Workshop Overview
This workshop addresses one of the most profound puzzles in complexity science and artificial life: How do goal-directed systems emerge and transform during major evolutionary transitions? From the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes, single cells to multicellular organisms, and simple agents to collective intelligences, life repeatedly demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to generate qualitatively new forms of purposiveness.
The central challenge lies in understanding how future states (goals) can causally influence present behavior without violating physical laws. Current approaches typically emphasize either material dynamics (biochemical self-organization, thermodynamic constraints) or informational processes (learning, semantic processing, prediction) in isolation, missing their crucial cooperative interplays.
We propose that the key lies in problem spaces—the existential and developmental challenges that systems continuously navigate through matter-information cooperation. During metasystem transitions, these problem spaces fundamentally reorganize, creating novel forms of agency and goal-directedness that transcend their constituent parts. By integrating autopoietic theory, semantic information dynamics, and process philosophy, we can begin to understand how purpose naturally emerges from physical processes.
Key Questions:
- How do matter-information interplays embody problem spaces across scales?
- What cooperative mechanisms predict successful metasystem transitions?
- How does goal-directed novelty emerge from collective problem-solving?
- Can we develop a unified framework spanning bacterial chemotaxis to human intentionality?
Confirmed Speakers:
- Tomas Veloz (VUB-UM6P-UTEM, Belgium-Morocco-Chile)
Matter-Information Interplays, problem spaces, and the evolution of goal-directedness - Stefan Leijnen (HU, Netherlands)
From Emergent Constraints to Transformational Creativity - Raphael Liogier (Sciences Po-UM6P, France-Morocco)
Can Process-Ontology Rescue Purpose from Complex Adaptive Systems? - Olha Sobetska (VUB, Belgium)
Irrationality and Creativity in Human and AI Decision-Making - Fernando Rosas (Sussex, UK)
The role of matter in Information Dynamics and Causal Emergence - TBA or Discussion
The Synthetic and Biological Implementation of Problem Spaces
Target Audience: Researchers in artificial life, complex systems, evolutionary biology, information theory, philosophy of mind, and AI alignment interested in foundational questions about purpose, agency, and the emergence of goal-directedness in natural and artificial systems.
Applications: Synthetic biology, AI safety and alignment, understanding consciousness, designing purposive artificial systems, and foundations of meaning and purpose in nature.