Please distribute...
You are hereby invited to our twenty-second "Evolution, Complexity and
Cognition (ECCO)" seminar of 2005:
Towards a Model of Life and
Cognition
by
Dr. Nagarjuna G.
(Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research, Mumbay, India)
Place: room 3C204 (building C, 3rd floor), VUB campus
Oefenplein
Time:
Wednesday, August 24, at 17:30 h.
(note: this is not on the usual Friday!)
Abstract:
This is an attempt to formulate an alternative foundation to
understand life, cognition and evolution of complex systems.
The presentation begins by constructing an ontology (a logically
possible world that makes life and cognition possible) based on
Becoming-Beings (interactions), not things. It is proposed that
relational invariance of internal interactions defines the identity
of the Beings. This is followed by a general theory of interactions:
All Beings interact with the environment (other Beings), and every
interaction perturbs the Being. There are mainly two kinds of
interactions: identity transforming (IT) and identity preserving (IP)
interactions. A Being is a product of counteracting (inverting)
both identity preserving and identity transforming
interactions. A new kind of interaction called dialogical
interactions and invertibility defines Living Beings, which are
beings that are capable of displaying behavioral changes without
undergoing change in identity. Dialogical invertibility is proposed
as an explaination to the metasystem transition from matter to living
matter. Dialogical invertibility is also the basis of primitive
cognition (procedural knowledge). Evolution of complex systems
happens by increase in Being's ability to invert the IP and IT
interactions. The model also provides a criteria to compute
complexity of Beings.
The model can accommodate regular physical and chemical
(including quantum) reality by accommodation (not reduction) and
therefore has the potential to be the foundation for a new science of
complexity.
More info:
full paper: http://cogprints.org/4109/
About the speaker:
Dr. Nagarjuna G. works at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science
Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as Fellow E.
He works in the area of Biological roots of cognition, Knowledge
Organization, Metacognitive studies, History and Philosophy of
Science, and is an advocate of Free Software for Education and
Research. Currently he is developing an expert system for
knowledge management called "GNOWSYS: Gnowledge Networking and
Organizing System" developed in Python and Zope. He is the
coordinator of the Centre's portal site development for science and
mathematics education, which will be launched soon at
http://www.gnowledge.org/ and http://www.gnoware.org /
This is the last seminar of Nagarjuna during his stay at ECCO as
visiting scientist, which he will leave by the end of August. .
--
Francis Heylighen
"Evolution, Complexity and Cognition" research group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
