56 found
Order:
Disambiguations
Mark A. Bedau [35]Mark Bedau [29]
  1. (2 other versions)Weak emergence.Mark A. Bedau - 1997 - Philosophical Perspectives 11:375-399.
    An innocent form of emergence—what I call "weak emergence"—is now a commonplace in a thriving interdisciplinary nexus of scientific activity—sometimes called the "sciences of complexity"—that include connectionist modelling, non-linear dynamics (popularly known as "chaos" theory), and artificial life.1 After defining it, illustrating it in two contexts, and reviewing the available evidence, I conclude that the scientific and philosophical prospects for weak emergence are bright.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   117 citations  
  2. (1 other version)Downward causation and the autonomy of weak emergence.Mark A. Bedau - 2002 - Principia 6 (1):5-50.
    Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   52 citations  
  3.  95
    Can Biological Teleology Be Naturalized?Mark Bedau - 1991 - Journal of Philosophy 88 (11):647-655.
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   67 citations  
  4. Is weak emergence just in the mind?Mark A. Bedau - 2008 - Minds and Machines 18 (4):443-459.
    Weak emergence is the view that a system’s macro properties can be explained by its micro properties but only in an especially complicated way. This paper explains a version of weak emergence based on the notion of explanatory incompressibility and “crawling the causal web.” Then it examines three reasons why weak emergence might be thought to be just in the mind. The first reason is based on contrasting mere epistemological emergence with a form of ontological emergence that involves irreducible downward (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  5. Where's the good in teleology?Mark Bedau - 1992 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (4):781-806.
  6.  88
    The nature of life: classical and contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science.Mark Bedau & Carol Cleland (eds.) - 2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  7. Goal-Directed Systems and the Good.Mark Bedau - 1992 - The Monist 75 (1):34-51.
    We can readily identify goal-directed systems and distinguish them from non-goal-directed systems. A woodpecker hunting for grubs is the first, a pendulum returning to rest is the second. But what is it to be a goal-directed system? Perhaps the dominant answer to this question, inspired by systems theories such as cybernetics, is that goal-directed systems are distinguished by their tendency to seek, aim at, or maintain some more-or-less easily identifiable goal. Cybernetics and the like would hold that physical systems subject (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  8. Four puzzles about life.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    To surmount the notorious difficulties of defining life, we should evaluate theories of life not by whether they provide necessary and sufficient conditions for our current preconceptions about life but by how well they explain living phenomena and how satisfactorily they resolve puzzles about life. On these grounds, the theory of life as supple adaptation (Bedau 1996) gets support from its natural and compelling resolutions of the following four puzzles: (1) How are different forms of life at different levels of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  9. The nature of life.Mark A. Bedau - 1996 - In Margaret A. Boden (ed.), The philosophy of artificial life. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 332--357.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   30 citations  
  10.  85
    Philosophical content and method of artificial life.Mark A. Bedau - 1998 - In Terrell Ward Bynum & James Moor (eds.), The Digital Phoenix: How Computers are Changing Philosophy. Cambridge: Blackwell. pp. 135--152.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  11. A functional account of degrees of minimal chemical life.Mark A. Bedau - 2012 - Synthese 185 (1):73-88.
    This paper describes and defends the view that minimal chemical life essentially involves the chemical integration of three chemical functionalities: containment, metabolism, and program (Rasmussen et al. in Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter, 2009a ). This view is illustrated and explained with the help of CMP and Rasmussen diagrams (Rasmussen et al. In: Rasmussen et al. (eds.) in Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter, 71–100, 2009b ), both of which represent the key chemical functional dependencies among containment, metabolism, and (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  12.  37
    The Evolution of Complexity.Mark Bedau - 2009 - In Barberousse Anouk, Morange M. & Pradeau T. (eds.), Mapping the Future of Biology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 266. Springer.
  13.  94
    Measurement of evolutionary activity, teleology, and life.Mark Bedau - unknown
    We consider how to discern whether or not evolution is taking place in an observed system. Evolution will be characterized in terms of a particular macroscopic behavior that emerges from microscopic organismic interaction. We de ne evolutionary activity as the rate at which useful genetic innovations are absorbed into the population. After measuring evolutionary activity in a simple model biosphere, we discuss applications to other systems. We argue that evolutionary activity provides an objective, quantitative interpretation of the intuitive idea of (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  14. (4 other versions)Artificial life: organization, adaptation and complexity from the bottom up.Mark A. Bedau - 2003 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (11):505-512.
