Michael Levin

Developmental biology is uniquely poised to contribute to the study of embodied minds, because it is there that we see, right in front of our eyes, the journey from physics and chemistry to behavioral science and beyond. While I do not have a new theory of consciousness to propose and am not a consciousness scientist, I will discuss research whose findings will surely impact this field: (1) our framework for recognizing and communicating with the collective intelligence of cells, which illustrates how our bodies host innumerable co-existing minds functioning in diverse problem spaces (worlds), and reveals why we must take consciousness beyond the brain very seriously; (2) our production of novel synthetic living beings, which raise important questions about new sources of information in biology and beyond, which bears on the (non)viability of physicalism; (3) an agency ratchet functioning before replication takes place, showing patterns potentiating life and mind but themselves requiring neither specific physics nor evolutionary history.