Information, Computation, Cognition. Agency-Based Hierarchies of Levels
Book chapter, 2016

This paper connects information with computation and cognition via concept of agents that appear at variety of levels of organization of physical/chemical/cognitive systems – from elementary particles to atoms, molecules, life-like chemical systems, to cognitive systems starting with living cells, up to organisms and ecologies. In order to obtain this generalized framework, concepts of information, computation and cognition are generalized. In this framework, nature can be seen as informational structure with computational dynamics, where an (info-computational) agent is needed for the potential information of the world to actualize. Starting from the definition of information as the difference in one physical system that makes a difference in another physical system – which combines Bateson and Hewitt’s definitions, the argument is advanced for natural computation as a computational model of the dynamics of the physical world, where information processing is constantly going on, on a variety of levels of organization. This setting helps us to elucidate the relationships between computation, information, agency and cognition, within the common conceptual framework, with special relevance for biology and robotics.

http://www.idt.mdh.se/~gdc/work/Ch10_Pt-AI-GDC.pdf

Morphogenesis

Agency

Embodied computation

Morphological computing

Natural computation

Cognition

Information

Computation

Author

Gordana Dodig Crnkovic

Chalmers, Applied Information Technology (Chalmers), Cognition and Communication

Synthese Library

01666991 (ISSN) 25428292 (eISSN)

Vol. 376 141-159

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories

Computer and Information Science

Roots

Basic sciences

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-26485-1_10

More information

Latest update

7/11/2024