  15. Weak emergence and computer simulation.Mark Bedau - 2011 - In Paul Humphreys & Cyrille Imbert (eds.), Models, Simulations, and Representations. New York: Routledge.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  16. 3 Weak Emergence and Context-Sensitive Reduction.Mark A. Bedau - 2010 - In Antonella Corradini & Timothy O'Connor (eds.), Emergence in science and philosophy. New York: Routledge. pp. 6--46.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  17.  66
    Three Illustrations of Artificial Life's Working Hypothesis.Mark A. Bedau - unknown
    Artificial life uses computer models to study the essential nature of the characteristic processes of complex adaptive systems proceses such as self-organization, adaptation, and evolution. Work in the field is guided by the working hypothesis that simple computer models can capture the essential nature of these processes. This hypothesis is illustrated by recent results with a simple population of computational agents whose sensorimotor functionality undergo open-ended adaptive evolution. These might illuminate three aspects of complex adaptive systems in general: punctuated equilibrium (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  18. Weak emergence drives the science, epistemology, and metaphysics of synthetic biology.Mark A. Bedau - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (4):334-345.
    Top-down synthetic biology makes partly synthetic cells by redesigning simple natural forms of life, and bottom-up synthetic biology aims to make fully synthetic cells using only entirely nonliving components. Within synthetic biology the notions of complexity and emergence are quite controversial, but the imprecision of key notions makes the discussion inconclusive. I employ a precise notion of weak emergent property, which is a robust characteristic of the behavior of complex bottom-up causal webs, where a complex causal web is one that (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  19.  53
    Against Mentalism in Teleology.Mark A. Bedau - 1990 - American Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1):61 - 70.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  20.  20
    Bifurcation Structure in Diversity Dynamics.Mark Bedau - unknown
    ed individuals. Total diversity D is the sum of two fundamental principles governing broad classes of such..
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  21.  66
    Cartesian Interaction.Mark Bedau - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1):483-502.
  22.  30
    The Intrinsic Scientific Value of Reprogramming Life.Mark A. Bedau - 2011 - Hastings Center Report 41 (4):29-31.
  23.  76
    Emergent models of supple dynamics in life and mind.Mark A. Bedau - 1997 - Brain and Cognition 34:5-27.
    The dynamical patterns in mental phenomena have a characteristic suppleness&emdash;a looseness or softness that persistently resists precise formulation&emdash;which apparently underlies the frame problem of artificial intelligence. This suppleness also undermines contemporary philosophical functionalist attempts to define mental capacities. Living systems display an analogous form of supple dynamics. However, the supple dynamics of living systems have been captured in recent artificial life models, due to the emergent architecture of those models. This suggests that analogous emergent models might be able to explain (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  24.  36
    The Evolution of Sensorimotor Functionality.Mark Bedau - unknown
    One can study the the evolution of sensorimotor functionality by synthesizing this process in an abstract arti cial life model, speci cally, a population of agents that interact with each other and with their environment in a way that allows natural selection implicitly to shape their sensorimotor couplings. The present paper de nes very general measures of environmental and sensory uncertainty, and of action's direct and indirect e ects on perception, and reports a series of observations of these quantities in (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  25.  28
    What is Life?Mark A. Bedau - 2008 - In Sahorta Sarkar & Anya Plutynski (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. pp. 455–471.
    This chapter contains section titled: The Fascination of Life The Phenomena of Life Puzzles about Life Accounts of Life The Problem of Understanding Life References Further Reading.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  26.  52
    Collective Intelligence of the Artificial Life Community on Its Own Successes, Failures, and Future.Steen Rasmussen, Michael J. Raven, Gordon N. Keating & Mark A. Bedau - 2003 - Artificial Life 9:207-235.
    We describe a novel Internet-based method for building consensus and clarifying con icts in large stakeholder groups facing complex issues, and we use the method to survey and map the scienti c and organizational perspectives of the arti cial life community during the Seventh International Conference on Arti cial Life (summer 2000). The issues addressed in this survey included arti cial life’s main successes, main failures, main open scienti c questions, and main strategies for the future, as well as the (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  27.  40
    Testing Bottom-Up Models of Complex Citation Networks.Mark A. Bedau - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1131-1143.
    The robust behavior of the patent citation network is a complex target of recent bottom-up models in science. This paper investigates the purpose and testing of three especially simple bottom-up models of the citation count distribution observed in the patent citation network. The complex causal webs in the models generate weakly emergent patterns of behavior, and this explains both the need for empirical observation of computer simulations of the models and the epistemic harmlessness of the resulting epistemic opacity.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  28.  67
    Interdisciplinary Interconnections in Synthetic Biology.Ulrich Krohs & Mark A. Bedau - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (4):313-317.
  29.  98
    (1 other version)Introduction to philosophical problems about life.Mark A. Bedau - 2012 - Synthese 185 (1):1-3.
