Cell Intelligence in Physiological & Morphological Spaces

[Federica]

There is a new presentation by ML on YT. Much of the content is known and there is no inversion of inquiry in the inner direction - all focus is on thought-content. But there are also various promising views for the evolution of scientific thought, and I’ve tried to highlight some points.


1. The constant appeal - explicit and implicit - to think outside the box and give serious consideration to weird hypotheses. This approach refreshes the usual modes of scientific inquiry and may help counter dogmatism and scientism. The scientific world is desensitized to concepts such as “the non-physical”, “the platonic space”, “top down organization”, and “various kinds of beings”. With time, people will hopefully become less and less upset when concepts of this kind are proposed and used as tools for scientific inquiry.

2. The use of metaphors - the unified electromagnetic spectrum, the evolution of numbers in maths - to encourage change in habitual thought patterns.

3. An expansive view of intelligence: “We easily detect intelligence in beings with whom we share the same spatio-temporal scale”. We know this doesn’t end well in the direction of algorithms, for example, but the novelty is there nonetheless.

4. “What our brains are using to embody conventional cognition is exactly the same molecular mechanisms - meaning ion channels, electrical synapses, and neurotransmitters - exactly the same machinery as the collective intelligence of the body uses to make anatomical decisions”. That’s insightful. More than a century ago, Steiner already highlighted the connection between the forces that grow anatomy and those that grow cognition. In Levin, the statement is seen materialistically, in the sense that every structure in our bodies has intelligence in some sense. We know that spiritual science makes those processes clear, once the spiritual origin of those cosmic formative forces is recognized, and how they infuse themselves centripetally in life, to result in anatomical growth, and/or growth of the powers of thought, in man.

5. Speaking of cell behavior, when cells are bioelectrically instructed to build a displaced eye in a lower animal, for example, ML says: “it’s a cancer suppression mechanism. Cells don't just pick up whatever message you happen to give them. They resist. They have their own idea of what they should be doing, so all this morphogenesis is a constant battle of world views; it's a battle of models and the cell collectives have to decide which model of the future they're going to go with”. This again is insightful from a spiritual scientific perspective: there is a top down communication that cells may abide to, and it doesn't come from physics or chemistry. Still, it seems problematic to try and develop these insights about hierarchical spaces using the cell as the structure of reference, especially in view of inducting cancer suppression mechanisms in man. I would say, this approach can be seen as cancer suppressing just as much as cancer generating, to the extent that it addresses cellular activity. From a spiritual scientific perspective, only a holistic consideration of the entirety of man can yield understanding of these processes. As long as life forms are conceptualized as an aggregate of cells (even if directed by hierarchical collective intelligences, Levin still sees cells as the building blocks of life, as the level where things happen) understanding of the real forces at play is veiled. Because the cell is only the sense-perceptible form resulting from destructive forces of fragmentation breaking in the unity of the human organism, as they oppose the cosmic developmental forces that evolve the human form. Cell nature expresses resistance, as ML says, but resistance to life, while cell perceptible appearance, with its mediating globular form, results from the interplay of constructive and destructive forces - it's the balancing point. In this sense, “the collective that knows how to build an organ” is not a collective of cells. And when a bioelectrical stimulus is given at cell level, through the forces of potassium for example, as ML does, supersensible formative principles are unconsciously evoked, not in the cells, but first in the organism, and in the organ.

6. “The number of individuals in an embryonic medium is certainly not set by genetics.” Here ML notices that if the cells are grouped by the experimenter to cluster in certain ways, they will form individuals accordingly. Surely, genetics is not the cause, but these results (thought content) distract the experimenter from encompassing his own role in the experiment. One may argue: “I do know what I am doing by interfering with the course of events in the embryonic medium”, and it’s easy to see what it would mean. But it’s the recursiveness in the act that remains unrealized. It’s not only that, without the hand of the experimenter, things would have gone differently in the embryonic medium, but also that, by shaping the experimental set, the experimenter has entered a phase in experience from which the unity of cognitive flow and experimental flow becomes real and noticeable, progressively and recursively, until the cognitive cone becomes reoriented entirely towards the same truth, but seen from the other side, like when a straight line is seen as a circle with infinite diameter: by keep following it, we come back from the other side, through infinity.
This reference by ML reminds me of Steiner's pointing to the inward-directed inquiry, when he described how scientists used to argument the Kant-Laplace theory of the origin of the universe. (GA 104 Lecture VI):


