Welcome to the webpage of the 2nd workshop on Goal-Directed Behavior in Life and Non-Life, to be held as part of the 2025 Conference on Artificial Life (https://2025.alife.org/).
The goal of this workshop is to attract researchers trying to understand the occurrence of goal-directed behavior (GDB) in all its forms and provide them with an informal and friendly venue to share current ideas. We also want to give people new to the topic an idea of the work happening in this fascinating research area.
GDB 1st workshop: https://sites.google.com/view/gdb-alife-2024/
Call for abstracts:
Living organisms appear to exhibit “goal-directed behavior” (GDB), i.e. they appear to act in order to achieve goals. Goals can be intrinsic like persistence and growth as well as more mundane things like “more ice cream”. A typical example is a chemotactic bacterium, which survives by sensing and moving toward food in its environment. However, currently, there is no established theory for GDB, yet such a theory would help understand the gap between the seemingly purposeless universe of nonliving matter and the goal-filled world of life.
We are particularly interested in understanding how GDB can be described using tools from information theory, thermodynamics and Bayesian statistics. Examples of related open topics and questions are:
What is the information content of goals and who or what makes use of this information?
When is it justified to describe a nonliving physical system as exhibiting GDB? What are the minimal components driving GDB?
How the established models of matter used in physics and chemistry can give rise to phenomena / structures / systems / individuals for which it can be decided whether they appear or are goal-directed.
What is the role of GDB in life / artificial life and the origin of life ? How can goal-directedness emerge? How is goal-directedness related to causality?
When is it justified to speak of a goal-directed system within a dynamical system for example a cellular automaton or a reaction diffusion system?
Can goals be seen as secret keys to deciphering the behavior of systems?
How the established models of matter used in physics and chemistry can give rise to phenomena / structures / systems / individuals for which it can be decided whether they appear or are goal-directed.
Submission:
If you wish to present your ideas and/or results in this workshop please apply by sending your abstract to: goaldirbehavior@gmail.com
Deadline: 7 September 2025. If you wish your abstract not to be available at the workshop’s website (if it gets selected) please let us know.