Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
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From: bruck@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck)
Subject: Re: Nested hierarchical programming, you say?
Organization: ACTCOM - Internet Services in Israel
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 1995 23:42:22 GMT
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Achim Clausing (cl@math.uni-muenster.de) wrote:
: Hallo Shane,

: Your "nested hierarchical concept" of alife certainly can be realized on a
: computer. After all, programming is creating abstractions, all the time -
: in my book this is the definition of programming, so I naturally expect that
: by putting enough layers around the hardware it can be made to look like
: a living being more and more.

: But I suspect that this approach towards an understanding of "What is life"
: misses the quintessence of real life in a profound way: Artificial life
: is unavoidably embedded into an outer world, the real one, whereas real life
: is not embedded. A computer program has no means to make inquiries about itself
: - this self is something not existing in the world of information but in the
: outer, real, world of the computer hardware (a real thing). Without this environment
: the program is unable to exist.

: So whatever is created in software will lack one feature I consider as necessary for
: life: Life is "context-free". It does not need a superstructure in order to happen.
: It has the chance to understand itself. A program never has this chance, it is embedded
: into something to which it has no connection whatsoever.

: Alife programs may resemble life, even closely in some aspects. But they are
: very dead unless someone from the outside (the superstructure - we) is looking at them
: and interpreting them. They need a separate context. We don't - we are our own context.

: So my these is: True life is context-free, hence it cannot be created since otherwise
: it would have the context of it's creator. (I just proved that God does not exist ;-)
: And thus building second-order, third-order, whatever higher order structures on the
: computer obviously is of no help. Life is first order or it isn't life.

: Achim Clausing



: Universitaet Muenster
: Fachbereich Mathematik
:                                   email: cl@math.uni-muenster.de
: Einsteinstr. 62                   phone: +251 83 3779
: D-48149 Muenster                  fax  : +251 83 8370


