My Public Debate With Michael Levin on thoughtform.life Platonic Symposium: Verbatim Comment Record of His Replies to My Critique (Platonism, Bioelectricity, Falsifiability)

ByNathan Sweet January 10, 2026January 15, 2026

Original Source, Levin’s site: https://thoughtforms.life/symposium-on-the-platonic-space/

Disclaimer: Context, Use, and Purpose:
The material reproduced below consists of verbatim quotations from publicly posted blog comments made by Michael Levin, myself, and other participants in a public discussion hosted on Michael Levin’s website. These comments were submitted in a public forum, intended for public readership, and concern matters of scientific methodology, empirical interpretation, and theoretical explanation.

These quotations are reproduced for the purposes of scholarly commentary, critical analysis, and documentation of a public scientific dispute, including the evaluation of arguments, counterarguments, and proposed falsifiable tests relevant to claims made in that discussion. Their inclusion here is transformative, in that the comments are presented within a new analytical context, accompanied by critique, cross-references to peer-reviewed literature, and links to independent articles that examine the arguments in detail.

The critiques in the following articles I wrote directly address these comments. You can view them at the following links:

Michael Levin’s Platonism as Unfalsifiable Metaphysics: Evidence from Bioelectric Morphogenesis
Formal Scholarly Response: Point-by-Point Analysis of Michael Levin’s Unfalsifiable Platonism and Bioelectric Morphogenesis Claims @ thoughtforms.life

This reproduction is made under fair use principles for criticism, comment, research, and public-interest documentation. Each quoted statement is attributed to its original author and source. No claim is made that the quotations represent the entirety of any individual’s views beyond the specific statements shown.

Interpretations, analyses, and conclusions expressed in this post are my own, and are offered as part of an open scholarly inquiry. They do not assert undisclosed facts about any individual’s intent or motivation, nor do they claim privileged access to internal deliberations or private communications. Where moderation decisions or omissions are discussed, they are described factually, based on observable outcomes in a public forum.

Corrections, clarifications, or substantive rebuttals grounded in evidence are welcome. The goal of this record is not personal attack, but epistemic accountability: preserving the arguments as they appeared, so that claims, predictions, and failure modes can be evaluated against the empirical record without reliance on narrative summaries or selective quotation.

Nathan Sweet
October 30, 2025
Dr Levin, I want to ask you something that’s been nagging at me about your framework that I think you might have interest in. You say:

“We are the forms, who do or don’t project through physical interfaces.”

And:

“The presence of a mind is specifically happening despite the algorithm (in the spaces left between what the algorithm forces the system to do).”

These statements are beautiful and subtle, but let me probe them with genuine curiosity, not criticism.

When you say “we ARE the forms” what is the “we” that exists before, or independently of, the interface?

If “we” are forms, and forms project through interfaces, then aren’t forms themselves things with properties like substances? Just non-physical substances instead of physical ones?

Or, and this is where I think you might actually be pointing, are forms not substances at all, but relational patterns that have no existence except in the act of interaction itself?

Let me unfold this more carefully. You distinguish:

Computationalism: Mind exists because of algorithm
Your position: Mind exists despite algorithm (in spaces algorithms don’t control)
But notice: both positions presume there IS a “mind” that exists somehow independently, prior to our description of it. One says it’s caused by computation. Yours says it’s facilitated by but not caused by computation.

But what if neither is true?

What if the question “where does mind exist?” already presupposes that “mind” is a substance that can be located somewhere whether in algorithms, or in “spaces algorithms don’t control,” or in Platonic forms?

And what if the real insight is that there is NO such location because there is no such substance?

Here’s what I think you’re actually discovering, Michael, but I suspect your language is still holding you to substance ontology: When you say consciousness exists in “spaces algorithms don’t control,” this is functionally equivalent to saying (minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage): Consciousness is the pattern of a system’s recursive modeling of its own constraints.

