Virtual Machinery and Evolution of Mind (Part 3) Meta-Morphogenesis: Evolution of Information-Processing Machinery 1
Aaron Sloman · 2011
Much of Turing’s work was about how large numbers of relatively simple processes could cumulatively produce qualitatively new large scale results e.g. Turing machine operations producing results comparable to results of human mathematical reasoning, and micro-interactions in physicochemical structures producing global transformations as a fertilized egg becomes an animal or plant. In the same spirit, this paper presents a first-draft rudimentary theory of “meta-morphogenesis” that may one day show how, over generations, interactions between changing environments, changing animal morphologies, and previously evolved information-processing capabilities might combine to produce increasingly complex forms of “informed control”, starting with control of various kinds of physical behaviour, then later also informed control of informationprocessing. Eventually, this could explain philosophically puzzling features of animal (including human) minds, such as the existence of “qualia”; and also enhance our still incomplete understanding of requirements for future machines rivalling biological intelligence. This will require us to explore the space of possible minds, and the requirements dierent sorts of minds need to satisfy ‐ many of which are unobvious. These ideas point to some consequences of embodied cognition that often go unnoticed.