Quote:This is a deliberately provocative talk (~1 hour 20 minutes) I gave on teleology (a pretty taboo subject in a lot of the life sciences) delivered at Caltech. I try to go step by step and show the philosophical background of how I think about goal-directedness in physically embodied agents (cells and tissues etc.) and then the data - classic examples and new discoveries that this framework allowed us to make.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
Quote:This talk interprets Michael Levin’s Platonic research program in developmental biology through Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, arguing that Levin’s empirical breakthroughs press us toward a richer metaphysics of form and agency. Levin’s work on bioelectric patterning, xenobots, and morphogenesis shows that genomes underdetermine anatomy and behavior, suggesting that cells navigate a latent, ordered morphospace of possibilities beyond local molecular interactions and ancestral selection. Levin provocatively frames this in terms of forms and goals that ingress from beyond space-time, but his thin client metaphor risks reinstalling a dualism in which disembodied patterns become puppet masters and organisms mere terminals. I propose instead a process-relational Platonism in which Whitehead’s “eternal objects” name structured possibilities that do not themselves act but are ingressed and selectively realized by organisms. Agency belongs to the concrete occasions of experience associated with living organisms that prehend both the physical past and relevant unrealized potentials, so that formal and final causes re-enter biology as internal modes of organismic valuation and decision, not externally imposed blueprints. I suggest how this reframing blurs sharp boundaries between physics and biology and opens space for a non-dogmatic, non-interventionist process theology that orders possibility without dictating outcomes. Levin’s program thus becomes a privileged empirical site for rethinking how form, value, and novelty co-constitute a living cosmos.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
The original video is fairly dense! I have got about half way through, and what I can say is that it seems to reveal a very complex mechanism which controls the expression of various biological features - eyes, tails, limbs etc.
I haven't yet found out why Michael Levin thinks his video is particularly provocative, but it obviously relates to the entire evolution debate.
Quote:"Okay, sure, biological life operates according to abstract principles.
And okay, sure, maybe these principles really exist, and are really not reducible to the physical world.
And, great, the laws of physics and chemistry and biology aren’t enough to explain why life reaches for these abstract goals.
But then why does life follow these principles? What causes organisms to grow and develop towards an immaterial “pole star”?"
Now that is strong logic!!! As to his point - I would respond that there is (actual non-physical) structure behind and in informational relations. Entanglement is just one kind of structure. Wonderful article.
(2025-12-01, 06:13 PM)stephenw Wrote: Now that is strong logic!!! As to his point - I would respond that there is (actual non-physical) structure behind and in informational relations. Entanglement is just one kind of structure. Wonderful article.
Do you know if Michael Levin is part of the "Third Way" movement?
David
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I found that critique very cogent. It clarified my own reservation regarding Michael seeming to strip agency from agents themselves and instead attribute it to abstractions, thus, like physicalism, mistakenly affirming a sort of determinism, just in a different form (pun unintended).
I also found his summary of Whitehead's philosophy to be very helpful given that I haven't studied Whitehead but have seen him referenced a lot.
My only reservation about the alternative view he shares is that it seems to make experience primary. As discussed in other threads, to me this seems incoherent. That said, I might just not be understanding the view completely, as he didn't go into all that much detail about the exact role and ontological status of experience on this view.
I've not (yet?) watched the video in the OP; if/when I do, I'll be interested to see how it stands up in hindsight in the light of this critique.
(2025-12-02, 02:48 PM)David001 Wrote: Do you know if Michael Levin is part of the "Third Way" movement?
David
M. Levin doesn't appear to have linked with TTW of Evolution. If I get Levin's "voice" correctly he assumes that research into how intentionality works in the real world is unencumbered by the neoDarwinism of the recent past.
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