“So our sun and the planets circling round it are supposed to have formed themselves into globes. In connection with this a neat little comparison has always been made use of in the schools, and it is still employed to-day, to show by ocular demonstration how a whole planetary system can originate through rotation. Some oily liquid is taken, which, when placed in water takes a globular form. Then a small disc is cut and inserted through the equatorial line of this oily ball so that it is divided into two halves. This is then rotated by means of a pin stuck through the centre of the disc, and one sees at first one drop separate itself and circle as a separate body round the large globe, then a second and a third drop, and finally a large drop remains in the centre around which many smaller ones revolve. “A planetary system in miniature!” says the experimenter. Then he says: Why should not our solar system originate from that primeval nebula in this way, if we can now imitate it in this miniature solar system? Usually this comparison seems to be extremely illuminating and people now understand how once upon a time Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury separated from that primeval nebula. But the whole affair, not only the comparison but the whole idea, proceeds from the emptiness of all present-day thinking, for the persons in question, otherwise quite learned men, who put forward this illustration in such an illuminating manner, forget only one thing, namely, that they themselves are present and turn the pin. Now self forgetfulness is very good in certain realms of life, but in this case, if the experimenter is forgotten, the most important thing is forgotten, for without him the drop of oil would never rotate at all. The learned person who believes in such a superstition—this superstition is called the Kant-Laplace system—should at least be logical in his thinking, he should at least presume that some sort of being must have sat on a gigantic stool in space at that time and set a gigantic axis in motion. But human thought has gradually become so accustomed to consider only the material, that the contradiction in such a comparison is no longer noticed.”


7. “There are no humans as a sharp category, we are in the middle of a continuum, developmentally and evolutionarily.” This is evident from spiritual science, though the context in which this is intended is not the same. Still, it’s interesting that ML expresses himself in these terms. I also think that the corollary of these research lines - that “because of biological and technological changes the standard human category becomes extremely diffuse” - has the potential to become ideologically disruptive. With spiritual science, these ideas find their proper contextualization but how to rightly understand the notion of “diffusion of humanness” from a common perspective...
Also intersting to notice how Levin is directly invloved in the commercialization of the science he's developing:
https://astonishinglabs.com/
There is an "Aging and Longevity" business lined up in the list of the 3 next companies that Astonishing Labs will launch.

[Cleric]

There is a new presentation by ML on YT. Much of the content is known and there is no inversion of inquiry in the inner direction - all focus is on thought-content. But there are also various promising views for the evolution of scientific thought, and I’ve tried to highlight some points.

Thanks Federica, nice summary. I still think that ML, at least out of the popular faces of the day that I'm familiar with, who expose themselves on YT, is closest to the viable direction in which the intellect can become coaxial with the flow of existence. And as we have spoken before, it really boils down to overcoming the intellectual reductionism - the desire of the intellectual ego to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances. And we have seen, this is not easy to resist even by ML, who presently gives priority to the intellectual modeling as it is believed more likely to yield actionable results.

One other problem is that for ML the World state is still defined by some foundational substrate. Everything else are patterns within the substrate. This still gives a distinct bottom-up flavor to ML's mindset. It is interesting to see this, for example, in this conversation:



Here it is clear how the human pattern emerges from the fundamental substrate and can now steer the flow according to intuition within a greater cognitive light cone. The question arises: what could be the characteristic traits of such patterns who have expanded their light cones even further (they do not need to be physically distinct organisms. They may live in the patterns of the weather, of the Cosmos, and so on. BTW, even though conceived from the side of the substrate, this is indeed a way we can think of the beings of the hierarchies!) ML says that in his view such an expansion of consciousness should lead to an increase in benevolent compassion. Here it is interesting to see how the host assumes the opposite position and asks why this should be the case. And indeed, in a bottom-up conception there's no fundamental reason to care about other patterns. When we see the substrate in such a way, as islands of temporary order emerging from the chaos, we can imagine that one such pattern can be easily excised from the totality without this having any significant repercussions. This allows for a view of potential higher beings living in greater patterns, who are completely indifferent about other patterns and can even 'eat' them without any regret.

