INSPIRE Track 1: Development of Perception-Action in Non-living, Dissipative Systems

该INSPIRE奖的部分资金由社会行为和经济科学理事会行为和认知科学部的发展和学习科学项目、数学和物理科学理事会化学部的化学结构动力学和机制项目以及数学和物理科学理事会的多学科活动办公室资助。所有生物体都会发展为目标和意图服务的感知和行动能力，无论多么初级。行为科学家传统上认为感知和行动是高阶动物的属性，但最近的研究表明，所有生物，包括单细胞生物、植物和真菌，都具备检测环境中信息并利用该信息指导行动的能力。能够感知-行动的生物系统的多样性表明，感知-行动不是反映特定的生物专业性，而是通过生物学充分利用的一般物理原理发展起来的。当前的项目旨在发现这些物理原理。研究人员将现代热力学的耗散结构理论作为理解感知-行动如何在自组织认知系统中出现的自然起点。耗散结构展示了能量和物质流动中形态的出现。研究人员最近的工作表明，更复杂的耗散结构可以检测并转向新能源。为此，这些耗散结构存储能量，并在与其自身持久性相关的延时动作中释放能量，从而展示基本的感知-动作。该项目的重点是非生命的物理系统，它们产生自己的形态和感知-行动能力。研究人员将： 1）创建一组自组织其形态的物理系统，以检测环境中的信息，并针对与目标相关的信息采取行动； 2）设计范式，其中这些系统发展感知和行动能力，开始收敛于简单生物体的复杂感知-行动行为，包括寻找新能源； 3）使用新概念，例如功能对称性破缺，将耗散结构理论扩展到涵盖局部服从热力学定律（即在较小的空间和时间尺度上）的系统，但发展为全球基本目标服务的感知和行动能力（即在较大的空间和时间尺度上）。在此过程中，该项目旨在提供一个总体理论框架，用于理解自排序物理化学系统如何检测有关其环境的信息，并根据该信息采取行动，以维持其自身的结构，实际上，开发出寻找能量和物质的基本形式。目前，生命系统的目标导向感知和行动超出了自然法的解释范围。 该项目将为理解基于热力学的感知行为提供一个新的起点。这项工作将从相对简单的非有机物理系统开始，但对生物和行为科学的影响是相当大的。因此，该项目应有助于创建一个新的跨学科领域，将生物学（广义上的）现象、自组织系统和非平衡热力学联系起来。最终，该项目的结果可能为新型工程奠定基础，其中系统自我组织其感知和行动以实现强加的目标。

This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Developmental and Learning Sciences Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences in the Directorate for Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences, and the Chemical Structure Dynamics and Mechanism Program in the Division of Chemistry in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.All organisms develop the ability to perceive and act in the service of goals and intentions, no matter how rudimentary. Behavioral scientists have traditionally considered perception and action as properties of higher-order animals, but recent work shows that all living things, including single-celled organisms, plants, and fungi, develop the ability to detect information in their environments and use that information to guide action. The diversity of biological systems capable of perception-action suggests that, rather than reflecting a particular biological specialization, perception-action develops through general physical principles that biology has richly exploited. The current project aims to discover these physical principles. The investigators take the theory of dissipative structures from modern thermodynamics as a natural starting place for understanding how perception-action emerges in self-organizing, epistemic systems. Dissipative structures demonstrate the emergence of morphology from the flow of energy and matter. The investigators' recent work shows that more complex dissipative structures detect and move to new energy sources. To do so, these dissipative structures store energy, and release it during time-delayed actions related to their own persistence, thus demonstrating rudimentary perception-action. The project focuses on non-living, physical systems that generate their own morphology and perceiving-acting capabilities. The investigators will: 1) Create a set of physical systems that self-organize their morphology so as to detect information in the environment, and act on that information relative to a goal; 2) Design paradigms in which these systems develop perceiving and acting capabilities that begin to converge on the complex perception-action behaviors of simple organisms, including searching for new energy sources; 3) Use new concepts, such as functional symmetry breaking, to extend the theory of dissipative structures to encompass systems that obey thermodynamic laws locally (i.e., on smaller spatial and temporal scales), but develop the ability to perceive and act in the service of rudimentary goals globally (i.e., on larger spatial and temporal scales). In so doing, the project seeks to provide an overarching theoretical framework for understanding how self-ordering physico-chemical systems come to detect information about their environments and act on that information in the service of maintaining their own structures, in effect, developing rudimentary forms of foraging for energy and matter.Currently, the goal-directed perception and action of living systems is beyond the explanatory reach of natural law. The project will provide a new starting point for understanding perception-action grounded in thermodynamics. The work will begin with relatively simple, non-organic physical systems, but the implications for the biological and behavioral sciences are considerable. As such, the project should help create a new interdisciplinary field that connects phenomena in biology (in the broadest sense of the term), self-organizing systems, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Ultimately, the results of the project may provide the foundation for a new type of engineering, in which a system self-organizes its perception and action to achieve an imposed goal.