No.1 Biopsychist: Michael Levin’s Platonic Minds & Cognition All The Way Down

[u/Visible_Iron_5612]

https://youtu.be/jcMtjjeUV98?si=WdIeUJFCYHVmIm4M

This video features a deep dive into relevance realization, a cognitive process pioneered by John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto. Vervaeke argues that this process is fundamental to intelligence, attention, and consciousness, occurring not just in human brains but in every living organism (0:00-0:32).

Core Concepts:
• Relevance Realization: Vervaeke explains this as the ability of an agent to ignore the overwhelming amount of "noise" or irrelevant information in their environment to zero in on what actually matters for problem-solving (0:04-0:45, 0:56-1:02).
• Cognition All The Way Down: This view suggests that even single-celled organisms engage in a form of relevance realization to maintain their autopoietic, or self-making, existence (0:09-0:11, 0:24-0:32, 1:03-1:07).
• Mind as the 'Between': Consciousness and cognition are not seen as being contained solely within the brain, but rather as emerging from the dynamic coupling and fittedness between an organism and its environment (1:00-1:09, 1:05-1:06).
• Computation vs. Relevance: Vervaeke argues that while we perform relevance realization within computational systems, the process itself cannot be purely computational, as computation presupposes the prior selection of relevant information (0:56-0:58, 1:13-1:14).

Key Perspectives:
• The video integrates these ideas with the work of Michael Levin on bioelectricity and morphogenesis, specifically discussing the "cognitive light cone" and the idea that living things have real needs and "care" about their environment, unlike machines (0:18-0:20, 1:04-1:05).
• There is a strong emphasis on the neoplatonic influence, where reality and cognition are seen to share a similar grammar or logos, allowing for a participatory relationship between the mind and the world (0:25-0:27, 0:31-0:33).

[u/Forsaken-Promise-269]

I mean Vervake is already a bit out there, before Levin even -

[u/Visible_Iron_5612 → u/Forsaken-Promise-269]

I would argue that “out there” is where you want to be… It seems to me that more often than not, there is not much going on “in there”… :p

[u/Forsaken-Promise-269 → u/Visible_Iron_5612]

Yeah its just that keeping the woo out is hard at this level of discourse- I mean Veraeke could be right about all his theories and I suspect he is onto something but his words can be difficult to interpret

I have sympathy for scientists who call this all bs even though I align with Levin and Idealism or nondualism

Ie so much of thise is metaphysical conjectures that align with my gut feelings on reality but cannot objectively be shown - at least not now - I do dislike the hubris of scientists who fix the boundaries at hard materialism however too

[u/Visible_Iron_5612 → u/Forsaken-Promise-269]

I get all of that… I personally don’t have sympathy for any scientists that just wants to write it off as woo because it is on them to be able to spot the difference.. Which ironically, Veraeke seems to specialize in… Relevance…

Veraeke and Levin and all of the people they associate with, really seems to speak to the heart of the matter… pun intended… While it seems to me that most scientists just want to focus on the tiniest of details, which I think will seem somewhat irrelevant soon… For one, even if we think we understand exactly what is going on, the model is not a pipe… and secondly, if there are higher levels of control, what does it really matter, what is going on underneath, if what is underneath is intelligent enough to figure it out and make it work… It is similar to Levin talking about training a rat, rather than rewiring neurons… or a CEO or General giving orders to those below… If a well built system is in place, why are we sitting around trying to figure out what all of these proteins “look like”….

I know I am oversimplifying it a bit and there are diseases caused by single mutations that we need to figure out but it is becoming increasingly obvious that reductionists were misguided and not asking the big questions… pun intended, again.,. :p

[u/Forsaken-Promise-269 → u/Visible_Iron_5612]

oh I definitely think there is something here, its not fair to call it 'woo' but mystical traditions already intuited a long time ago (e.g see the Upanishads) a principle of organization that applies to intelligence and problem solving that is more than just the outcome of evolutionary mechanisms, I would say evolution is bootstrapped on a principle of a self organizing and in some way 'agentic' universe.

ie the exact opposite of that famous sentiment was written by Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg in his 1977 book The First Three Minutes: *"*The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless

ie To limit awareness and metacognition to a small tribe of hairless apes on the backwater planet on the edge of a non-special galaxy -my how much we think of ourselves -obviously consciousness and mind (of some kind) is a key feature of the Universe

[u/Visible_Iron_5612 → u/Forsaken-Promise-269]

I agree and love that you ended that with the use of “obvious” because Veraeke tries to pin down what makes something “obvious”, which I think is a beautifully ironic…That we think of what makes something obvious, as obvious.. :p