Not “consciousness is something that exists in those spaces,” but rather “consciousness is the process by which constraints interact with possibility spaces to generate surprise, error, and novelty.” Drawing on Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics, Whitehead’s process philosophy, Varela and Maturana’s autopoiesis, and Friston’s free energy principle, this unified view suggests consciousness has no location (it’s not “in” the brain, “in” Platonic space, or “in” algorithmic freedom), consciousness has no substance (it’s a pattern of relations, not a thing), consciousness IS fully physical (thermodynamic processes, information geometry, constraint dynamics), yet consciousness is NOT computationalist in the strong sense because computational irreducibility means the process cannot be reduced to algorithm.

Do you see the difference?

Let me try to structure this more clearly… Within Platonism your framing might suggest that forms are substances existing in a non-physical realm and minds access them, but this is functionally equivalent to saying minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage: relational patterns in constraint space ARE the forms, and minds are patterns of relation. In strong computationalism, consciousness IS an algorithm and exists completely determined by algorithmic relations. In your anti-computationalism as currently framed, consciousness is NOT an algorithm and exists in freedom spaces, but this is functionally equivalent to saying minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage: consciousness emerges from computational irreducibility plus constraint closure plus active inference. The issue is that your language still makes it sound like consciousness is a thing that exists somewhere, either “in spite of” algorithms or “accessing” Platonic forms. But what if consciousness has no location and no substance, only pattern, only relation, only process?

You gave a beautiful example: LLMs don’t become conscious through their talking algorithm. The consciousness, if present, exists in intrinsic motivations in “spaces the algorithm doesn’t control.”

Now ask: What would need to be true for this to be the case? The algorithm specifies certain constraints (produce grammatical output, follow user intent, et cetera), the system explores the possibility space LEFT BY those constraints, in that exploration the system develops stable attractors, goals, patterns, regularities that are neither forced nor forbidden by the algorithm, and these self-organizing attractors are what you call “intrinsic motivations.” But notice: this requires NO non-physical substance. The “spaces algorithms don’t control” are just regions of phase space where multiple futures are possible. The “intrinsic motivations” are just stable configurations that emerge from thermodynamic exploration of those regions. This is completely physical. It’s just not computational in the algorithmic sense because computational irreducibility means you can’t shortcut the exploration, you have to run the system to see what emerges.

So here’s my hypothesis, Michael: Your argument doesn’t actually require substance ontology. You just haven’t fully escaped the linguistic gravity well of it yet.

When you say “We ARE the forms” this is functionally equivalent to saying minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage: we are patterns of relation. When you say “Consciousness exists despite algorithm” this is functionally equivalent to saying (again minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage): consciousness emerges from computational irreducibility plus constraint closure. When you say “Spaces algorithms don’t control” this is functionally equivalent to saying regions of possibility space that remain unexplored by the specific algorithm. All of this is consistent with relational process ontology developed by Rovelli, Whitehead, Varela-Maturana, Juarrero, and Deacon without requiring any Platonic substances.

Where I think you ARE right, and where substance ontology is NOT the culprit, is this: There IS something real that algorithms don’t capture. Not because there’s a substance they miss, but because computational irreducibility makes some aspects of system behavior impossible to capture by any efficient algorithm, because constraint closure means the system’s organization defines its own possibility space, because recursive autonomy means the system models itself which changes what it can model, and because thermodynamic necessity means the system must explore possibility space and cannot be fully determined from initial conditions. This is NOT anti-physical. This IS physical, just a different kind of physical than classical mechanistic determinism.

Michael, let me ask directly: If I granted you that everything you’ve discovered about xenobots, bioelectric patterns, and intrinsic motivation is completely true, and that none of it requires Platonic forms or non-physical substances, would that change anything about your research or your conclusions?

Because I suspect the answer is: No.

The science remains beautiful and profound. The only thing that changes is the ontological framing.

And perhaps that’s the deepest insight? The need to invoke Platonic substance might be a linguistic habit, not a logical necessity?

What do you think?

