Exploring the Adaptive Behaviors of Particle Lenia: A Perturbation-Response Analysis for Computational Agency

Abstract

A firm cognitive subject or ``individual'' is presupposed for the emergence of mind. However, with the development of recent information technology, the ``individual'' has become more dispersed in society and the cognitive subject has become increasingly unstable and adaptive, necessitating an update in our understanding of the ``individual''. Autopoiesis serves as a model of the cognitive subject, which is unstable and requires effort to maintain itself to adapt to the environment. In this study, we evaluated adaptivity for a highly extensible multi-particle system model Particle Lenia through the response perturbation. As a result, we found that Particle Lenia has a particle configuration that is both temporally unstable and has multiple stable states. This result suggests that Particle Lenia can express adaptive characteristics and is expected to be used as a computational model toward building an autopoietic cognitive agent.