Are Living Systems Machines?
Contemporary approaches to biology take the metaphor of viewing living systems as machines for granted, with a implicit assumption that micro level interactions of parts constitute and fully determine the behavior of the whole. However, a growing body of knowledge suggests that the type of causal explanations proper to machines do not do adequate justice to the apparent goal directed behavior of living systems. Recent experiments by Levin’s Lab at Tufts university demonstrate the universality of problem solving behavior of organisms down to the level of cells. Furthermore an emerging paradigm that builds upon an earlier approach to the study of life pioneered by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement offers a more holistic picture of viewing life as ‘Organism’ as opposed to ‘Mechanism’. This fresh outlook suggests that living systems are more than the sum of their parts.
The speaker will trace the philosophical history of this emerging approach from its earliest origins in Aristotle, it’s technical formulation in the ideas of Kant and Hegel, and its maturation in the contemporary approaches of Maturana and Varella. The convergence of Kant’s notion of intrinsic teleology with the recent ideas about Enactive Autopoesis will be discussed in order to show how biological systems can be viewed as intrinsically purposeful and cognitive down to the cellular level. Themes like ‘Top-down Constraints’ vs ‘Bottom-Up Emergence’, the relation between sentience, sense making and perception, and Levin’s model of ‘Scale Free Cognition’ will be discussed.
The benefits of adopting this new framework in the fields of medicine and therapy will be touched upon along with its implications for artificial intelligence and the study of consciousness. The lecture will follow a slide format, with animations, diagrams and other media.
About the Speaker:
Ashjay Mohsin is a graduate of Electrical Engineering from NUST. He is interested in pursuing graduate studies in the fields of Computational Biology and Cognitive Science. His interests range from Philosophy, Aesthetics, Consciousness, Cosmology and Cognitive Science to interdisciplinary approaches to the study of life, it’s history, origin and role in the life of the cosmos.