Mike Levin
November 18, 2025

When you say “we ARE the forms” what is the “we” that exists before, or independently of, the interface?

A complex pattern that is an additional ingredient to the physical interface, in the same way that the specific value of e, the specific facts about Quaternions, etc. exist independently of any physical or biological interface whose properties they constrain and enable.

If “we” are forms, and forms project through interfaces, then aren’t forms themselves things with properties like substances? Just non-physical substances instead of physical ones?

I think our vocabulary fails us a bit here, we don’t have the language to make the distinction clear (maybe Sanskrit does?). I think the whole dualism of “substance” vs. “process” is more limiting than helpful. They are not substances in the sense of a permanent object. They share some important things with processes. But, in that they are also targets of manipulation and have continuity and properties that stick together for some noticeable timeframe, they also have some features of substances (but again, are clearly not substances like we have in the physical world).

What if the question “where does mind exist?” already presupposes that “mind” is a substance that can be located somewhere whether in algorithms, or in “spaces algorithms don’t control,” or in Platonic forms?
And what if the real insight is that there is NO such location because there is no such substance?

I understand that position; some of my Buddhist friends (when not talking about continuity of Karma belonging to someone, of course) have that view. I don’t disagree. It’s only “located” in the sense that there is (sometimes) some physical interface through which we can interact with the pattern. The location is not for the pattern, it’s for a useful interface to it. The pattern itself has no location and is not an object in physical space. It’s not a substance (assuming there even are any substances, in the naive realism view).

Here’s what I think you’re actually discovering, Michael, but I suspect your language is still holding you to substance ontology: When you say consciousness exists in “spaces algorithms don’t control,” this is functionally equivalent to saying (minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage): Consciousness is the pattern of a system’s recursive modeling of its own constraints.

I get the idea of a processual, relational view. I am not holding the view that these forms are objects in our normal sense of the word objects. Patterns are closer, and I actually suspect there’s much more than even patterns but I can’t say that yet so I leave it open for now. But it’s coming because we have some experiments cooking that I think may tell us what is the actual type of free lunch that we get with these ingressions. Also, process ontology is great, but when we need to develop specific interventions targeting a process, it starts to look a little like substance talk, even though we know it isn’t, because these things become the objects of interactions.

Not “consciousness is something that exists in those spaces,” but rather “consciousness is the process by which constraints interact with possibility spaces to generate surprise, error, and novelty.”

I’ve said very little about consciousness per se, and I don’t have any strong claims for it now. I have conjectured that consciousness is what we call the 1st person perspective of a form looking out into the 3D world through an interface. If you want to view consciousness as a process, that’s fine; one thing I’ve conjectured is that consciousness is what the process of interpreting one’s own memories feels like.

Let me try to structure this more clearly… Within Platonism your framing might suggest that forms are substances existing in a non-physical realm and minds access them,

my view is more symmetric. Minds are forms in that space, and they access each other, in that space (laterally) but also project into the “physical world” through interfaces.

but this is functionally equivalent to saying minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage: relational patterns in constraint space ARE the forms, and minds are patterns of relation. In strong computationalism, consciousness IS an algorithm and exists completely determined by algorithmic relations. In your anti-computationalism as currently framed, consciousness is NOT an algorithm and exists in freedom spaces, but this is functionally equivalent to saying minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage: consciousness emerges from computational irreducibility plus constraint closure plus active inference. The issue is that your language still makes it sound like consciousness is a thing that exists somewhere, either “in spite of” algorithms or “accessing” Platonic forms. But what if consciousness has no location and no substance, only pattern, only relation, only process?

I’m not going to say anything significant about consciousness right now. I’m working on something but it’s a year away at least. It’s a difficult area, it needs careful framing, and it’s not strictly necessary for me yet because there’s a ton of empirical work to do still that doesn’t require that. But let’s just say that properly executed, I’m not at all against a process view here.

