Hi Jo,

"I realise that the above may be completely unintelligible ...".  Yup.  :)

But now we get to some good stuff.

"In your bee example I do not think you can identify an experience with an input-output relation because we know that outputs are contingent both on experience and contextual (Aristotelian formal) causal factors  in the brain that do not figure in the experience. "

In the OP, I mentioned that there were other actors in my model waiting in the wings.  It seems time bring them onstage.  The first such actor is "A".  Recall that I can write my model as B --> [agent] --> C, or just B -> C.  We can similarly write a preceding event/process as A -> B.  In this case, A is also a configuration of matter just like B.  In fact, A -> B may be a separate psychule, but does not need to be, and there may or may not be a physical agent involved between A and B. Also, there may be multiple internal processes between A and B.  We're just designating A as the starting point we care about.

The next actor to bring onstage is Aristotle and his four causes.  No, really. I understand that modern science has ditched most of Aristotle's causality, but I have reason to bring them all back.  We don't have to bring whatever baggage may have been created and discarded throughout history.  We can just redefine the terms now.  But I will use the same terms, because they seem to apply.  [Note, all of my knowledge of Aristotle's causality comes from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article "Aristotle on Causality".  Sorry.]

So, to restate the four causes relative to a given transformation of matter A -> B, the material cause is A, the formal cause is B (i.e., the form of B, i.e., the specific subset of measurable variables of B that we care about), the efficient cause is the agent if there is one or an explanation of the laws of physics that allowed the transformation if there is no agent, and the final cause is the purpose of creating the agent if there is an agent and there was a purpose for creating it.  The article mentioned above gives as an example the creation of a bronze statue.  The material cause is the bronze (A), the efficient cause is the sculptor, the formal cause is the shape of the statue (say, a horse)(B), and the final cause is an explanation of the purpose for creating the statue.

And now we can restate the model (new parts in bold and italic):

A psychule is an event wherein a well-defined subset of the internal relations (discernible variables) of an isolated configuration of matter (the input, B) is recognized by an agent which then generates a second configuration of matter (the output, C) such that the output is at least potentially a valuable response to one or more of the four Aristotelian causes of the input, that value accruing not to the agent but to whatever generated the agent.  The agent will necessarily embody knowledge generated by whatever created the agent, which knowledge was organized for the purpose of recognizing instances of the input.

So, in response to your statement

"we know that outputs are contingent both on experience and contextual (Aristotelian formal) causal factors",

 the model now specifies that the experience on which the output is contingent is embodied as knowledge in the agent, and the role of the Aristotelian causal factors is explicit.  Knowledge as used here will also be specifically defined, on request.

So where do you want to start?

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