Semantic closure: A guiding notion to ground artificial life

Abstract

The lack within AL of an agreed-upon notion of life and of a set of criteria for identifying life is considered. I propound a reflection upon the codified nature of the organization of living beings. The necessity of a guiding notion based on the coding is defended. After sketching some properties of the genetic code I proceed to consider the issue of functionalism as strategy for AL. Several distinctions ranging from plain multiple realizability to total implementation independence are made, arguing that the different claims should not be confused. The consideration of the semantic and intrinsically meaningful nature of the code leads to discuss the "symbol grounding" in AL. I suggest the principle of Semantic Closure as a candidate for confronting both problems inasmuch as it can be considered an accurate guiding notion to semantically ground Artificial Life.