Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic

Significance of Models of Computation, from Turing Model to Natural Computation

The increased interactivity and connectivity of computational devices along with the spreading of computational tools and computational thinking across the fields, has changed our understanding of the nature of computing. In the course of this development computing models have been extended from the initial abstract symbol manipulating mechanisms of stand-alone, discrete sequential machines, to the models of natural computing in the physical world, generally concurrent asynchronous processes capable of modelling living systems, their informational structures and dynamics on both symbolic and sub-symbolic information processing levels. Present account of models of computation highlights several topics of importance for the development of new understanding of computing and its role: natural computation and the relationship between the model and physical implementation, interactivity as fundamental for computational modelling of concurrent information processing systems such as living organisms and their networks, and the new developments in logic needed to support this generalized framework. Computing understood as information processing is closely related to natural sciences; it helps us recognize connections between sciences, and provides a unified approach for modeling and simulating of both living and non-living systems.

Dynamics of Information as Natural Computation

Processes considered rendering information dynamics have been studied, among others in: questions and answers, observations, communication, learning, belief revision, logical inference, game-theore ...

Information and computation : essays on scientific and philosophical understanding of foundations of information and computation

Cybersemiotics and the Question of Knowledge (S Brier) Information Dynamics in a Categorical Setting (M Burgin) Mathematics as Biological Process (G Chaitin) Information, Computation, Measurement and Irreversibility (J Collier) From Descartes to Turing: The Computational Content of Supervenience (B Cooper) On the Algorithmic Nature of the World (J-P Delahaye & H Zenil) A Dialogue Concerning Two Possible World Systems (G Dodig-Crnkovic & V Mueller) Does Computing Embrace Self-Organization? (W Hofkirchner) Analysis of Information and Computation in Physics Explains Cognitive Paradigms: From Full Cognition to Laplace Determinism to Statistical Determinism to Modern Approach (V Kreinovich & R Araiza) Bodies - Both Informed and Transformed (B J MacLennan) Computation on Information, Meaning and Representations, an Evolutionary Approach (C Menant) Interior Grounding, Reflection, and Self-Consciousness (M Minsky) Insights into the Biological Computing (W Riofrio) Super-Recursive Features of Natural Evolvability Processes and the Models for Computational Evolution (D Roglic) A Sketch of a Modeling View of Computing (O Shagrir) Whats Information, for an Organism or Intelligent Machine? How Can a Machine or Organism Mean? (A Sloman) Inconsistent Information as a Natural Phenomenon (C N J de Vey Mestdagh & J H Hoepman)

Modeling Life as Cognitive Info-Computation

This article presents a naturalist approach to cognition understood as a network of info-computational, autopoietic processes in living systems. It provides a conceptual framework for the unified view of cognition as evolved from the simplest to the most complex organisms, based on new empirical and theoretical results. It addresses three fundamental questions: what cognition is, how cognition works and what cognition does at different levels of complexity of living organisms. By explicating the info-computational character of cognition, its evolution, agent-dependency and generative mechanisms we can better understand its life-sustaining and life-propagating role. The info-computational approach contributes to rethinking cognition as a process of natural computation in living beings that can be applied for cognitive computation in artificial systems.

Absolute α-decay rates in Po isotopes

Abstract Absolute α-decay widths in Po isotopes are studied in terms of a correlated basis consisting of two-particle (physical) states. It is found that the neutron-neutron, proton-proton and neutron-proton pairing interactions play a fundamental role in clustering the neutrons and protons that eventually constitute the α-particle. As a result, the calculated α-decay widths are enhanced by several orders of magnitude by properly including the pairing interaction. Reasonable agreement with available experimental data is obtained.

Information, Computation, Cognition. Agency-based Hierarchies of Levels.

This paper connects information with computation and cognition via concept of agents that appear at variety of levels of organization of physical/chemical/cognitive systems – from elementary particles to atoms, molecules, life-like chemical systems, to cognitive systems starting with living cells, up to organisms and ecologies. In order to obtain this generalized framework, concepts of information, computation and cognition are generalized. In this framework, nature can be seen as informational structure with computational dynamics, where an (info-computational) agent is needed for the potential information of the world to actualize. Starting from the definition of information as the difference in one physical system that makes a difference in another physical system – which combines Bateson and Hewitt’s definitions, the argument is advanced for natural computation as a computational model of the dynamics of the physical world, where information processing is constantly going on, on a variety of levels of organization. This setting helps us to elucidate the relationships between computation, information, agency and cognition, within the common conceptual framework, with special relevance for biology and robotics.

Info-computationalism and Morphological Computing of Informational Structure

Within the framework of info-computationalism, morphological computation is described as fundamental principle for all natural computation (information processing).

An exact shell-model treatment of α-clustering and absolute α-decay

Abstract The alpha clustering and corresponding alpha decay of 212 Po is studied within the framework of a multistep shell-model method. All interactions among the four nucleons that constitute the alpha particle are included and a large single-particle representation is used. It is found that this approach is not sufficient to explain the available experimental data.

The Info-computational Nature of Morphological Computing

Morphological computing emerged recently as an approach in robotics aimed at saving robots computational and other resources by utilizing physical properties of the robotic body to automatically produce and control behavior. The idea is that the morphology of an agent (a living organism or a machine) constrains its possible interactions with the environment as well as its development, including its growth and reconfiguration. The nature of morphological computing becomes especially apparent in the info-computational framework, which combines informational structural realism (the idea that the world for an agent is an informational structure) with natural computationalism (the view that all of nature forms a network of computational processes). Info-computationalism describes morphological computation as a process of continuous self-structuring of information and shaping of both interactions and informational structures. This article argues that natural computation/morphological computation is a computational model of physical reality, and not just a metaphor or analogy, as it provides a basis for computational framing, parameter studies, optimizations and simulations – all of which go far beyond metaphor or analogy.

Computing Nature: Turing Centenary Perspective

This book is about nature considered as the totality of physical existence, the universe, and our present day attempts to understand it. If we see the universe as a network of networks of computational processes at many different levels of organization, what can we learn about physics, biology, cognition, social systems, and ecology expressed through interacting networks of elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells, (and especially neurons when it comes to understanding of cognition and intelligence), organs, organisms and their ecologies? Regarding our computational models of natural phenomena Feynman famously wondered: Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? Phenomena themselves occur so quickly and automatically in nature. Can we learn how to harness natures computational power as we harness its energy and materials? This volume includes a selection of contributions from the Symposium on Natural Computing/Unconventional Computing and Its Philosophical Significance, organized during the AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012, held in Birmingham, UK, on July 2-6, on the occasion of the centenary of Alan Turings birth. In this book, leading researchers investigated questions of computing nature by exploring various facets of computation as we find it in nature: relationships between different levels of computation, cognition with learning and intelligence, mathematical background, relationships to classical Turing computation and Turings ideas about computing nature - unorganized machines and morphogenesis. It addresses questions of information, representation and computation, interaction as communication, concurrency and agent models; in short this book presents natural computing and unconventional computing as extension of the idea of computation as symbol manipulation.