Morphognosis: the Shape of Knowledge in Space and Time

Artificial intelligence research to a great degree focuses on the brain and behaviors that the brain generates. But the brain, an extremely complex structure resulting from millions of years of evolution, can be viewed as a solution to problems posed by an environment existing in space and time. The environment generates signals that produce sensory events within an organism. Building an internal spatial and temporal model of the environment allows an organism to navigate and manipulate the environment. Higher intelligence might be the ability to process information coming from a larger extent of space-time. In keeping with nature’s penchant for extending rather than replacing, the purpose of the mammalian neocortex might then be to record events from distant reaches of space and time and render them, as though yet near and present, to the older, deeper brain whose instinctual roles have changed little over eons. Here this notion is embodied in a model called morphognosis (morpho = shape and gnosis = knowledge). Its basic structure is a pyramid of event recordings called a morphognostic. At the apex of the pyramid are the most recent and nearby events. Receding from the apex are less recent and possibly more distant events. A morphognostic can thus be viewed as a structure of progressively larger chunks of space-time knowledge. A set of morphognostics forms long-term memories that are learned by exposure to the environment. A cellular automaton is used as the platform to investigate the morphognosis model, using a simulated organism that learns and navigates its world in search of food, as well as the game of Pong.