"I love Biologists often attribute purpose to living systems... Should they?"

2022-09-26 05:39:39

Skip to main content Main navigation About Cohort Program Organization Participating Institutions Project Participants Clusters/Projects ClustersSubaward Projects Agency and Directionality in Development Subaward Projects Cellular agency in multicellular development and cancer Physical aspects of early multicellular development Intrinsic purposiveness and the shaping of development Modeling Agency Formally Subaward Projects The paradox of the organism Universal principles of evolutionary adaptation Natural selection for collective purpose Emergent intrinsic motivations in intelligent collectives Evolutionary Origins and Transitions of Agency Subaward Projects Integration and individuation in the origin of agency Transitions in individuality: from ecology to teleonomy Features of autonomy in human evolution (Re)Conceptualizing Function and Goal-Directedness Subaward Projects Putting representations back into goal-directedness Open-ended evolution and organizational closure Mistakes in living systems: a new conceptual framework ‘Function’ in biology and bio-inspired design Directionality in Genomics and Macroevolution Subaward Projects Mutation rates, variational specificity, and genomic directionality New tests of directionality in fossil lineages The genetic basis of macroevolutionary trends Higher-Level Agency and Directionality in Ecology and Earth Science Subaward Projects Geofunctions: purposes and agents in global environmental sciences Chance versus purpose in biosphere evolution An organizational account of ecological functions Agential Behavior and Plasticity in Evolution Subaward Projects Exploratory mechanisms, agency, and evolution Agency and explanation in the evolutionary sciences Directedness in holobiont systems Evolution and organismal goal-directedness Directory of Project Participants Project News Blog Resources Publications Conceptual Inventory User account menu Project Participants Log in Show/Hide Main Menu Biologists often attribute purpose to living systems...Should they?Read photo description and credits From left to right:A star-nosed mole emerging from a burrow. Photo by Ken Catania, Vanderbilt University.A digitally rendered image of an orb-like cluster of spherical bacteria. 3D illustration by Sergey Volkov, Adobe Stock.An octopus curls the ends of its arms in clear aqua water. Photo by aerial-drone, Adobe Stock.View from above into a venus flytrap. Photo by shrike, Adobe Stock.There is a growing recognition that biological phenomena which suggest agency, directionality, or goal-directedness demand new conceptual frameworks that can translate into rigorous theoretical models and discriminating empirical tests. This project addresses the demand through a novel, interdisciplinary, large-scale program that combines philosophers, theoreticians, and experimentalists. Transitioning the scale of evolutionary search by inducing and searching in deep representations Comparative genomics of microsporidia On the causal interpretation of heritability from a structural causal modeling perspective Contact:[email protected] Form © Copyright 2021Minnesota Center forPhilosophy of Science