AI 中文总结
探讨物质系统成为生命的条件，构建框架以最小自主性对应非平衡物质相，形式化诊断相空间及标准，通过实例化诊断明确物理可容许性与生物充分性区别，限制机器感知相关问题。
AI 中文摘要
一个物质系统何时才有可能成为生命？我们认为这个问题先于行为、功能架构或计算能力，根本上是物理可容许性问题。我们构建了一个框架，其中最小自主性（基于自我维持的远离平衡组织的互动主义规范性意义）对应于一种独特的非平衡物质相，以复杂等离子体（一个物理且非生物的系统）作为其物质中的范例。我们形式化了一个诊断相空间，其标准（持续的自由能通量、组织闭合、主动信息维持和调节噪声敏感性）构成生命归属的必要条件。我们通过贝纳德对流作为缺乏闭合的驱动基线以及数字自我复制汤（其携带测量的信息遗传但其物理闭合在结构上为零）在对比系统中实例化诊断，并确定相空间的边界。我们证明等离子体满足最小物理自主性的每个可容许条件，但不具备开放式进化所需的信息遗传，从而明确了物理可容许性与生物充分性之间的区别，并限制了机器感知的下游问题。
英文摘要
When is a material system a candidate for life at all? We argue that this question is prior to behavior, functional architecture, or computational capacity, and that at root it is one of physical admissibility. We develop a framework in which minimal autonomy, taken in the interactivist sense of normativity grounded in self-maintaining far-from-equilibrium organization, corresponds to a distinct non-equilibrium phase of matter, and we take complex plasmas, a physical and non-biological system, as its in-materio exemplar. We formalize a diagnostic phase-space whose criteria (sustained free-energy throughput, organizational closure, active information maintenance, and regulated noise sensitivity) constitute necessary conditions for life-attribution. We instantiate the diagnostics across contrasting systems and fix the boundaries of the phase space via Bénard convection as a driven baseline lacking closure, and a digital self-replicating soup that carries measured informational heredity while its physical closure remains a structural zero. We demonstrate that plasmas satisfy every admissibility condition for minimal physical autonomy while carrying none of the informational heredity that open-ended evolution requires, sharpening the distinction between physical admissibility and biological sufficiency, and bounding downstream questions of machine sentience.
CommentsTo appear in the MIT Press Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2026). Accepted as a Talk for the Special Session on 'Artificial Life as Experimental Philosophy'
Journal refProceedings of the 2026 Artificial Life Conference (ALIFE 2026), August 17-21, 2026, pp. 13