    This paper describes and defends the view that minimal chemical life essentially involves the chemical integration of three chemical functionalities: containment, metabolism, and program. This view is illustrated and explained with the help of CMP and Rasmussen diagrams in Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter, 71–100, 2009b), both of which represent the key chemical functional dependencies among containment, metabolism, and program. The CMP model of minimal chemical life gains some support from the broad view of life as open-ended evolution, which (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  30.  39
    Adaptation of Mutation Rates in a Simple Model of Evolution.Mark Bedau - unknown
    We have studied the adaptation of mutation rates in a simple model of evolution. The model consists of a two-dimensional world with a periodically replenished resource and a uctuating population of evolving agents whose survival and reproduction are an implicit a function of their success at nding resources and their internal metabolism. Earlier work suggested that mutation rate is a control parameter that governs a transition between two qualitatively di erent kinds of complex adaptive systems, and that the power of (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  31.  72
    Evolutionary design of a DDPD model of ligation.Mark A. Bedau & Andrew Buchanan - unknown
    Ligation is a form of chemical self-assembly that involves dynamic formation of strong covalent bonds in the presence of weak associative forces. We study an extremely simple form of ligation by means of a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model extended to include the dynamic making and breaking of strong bonds, which we term dynamically bonding dissipative particle dynamics (DDPD). Then we use a chemical genetic algorithm (CGA) to optimize the model’s parameters to achieve a limited form of ligation of trimers—a (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  32.  39
    The Extent to which Organisms Construct their Environments.Mark A. Bedau - unknown
    Those interested in the relationship betw een environment structure and behavior — the topic of this special issue of Adaptive Behavior — w ill find much of value in Peter Godfrey-Smith's new book, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (hereafter CFMN; all page citations are to CFMN unless otherw ise indicated). The w riting is clear and concise, aptly balancing precision and breadth, and a host of relevant issues are raised and advanced. Although my comments here w ill (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  33. Cryptographic hash functions based on ALife.Mark A. Bedau, Richard Crandall & Michael J. Raven - 2009 - Psipress.
    There is a long history of cryptographic hash functions, i.e. functions mapping variable-length strings to fixed-length strings, and such functions are also expected to enjoy certain security properties. Hash functions can be effected via modular arithmetic, permutation-based schemes, chaotic mixing, and so on. Herein we introduce the notion of an artificial-life (ALife) hash function (ALHF), whereby the requisite mixing action of a good hash function is accomplished via ALife rules that give rise to complex evolution of a given system. Various (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34.  8
    Rudiments of Logic.George Myro, Mark Bedau & Tim Monroe (eds.) - 1987 - Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice-Hall.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  35. Supple laws in psychology and biology.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    The nature and status of psychological laws are a long-standing controversy. I will argue that part of the controversy stems from the distinctive nature of an important subset of those laws, which I’ll call “supple laws.” An emergent-model strategy taken by the new interdisciplinary field of artificial life provides a strikingly successful understanding of analogously supple laws in biology. So, after reviewing the failures of the two evident strategies for understanding supple psychological laws, I’ll turn for inspiration to emergent-models explanations (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Philosophical and scientific perspectives on emergence.Hugues Bersini, Pasquale Stano, Pier Luigi Luisi & Mark A. Bedau - 2012 - Synthese 185 (2):165-169.
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  37.  39
    (2 other versions)Effect of Environmental Structure on Evolutionary Adaptation.Jeffrey A. Fletcher, Mark A. Bedau & Martin Zwick - 1998 - In C. Adami R. Belew H. Kitano and C. Taylor (ed.), Artificial Life VI. MIT Press. pp. 189-198.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38.  43
    1 Arti cial life's working hypothesis.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    Arti cial life studies computer models of the processes characteristic of complex adaptive systems|processes like self-organization, self-reproduction, adaptation, and evolution. Complex adaptive systems take many forms, each of which di ers from the others in myriad ways. By abstracting away from the diverse details, arti cial life hopes to reveal fundamental principles governing broad classes of complex adaptive systems. This hope rests on arti cial life's working hypoth-.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  39.  25
    A Case Study in Objectifying Values in Science.Mark A. Bedau - 2004 - In Peter K. Machamer & Gereon Wolters (eds.), Science, Values, and Objectivity. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 190.
  40.  44
    Catalysis by self-assembled structures in emergent reaction networks.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    We study a new variant of the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model that includes the possibility of dynamically forming and breaking strong bonds. The emergent reaction kinetics may then interact with self-assembly processes. We observe that self-assembled amphiphilic aggregations such as micelles have a catalytic effect on chemical reaction networks, changing both equilibrium concentrations and reaction frequencies. These simulation results are in accordance with experimental results on the so-called “concentration effect”.
