Thoughtforms Life

This is a ~1 hour discussion with philosopher of science Lauren Ross (https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~rossl/), on the topic of explanation and causation - what does it mean to look for explanations in science, what counts as a good explanation, and how do you know you've got one. Lauren's book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/explanation-in-biology/743A8C5A6E709B1E348FCD4D005C67B3 CONNECT WI...

This is a ~1 hour conversation of Aastha Jain Simes (https://www.livelongerworld.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/aasthajs) and Azra Raza on her unique and passionate journey in oncology and her ideas for cancer therapy. Azra is an amazing person, clinician, and scientist; see more of her work at: Columbia web page: https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/profile/azra-raza-md Personal site with poetry an...

This is a very fast (~33min) flyover of some ideas relevant to the relationship between biology, computation, cognition, consciousness, and related subjects. This was given at the amazing Progress and Visions in Consciousness Science series (https://amcs-community.org/events/progress-visions-series/) as the prologue to a discussion. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Talk Overview and Structure (01:30) Expanding O...

This is a ~35 minute discussion with Willem Nielsen (https://community.wolfram.com/web/wrn2001, https://medium.com/@wnielsen) from the Wolfram Institute about their cellular automata models of disease and our approach to this problem. Papers to which I referred: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00018-023-04790-z https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/1/131 https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/7/...

This is an ~1 hour 10 minute conversation with Iain McGilchrist (https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/), on the topic of my recent paper on the Platonic Space (https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5g2xj_v3) - forms ingressing into the physical world in biology, causation, evolution, and mind. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~1 hour talk (given at the Departmental Seminar series at the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences) on the use of a cognitive approach to bioengineering and regenerative medicine, in which morphogenesis is the behavior (in anatomical space) of a collective intelligence of cellular swarms. I describe our work that takes advantage of the bioelectric inter...

This a ~1 hour 20 minute conversation between Aastha Jain Simes (https://www.livelongerworld.com/), Pamela Lyon (https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=1oY1J5kAAAAJ&hl=en), and I. Pamela is a key figure in the development of a biogenic approach to mind, and we talked about her journey to understanding cognition. A few of her papers: https://aeon.co/essays/the-study-of-the-mind-needs-a-co...

This is a ~30 minute conversation with Mayli Mertens (Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellow at University of Antwerp, https://philpeople.org/profiles/mayli-mertens) and I on the topic of molecular placebos, bioelectricity, and self-fulfilling prophecies in medicine (the latter being the title of her recent paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11017-024-09677-z ) CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Web...

This is a ~1 hr talk on what is similar and what is different between biological and (current) technological information-processing systems, and the implications for biomedicine, AI, and ethics. A version of this talk with Q&A at the TPC consortium at Argonne National Lab is at https://tpc.dev/tpc-seminar-series/ CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The...

This is a ~1 hour conversation on topics of consciousness, affect, evolution, and philosophy between Gunnar Babcock (https://cals.cornell.edu/gunnar-babcock), Daniel McShea (https://scholars.duke.edu/person/dmcshea), Mark Solms (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en), and I. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~1.5 hour conversation with Richard Watson (https://www.richardawatson.com/) and Leo Caves (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leo-Caves, https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=Oov_zsoAAAAJ&hl=en) about issues of resonance, unconventional cognition, observers, process philosophy, etc. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~2-hour Q&A with Mark Solms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Solms) at the "Public conversation about their work and its implications for psychoanalysis" series of the Annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~1 hour conversation between Alexey Tolchinsky (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/alexey-tolchinsky-psyd ), a clinical psychologist and Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University, Center for Professional Psychology, and Thomas Pollak (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6171-0810), a neuropsychiatrist and researcher working at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and...

This is a ~1 hour 10 minute discussion with Robert Prentner (https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=ZYcFVxoAAAAJ&hl=en) and Timothy Jackson (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vOnot8oAAAAJ&hl=en) about Platonism and related concepts. The paper of mine that they reference at some point is: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5g2xj_v3; also an interesting email exchange between them o...

This is a ~1 hour conversation with Buck Trible (https://triblelab.fas.harvard.edu/people/waring-buck-trible, https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JLN0AT0AAAAJ&hl=en) about his fascinating work on the genetics, morphology, behavior, and sociality in ants. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a 1 hour 10 minute presentation of ideas around the architecture of biology (and how it differs from today's computational systems). Focusing on morphogenesis as a model of collective intelligence, I talk about the intelligence ratchet that results from life's need to creatively interpret information on the cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary scale. I end with some speculative ideas...

This is a ~1 hr10min talk I gave at a conference on modeling aspects of neuroscience. The talk is about the inverse idea - how tools and concepts from neuroscience apply far beyond neurons and brains, and can help understand a lot of biology across development, evolution, and diverse intelligence. I talked about what the symmetry between cognitive science and the study of morphogenesis means for b...

This is a ~1 hour conversation on topics of consciousness, AI, causation, affect, evolution, and philosophy between Gunnar Babcock (https://cals.cornell.edu/gunnar-babcock), Daniel McShea (https://scholars.duke.edu/person/dmcshea), Mark Solms (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en), and I. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The L...

This is a ~1 hour talk with Aaron Sloman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Sloman), Anthony Leggett (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_James_Leggett), and Chris Fields (https://chrisfieldsresearch.com/). The links to which Aaron refers are: https://cogaffarchive.org/misc/whatlife.html https://cogaffarchive.org/evol-devol.html CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify T...

This is a ~55 minute talk titled "Novel Bodies, Unconventional Minds: a diverse intelligence perspective on a continuum of cognition (and consciousness)" by Michael Levin given at the CIFAR (https://cifar.ca/next-generation/cifar-neuroscience-of-consciousness-winter-school/) Neuroscience of Consciousness Winter School, + about 20 min of Q&A. My lab doesn't normally work on consciousness per se...

This is a ~1 hour 20 minutes conversation between Bernardo Kastrup (https://www.bernardokastrup.com/), Richatrd Watson (https://www.richardawatson.com/), and me on topics at the intersection of physics, cognition, consciousness, etc. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~55 minute talk on the topic of the "Multiscale Human" (https://humanatlas.io/events/2024-24h/). I cover the topics of "what are we", "implications for biomedicine", and "future beyond human repair" from the perspectives of diverse intelligence at different scales of our bodies and at scales of evolution, development, and cognition. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts...

This is a 1 hour 12 minute talk presented at the 2nd Symposium on the Philosophy of Computing at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. It covers the ways in which biological computation is different from most of today's computer architectures, and concludes with a different way to think about emergence of cognition (not just complexity or unpredictability) in a way that informs how we think...

This is a ~50 minute working meeting between Martin Hanczyc (https://www.martinhanczyc.com/) and Michael Levin, discussing work on autonomous droplets and more generally the field of active and agential matter (physical intelligence, somatic computation, etc.) and conceptual approaches in the field of diverse intelligence. Examples of Martin's work: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37166609 htt...

This is a ~1 hour talk by Michael Levin, given to the bioengineering department at Northeastern University, on the topic of using bioelectricity as an interface for engineering agential materials. Companion papers are: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44222-022-00001-9 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33826908 CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin La...