Cognitive Science Departmental Seminars starts with Gülce Kardeş from Physics department.

Date: 19.02.2020, 12:40, Place: S-03

Algorithmic Identification of Observers in Arbitrary Dynamical Systems

Gülce Kardeş, METU Physics

Abstract

Since Shannon’s introduction to information theory, we have tended to fix our attention to a syntactic analysis of information. Yet a profound disclosure of meaning in information is reported by a group of systems (e.g. biological organisms) that use information from their environment which causally contributes to their ability of maintaining existence. In this study, we consider the problem of identifying such systems, called observers, that render a priori companion of semantic information (Kolchin- sky and Wolpert, 2018) possible. We introduce spin models as a platform in which we construct an identification procedure. Our findings present the physical properties of spin systems that have determinant role in specifying observers. We also investigate further characteristics of semantic information, and list several implications to discuss the applicability of our work to any physical system.

Joint work with David Wolpert, Santa Fe Institute