[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-85135-en":3,"doc-seo-85135-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},85135,2336464648746,"Skyler","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c",8,"Research & Report","Life as Plasmas Autonomy and Interactivism in-Materio","Life attribution begins with physical admissibility rather than behavior, functional architecture, or computational capacity. A framework links minimal autonomy—under an interactivist view of normativity grounded in self-maintaining far-from-equilibrium organization—to a distinct non-equilibrium phase of matter. Dusty/complex plasmas serve as an in-materio exemplar. Diagnostics define a phase-space with sustained free-energy throughput, organizational closure, active information maintenance, and regulated noise sensitivity as necessary conditions. Contrasting baselines bound the domain, separating physical admissibility from biological sufficiency and delimiting downstream questions about machine sentience.","Life as Plasmas: Autonomy and Interactivism in-materio  \nNicols Hinrichs 1 ,6 , Mahault Albarracin2 , Felipe Engelberger3 ,6 , Leonardo Christov-Moore 4 , and Daniel Polani5  \n1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany  \n2Verses AI Research Lab / Universit du Qubec  Montral, Canada  \n3Institute for Drug Discovery, Universitt Leipzig, Germany  \n4Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, USA  \n5University of Hertfordshire, UK  \n6 Eigenify, USA  \n[hinrichsn@cbs.mpg.de](hinrichsn@cbs.mpg.de)  \narXiv :2607 .09747v 1 [ cs .NE] 3 Jul 2026  \nAbstract  \nWhen 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 Bnard 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 openended evolution requires, sharpening the distinction between physical admissibility and biological sufficiency, and bounding downstream questions of machine sentience.  \nData/Code available at: [https://doi.org/10](https://doi.org/10) . 5281/zenodo .20732279  \nIntroduction  \nCan life and cognition be abstracted into software, or does autonomy require a thermodynamic substrate? How far can we push the substrate? Must life be organic, instantiated, physical, or can it be inorganic, simulated, and computational?  \nStrict computational substrate independence has been challenged by the normative view that living systems, embodied and thermodynamicaly precarious, have a capacity for “sense-making” rooted in its physical strug-  \n©2026 Hinrichs, Albarracin, Engelberger, ChristovMoore, and Polani. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4 .0 International (CC BY 4 .0) license.  \ngle against entropic disorder (Thompson, 2007); purely syntactic computation might lack the physical dynamics necessary for genuine agency.  \nContemporary debates about machine consciousness encounter a structurally identical problem. Accounts that evaluate candidate systems through behavior, architectural motifs, or abstract information-theoretic metrics presuppose a physical substrate capable of sustaining the organized dynamics those metrics are meant to capture. Integrated Information Theory (Tononi et al., 2016) evaluates intrinsic cause-effect power; a criterion that, as we argue below, is better understood asan ally of physical grounding than as a license for substrate-independent attribution. Global Workspace Theory (Baars, 1988) similarly presupposes an organizational architecture whose physical realization is left unexamined.  \nDriven Physi  \ncal Substrates  \nplasmas, embodied  hardware, active matter  \nDiagnostic Phase Space   \n{Q, σ, Φclosure , Rinfo , χnoise }  \nNon-Equilibrium Organized Systems  \nsustained throughput, multiscale dynamics  \nAdmissible Attribution Domain  \nlife-or consciousnessrelevant systems  \nFigure 1: Commutative grounding and attribution. Life-or autonomy-attribution is admissible only when both paths from Driven Physical Substrates toAdmissible Attribution Domain a","cbCaieJHXFAq9Bar","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieJHXFAq9Bar","pdf",394194,4,1,10,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Can life be abstracted into software?\n## Challenges to substrate independence\n## Grounding requirements for life and consciousness\n# Driven Physical Substrates\n## Diagnostic Phase Space\n# Non-Equilibrium Organized Systems\n## Admissible Attribution Domain\n# Figure 1","[{\"question\":\"What is the document’s main criterion for attributing life or autonomy?\",\"answer\":\"Life-relevant attribution is treated as a question of physical admissibility: a system must satisfy far-from-equilibrium organizational conditions and fall within bounded diagnostic ranges, before considering intelligence or representation.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the proposed framework mean by minimal autonomy in the interactivist sense?\",\"answer\":\"Minimal autonomy is defined through normativity grounded in self-maintaining far-from-equilibrium organization, corresponding to a distinct non-equilibrium phase of matter.\"},{\"question\":\"Why are plasmas used as the in-materio example?\",\"answer\":\"The document introduces complex plasmas as non-biological, physically grounded systems to test whether physical admissibility conditions for minimal autonomy can be met without biological 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