Terms and boundaries
These concepts originated in biology, complex systems, and cognitive science. A runtime translation is useful only when it yields explicit state, rules, measurements, and failure criteria. Source: Incomplete Nature Source: Autopoiesis and Cognition Source: The Embodied Mind
| Concept | Original domain | Concise definition | Possible runtime translation | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teleodynamics | Complex systems / philosophy of biology | End-directed organization emerging from mutually constraining processes | Control objectives arising from coupled operational constraints | Editorial analogy unless formally instantiated |
| Autopoiesis | Biology / systems theory | A network that produces and maintains its organization | Self-monitoring, repair, and boundary maintenance | Software services do not become living systems by analogy |
| Enaction | Cognitive science | Cognition through ongoing agent–environment coupling | Perception/action feedback with updated runtime state | Does not itself specify governance or safety |
| Teleonomy | Biology | Apparent purpose produced by a program or evolved mechanism | Externally specified goals expressed through runtime behavior | Does not imply self-generated goals |
| Homeostasis | Physiology / control | Maintaining variables within viable ranges | Budgets, health metrics, error rates, and context pressure | Thresholds are engineered, not biologically intrinsic |
| Active inference | Computational neuroscience | Action and belief update under a generative model | One possible control formalism | Distinct from teleodynamics; do not conflate them |
Deacon’s hierarchy as an editorial mapping
Deacon distinguishes a baseline homeodynamic or thermodynamic tendency, morphodynamic self-organization, and teleodynamic reciprocal constraint. The following is a MiRuntime editorial mapping, not a scientific equivalence: Source: Teleological causality
- Direct execution: a request follows the configured path and dissipates its budget.
- Self-organizing representation or search: candidates, plans, or representations form under local scoring.
- Runtime-level mutual constraint: goals, policies, resources, recovery, and evidence jointly limit which actions remain valid.
Metaphor versus mechanism
Metaphor can help describe
- Viability and maintenance.
- Repair and coupled feedback.
- Bounded growth and constraint.
Mechanism requires
- Explicit state variables and update rules.
- Measurable thresholds and testable predictions.
- Failure criteria, benchmark comparison, and reproducible code or data.
Research implications for MIR
Observe
Monitor external state, internal operating condition, evidence quality, and uncertainty.
Constrain
Preserve immutable policy, resource limits, identity, and approval boundaries.
Recover
Detect loss of validity and restore, compensate, ask, no-op, or terminate.
Prove
Preserve the proposal, authority decision, checkpoint, effect, and measured outcome.
Limitations
Translating biological concepts into runtime engineering is an editorial synthesis and remains an open research program. The translation does not establish life, consciousness, affect, autonomy, or intrinsic purpose in software. Active inference is cited as a distinct computational framework, not as evidence that all adaptive runtimes implement it. Source: Free-energy principle
Source record
References
- Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter Primary source
Terrence W. Deacon. W. W. Norton & Company. Published 2011; last reviewed 2026-06-24 UTC. Foundational book.
- A thermodynamic basis for teleological causality Primary source
Terrence W. Deacon and Miguel García-Valdecasas. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Published 2023; last reviewed 2026-06-24 UTC. Peer-reviewed research paper.
Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela. Springer. Published 1980; last reviewed 2026-06-24 UTC. Foundational book.
Francisco G. Varela, Humberto R. Maturana, and Ricardo Uribe. Biosystems. Published 1974; last reviewed 2026-06-24 UTC. Peer-reviewed research paper.
Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. MIT Press. Published 1991; last reviewed 2026-06-24 UTC. Foundational book.
- The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Primary source
Karl Friston. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Published 2010; last reviewed 2026-06-24 UTC. Peer-reviewed review paper.