CASH Only: Constitutive Autonomy through Motorsensory Self-Programming

Abstract Constitutive autonomy is the capacity of an entity to perpetually develop its individual constitution and coupling with its environment. We argue that computational entities (i.e., entities that can perform computation) can gain constitutive autonomy through motorsensory self-programming – a mechanism by which the entity acquires new computational processes as a series of patterns of interaction that the entity can learn through experience, simulate internally, and enact in the environment. Motorsensory self-programming allows the evolution of the cognitive coupling between the entity’s behavior selection mechanism and the environment as it appears from the viewpoint of the behavior selection mechanism. Constitutive autonomy of computational entities could lead to genuine agency.