic agency is strictly required for truly open-ended evolution through radical emergence.
We discuss the diverse ramifications of this argument, not only in AI research and evolution, but also for the philosophy of science.
"How Organisms Come to Know the World: Fundamental Limits on Artificial General Intelligence"
Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution 9: 806283 (January 2022).
(preprint published in October 2021)
______
Artificial intelligence has made tremendous advances since its inception about seventy years ago. Self-driving cars, programs beating experts at complex games, and smart robots capable of assisting people that need care are just some among the successful examples of machine intelligence. This kind of progress might entice us to envision a society populated by autonomous robots capable of performing the same tasks humans do in the near future. This prospect seems limited only by the power and complexity of current computational devices, which is improving fast.
However, there are several significant obstacles on this path. General intelligence involves situational reasoning, taking perspectives, choosing goals, and an ability to deal with ambiguous information. We observe that all of these characteristics are connected to the ability of identifying and exploiting new affordances — opportunities (or impediments) on the path of an agent to achieve its goals. A general example of an affordance is the use of an object in the hands of an agent.
We show that it is impossible to predefine a list of such uses. Therefore, they cannot be treated algorithmically. This means that “AI agents” and organisms differ in their ability to leverage new affordances. Only organisms can do this.
This implies that true AGI is not achievable in the current algorithmic frame of AI research.
It also has important consequences for the theory of evolution. We argue that organismic agency is strictly required for truly open-ended evolution through radical emergence.
We discuss the diverse ramifications of this argument, not only in AI research and evolution, but also for the philosophy of science.
Johannes Jaeger
"The Fourth Perspective: Evolution and Organismal Agency"
In: "Organization in Biology" ed. Matteo Mossio, Springer, Berlin (forthcoming).
(preprint published in February 2021)
______
This essay examines the deep connections between biological organization, agency, and evolution by natural selection.
Its central argument is that the basic unit of evolution is not a genetic replicator, but a complex hierarchical life cycle, or reproducer. It shows that the self-manufacturing capabilities of reproducers are a necessary precondition for evolvability, and proposes an extended and disambiguated set of minimal conditions for evolution by natural selection — including new or revised principles of heredity, variation, and ontogenesis (broadly defined as the acquisition of the capacity to reproduce).
The requirement for continued maintenance of self-manufacturing organization throughout the life cycle and across generation suggests that all evolvable systems are agents (or contain agents among their components). This means that we ought to take agency seriously, if we aim to obtain an organism-level theory of evolution in the original spirit of Darwin's struggle for existence.
Such understanding must rely on an agential perspective on evolution, complementing and succeeding existing structural, functional, and processual approaches. This essay sketches a tentative outline of such an agential perspective, and presents a survey of methodological and conceptual challenges that will have to be overcome if we are to properly implement it.
"The Fourth Perspective: Evolution and Organismal Agency"
In: "Organization in Biology" ed. Matteo Mossio, Springer, Berlin (forthcoming).
(preprint published in February 2021)
______
This essay examines the deep connections between biological organization, agency, and evolution by natural selection.
Its central argument is that the basic unit of evolution is not a genetic replicator, but a complex hierarchical life cycle, or reproducer. It shows that the self-manufacturing capabilities of reproducers are a necessary precondition for evolvability, and proposes an extended and disambiguated set of minimal conditions for evolution by natural selection — including new or revised principles of heredity, variation, and ontogenesis (broadly defined as the acquisition of the capacity to reproduce).
The requirement for continued maintenance of self-manufacturing organization throughout the life cycle and across generation suggests that all evolvable systems are agents (or contain agents among their components). This means that we ought to take agency seriously, if we aim to obtain an organism-level theory of evolution in the original spirit of Darwin's struggle for existence.
Such understanding must rely on an agential perspective on evolution, complementing and succeeding existing structural, functional, and processual approaches. This essay sketches a tentative outline of such an agential perspective, and presents a survey of methodological and conceptual challenges that will have to be overcome if we are to properly implement it.