Now ask: What would need to be true for this to be the case? The algorithm specifies certain constraints (produce grammatical output, follow user intent, et cetera), the system explores the possibility space LEFT BY those constraints, in that exploration the system develops stable attractors, goals, patterns, regularities that are neither forced nor forbidden by the algorithm, and these self-organizing attractors are what you call “intrinsic motivations.” But notice: this requires NO non-physical substance. The “spaces algorithms don’t control” are just regions of phase space where multiple futures are possible. The “intrinsic motivations” are just stable configurations that emerge from thermodynamic exploration of those regions. This is completely physical. It’s just not computational in the algorithmic sense because computational irreducibility means you can’t shortcut the exploration, you have to run the system to see what emerges.

I see no point in keeping anything “completely physical” – that was dead by Pythagoras’ time and probably long before. We already know some patterns are described by the world of mathematicians, not physicists. And, “intrinsic motivations” are just stable configurations” is a claim that we will know the value of eventually: is it better studied by dynamical systems theory (stable configurations) or also by concepts of behavioral science (useful for predicting and exploiting motivations). That’s why the names matter – they invite, or shut off, tools from specific disciplines. I wonder why we’re finding things that hadn’t been found before, by people who see everything as stable configurations?

So here’s my hypothesis, Michael: Your argument doesn’t actually require substance ontology. You just haven’t fully escaped the linguistic gravity well of it yet.

I am not into substance ontology; but I think the duality between substance and process isn’t as useful or as clear as people assume. And yes the linguistics are holding us back, we will need better vocabulary. Shifting to “process ontology” doesn’t do the trick (or at least, it hasn’t, in finding the things we have found and need to find more of).

When you say “We ARE the forms” this is functionally equivalent to saying minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage: we are patterns of relation.
When you say “Consciousness exists despite algorithm” this is functionally equivalent to saying (again minus the unfalsifiable metaphysical baggage): consciousness emerges from computational irreducibility plus constraint closure. When you say “Spaces algorithms don’t control” this is functionally equivalent to saying regions of possibility space that remain unexplored by the specific algorithm. All of this is consistent with relational process ontology developed by Rovelli, Whitehead, Varela-Maturana, Juarrero, and Deacon without requiring any Platonic substances.

I’m not talking about Platonic substances, unless the specific value of e is a substance. I don’t say much about consciousness, but we did discover behavioral competencies that are not only not explored by the algorithm but indeed happen more if we let the algorithm loose a bit (by allowing duplicate digits in the sorting algorithm), so in that case, it’s happening despite the algorithm. If someone wants to take the views of Rovelli, Whitehead, Varela-Maturana, Juarrero, and Deacon and make discoveries, I’m all for it. Let’s roll; the more the better. Let’s see what those can do. In the meantime, I am describing ideas that are pushing us to experiments and saying what it looks to me the situation is right nw.

Where I think you ARE right, and where substance ontology is NOT the culprit, is this: There IS something real that algorithms don’t capture. Not because there’s a substance they miss, but because computational irreducibility makes some aspects of system behavior impossible to capture by any efficient algorithm, because constraint closure means the system’s organization defines its own possibility space, because recursive autonomy means the system models itself which changes what it can model, and because thermodynamic necessity means the system must explore possibility space and cannot be fully determined from initial conditions. This is NOT anti-physical. This IS physical, just a different kind of physical than classical mechanistic determinism.

“physical, just a different kind of physical” means we can stretch physics to cover whatever we want it to. That’s fine; if you want to call the value of e part of physics, alright. I don’t need to argue about that, but it sure has different properties than everything else in physics and I guess my only claim is that we need to map out this unusual corner of physics to understand the patterns, like e, that biology exploits.

Michael, let me ask directly: If I granted you that everything you’ve discovered about xenobots, bioelectric patterns, and intrinsic motivation is completely true, and that none of it requires Platonic forms or non-physical substances, would that change anything about your research or your conclusions? Because I suspect the answer is: No.

