Related papers: Consciousness: A Direct Link with Life's Origin?
How subjective experience (i.e., consciousness) arises out of objective material processes has been called the hard problem. The neuroscience of consciousness has set out to find the sufficient conditions for consciousness and theoretical…
A new prior is proposed for learning representations of high-level concepts of the kind we manipulate with language. This prior can be combined with other priors in order to help disentangling abstract factors from each other. It is…
In a many body system, constituents interact with each other, forming a recursive pattern of interaction and giving rise to many interesting phenomena. Based upon concepts of the modern many body theory, a model for a generic many body…
Life occurs in concentrated `Ringer Solutions' derived from seawater that Lesser Blum studied for most of his life. As we worked together, Lesser and I realized that the questions asked of those solutions were quite different in biology…
We consider possible designs and experimental realiza-tions in synthesized rather than naturally occurring bio-chemical systems of a selection of basic bio-inspired information processing steps. These include feed-forward loops, which have…
Because we are highly motivated to be understood, we created public external representations -- mime, language, art -- to externalise our inner states. We argue that such external representations are a pre-condition for access…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
Active systems across scales, ranging from molecular machines to human crowds, are usually modeled as assemblies of self-propelled particles driven by internally generated forces. However, these models often assume memoryless dynamics and…
The implications of large-scale coherence in biological systems and possible links to quantum theory are only beginning to be explored. Whether quantum-like coherent phenomena are relevant, or even possible at all, at the high temperatures…
One of the longest standing open problems in science is how life arises from non-living matter. If it is possible to measure this transition in the lab, then it might be possible to understand the physical mechanisms by which the emergence…
The scope of human consciousness includes states departing from what most of us experience as ordinary wakefulness. These altered states of consciousness constitute a prime opportunity to study how global changes in brain activity relate to…
Consciousness is a sequential process of awareness which can focus on one piece of information at a time. This process of awareness experiences causation which underpins the notion of time while it interplays with matter and energy, forming…
Inspired by Bayesian approaches to brain function in neuroscience, we give a simple theory of probabilistic inference for a unified account of reasoning and learning. We simply model how data cause symbolic knowledge in terms of its…
The natural evolution of life seems to proceed through steps characterized by phases of relatively rapid changes, followed by longer, more stable periods. In the light of the string-theory derived physical scenario proposed in [1], we…
Populations of isogenic embryonic stem cells or clonal bacteria often exhibit extensive phenotypic heterogeneity which arises from stochastic intrinsic dynamics of cells. The internal state of the cell can be transmitted epigenetically in…
The persistent motility of the individual constituents in microbial suspensions represents a prime example of so-called active matter systems. Cells consume energy, exert forces and move, overall releasing the constraints of equilibrium…
The paper introduces a basic logic of knowledge and abduction by extending Levesque logic of only-knowing with an abduction modal operator defined via the combination of basic epistemic concepts. The upshot is an alternative approach to…
Biological systems often choose actions without an explicit reward signal, a phenomenon known as intrinsic motivation. The computational principles underlying this behavior remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigate an…
We look at consciousness through the lens of Theoretical Computer Science, a branch of mathematics that studies computation under resource limitations, distinguishing functions that are efficiently computable from those that are not. From…
How do organisms recognize their environment by acquiring knowledge about the world, and what actions do they take based on this knowledge? This article examines hypotheses about organisms' adaptation to the environment from machine…