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>The #purpose of invoking the notion of "purpose" is to emphasize the irrelevance of the #trajectories traced by such a system en route from an arbitrary initial #state to its #goal. In a synthesized system whose inner workings are known, this irrelevance has no significance. This irrelevance becomes highly significant, however when the analytic problem, the machine identification problem, cannot be solved, because, for instance, it is ***trans-computational*** in the sense that with known algorithms the number of elementary computations exceeds the age of the universe expressed in nanoseconds.
From #H_v_Foerster's definition of CYBERNETICS in the *Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence*, Wiley, 1987, as presented in:
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>Self-organizing systems are characterized by their intrinsic, nonlinear operators, (i.e., the properties of their constituent elements, macromolecules, spores of the slime mold, bees, etc.), which generate macroscopically (meta-) stable patterns maintained by the perpetual flux of their constituents. A special case of #self_organization is #autopoiesis. It is that organization which is its own Eigen-state: *the outcome of the productive interactions of the components of the system are those very components*. It is the organization of the #living, and, at the same time, the organization of #autonomy.