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Álvaro Moreno :: publications

Index of selected publications

Articles in Journals

Chapters of Books

Abstracts and Downloads

MORENO, A. & BARANDIARAN, X. (2004)
A naturalized Account of the Inside-Outside Dichotomy.
Philosophica, in press.

Abstract
The first form of the inside-outside dichotomy appears as a self-encapsulated system with an active border. These systems are based on two complementary but asymmetric processes: constructive and interactive. The former physically constitute the system as a recursive network of component production, defining an inside. The maintenance of the constructive processes implies that the internal organization also constrains certain flows of matter and energy across the border of the system, generating interactive processes. These interactive processes ensure the maintenance of the constructive processes thus specifying a meaningful outside. Upon this basic form of identity formation, the evolutionary and historical domain is open for the emergence of a whole hierarchy and ecology of insides and outsides. These which mutually subsume and collaborate in the maintenance of the essential inside-outside dichotomy that defines the conditions of possibility of the subjects and the worlds they generate.

Keywords
Inside-outside dichotomy, constructive and interactive loop, agency, naturalized philosophy.

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PDF (submmited final draft, 203K, 13 pages).

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RUIZ-MIRAZO, K, PERETO, J. & MORENO, A. (2003)
A Universal Definition of Life: Autonomy and Open-ended Evolution
Origins of Life. Accepted for publication

Abstract
Life is a complex phenomenon that not only requires individual self-producing and self-sustaining systems but also a historical-collective organization of those individual systems, which brings about a characteristic evolutionary dynamics. On these lines, we propose to define universally living beings as autonomous systems with open-ended evolution capacities, and we claim that all such systems must have a semi-permeable active boundary (membrane), an energy transduction apparatus (set of energy currencies) and, at least, two types of functionally interdependent macromolecular components (catalysts and records). The latter is required to articulate a ‘phenotype-genotype’ decoupling that leads to a scenario where the global network of autonomous systems allows for an open-ended increase in the complexity of the individual agents. Thus, the basic-individual organization of biological systems depends critically on being instructed by patterns (informational records) whose generation and reliable transmission cannot be explained but taking into account the complete historical network of relationships among those systems. We conclude that a proper definition of life should consider both levels, individual and collective: living systems cannot be fully constituted without being part of the evolutionary process of a whole ecosystem. Finally, we also discuss a few practical implications of the definition for different programs of research.

Keywords
Definition of life, origin of life, autonomous agents, open-ended evolution, genotype-phenotype decoupling, origins of (genetic) information, generalization of biology, astrobiology, artificial life.

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pdf (96 Kb)

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MORENO, A, RUIZ-MIRAZO, K (2002)
Key issues regarding the origin, nature and evolution of complexity in nature: information as a central concept to understand biological organization
Special Issue Emergence 4.1/4.2 pp 63-76

Abstract
The appearance of basic autonomous systems is a necessary requisite for the beginning of an ‘open-ended’ process of production and evolution of complexity. Nevertheless, there must appear a partial decoupling --and at the same time a new kind of causal connection-- between two material domains in the system. This provokes a qualitative change in the potential of the system to reach higher levels of complexity. We identify the roots of information in the new causal interaction that takes place in the context of an organization whose dynamics is partially decoupled. As a result of the emergence of informational mechanisms in the system a totally different way to innovate and evolve can be set up: a way in which evolutionary changes occur “free” of the direct influence of functionalmetabolic constraints. This is the reason why it seems appropriate to introduce the notion of information in theories and models of biological organization and evolution.

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MORENO, A (2002)
El problema de la relación entre autonomía e información en la estructura de la organización biológica
Ludus Vitalis  X (17)  2002 pp. 123-147

Resumen
Autonomía e información aparecen como dos principios fundamentales pero opuestos en la organización biológica. Mientras que el origen de sistemas autónomos es concebible como un desarrollo de los mecanismos fisico-químicos que gobiernan los procesos autoorganizativos, la información aparece como un principio de organización ajeno e incompatible. Sin embargo, el origen de la información está ligado a una nueva etapa de la evolución de los sistemas autónomos, la de su inserción en un metasistema colectivo. Así, la información resulta fundamental en la creación de formas de dependencia de los sistemas individuales respecto de una organización espacial y temporalmente más amplia.

Palabras Clave
Autonomía, Información, Código, Organización biológica, Metarred, Desacoplamiento dinámico, Cierre operacional, Evolución, Selección Natural, Registros


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pdf (128 Kb)

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ETXEBERRIA, A & MORENO, A (2001)
From Complexity to Simplicity: Nature and symbols
BioSystems  60 (1-3) pp 149-157 (Special issue “The Physics and Evolution of Symbols and Codes:Reflections on the Work of Howard Pattee”)

Abstract
This paper reviews Pattee’s ideas about the symbolic domain as a phenomenon related to the selfsimplifying processes of certain hierarchical systems, such as the living. We distinguish the concepts of constraint, record, and symbol to explain how the Semantic Closure Principle, that is to say, the view that symbols are self-interpreted by the cell, emerges. Related to this, the notion of complementarity is discussed both as an epistemological and as an ontological principle. In the final discussion we consider whether autonomous systems can exist in which constraints are not symbolically preserved, and if biological symbols can be considered to have a descriptive nature.

Keywords
Constraint, record, Semantic Closure, symbol.