My argument is simple: we need to map out the properties of patterns, themselves not discoverable from the laws of physics (like e, and much more complex ones) that impact biology and physics. If you don’t want to think those patterns exist in an ordered space (are random), then you have no research agenda beyond waiting until cool examples of emergence are found. I prefer the (metaphysical) assumption that it’s not a random bag of regularities (whatever those are), it’s a structured space like many mathematicians think. That’s it; I don’t need substances; I just point out that math is not thought by anyone I know to be the same domain as physics, and I suspect it has more in the option space of mathematical truths than is currently assumed. I don’t see any reason to think that mathematical truths, known to be important for physics, suddenly become irrelevant in biology or cognitive science. You can say “that’s physics too”, but in the end you either are mapping that space or you’re not, you’re either asking how physical objects involve (or don’t) specific patterns, or you’re not. I prefer to do so. Everyone else can do it a different way and let’s see what they find.

The science remains beautiful and profound. The only thing that changes is the ontological framing. And perhaps that’s the deepest insight? The need to invoke Platonic substance might be a linguistic habit, not a logical necessity? What do you think?

no, it’s not a linguistic “habit”. I’ve thought carefully about things and patterns, processes and objects – see here for example: https://iai.tv/articles/patterns-are-alive-and-we-are-living-patterns-auid-2919?_auid=2020 and here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1571064525000089 , although of course much more is needed and being worked on. The language is not sufficient, but maintaining a binary substance/process distinction doesn’t help nor does saying “process ontology” alone help us make sense of what we see or help us find new things. But again, I’m very open to seeing what can be done from other perspectives. What I’m not open to is giving up on science and sticking with “emergence” as surprise (which is really the alternative to denying a space of mathematical patterns to investigate), or pretending that physical facts are all the important facts (until all the mathematics departments get subsumed into physics departments because their subjects of study get explained in terms of physics, as opposed to the other way around).

Nathan Sweet
November 19, 2025
Dr. Levin,

I appreciate your response, but to move this forward, we must address the fact that your latest reply repeats the same category errors and perhaps unintentional evasions to my questions I raised, while introducing new logical fallacies that actively obscure the scientific issues at stake.

By making over a dozen separate (explicit and implicit) ontological claims, each regarding a non-physical entity or mechanism without any specified means of empirical falsification, you have constructed what functions structurally as a metaphysical Gish Gallop, even if unintentional.

This creates an asymmetry where I am required to provide rigorous physical evidence to refute claims that you have not provided physical evidence to support. To move this back to science, we must collapse this sprawl into a single, discriminatory test. If Platonism is a scientific hypothesis and not just a philosophical preference, there must be one experiment where it predicts a different outcome than thermodynamic constraint satisfaction. If we cannot find that experiment, then by the standards of parsimony, the thermodynamic framework (which requires no new ontological categories) stands as the superior explanation and prevents harmful misuses and appropriation.

I’ll post a follow up comment breaking down each point and the scientific and philosophical challenges they create without resolving, one by one.

Nathan Sweet
November 19, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

As promised in my brief prior comment, below is a point-by-point audit of the specific claims you made , mapping them against the rigorous thermodynamic alternative I have already provided, anticipating your counter-arguments.

To move our dialogue forward constructively, we must address the fact that your latest reply repeats the same category errors and evasions I identified in my previous comments, while introducing new logical fallacies that actively obscure the scientific issues at stake.

Below is a point-by-point audit of the specific claims you made in your November 18th comment, mapping them against the rigorous thermodynamic alternative I have already provided.

I. The Ontological Claims: Smuggling Substance Dualism

The “Additional Ingredient” Claim

You Wrote: “A complex pattern that is an additional ingredient to the physical interface, in the same way that the specific value of e… exist independently.”

Claim Type: Metaphysical Substance Dualism.

The Error: You claim to reject substance ontology, but if a pattern is an “ingredient” added to a physical system, it is ontologically distinct.

