title: Evolution with material symbol systems.
abstract: Pattee's semantic closure principle is used to study the characteristics and requirements of evolving material symbols systems. By contrasting agents that reproduce via genetic variation with agents that reproduce via self-inspection, we reach the conclusion that symbols are necessary to attain open-ended evolution, but only if the phenotypes of agents are the result of a material, self-organization process. This way, a study of the inter-dependencies of symbol and matter is presented. This study is based first on a theoretical treatment of symbolic representations, and secondly on simulations of simple agents with matter-symbol inter-dependencies. The agent-based simulations use evolutionary algorithms with indirectly encoded phenotypes. The indirect encoding is based on Fuzzy Development programs, which are procedures for combining fuzzy sets in such a way as to model self-organizing development processes.
authors.affiliation: Modeling, Algorithms, and Informatics Group (CCS-3) Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS B256, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. rocha@lanl.gov
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Rocha
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001703:Biophysics / Q000266:history; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005838:Genotype; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008957:Models, Genetic; D000069497:Origin of Life; D010641:Phenotype; D012098:Reproduction; D012641:Selection, Genetic