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41.  33
    Dependence of adaptability on environmental structure in a simple evolutionary model.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    This paper concerns the relationship between the detectable and useful structure in an environment and the degree to which a population can adapt to that environment. We explore the hypothesis that adaptability will depend unimodally on environmental variety, and we measure this component of environmental structure using the information-theoretic uncertainty of detectable environmental conditions. We de ne adaptability as the degree to which a certain kind of population successfully adapts to a certain kind of environment, and we measure adaptability by (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  42.  81
    Financial markets can be at sub-optimal equilibria.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    We use game theory and Santa Fe Artificial Stock Market, an agent-based model of an evolving stock market, to study the optimal frequency for traders to revise their market forecasting rules. We discover two things: There is a unique strategic Nash equilibrium in the game of choosing forecast revision rates, and this equilibrium is sub-optimal in the sense that traders’ earnings are not maximized an the market is inefficient. This strategic equilibrium is due to an analogue of the prisoner’s dilemma; (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  43.  48
    Is echo a complex adaptive system?Mark Bedau - 2000 - Evolutionary Computation 8 (4):419-442.
    We evaluate whether John Holland’s Echo model exemplifies his theory of complex adaptive systems. After reviewing Holland’s theory of complex adaptive systems and describing his Echo model, we describe and explain the characteristic evolutionary behavior observed in a series of Echo model runs. We conclude that Echo lacks the diversity of hierarchically organized aggregates that typify complex adaptive systems, and we explore possible explanations for this failure.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  44.  58
    Living technology today and tomorrow.Mark A. Bedau - 2009 - Technoetic Arts 7 (2):199-206.
    The concept of living technology can be applied to any technology that is powerful and useful specifically because it has some of the fundamental features of living systems. This article is a brief general overview of living technology's current state and projected future. After illustrating living technology and discussing why it is complicated to define, I explain how it is related to so-called NBIC convergence (see below) and discuss some of the larger social, ethical and aesthetic issues that it raises.
    No categories
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  45.  40
    May 17, 1999.Mark Bedau - unknown
    The document contains fourteen pictures of waves of evolutionary activity created by alleles in the sensory-motor strategies of agents in Packard's Scatter model.1 The quality of these waves indicate di erent kinds of evolutionary phenomena involving signi cant adaptations in sensory-motor rules. The purpose of this document is only to depict a variety of kinds of evolutionary phenomena, not to explain those phenomena a job for another occasion. The following papers contain more background on evolutionary activity waves and Packard's Scatter (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  46.  54
    Minimal memetics and the Evolution of Patented Technology.Mark A. Bedau - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (4):791-807.
    The nature and status of cultural evolution and its connection with biological evolution are controversial in part because of Richard Dawkin’s suggestion that the scientific study of culture should include “memetics,” an analog of genetics in which genes are replaced by “memes”—the hypothetical units of cultural evolution. Memetics takes different forms; I focus on its minimal form, which claims merely that natural selection shapes to some extent the evolution of some aspects of culture. Advocates and critics of memetics disagree about (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47.  42
    Optimal Formulation of Complex Chemical Systems with a Genetic Algorithm.Mark A. Bedau - unknown
    We demonstrate a method for optimizing desired functionality in real complex chemical systems, using a genetic algorithm. The chemical systems studied here are mixtures of amphiphiles, which spontaneously exhibit a complex variety of self-assembled molecular aggregations, and the property optimized is turbidity. We also experimentally resolve the fitness landscape in some hyper-planes through the space of possible amphiphile formulations, in order to assess the practicality of our optimization method. Our method shows clear and significant progress after testing only 1 % (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48. Open problems in artificial life mark A. bedau∗,†.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    artificial life, each of which is a grand challenge requiring a major advance on a fundamental issue for its solution. Each problem is briefly explained, and, where deemed helpful, some promising paths to its solution are indicated.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49.  65
    Objectifying values in science: A case study.Mark Bedau - manuscript
    There are at least two different ways in which values and science can be connected. One is through the evaluation of science, and the other is through the scientific investigation of values. The evaluation of science is a non−scientific, political or ethical investigation of the practices of science. Various proposed and actual scientific practices call out for social and ethical evaluation. A few that have received recent attention are the human genome project, intelligence testing, and encryption algorithms. Such evaluations of (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  50.  25
    Policy‐Making and Systemic Complexity.Mark A. Bedau - 2014 - Hastings Center Report 44 (S5):29-30.
    Synthetic biology has spawned a debate about how society and the international community should go about policy‐making, especially given the potential for both transformative benefits and existential threats. One of the significant contributions of “The Ethics of Synthetic Biology: Next Steps and Prior Questions,” by Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray, is its exploration of the difficulties of devel­oping policy that appropriately addresses the risks and benefits of synthetic biology. In this comment I want to develop this point further and emphasize how (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 56