Minimax featural computation in mathematical biolinguistics

My research proposal stems from the 'weak AI/strong AI' debate evident in Max Tegmark's work but ultimately stemming
from the work of Alan Turing. My summer project countenanced this problem in the domain of phonology, closely
following Hale & Reiss (2008) and their criticism of Optimality Theory. I wish to develop this into the domain of syntax,
where the idea of being 'substance-free' is somewhat harder to avoid, especially in cartographic approaches which
incorporate a lot of semantic content into what should be syntactic features. The question posed in the Turing program
for linguistic theory is, then, to evaluate the extent to which current linguistic theories achieve the goal of strong
generativity, and to improve formalisms as such. As my proposal details, I see this approach as having a lot to do with
the precise nature of features and how they combine. In this sense I diverge from Cedric Boeckx (2014), but I believe
that further investigation will reveal important overlap. On my view, this necessarily develops into a strongly
interdisciplinary approach, in line with the biolinguistic programme. Such areas include mathematics (cf. Song's 2019
dissertation on category theory), computer science (complexity theory), cognitive science (Poeppel; Gallistel & King) and
biological and evolutionary concerns (Boeckx; Balari & Lorenzo). The ambitious goal is to build a theory from the ground
up which critically intertwines the essential aspects of these theories and disciplines.