Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Michael Levin’s Latent Space of Biological Form

Iain McGilchrist mentions my dialogue with Michael Levin a few weeks ago at the start of this video, before proceeding into an inquiry concerning the whereabouts of ideal form: Where are the forms in the ‘latent space’ of biological possibility? I think everyone in the conversation, including Iain, senses that asking “where”–while essential for noting what’s missing in materialist accounts–is ultimately the wrong sort of question. We need alternative ways of rendering this mystery intelligible.

One alternative is via plasma physicist and process philosopher Tim Eastman’s “logoi framework,” wherein “pre-space potentiae” are understood to grow together with physical actualities. The latter can be effectively mapped using a Boolean dyadic logic of 1s and 0s, while the former cannot. The former, the potentiae, are indecipherable via a dyadic logic, but can be approached via a triadic logic (eg, Peircean semiotics). See my review of Eastman’s recent book for more on this approach.

Scientific materialism has for several centuries gone about trying to explain nature merely in terms of the lawful behavior of already actualized, measurable bits of matter or information. The problem is, in addition to leaving said laws entirely unaccounted for, this explanatory model defines the physical world in such a way that the minds claiming to explain it never could have emerged!

Minds, as we know quite intimately, not only perceive the already actual but conceive alternatives.

Minds harvest possibilities alongside actualities.

Minds partake in a shared realm of ideas.

Minds can selectively ingress new ideas that adapt to unexpected events in the present or upset the settled habits of the past.

Levin’s work is making clear that such minds (of endless forms most beautiful!) are operative at physical scales far beyond just human scientists.

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Matthew David Segall

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18 responses to “Michael Levin’s Latent Space of Biological Form”

  1. aramis720 Avatar
    aramis720

    Very interesting thoughts and I think Levin’s work quite incredible. I had the honor of speaking on a panel with him last week in Taormina at the Science of Consciousness conference. In terms of your query about where morphospace resides why not simply in our heads, and following the rules of biophysics that determine/guide what forms may in fact manifest? The notion of eternal forms remains the biggest hurdle for me in Whitehead’s system and still don’t really see the need for it in his system.

    Reply
    1. Matthew David Segall Avatar
      Matthew David Segall

      Hi Tam! Is that panel discussion available online anywhere??

      Regarding eternal objects in Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme, I’d say that nothing in his system makes sense if you remove them. Actual occasions without the counter-pole of eternal objects become devoid of any meaning. This is not to say that one may not find some success constructing a novel metaphysical scheme that does not reference pure potentials (though I have my doubts about this!). But if you’re going to think with Whitehead, I don’t see any way around including eternal objects. They are just too intricately interwoven with the whole of his cosmology, such that removing them destroys the coherence of the scheme.

      Reply
      1. aramis720 Avatar
        aramis720

        How so? Didn’t Sherburne construct a Whiteheadian modification sans eternal objects? Why not simply physical prehensions sans conceptual ingressions?

      2. Matthew David Segall Avatar
        Matthew David Segall

        If there were only physical prehensions and no conceptual reversions, how could anything new ever happen? Occasions would be stuck conforming to their past with no capacity to ingress relevant possibilities.

      3. aramis720 Avatar
        aramis720

        Why do we need conceptual ingressions for new possibilities? There is still the subjective aim and satisfaction, which is where I see the ability for novelty to come in, or am I confusing these terms and ideas? Admittedly I have not reviewed Whitehead in detail for some years now so I’m a bit rusty!

      4. Matthew David Segall Avatar
        Matthew David Segall

        If we are eliminating conceptual prehension from concrescence, that leaves only the feelings of already actualized facts in the physical pole. With no source of alternative possibilities, all an occasion can do is reiterate what it physically prehends. I suppose you could sneak in the idea of valuation up or down of what it has physically felt, but this only grants occasions the ability to accentuate or attenuate what has already occurred. Not much room for genuine novelty…

      5. aramis720 Avatar
        aramis720

        If there is that little wiggle/swerve at the beginning of the ontological chain couldn’t it compound quite significantly by the time it reaches the human spatiotemporal scale?

      6. Matthew David Segall Avatar
        Matthew David Segall

        The clinamen may get you randomness but I’m not sure it gets you relevant novelty.

      7. aramis720 Avatar
        aramis720

        Some deep issues here for sure, including not the least the question of what constitutes true novelty? Is there anything new under the sun or is it all recombinations of existing stuff? My in-progress electromagnetic field approach to consciousness, which has been strongly inspired/influenced by Whitehead and Griffin, envisions all actual entities being resonating EM fields (in today’s physics this is true and uncontroversial except for the nucleons, which are technically resonating nuclear fields), which combine when in sufficient proximity and when a shared frequency is achieved. That combination leads to the combination of consciousness and subsumption of parts of the subsidiary consciousness in each entity into a larger whole: the many become one and are increased by one. That one includes a creative element of deciding what parts of the subsidiary entities to include, and that is a creative act. That nested hierarchy that forms in complex biological systems is then a compound of many creative acts at different spatiotemporal scales. Does that provide room for true novelty without invocation of eternal objects? Seems to me that it does but I’m curious of your thoughts.

