From Fragments to Selves: Morphogenesis, Cognition, and Agency

About this event

Join us for a special crossover session with Phil's philosophy group. Tone will present on a deep question at the meeting point of biology and philosophy of mind: how do many small living parts come together to form a single self? Every organism starts as fragments: cells, each with its own needs and its own way of regulating itself. Somehow these fragments come together into tissues, bodies, and minds that pursue goals of their own. Brains are the obvious place to look for cognition, but more and more work suggests that goal-directed problem solving runs much deeper in living systems. Tissues coordinate toward large-scale anatomical outcomes, and regenerating organisms seem to "know" what shape they are supposed to become. This session stays grounded in real biology and lets the philosophical questions come out of the evidence. Tone will draw on three sources: Michael Levin's work on the computational boundary of a self, van Duijn, Keijzer, and Franken's account of minimal cognition as sensorimotor coordination, and Moreno and Peretó's An Evolutionary Story of Agency. The session will explore: Morphogenesis as Problem Solving: How bioelectric signaling, target morphology, and regeneration suggest that cells and tissues move toward goals in an "anatomical space," much as animals move through physical space. Cognition on a Continuum: How cognition might reach from single cells to tissues to nervous systems, each level expanding the size and complexity of the problems a living system can solve. The Emergence of Agency: How minimal forms of agency may have arisen over evolutionary time. This includes how many simple agents become one larger agent and what sets the boundaries of a self. The Philosophical Stakes: When is it legitimate to say a biological system has goals, solves problems, or has cognition? And where does useful description end and real agency begin? The presentation will be followed by open Q&A and discussion.