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

该INSPIRE奖部分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门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。所有的生物都发展出了为目标和意图服务的感知和行动的能力，无论多么初级。传统上，行为科学家认为感知和行动是高级动物的特性，但最近的研究表明，所有生物，包括单细胞生物、植物和真菌，都发展出了在环境中探测信息并利用这些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化，而是通过生物学充分利用的一般物理原理发展起来的。目前的项目旨在发现这些物理原理。研究人员将现代热力学中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。耗散结构证明了从能量和物质的流动中出现的形态。研究人员最近的工作表明，更复杂的耗散结构可以探测并转移到新能源上。为此，这些耗散结构储存能量，并在与自身持久性相关的时间延迟行动中释放能量，从而展示了基本的感知-行动。该项目专注于非生命的物理系统，这些系统可以产生自己的形态和感知-行动能力。研究人员将：1)创建一套自组织形态的物理系统，以便检测环境中的信息，并根据这些信息采取行动；2)设计范式，这些系统发展感知和行动能力，开始收敛于简单生物的复杂感知-行动行为，包括寻找新能源；3)使用新的概念，如功能对称破缺，将耗散结构理论扩展到包括局部服从热力学定律的系统（即，在较小的空间和时间尺度上），但发展在全球（即，在较大的空间和时间尺度上）为基本目标服务的感知和行动能力。在这样做的过程中，该项目试图提供一个总体的理论框架，以理解自我排序的物理化学系统是如何探测到有关其环境的信息，并在维持其自身结构的服务中对这些信息采取行动的，实际上，发展出觅食能量和物质的基本形式。目前，生命系统以目标为导向的感知和行为已经超出了自然法则的解释范围。该项目将为理解基于热力学的感知-行动提供一个新的起点。这项工作将从相对简单的非有机物理系统开始，但对生物学和行为科学的影响是相当大的。因此，该项目应该有助于创建一个新的跨学科领域，将生物学现象（在最广泛的意义上）、自组织系统和非平衡热力学联系起来。最终，项目的结果可能为一种新型工程提供基础，在这种工程中，系统可以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.