ML obviously has some deeper feeling for morality and seeks to justify it with the idea of oneness. Yet, we can feel how this will always feel ad-hoc, as long as the chaotic substrate is seen as primary. Yes, greater and greater patterns may emerge. They may choose to be compassionate and caring for other patterns, but in the end, this is simply a preference (in other words, in such a view, the entanglement of karma is questionable). This is different when we also include the top-down approach and realize that the substrate is the elemental patterns of a Cosmic whole. His posthuman stance suggests that he sees evolution so far as going more or less randomly, and from this point onward, we can steer things ourselves, and we must do so. So far, I haven't heard him question whether this evolution may actually be following specific curvatures maintained precisely by patterns of intelligence with far greater light cones. And even if he privately considers such ideas, I guess he's not in a hurry to go out publicly with them, since his experiments lying in the elemental patterns can hardly tell anything about it. Higher patterns of being might be there, and they are hopefully compassionate to us, but as far as our evolution is concerned, we're on our own.

[Federica]

Thanks Federica, nice summary. I still think that ML, at least out of the popular faces of the day that I'm familiar with, who expose themselves on YT, is closest to the viable direction in which the intellect can become coaxial with the flow of existence. And as we have spoken before, it really boils down to overcoming the intellectual reductionism - the desire of the intellectual ego to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances. And we have seen, this is not easy to resist even by ML, who presently gives priority to the intellectual modeling as it is believed more likely to yield actionable results.

Thank you! That's how I relate to what you say, and to the video dialogue.
The train of thoughts beginning from the time-stamp in the video can only unfold from a fundamentally material perspective. Basically he says: there is no excuse today for accepting our physical configuration as it is at birth. Our embodiment befalls us at random, and we are stupid to accept it just because it’s supposedly natural. Future man will be shocked to see how stupid we were to take our embodiments, and the physical suffering that comes with it, as inevitable. We have to allow ourselves to change that, because suffering and limitations are bad. This is his moral perspective.

Now, the contradiction I see here is, he’s conceptually open to higher intelligences to be ruling these things from above the level of man (“who knows what other levels there are, above the linguistic level, in the Platonic space”) but despite this, he considers that he knows better than them, at our human level as of now, and we should therefore just rebel against physical suffering and limitations, as they burden our bodily life today (interestingly, he doesn’t speak of soul suffering, but only of physical suffering). Therefore, we should take this (instinctive) stance against suffering and limitations, rather than trying to grasp the larger plans of those higher intelligences, in which the higher meaning of suffering and limitation may be inscribed. He says, there are larger cognitive cones than man’s. Still, our evolutionary focus should be on implementing those conclusions that his present cognitive span gives, rather than focusing on first expanding that cone.

I tend to think that, when he sees future man looking back at us, shocked that we accept random embodiments without trying to eliminate suffering or expand IQ, he is expressing unconscious hybris. He projects his current personal idea of what compassion is, on future man. It's set in stone. He speaks plenty of evolutionary and developmental unfolding, but, strangely, his own moral conception is preserved from all that. He assumes that future man will have his present morality. He doesn’t even consider the possibility that future man's cognitive cone may grow beyond Michael Levins own present cognitive cone. This is despite the fact that he himself has built the conceptual framework to conceive of that evolution, and despite what he says about the hypothetical higher being-bodhisattwa, who would be able to feel true compassion for thousands of beings at the same time - which in itself is a great insight! However, very conveniently, just in his own personal case, he drops the cognitive light-cone conceptual framework, to put himself at the apex of, not only a cognitive vantage point, but also of a moral vantage point - which could be worse. He acknowledges a larger radius of compassion of higher beings, but it’s nonetheless a radius whose quality pretty much conforms to just his own present conception of that quality. This is why I tend to think that his position is an expression of unconscious hybris.