      8. Matthew David Segall Avatar
        Matthew David Segall

        “Is there anything new under the sun or is it all recombinations of existing stuff?”
        I think Whitehead’s answer to this question is clear as day: like Heraclitus, he affirms that “the sun is new everyday”!

        With regard to actual entities, reading Whitehead scholars like Wallack (see The Epochal Nature of Process in Whitehead’s Metaphysics, 1980), James Bradley, and Auxier and Herstein has led me decisively away from the so-called “micrological” interpretation. I’d argue that actual entities are a generic notion that Whitehead intended to apply to any concrete existent whatsoever, not just to quantum events or some other tiny sort of particle-event. The actual entity is a metaphysical description, and as such, could be applied to your resonating EM fields, assuming you intend to describe them as epochal creatures. I get the sense that you do not want to treat them this way, since you describe them combining when in proximity to one another: strictly speaking, this is not possible for Whitehead’s actual entities, which do not move, or change, or combine–at least not until they’ve perished into objective immortality and are prehended by subsequently concrescing entities.

        I don’t see any evidence of novelty in the picture you describe, just a sort of weak emergence whereby parts become a whole that is not greater than the sum of those parts, just a combination. I gather you intend to describe something more like strong emergence, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but that is something different from a compound of fields. It is not clear what constitutes the “creative act” you speak of if the EM field-entities you describe are simple resonators. Resonance sounds like the conformal phase of concrescence. But what about the comparative and supplemental phases of concrescence? Without those later phases, I am not sure how novelty enters into the picture?

      9. aramis720 Avatar
        aramis720

        As for mathematical invention or moral revulsion I would suggest that these feelings come from the thought structures carried in complex human minds — memes, essentially, to which the individual mind reacts. Any mathematician will generally have a framework of appropriate maths in her head from which she derives new insights. I know the creative act can often feel like channeling from somewhere else but why couldn’t that somewhere be the unconscious or body of knowledge acquired through study? We each of us carry 4 billion years of evolution within us, both physically and mentally. That’s a lot of collective unconscious and archetypes to draw upon!

      10. Matthew David Segall Avatar
        Matthew David Segall

        Hmm, well, I suppose if you are drawn to the memetic theory of cultural evolution then you are not in need of an answer to the question, Wherefrom novelty? There simply isn’t any, since human minds are just complicated mimicry machines.

        You do affirm archetypes, however, which is something like “real potentiality” in Whitehead’s scheme (ie, already ingressed eternal objects prehended in the physical pole, in contrast to “pure potentials” which have not yet ingressed in the cosmic past and so can only be conceptually prehended). Working through the metaphysical possibility of archetypes may lead you back to something approaching Whitehead’s thesis : )

        Anyway, interesting issues here, and while it seems we disagree about the importance of eternal objects, I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage you or anyone from forging ahead with your unique take on perennial philosophical problems!

      11. Matthew David Segall Avatar
        Matthew David Segall

        The denial of conceptual prehension in the case of high grade conscious occasions of experience such as those enjoyed by human beings becomes especially vexing… How do you explain imaginative freedom? Mathematical invention? Scientific theorization? Moral revulsion?

      12. aramis720 Avatar
        aramis720

        I think the panel recording will go online soon but I suspect you may have to purchase the conference pass or something similar to view it. I”ll let you know.

  2. iainmcgilchrist Avatar
    iainmcgilchrist

    Dear Matt,

    Just got back from an exhausting road/lecture trip, so I’d need time to look at what you are saying in detail.  But my immediate response is that of course my point in pushing Levin on ‘where’ was not that I think there will be a ‘where’ in Newtonian space, but to reveal that there won’t, and that therefore we need to shift our field of conceptions.  Or did you think I missed something important/basic here?  Sometimes one has to ask the wrong question to reveal that the inability to answer it is itself a way forward.  Or so I think, at any rate!

    All best wishes,

    Iain

    Reply
    1. Matthew David Segall Avatar
      Matthew David Segall

      Dear Iain,

      I meant to include you in the “we” who sense that asking “where”—while essential as a starting point for the inquiry—is inadequate. I was glad to see you press Levin on this question, and insist that his albeit scientifically appropriate instrumentalism is, metaphysically speaking, not at all addressing the question. I am agreeing with you that we must shift our field of conceptions, and have offered a few suggestions for how to do so.

      -Matt

      Reply
      1. philiptryon Avatar
        philiptryon

        Ian, I found much value in the things that you said but I wonder why you are not focusing more on the fact that these recurring morphological forms, be they 3-dimensional patterns of skulls or patterned behaviors like nest building or spider webbing, not only exist but are evolving and that they are informed or generated or somehow the result of past experiences of self or similar others? (Where else could they have come from?)
        Could it be the case that an embryo or brain might grow and organize itself in the light of an influential resonance with past similar entities and their cumulative, similar enactments?

  3. philiptryon Avatar
    philiptryon

    I meant to type “Iain.” My bad!

    Reply

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