Syntactic Autonomy: Why There is no Autonomy without Symbols and How Self-Organization Might Evolve Them

TL;DR

This paper explores how the emergence of syntactic autonomy in agents enables complex self-organization, open-ended evolution, and shared symbolic communication, emphasizing the importance of symbols for true autonomy.

Contribution

It proposes that syntactic autonomy is essential for meaningful closure and evolution, linking dynamical systems, symbolic memory, and the emergence of syntax in biological and artificial agents.

Findings

Syntactic autonomy enables complex agent interactions and evolution.

Emergent computation in cellular automata can produce non-trivial solutions.

RNA editing may have contributed to primordial biological coding mechanisms.

Abstract

Two different types of agency are discussed based on dynamically coherent and incoherent couplings with an environment respectively. I propose that until a private syntax (syntactic autonomy) is discovered by dynamically coherent agents, there are no significant or interesting types of closure or autonomy. When syntactic autonomy is established, then, because of a process of description-based selected self-organization, open-ended evolution is enabled. At this stage, agents depend, in addition to dynamics, on localized, symbolic memory, thus adding a level of dynamical incoherence to their interaction with the environment. Furthermore, it is the appearance of syntactic autonomy which enables much more interesting types of closures amongst agents which share the same syntax. To investigate how we can study the emergence of syntax from dynamical systems, experiments with cellular automata leading to emergent computation to solve non-trivial tasks are discussed. RNA editing is also mentioned as a process that may have been used to obtain a primordial biological code necessary open-ended evolution.