Essay Abstract
Some physical entities, which we often refer to as agents, can be described as having intentions and engaging in goal-oriented behavior. Yet agents can also be described in terms of low-level dynamics that are mindless, intention-less, and without goals or purpose. How we can reconcile these seemingly disparate levels of description? This is especially problematic because the lower scales at first appear more fundament in three ways: in terms of their causal work, in terms of the amount of information they contain, and their theoretical superiority in terms of model choice. However, recent research bringing information theory to bear on modeling systems at different scales significantly reframes the issue. I argue that agents, with their associated intentions and goal-oriented behavior, can actually causally emerge from their underlying microscopic physics. This is particularly true of agents because they are autopoietic and possess (apparent) teleological causal relationships.
Author Bio
Erik P Hoel is a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. He received his PhD in neuroscience working under Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Having grown up in his family's bookstore, he occasionally writes fiction and essays for various publications. His scientific research involves applying measures of emergence and consciousness to the cortex.