artificial language See FORMAL LANGUAGE, PHILOS-. OPHY OF LANGUAG. artificial life, an interdisciplinary science studying the most general character of the fundamental processes of life. These processes include self-organization, self-reproduction, learning, adaptation, and evolution. Artificial life (or ALife) is to theoretical biology roughly what artificial intelligence (AI) is to theoretical psychology – computer simulation is the methodology of choice. In fact, since the mind exhibits many of life’s fundamental properties, AI could be considered a subfield of ALife. However, whereas most traditional AI models are serial systems with complicated, centralized controllers making decisions based on global state information, most natural systems exhibiting complex autonomous behavior are parallel, distributed networks of simple entities making decisions based solely on their local state information, so typical ALife models have a corresponding distributed architecture. A computer simulation of evolving ‘bugs’ can illustrate what ALife models are like. Moving around in a two-dimensional world periodically laden with heaps of ‘food,’ these bugs eat, reproduce, and sometimes perish from starvation. Each bug’s movement is genetically determined by the quantities of food in its immediate neighborhood, and random mutations and crossovers modify these genomes during reproduction. Simulations started with random genes show spontaneous waves of highly adaptive genetic novelties continuously sweeping through the population at precisely quantifiable rates. See C. Langston et al., eds., Artificial Life II (1991).
ALife science raises and promises to inform many philosophical issues, such as: Is functionalism the right approach toward life? When, if ever, is a simulation of life really alive? When do systems exhibit the spontaneous emergence of properties?
See also ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE , COM- PUTER THEORY , CONNECTIONISM , FUNCTION — ALIS. M.A.B.