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Alife Digest Number 045
ALIFE LIST: Artificial Life Research List Number 45 Friday, October 26th 1990
ARTIFICIAL LIFE RESEARCH ELECTRONIC MAILING LIST
Maintained by the Indiana University Artificial Life Research Group
Contents:
what is "emergent"?
responding to 'what is "emergent"'
Call for papers
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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 90 19:36:04 EDT
From: W. Richard Stark <stark@kleene.math.usf.edu>
Subject: Call for papers
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C A L L - F O R - P A P E R S
The Americal Mathematical Society Southeastern Sectional Meeting.
22-23 March 1991,
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.
AMS SPECIAL SESSION:
MATHEMATICAL ISSUES IN BIOLOGICALLY MOTIVATED COMPUTING.
Presentations in this session will focus on mathematical issues fundamental
to complex systems of communicating processes: on problems, methods, and
theory. We see "biologically motivated computing" as being a central case of
extremely distributed computing.
Objective: to explore and introduce abstract computational paradigms ranging
from biological information processing to parallel computing to
non-classical recursion theory. An ideal format might be to present a simple
problem in one of these areas, then devote most of the presentation to
mathematics arising from the problem. We would like to have mathematicians
leave the special session with an appreciation of the challenges present in
the subject as well as specific problems that they could attack on the basis
of the presentation and little more than their particular background.
Partial list of appropriate systems and topics: natural information-processing
systems, abstract social systems, abstract tissues/organs, cellular automata,
biological applications of Petri nets, highly parallel computers
(e.g., Connection Machine), artificial life, neural networks, Lindenmeyer
systems, genetic algorithms, graph rewriting systems, parallel complexity,
and non-classical recursion theory.
Conclusion: This is an opportunity to communicate problems in an area that
is extremely deep, but still broadly accessible.
Organizers: Edwin Clark, Joseph Liang, Gregory McColm, John Pedersen, and
Richard Stark.
Mathematics Department, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620.
Phone: 813-974-2643, FAX: 823-974-2700.
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From: Jonathan Rowe <jro@cs.exeter.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 11:29:43 BST
Subject: what is "emergent"?
Does anyone have any precise definition of the term "emergent property"?
Are there any good examples of a system that has both emergent properties
and non-emergent ones?
In a recent discussion, two extreme views evolved: one said that all properties
were emergent, but some more so than others; the other view was that no
property was emergent, but some were less obviously built-in than others.
Is it a matter of degree? Or is there a clear distinction to be made?
Jon Rowe.
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Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 06:34:48 -0500
From: Marek W. Lugowski <marek@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: responding to 'what is "emergent"'
I would like to suggest that emergent be taken to mean "not controlled".
Controlled would mean subject to top-down or interpreter/interpreted
formalization and emergent would mean not subject to the above but a
product of natural selection, possibly impossible to write down as a
closed form formula of a typographical formal system.
-- Marek
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End of ALife Digest
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