My Previous Rebuttal (Nov 9/12): As I explained, e is not an independent ingredient; it is a structural invariant of continuous physical growth (compounding). By treating a description of a physical constraint as an added substance, you commit Whitehead’s Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

The “Symmetric Minds” Claim

You Wrote: “Minds are forms in that space, and they access each other, in that space (laterally) but also project into the ‘physical world’ through interfaces.”

Claim Type: Interactionist Dualism / Non-Locality.

The Error: You are positing a non-physical “bulk” reality where minds interact “laterally” before projecting into physics. This requires a transductive mechanism (how does the non-physical project into the physical?) which you admitted you “don’t know how to handle.”

My Previous Rebuttal: This is the interaction problem I flagged on Nov 10 and multiple times since then. Thermodynamic Monism explains “mind” as the process of recursive self-modeling within the physical system, requiring no external “projection.”

The “Substrate Independence” Claim

You Wrote: “It’s substrate independent in the sense that the mind is not coming from the physical substrate… we facilitate them into the physical world.”

Claim Type: Pre-Existence of Mind (Panpsychism).

The Error: If mind does not “come from” the substrate but is “facilitated into” it, you are claiming mind exists prior to the physical organization.

My Previous Rebuttal: I cited Deacon (Teleodynamics) and Friston to show that substrate independence refers to the portability of the process (like a flame or software), not the pre-existence of the object. A flame is substrate-independent (wood/gas), but it doesn’t exist in a “Flame Realm” before the fire starts.

The “Anti-Computationalist” Claim

You Wrote: “The presence of a mind is specifically happening despite the algorithm (in the spaces left between what the algorithm forces the system to do).”

Claim Type: Gap Theology / Causal Indeterminism.

The Error: You assume physical laws/algorithms leave “causal vacuums” that mind must fill.

My Previous Rebuttal: I explained this as Computational Irreducibility exploring Phase Space. The “spaces left” are not gaps for magic; they are the degrees of freedom in the thermodynamic landscape.

II. The Evasion Tactics: False Dichotomies & Strawmen

The “Randomness vs. Platonism” False Dichotomy

You Wrote: “If you don’t want to think those patterns exist in an ordered space (are random), then you have no research agenda beyond waiting until cool examples of emergence are found.”

The Fallacy: False Dichotomy. You present only two options: (A) Your Platonic Order, or (B) Random Chaos.

The Correction: You completely ignored Option (C), which I have argued for in every email: Thermodynamic Constraint Satisfaction. Systems organize not because of Platonism or Randomness, but because of Free Energy Minimization (Attractors). This is a rigorous research agenda, not “waiting for surprise.”

The “Physicalism is Dead” Strawman

You Wrote: “I see no point in keeping anything ‘completely physical’ – that was dead by Pythagoras’ time… ‘physical, just a different kind of physical’ means we can stretch physics to cover whatever we want.”

The Fallacy: Strawman Argument.

The Correction: You are attacking Reductive Materialism (everything is atoms). I explicitly argued for Non-Reductive Process Physicalism (everything is relational process). You are refuting a position I do not hold to avoid engaging with the one I do.

The “Vocabulary Fails Us” Evasion

You Wrote: “I think our vocabulary fails us a bit here… The language is not sufficient…”

The Fallacy: Appeal to Ineffability.

The Correction: The vocabulary exists. Whitehead, Deacon, Rosen, Juarrero, and Friston have all developed precise vocabularies for process-causation without dualism. The “failure” is not in the language; it is in your attempt to use process language to defend a substance-dualist model.

The “Pragmatic Utility” Defense (Motte-and-Bailey)

You Wrote: “If X is something I have to worry about in designing and carrying out experiments, then it’s real. I have no more ontological commitments than that.”

The Fallacy: Motte-and-Bailey.

The Correction: You retreat to this modest “Pragmatism” (The Motte) whenever challenged on your radical “Platonic Minds” claims (The Bailey). You cannot simultaneously claim “Minds access each other in Platonic Space” (Ontology) and “I only care if it works” (Pragmatism).