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pdf (72 Kb)

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RUIZ, K., MORENO, A. (2000)
Searching for the roots of autonomy: the natural and artificial paradigms revisited
Comunication and Cognition-Artificial Intelligence, 17(3-4) pp 209-228 (Special issue “The contribution of Artificial Life and the Sciences of Complexity to the Understanding of Autonomous Systems”)

Abstract
In this paper we claim that autonomy --in its most basic expression-- involves not only selfmaintenance,but also the actual self-construction of a system. It is argued that the only way for a system to conduct and organise by itself the flows of matter and energy necessary for its maintenance is through the development of a component production machinery, which can constrain those flows functionally, so as to achieve some sort of operational closure or recursivity (at the same time as it stays thermodynamically open). This also explains why basic autonomy is the most radical form of autonomy, which cannot be fully understood just in purely internalist terms. As a result, the attempts to create artificially minimal autonomous systems must be very close to those that try to generate simple versions of metabolic systems.

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RUIZ, K., ETXEBERRIA, A., MORENO, A., & IBAÑEZ, J. (2000)
Organisms and their place in biology
Theorys  in Biosciences  119 pp 43-67

Abstract (non official)
Until quite recently biology and life sciences were sciences of the organism, but now philosophical discussions of that notion may even deny the existence of entities that fall under this category. The notion of organism is problematic. It is not only that, for some time now, part of the life sciences do not have individual organisms as an object of study, it is also that these findings seem to challenge the intuitive notion of organism as a main biological entity. Biology seems to have dismembered in different life sciences1 and each takes as its object of analysis a particular aspect of the global –and unique– phenomenon of life on Earth. Sometimes the focus is on processes less global and more specialised than the organism, like in some developments of molecular biology and its derivations (genetic engineering, developmental genetics, etc.) or of gene-centred evolutionary theory. Some other times, on more encompassing aspects that take into account entities at a higher level than the organism, for example, in some parts of evolutionary biology or of ecology. As a consequence, the focus seems to have shifted away from the organism. However, it is dubious that there can be a science of the living without an adequate understanding of that notion.

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pdf (140 Kb)

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MORENO, A (2000)
Artificial Life as a bridge between Science and Philosophy
Artificial Life VII: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference, edited by Mark A. Bedau, John S. McCaskill, Norman H. Packard, and Steen Rasmussen. MIT Press, pp 507-512. 2000.

Abstract
Artificial Life is developing into a new type of discipline, based on computational construction as the main tool to explore and produce a science of life “as it could be”. In this research program, the generation of complex virtual systems becomes the actual object of the theories, substituting the usual empirical domain. This brings along a deep change in the traditional relationship between the ontological, epistemological and methodological levels, which forces us to reconsider the solid differences apparently established between science and philosophy. Even if the frontiers between these two kinds of knowledge do not completely disappear, new, very dynamic and complex, technologically mediated ways of interaction are being developed between them.

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pdf (40 Kb)

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MORENO, A.& RUIZ, K (1999)
Metabolism and the problem of its universalization
BioSystems 49 (1) pp 45-61.

Abstract
Metabolism tends to be conceived either as an operationally closed network of production of components or as an autonomous apparatus of management of energy flows. Taking up some recent ideas that connect the concept of autonomy with thermodynamic requirements, we move further to defend the hypothesis that there must be a deep intertwinement between the relational-constructive logic of a basic biological system and the logic of its thermodynamic implementation. Hence, we propose that metabolism should be universally defined as the recursive self-maintenance of controls upon the energy flows necessary for the physical realization of a component production system operationally closed. Finally, being critical with some claims of the so-called “strong” Artificial Life approach, we try to show that present ‘computational metabolisms’ are necessarily different in their structure and functioning from any real metabolic system, due to the distinct type of causal relations and mechanisms which are respectively established in them.

Keywords
self-organization, energetic and relational-constructive autonomy, workconstraint cycle, metabolism, artificial life.

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pdf (92 Kb)

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MORENO, A. (1998)
Information, Causality and Self-Reference in Natural and Artificial Systems
Dubois D.M. (ed) Computing Anticipatory Systems Woodbury,  NY: American Institute of Physics,  pp. 202-206.D.M.

Keywords
Information, causality, constraints, self-reference, complexity

Abstract (non-official)
This paper deals with the problem of the relation between information and causality. We consider information to be some kind of structure that has a referential capacity or, simply, the referential content of that structure. Hence, information does not have to do with the physical properties of its material support, only with referential relations (we shall address this notion later). These, in their turn, may be of two different types, either relations 1) between informational structures and the domain they denote (the world of meaning), or 2) among the informational structures themselves (the world of computation and formal systems). In case 2), informational relations may be seen as implementations of a mathematical universe where both the formal relations (syntax) and the referential capacity (semantics) have been extracted from the material support as pure abstractions, and, as a consequence, they might refer to different physical objects or events.

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pdf (28 Kb)

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MORENO, A., UMEREZ, J & IBAÑEZ, J (1997)
Cognition and Life. The Autonomy of Cognition.
Brain & Cognition 34 (1) Special Issue Academic Press  pp 107-129

Keywords
Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, autonomy, biological grounding, cognition, evolution, life,
nervous system, universality.

Abstract
In this paper we propose a philosophical distinction between biological and cognitive domains based on two conditions which are postulated in order to get a useful characterization of cognition: biological grounding and explanatory sufficiency. According to this, we argue that the origin of cognition in natural systems (cognition as we know it ) is the result of the appearance of an autonomous system embedded into another more generic one: the whole organism. This basic idea is complemented with another one: the formation and development of this system, in the course of evolution, cannot be understood but as the outcome of a continuos process of interaction between organisms and environment, between different organisms, and, specially, between the very cognitive organisms. Finally, we address the problem of the generalization of a theory of cognition (cognition as it could be) and conclude that this work would imply a grounding work on the problem of the origins developed in the frame of a confluence between both AL and an embodied AI.

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pdf (124 Kb)

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