The emergent hypercomputational power of artificial living systems

Abstract

Computability theory has long been based on the Turing machine model. However, the change in the nature of computing systems has led to a focus on new paradigms of computation. Situated in this debate are two articles by Van Leeuwen and Wiedermann (2001, 2002). The authors present a computational model of artificial living systems - the community of active cognitive transducers - and claim that hypercomputational power can emerge in artificial living systems. Although the three notions involved in this claim - hypercomputation, artificial life, and emergence - are widely studied, they do not have generally accepted definitions or theories. In this thesis, we review the claim against a more detailed discussion of each of its components, in order to get a better understanding of the claim, and to see whether it is indeed tenable.