Intelligence and reference

Gianfranco Basti

pp. 139-159

in: Gordana Dodig Crnkovic, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Raffaela Giovagnoli (eds), Computing nature, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

In a seminal work published in 1952, "The chemical basis of morphogenesis", A. M. Turing established the core of what today we call "natural computation" in biological systems, intended as self-organizing dissipative systems. In this contribution we show that a proper implementation of Turing's seminal idea cannot be based on diffusive processes, but on the coherence states of condensed matter according to the dissipative Quantum Field Theory (QFT) principles. This foundational theory is consistent with the intentional approach in cognitive neuroscience, as far as it is formalized in the appropriate ontological interpretation of the modal calculus (formal ontology). This interpretation is based on the principle of the "double saturation" between a singular argument and its predicate that has its dynamical foundation in the principle of the "doubling of the degrees of freedom" between a brain state and the environment, as an essential ingredient of the mathematical formalism of dissipative QFT.