Thermodynamic Reasons for Perception--Action Cycles

Abstract

An argument is developed to show that the origin and evolution of the perceptual guidance of movements and the movement enhancement of opportunities to perceive, that is, perception-action cycles, have a direct and deep connection with thermodynamic principles. The cornerstones of the argument are: (a) maximum entropy production as a physical selection principle (thermodynamic fields will behave in such a fashion as to get to the final state-minimize the field potential or maximize the entropy-at the fastest possible rate given the constraints); (b) the inexorability of order production (order production is inexorable because order produces entropy faster than disorder); (c) evolution as a global phenomenon (the Earth system at its highest level evolves as a single global entity); and (d) information in Gibson's law-based, specificational sense (invariant relations exist between higher order properties of structured energy distributions and their environmental sources). In the coordination of self-organizing dynamics with information in the specificational sense, access is provided to otherwise inaccessible opportunities to produce ordered flow and to dissipate, thereby, the geocosmic potential at faster rates. The progressive emergence of perception-action cycles in the evolution of the Earth as a global entity is the lawful product of opportunistic physics: There was no other way to produce the collective (ordered) states that would engender these higher levels of dissipation. Perception-action cycles express higher order symmetries of the world itself, in its own becoming. Perception-action is the physics at these higher levels.