And we can also notice that his vision of the future - our present-day acceptance of sub-optimal embodiments will be inconceivable to future man - is built on a solely material, 3D understanding of humans as physical bodies. This is how he arbitrarily restricts the cognitive cone at will, forgetting that he has warned about limiting understanding of intelligence to the physical, 3D realm. Clearly, he adopts such a viewpoint intermittently, especially when it serves his inquiries directed below the level of man. But just at our human level, he becomes blind to it. There he forgets his own warnings. In this way, “the desire of the intellectual ego to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances” plays out in him, as I see it.

One other problem is that for ML the World state is still defined by some foundational substrate. Everything else are patterns within the substrate. This still gives a distinct bottom-up flavor to ML's mindset. It is interesting to see this, for example, in this conversation:

Here it is clear how the human pattern emerges from the fundamental substrate and can now steer the flow according to intuition within a greater cognitive light cone. The question arises: what could be the characteristic traits of such patterns who have expanded their light cones even further (they do not need to be physically distinct organisms. They may live in the patterns of the weather, of the Cosmos, and so on. BTW, even though conceived from the side of the substrate, this is indeed a way we can think of the beings of the hierarchies!) ML says that in his view such an expansion of consciousness should lead to an increase in benevolent compassion. Here it is interesting to see how the host assumes the opposite position and asks why this should be the case. And indeed, in a bottom-up conception there's no fundamental reason to care about other patterns. When we see the substrate in such a way, as islands of temporary order emerging from the chaos, we can imagine that one such pattern can be easily excised from the totality without this having any significant repercussions. This allows for a view of potential higher beings living in greater patterns, who are completely indifferent about other patterns and can even 'eat' them without any regret.

ML obviously has some deeper feeling for morality and seeks to justify it with the idea of oneness. Yet, we can feel how this will always feel ad-hoc, as long as the chaotic substrate is seen as primary. Yes, greater and greater patterns may emerge. They may choose to be compassionate and caring for other patterns, but in the end, this is simply a preference (in other words, in such a view, the entanglement of karma is questionable). This is different when we also include the top-down approach and realize that the substrate is the elemental patterns of a Cosmic whole. His posthuman stance suggests that he sees evolution so far as going more or less randomly, and from this point onward, we can steer things ourselves, and we must do so. So far, I haven't heard him question whether this evolution may actually be following specific curvatures maintained precisely by patterns of intelligence with far greater light cones. And even if he privately considers such ideas, I guess he's not in a hurry to go out publicly with them, since his experiments lying in the elemental patterns can hardly tell anything about it. Higher patterns of being might be there, and they are hopefully compassionate to us, but as far as our evolution is concerned, we're on our own.

Yes, I feel like his moral conceptions, the bodhisattwa with larger compassion radius, are simply grafted onto the cell-based, substrate-based, bottom-up views, and so they can't become fully integrated. In other words, there is dualism, behind the oneness. It's an ad-hoc addition that doesn't become organic, so to say, similar to a bioelectrical stimulus that doesn't succeed in convincing the cell-collective. Yes, karma can't fit in this picture, because of the moral vantage point, that remains blind to alternatives to the material substrate. And randomness becomes a marker of this blindness. I tend to think he does not privately entertain the possibility of specific higher curvatures corresponding to greater cogntive light cones. This is because of the moral vantage point he dwells in. This is suggested to me particularly when he rails against our current stance, and feels how future man (a.k.a. he himself) will be outraged by present passivity, at 30:40.

