[Fis] Mind, Life & Machines

Thu May 22 23:45:59 CEST 2025

Dear Mike, Bill, all,

I must confess to have slightly lost the plot with the present discussion.
It could be just me, but FIS feels like a broken record sometimes. It
certainly isn't caused by Bill or Mike - personally I blame the
technology... (for reasons of trust and truth which I mentioned earlier -
incidentally, on that topic, Ian McGilchrist here is great -
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_KNgKQVkcFI__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SmLLx1TFqMvqpGJQrHLAuNtEZYGxm_0B5tm6d7uFSZQLN1wIgZekbPCydezUubeuvQlOPiUQp40U-VWFu2_47gI$  )

I want to suggest a few propositions, relating particularly to Mike's
concern for the distinction between machines and living things, and I'm
interested if Bill, Mike or others agree.

1. Although we humans are living things, in the context of a mechanised
world, we (and perhaps only we) can behave like machines. The irony of this
is that if we knew how machine-like the organic substrate of our
consciousness is, we would behave more humanely, organically and less
mechanically. This is the essential message of cybernetics.

2. Our apprehension of what it is to be mechanical is a charicature of
mechanism. Essentially human perception of "mechanical" is low-variety,
unadaptive and by definition, inorganic - Von Foerster's trivial machine.
It is from this charicature that our apprehension of "binary" systems
comes.

3. Our mechanistic charicature comes from an inability to perceive the
topology of mechanism. I think this is more than Von Foerster's non-trivial
machine, although it may be the case that to build a non-trivial machine a
spatial dimension in its behaviour is necessary (see Tom Fischer's work on
the Ashby's box:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337959136_Learning_the_Ashby_Box_an_experiment_in_second_order_cybernetic_modeling__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SmLLx1TFqMvqpGJQrHLAuNtEZYGxm_0B5tm6d7uFSZQLN1wIgZekbPCydezUubeuvQlOPiUQp40U-VWFCies8ks$ 
). We miss the full dimensional picture, and so attenuate it, and things
like the Ashby box make no sense to us.

4. If we could perceive the full topology of mechanism we would revise our
understanding of logic, binary, distinction, evolution and organisation. I
wonder if such a new logic may resemble Joe's work, or Lou's topological
work.

5. Our present rapidly advancing AI technologies are scientific instruments
that may yet extend our perception to apprehend the topology of mechanism.
Alongside this, empirical biological work (particularly Mike's
bioelectricity work) may well complement the technology and help establish
a coordinated scientific understanding.

What do you think?

Best wishes

Mark

Dr. Mark William Johnson
Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
University of Manchester

Department of Science Education
University of Copenhagen

Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
University of Liverpool
Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SmLLx1TFqMvqpGJQrHLAuNtEZYGxm_0B5tm6d7uFSZQLN1wIgZekbPCydezUubeuvQlOPiUQp40U-VWFKLJkN30$ 

