Oct 26, 2022 11:43 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 27, 2022 01:08 AM by C C.)
https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-re...-into-life
EXCERPTS (Philip Ball): . . . One of biology’s most enduring dilemmas is how it dances around the issue at the core of such a description: agency, the ability of living entities to alter their environment (and themselves) with purpose to suit an agenda.
Typically, discussions of goals and purposes in biology get respectably neutered with scare quotes: cells and bacteria aren’t really ‘trying’ to do anything, just as organisms don’t evolve ‘in order to’ achieve anything (such as running faster to improve their chances of survival). In the end, it’s all meant to boil down to genes and molecules, chemistry and physics – events unfolding with no aim or design, but that trick our narrative-obsessed minds into perceiving these things.
Yet, on the contrary, we now have growing reasons to suspect that agency is a genuine natural phenomenon. Biology could stop being so coy about it if only we had a proper theory of how it arises. Unfortunately, no such thing currently exists, but there’s increasing optimism that a theory of agency can be found – and, moreover, that it’s not necessarily unique to living organisms. A grasp of just what it is that enables an entity to act as an autonomous agent, altering its behaviour and environment to achieve certain ends, should help reconcile biology to the troublesome notions of purpose and function.
A bottom-up theory of agency could help us interpret what we see in life, from cells to societies – as well as in some of our ‘smart’ machines and technologies. We’re starting to wonder whether artificial intelligence systems might themselves develop agency. But how would we know, if we can’t say what agency entails?
[...] A popular narrative now casts all living entities as ‘machines’ built by genes, as Richard Dawkins called them. For Ernst Mayr, biology was unique among the sciences precisely because its objects of study possessed a program that encoded apparent purpose, design and agency into what they do. On this view, agency doesn’t actually manifest in the moment of action, but is a phantom evoked by our genetic and evolutionary history.
But this framing doesn’t explain agency; it simply tries to explain it away. Individual genes have no agency, so agency can’t arise in any obvious way from just gathering a sufficient number of them together. Pinning agency to the genome doesn’t tell us what agency is or what makes it manifest.
Besides, genes don’t fully specify behavioural outcomes in any given situation – not just in humans, but even in very simple organisms. Genes can imbue dispositions or tendencies, but it’s often impossible to predict precisely what an organism will do even when it’s mapped down to the last cell and gene. If all behaviour were hardwired, individual organisms could never find creative solutions to novel problems, such as the ability of New Caledonian crows to shape and use improvised tools to obtain food.
This reveals a crucial dimension of agency: the ability to make choices in response to new and unforeseen circumstances. [...] No one should suppose that macrophages are acting in the rich cognitive environment available to a wolf, but sometimes it’s hard to decide where the distinctions lie. Confusion can arise from the common assumption that complex agential behaviour requires a concomitantly complex mind.
In the ordinarily sedate waters of plant biology, for example, a storm is currently raging over whether or not plants have sentience and consciousness. Some things that plants do – such as apparently selecting a direction of growth based on past experience – can look like purposeful and even ‘mindful’ action, especially as they can involve electrical signals reminiscent of those produced by neurons.
But if we break down agency into its constituents, we can see how it might arise even in the absence of a mind that ‘thinks’, at least in the traditional sense. Agency stems from two ingredients: first, an ability to produce different responses to identical (or equivalent) stimuli, and second, to select between them in a goal-directed way. Neither of these capacities is unique to humans, nor to brains in general... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS (Philip Ball): . . . One of biology’s most enduring dilemmas is how it dances around the issue at the core of such a description: agency, the ability of living entities to alter their environment (and themselves) with purpose to suit an agenda.
Typically, discussions of goals and purposes in biology get respectably neutered with scare quotes: cells and bacteria aren’t really ‘trying’ to do anything, just as organisms don’t evolve ‘in order to’ achieve anything (such as running faster to improve their chances of survival). In the end, it’s all meant to boil down to genes and molecules, chemistry and physics – events unfolding with no aim or design, but that trick our narrative-obsessed minds into perceiving these things.
Yet, on the contrary, we now have growing reasons to suspect that agency is a genuine natural phenomenon. Biology could stop being so coy about it if only we had a proper theory of how it arises. Unfortunately, no such thing currently exists, but there’s increasing optimism that a theory of agency can be found – and, moreover, that it’s not necessarily unique to living organisms. A grasp of just what it is that enables an entity to act as an autonomous agent, altering its behaviour and environment to achieve certain ends, should help reconcile biology to the troublesome notions of purpose and function.
A bottom-up theory of agency could help us interpret what we see in life, from cells to societies – as well as in some of our ‘smart’ machines and technologies. We’re starting to wonder whether artificial intelligence systems might themselves develop agency. But how would we know, if we can’t say what agency entails?
[...] A popular narrative now casts all living entities as ‘machines’ built by genes, as Richard Dawkins called them. For Ernst Mayr, biology was unique among the sciences precisely because its objects of study possessed a program that encoded apparent purpose, design and agency into what they do. On this view, agency doesn’t actually manifest in the moment of action, but is a phantom evoked by our genetic and evolutionary history.
But this framing doesn’t explain agency; it simply tries to explain it away. Individual genes have no agency, so agency can’t arise in any obvious way from just gathering a sufficient number of them together. Pinning agency to the genome doesn’t tell us what agency is or what makes it manifest.
Besides, genes don’t fully specify behavioural outcomes in any given situation – not just in humans, but even in very simple organisms. Genes can imbue dispositions or tendencies, but it’s often impossible to predict precisely what an organism will do even when it’s mapped down to the last cell and gene. If all behaviour were hardwired, individual organisms could never find creative solutions to novel problems, such as the ability of New Caledonian crows to shape and use improvised tools to obtain food.
This reveals a crucial dimension of agency: the ability to make choices in response to new and unforeseen circumstances. [...] No one should suppose that macrophages are acting in the rich cognitive environment available to a wolf, but sometimes it’s hard to decide where the distinctions lie. Confusion can arise from the common assumption that complex agential behaviour requires a concomitantly complex mind.
In the ordinarily sedate waters of plant biology, for example, a storm is currently raging over whether or not plants have sentience and consciousness. Some things that plants do – such as apparently selecting a direction of growth based on past experience – can look like purposeful and even ‘mindful’ action, especially as they can involve electrical signals reminiscent of those produced by neurons.
But if we break down agency into its constituents, we can see how it might arise even in the absence of a mind that ‘thinks’, at least in the traditional sense. Agency stems from two ingredients: first, an ability to produce different responses to identical (or equivalent) stimuli, and second, to select between them in a goal-directed way. Neither of these capacities is unique to humans, nor to brains in general... (MORE - missing details)