[AshvinP]

One other problem is that for ML the World state is still defined by some foundational substrate. Everything else are patterns within the substrate. This still gives a distinct bottom-up flavor to ML's mindset. It is interesting to see this, for example, in this conversation:

Here it is clear how the human pattern emerges from the fundamental substrate and can now steer the flow according to intuition within a greater cognitive light cone. The question arises: what could be the characteristic traits of such patterns who have expanded their light cones even further (they do not need to be physically distinct organisms. They may live in the patterns of the weather, of the Cosmos, and so on. BTW, even though conceived from the side of the substrate, this is indeed a way we can think of the beings of the hierarchies!) ML says that in his view such an expansion of consciousness should lead to an increase in benevolent compassion. Here it is interesting to see how the host assumes the opposite position and asks why this should be the case. And indeed, in a bottom-up conception there's no fundamental reason to care about other patterns. When we see the substrate in such a way, as islands of temporary order emerging from the chaos, we can imagine that one such pattern can be easily excised from the totality without this having any significant repercussions. This allows for a view of potential higher beings living in greater patterns, who are completely indifferent about other patterns and can even 'eat' them without any regret.

ML obviously has some deeper feeling for morality and seeks to justify it with the idea of oneness. Yet, we can feel how this will always feel ad-hoc, as long as the chaotic substrate is seen as primary. Yes, greater and greater patterns may emerge. They may choose to be compassionate and caring for other patterns, but in the end, this is simply a preference (in other words, in such a view, the entanglement of karma is questionable). This is different when we also include the top-down approach and realize that the substrate is the elemental patterns of a Cosmic whole. His posthuman stance suggests that he sees evolution so far as going more or less randomly, and from this point onward, we can steer things ourselves, and we must do so. So far, I haven't heard him question whether this evolution may actually be following specific curvatures maintained precisely by patterns of intelligence with far greater light cones. And even if he privately considers such ideas, I guess he's not in a hurry to go out publicly with them, since his experiments lying in the elemental patterns can hardly tell anything about it. Higher patterns of being might be there, and they are hopefully compassionate to us, but as far as our evolution is concerned, we're on our own.

This is a fascinating discussion, Cleric, thanks for sharing it. Indeed, it is remarkable to me how much the Christ impulse tries to shine through ML's perspective in such a discussion. It is practically oozing out of every intuition and sentiment that he has pertaining to the evolutionary process - the recognition of 'selflets' (past and future) that we are always communicating with to pursue goals, the need to resist karmic curvatures and fashion new degrees of freedom, the desire to expand the sphere of moral resonance well beyond blood relations, the need to make philosophical ideas into vehicles of practical transformation, and so on. It is only the lack of introspective observation of his philosophical-scientific thinking process, which flows this Christ impulse into the one-sided channel of patterned intelligence emerging from the chaotic substrate (not too dissimilar from BK and analytic idealism). It is that lack of introspection that prevents him from taking his own intuitions more seriously, recognizing that the future selflets may already be steering the evolutionary process through our imaginative activity and communicating their intents through our intuitive insights. It is a prime lesson on how the most careful observation and thinking through empirical facts and corresponding intuitions, and even an empathic sensitivity for the inner lives of other souls, can go horribly astray when deprived of introspective self-consciousness of its underlying movements. It starts to rebel against its future selflet because it can't perceive the latter's intentional curvatures along which its states unfold.

(I would note that ML gives the substrate some structure by characterizing it as a timeless Platonic space of archetypal forms that ingress into physical configurations as appropriate opportunities arise, but practically speaking these archetypal forms may as well be MAL's instinctive consciousness unless they are taken more seriously as immanent in the structure and steering of imaginative life, first and foremost)

[Cleric]

I found this episode interesting:



Of course, it is very far from connecting things with inner activity, but there's at least a ray of hope that strict bottom-up reductionism is open for revision (even though still in a purely mechanical sense).

[Federica]

I found this episode interesting:

Of course, it is very far from connecting things with inner activity, but there's at least a ray of hope that strict bottom-up reductionism is open for revision (even though still in a purely mechanical sense).

I tried to follow, but too many prerequisites. I did notice that he concludes with the Levin-like idea of top-down direction, to contrast bottom-up reductionism. But he leaves it undeveloped.