From Google:
"Michael Levin and Daniel Dennett have proposed the phrase “cognition all the way down” (Levin & Dennett, 2020) to frame this approach. They propose to model individual cells in the multicellular collective as intelligent agents on their own, that coordinate (likely via bioelectrical communication, see: Levin, 2019, p."
Wiki page for Michael Levin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levin_(biologist)
Here is a link to a PDF file of a paper by Levin. It seems to download the file and then you have to click on the downloaded file. Below are excerpts from the paper.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...elX&opi=899784
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Collective Intelligence of Morphogenesis as a Teleonomic Process
Michael Levin1,2
1 Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
2 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
Address for correspondence:
200 Boston Ave.,
Suite 4600,
Medford, MA 02155,
Email:
michael.levin@tufts.edu
Tel.: (617) 627-6161
Keywords: embryogenesis, regeneration, basal cognition, bioelectricity, gap junctions,
evolution, teleonomy, goals, plasticity
Running title: Apparent purpose in anatomical morphospace
A revised version of this paper will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming
MIT Press volume in 2023.
Abstract
Multiscale competency is a central phenomenon in biology: molecular networks,
cells, tissues, and organisms all solve problems via behavior in various spaces
(metabolic, physiological, anatomical, and the familiar 3D space of movement). These
capabilities require being able reach specific goal states despite perturbations and
changes in their own parts and in the environment: effective teleonomy. Strong examples
of the remarkable scaling of such goal states during teleonomic processes are seen
across development, regeneration, and cancer suppression. I illustrate examples of
regulative morphogenesis of multicellular bodies as the teleonomic behavior of a
collective intelligence composed of cells. This view helps to unify many phenomena
across multiscale biology, and suggests a framework for understanding how teleonomic
capacity increased and diversified during evolution. Thus, teleonomy is a lynchpin
concept that helps address key open questions around evolvability, biological plasticity,
and basal cognition, and a powerful invariant that drives novel empirical research
programs
Introduction
To paraphrase a famous quote (Dobzhansky 1973), nothing in biology makes
sense except in light of teleonomy (Auletta 2011; Ellis, Noble, and O'Connor 2012; Noble
2011, 2010). Most observers, including biologists, physicists, and engineers, have
watched with wonder as biological systems expend energy to achieve a specific state of
affairs different than the current one, despite changing circumstances. This phenomenon
includes workhorse concepts such as stress (the system-level effects of the inability to
reach desired states, and the driver of change), memory (the ability to represent specific
states that are not present right now), intelligence (competency in navigating problem
spaces toward desired goals), and preferences (inherent valence of specific states over
others). The capacity to work toward goals (preferred future states) is ubiquitous across
the biosphere and present at all scales of organization, from the planning capacities of
primates to the abilities of cellular collectives to modify their activity to achieve a specific
embryonic anatomy despite perturbations. It is a defining feature of life, of great
importance to evolutionary biologists (in their quest to understand the origin of various
functions), exobiologists (seeking ways to recognize unconventional life forms),
researchers in artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life (trying to develop
autonomous synthetic systems), and workers in regenerative biomedicine (whose goal
requires the reprogramming of cellular and tissue functions toward desired goal states
associated with health). How living systems establish, encode, and pursue goals is a
fundamental question at the heart of numerous fields, including biology, philosophy,
cognitive science, and the information technology sciences.
Teleology and related concepts have been the subject of much debate (Turner
2017; McShea 2016; Lander 2004; Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow 1943; F.J. Varela,
Thompson, and Rosch 1991; Maturana and Varela 1980b; F.G. Varela, Maturana, and
Uribe 1974; F. Varela and Maturana 1972; Bertalanffy 195). Here, I focus on teleonomy:
apparently purposeful behavior, emphasizing two aspects. “Apparent”, because it is to be
measured and characterized from the perspective of an observer seeking a powerful way
to understand the system (not some objective intrinsic fact about a system itself) (Ashby
1952). “Purposeful”, because great explanatory power and new research can be driven
by a rigorous investigation of what states motivate a system to expend energy as it
navigates various action spaces.
Teleonomy is a lens (akin to the pragmatic intentional stance (Dennett 1987))
through which scientists see biological systems, creatures see each other, and parts of
living systems model other parts and themselves (Wood 2019; Mar et al. 2007). Here, I
focus on teleonomy as a profound way to understand morphogenesis as the teleonomic
behavior of a multiscale collective agent (molecular networks, cells, etc.). A key aim is to
show that goal-directed function is not just the province of advanced brains with selfaware agency, but rather is a primary principle scaled up from basal functions in the most primitive life forms. More than that, it is an essential invariant that pervades, and reveals actionable symmetries across diverse aspects of biology.
The philosophical assumptions of this perspective (Levin 2022) can be explicitly
stated as follows. First, there is a primary goal to drive empirical research, not to preserve
philosophical positions that make “armchair” decisions on questions of agency in the
absence of specific experiment. Second, there is a commitment to evolutionary continuity
of bodies and minds and to a search for minimal examples of key capacities, which will
necessarily blur the boundaries between cognitive phenomena and “just physics”.
Proposals for sharp phase transitions in terms of agency carry the burden of having to
show how discrete changes across one generation create a novel agential capacity in
offspring that didn’t exist in the parents. Thus, I assume gradualism and continuous (not
binary) metrics of all important parameters, such as agency, cognition, intelligence,
memory, goal-directedness, etc.
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