On Tue, 13 May 2025, 14:31 Pedro C. Marijuán, <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Mind, Life & Machines
>
>
> *From Mike Levin: Living Things Are Not Machines (Also, They Totally Are)*
>
> To start with, different contexts require us to adopt diverse perspectives
> as to
> how much mind, or mechanism, is before us. The continuing battle over
> whether
> living beings are or are not machines is based on two mistaken but
> pervasive
> beliefs. First, the belief that we can objectively and uniquely nail down
> what
> something is. And second, that our formal models of life, computers or
> materials
> tell the entire story of their capabilities and limitations.
>
> Despite the continued expansion and mainstream prominence of molecular
> biology, and its reductionist machine metaphors, or likely because of it,
> there has
> been an increasing upsurge of papers and science social media posts
> arguing that
> “living things are not machines” (LTNM). There are thoughtful, informative,
> nuanced pieces exploring this direction, such as this exploration of “new
> post-
> genomic biology” and others, masterfully reviewed and analyzed by cognitive
> scientist and historian Ann-Sophie Barwich and historian Matthew James
> Rodriguez at Indiana University Bloomington. (A non-exhaustive list
> includes
> engineer Perry Marshall’s look at how biology transcends the limits of
> computation, computer scientist Alexander Ororbia’s discussion of “mortal
> computation,” biologist Stuart Kauffman and computer scientist Andrea
> Roli’s
> look at the evolution of the biosphere, and the works of philosophers like
> Daniel
> Nicholson, George Kampis and Günther Witzani.)
>
> Many others, however, use the siren song of biological exceptionalism and
> outdated or poorly defined notions of “machines” to push a view that
> misleads lay
> readers and stalls progress in fields such as evolution, cell biology,
> biomedicine,
> cognitive science (and basal cognition), computer science, bioengineering,
> philosophy and more. All of these fields are held back by hidden
> assumptions
> within the LTNM-lens that are better shed in favor of a more fundamental
> framework.
> In arguing against LTNM, I use cognitive science-based
> approaches to understand and manipulate biological substrates.
> I have claimed that cognition goes all the way down to the molecular
> level; after all,
> we find memory and learning in small networks of mutually interacting
> chemicals, and studies show that molecular circuits can act as agential
> materials.
> I take the existence of goals, preferences, problem-solving skills,
> attention,
> memories, etc., in biological substrates such as cells and tissues so
> seriously that
> I’ve staked my entire laboratory career on this approach.
>
> Some molecular biology colleagues consider my views — that bottom-up
> molecular approaches simply won’t suffice, and must be augmented with the
> tools
> and concepts of cognitive science — to be an extreme form of animism.
> Thus, my
> quarrel with LTNM is not coming from a place of sympathy with molecular
> reductionism; I consider myself squarely within the organicist tradition of
> theoretical biologists like Denis Noble, Brian Goodwin, Robert Rosen,
> Francisco
> Varela and Humberto Maturana, whose works all focus on the irreducible,
> creative, agential quality of life; however, I want to push this view
> further than
> many of its adherents might.
>
> LTNM must go, but we should not replace this concept with its opposite,
> the dreaded presumption that living things are machines;
> that is equally wrong and also holds back progress.
> Still, it is easy to see why the LTNM-lens persists. The LTNM framing
> gives the
> feeling that one has said something powerful — cut nature at its joints
> with
> respect to the most important thing there is, life and mind, by
> establishing a
> fundamental category that separates life from the rest of the cold,
> inanimate
> universe. It feels as if it forestalls the constant, pernicious efforts to
> reduce the
> majesty of life to predictable mechanisms with no ability to drive
> consideration or
> the first-person experiences that make life worth living.
> “Many use the siren song of biological exceptionalism and outdated
> or poorly defined notions of ‘machines’ to push a view that misleads
> lay readers and stalls progress.”
>
> But this is all smoke and mirrors, from an idea that took hold as a
> bulwark against
> reductionism and mechanism; it refuses to go away even though we have
> outgrown it. The approach I am advocating for is anchored by the
> principles of
> pluralism and pragmatism: no system definitively is our formal model of
> it, but if
> we move beyond expecting everything to be a nail for one particular
> favorite
> hammer, we are freed up to do the important work of actually
> characterizing the
> sets of tools that may open new frontiers.
>
> As scientists and philosophers, we owe everyone realistic stories of
> scaling and
> gradual metamorphosis along a continuum — not of magical and sharp
> transitions — and a description of the tools we propose to use to interact
> with a
> wide range of systems, along with a commitment to empirical evaluation of
> those
> tools. We must battle our innate mind-blindness with new theories in the
> field of
> Diverse Intelligence and the facilitating technology it enables, much as a
> theory
> and apparatus for electromagnetism enabled access to an enormous, unifying
> spectrum of phenomena of which we had previously had only narrow,
> disparate-
> seeming glimpses. We must resist the urge to see the limits of reality in
> the limits
> of our formal models. Everything, even things that look simple to us, are
> a lot
> more than we think they are because we, too, are finite observers —
> wondrous
> embodied minds with limited perspectives but massive potential and the
> moral
> responsibility to get this (at least somewhat) right.
>
>
> *See an enlarged version of this text at: *
>
> *https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SmLLx1TFqMvqpGJQrHLAuNtEZYGxm_0B5tm6d7uFSZQLN1wIgZekbPCydezUubeuvQlOPiUQp40U-VWFKjCgwLI$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!TuRf27kMqxXb6vn61GDuY5SQFOpW-2bJsv9g_xjpV95LAvd4KXEvjSvlYJyKOCwm5VRzNhHx_qeJdN1pix7IJbKTwFLX$>*
>
>
> *-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *
>
> * From William B. Miller, Jr. : **Information in a cellular framework* –
> abstract for discussion
>
> See in the accompanying attached file (for technical reasons)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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