Michael Levin and Matthew Segall: Meaning, Matter and Memory

Jump to 3:20. If you want the intro of my guests, start at the beginning. Episode is also on YouTube

Dr. Michael Levin, developmental biologist and pioneer in the area of morphogenesis and regenerative possibilities meets with Matthew Segall, a philosopher who sees Alfred North Whitehead's cosmology as a way forward in healing the rift between philosophy and science. They discuss the role of behavior, environment, time and necessity in shaping life. Timestamps and links follow description. The relationship between philosophy and science is tied together now by the work in developmental biology. Advances in science can help to sharpen philosophical categories. Plato's static view of forms and Aristotle's great chain of being need to be revolutionized to account for the emergence of forms in evolutionary history. Mechanistic science has been successful in terms of instrumental knowledge, but has left out formal and final causes. Whitehead's view of evolution as an accumulation of facts in the past and a field of possible forms in the future was discussed, as well as the agency that is needed to search this field of possibilities. Perhaps the environment is massively underdetermined, but pattern memory can be visualized and rewritten. Finally, Levin posited that "proof of humanity" must be related to the level of compassion, ability and existential struggles that humans have. Timestamps are from YouTube video and will be off by 15 seconds.Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 03:20 Question regarding Michael Levin's view of the relationship of philosophy and science. 06:15 Developmental biology is the key to looking at the relationship between philosophy and science. 22:30 Whitehead's injunction to take self-organization seriously 28:30 Free energy principle and the agency of the environment 28:50 The environment is massively under-determined 32:45 Engineering protocols. What do I need to know in that spacetime environment to most optimally relate to that system? 33:45 How Whitehead might relate to the idea of cognitive light cones 47:55 Anomaly 51:30 Determinism is a side effect of the deistic hangover of Newton and Descartes The Observer is within the world being observed, and has an impact on it. 55:40 Mechanistic cosmology is deism, basically. We need a new metaphysic. 58:30 We are more than just perceiving beings 1:01:45 Every cell is trying to behavior shape its neighbors 1:11:00 The Logos as ordering principle 1:13:20 Ingression of relevant novelty The relationship between perception, agency, and intelligence as collective efforts. 1:16:10 Does the prompting of the oak tree leaf presuppose that the subroutine that creates the gall is already present in the leaf? 1:20:00 When a salamander regrows a limb, is that a memory capacity? 1:22:50 Energetic transmission is a kind of vector feeling (Whitehead) What is the Place of Thinking, Feeling, and Willing in Nature? 1:23:50 The project is the sentience of physics and the physics of sentience 1:24:34 The distinction between control and relationship The Paradigms of Control v. Relationship The Spectrum of Persuadability Levels of Controllability 1:28:50 Ethical considerations and the movement from force to persuasion Michael Levin's website: https://allencenter.tufts.edu Matthew Segall's website: https://footnotes2plato.com Books by Matthew Segall: https://footnotes2plato.com/books/ Michael Levin's TAME paper (scroll down for Figure 1): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201/full