2007/10/23 by Gennaro Auletta, G. Auletta, G. F. R. Ellis +6 · 5 citations
Arts and Humanities · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · #Artificial intelligence #Causation #Computer science #Control (management) #Engineering #Epistemology #FOS: Biological sciences #Management science #Other Quantitative Biology (q-bio.OT) #Philosophy #Philosophy and History of Science #q-bio.OT
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0710.4235
Revised version to meet referee's comments, and responding to a paper by Wegscheid et al that was not mentioned in the previous version. 23 pages, 9 figures
openalex publication_date 2007/10/23 · arxiv created 2008/01/18 · arxiv updated 2011/11/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
It has been claimed that different types of causes must be considered in biological systems, including top-down as well as same-level and bottom-up causation, thus enabling the top levels to be causally efficacious in their own right. To clarify this issue, important distinctions between information and signs are introduced here and the concepts of information control and functional equivalence classes in those systems are rigorously defined and used to characterise when top down causation by feedback control happens, in a way that is testable. The causally significant elements we consider are equivalence classes of lower level processes, realised in biological systems through different operations having the same outcome within the context of information control and networks.