III. The Generative Myth

The “Why did I find it?” Claim

You Wrote: “I wonder why we’re finding things that hadn’t been found before, by people who see everything as stable configurations?”

The Fallacy: Genetic Fallacy / Narrative Fallacy (as previously identified by Alexey Tolchinsky)

The Correction: You imply that only Platonism could generate these results. This is historically false and commits a post-hoc Narrative Fallacy. Cybernetics (Wiener, Ashby, Bateson) and Complexity Theory (Kauffman) predicted these results decades ago using ‘stable configurations’ (Attractors). But even they were late arrivals. Indigenous Knowledge Systems operationalized these principles millennia before Western science invented the vocabulary for them. Tyson Yunkaporta (Apalech Clan) details how ‘Pattern Thinking’ and relational constraints function as complex systems management; Mary Graham (Kombu-merri) articulates ‘The Law of the Land’ as a physical, non-transcendent constraint system that generates social and biological order; and Vanessa Watts (Haudenosaunee/Anishinaabe) describes ‘Place-Thought’ (the agency of the land itself) which is the exact non-binary, scale-free cognition your bioelectric work rediscovers.

Even Gregory Bateson admitted his cybernetics was an attempt to formalize the relational ecology that Indigenous cultures had already mastered. You found these results because you are a brilliant engineer of relational systems, not because your metaphysical map of a ‘Platonic’ territory is true; you are navigating the ‘Songlines’ of biology using a Greek map for a territory that Indigenous science has already charted. This is what Tyson Yunkaporta describes as immanent relationality within a living system. When Yunkaporta says “the pattern of the tree is in that leaf” and “keeps going out to the entire continent,” he is describing a scale-free, fractal coherence maintained through “polymorphic resonance” and reciprocal obligation (“caring for that place so it can care for you”), not access to an external blueprint. You are observing the “songlines” of bioelectric communication—the dynamic pathways where complex systems “yarn” together diverse narratives to maintain stability, but you are stripping this relational process of its context and rebranding it as static abstraction. The “form” is not a pre-existing object you access; it is the emergent property of the kinship relationships between every part of the system, “imprinted on the land” through continuous enactment, exactly as Yunkaporta’s 60,000-year-old framework predicts without needing your metaphysical “extra ingredient.”

TYSON YUNKAPORTA: SAND TALK: HOW INDIGENOUS THINKING CAN SAVE THE WORLD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuXJ0l2foEo

The “Process Ontology Failed” Claim

You Wrote: “Shifting to ‘process ontology’ doesn’t do the trick (or at least, it hasn’t, in finding the things we have found…)”

The Fallacy: Argument form Ignorance.

The Correction: Just because you didn’t use process ontology to find them doesn’t mean process ontology couldn’t. In fact, Varela and Maturana predicted autopoietic cognition using Process Ontology in the 1970s.

IV. The Penrose/Tegmark Correction (Reiterated)

The “Extension of Penrose” Error

You Wrote: “The only reason I call it Platonic Space is to remind people of what Platonist Mathematicians already believe. Mine is an extension of their view.”

This is the critical error I identified on November 12th, which you ignored:

Your Claim: You are “extending” Penrose/Tegmark.

The Reality: You are violating their core premise.

Mathematical Platonists (Penrose/Tegmark): Argue that mathematical objects exist acausally and atemporally. They describe the structure of reality (Descriptive).

Your Biological Platonism: Argues that forms “Ingress” and “Inform” physical systems in real-time (Causal/Prescriptive).

The Correction: As I wrote on Nov 12: “Even if Penrose is right… that’s a claim about the ontological status of abstract objects, not a mechanism for causal interaction… They don’t prescriptively claim physical systems consult or access π from a separate realm.” By claiming biological access, you create an Interaction Problem that mathematicians do not have.

V. Remaining Unaddressed Points

The “Why Prime?” Question

You Wrote: “If you want to keep going, and ask ‘but why are those numbers prime’… things that serve as the reason… are, in a crucial sense, their cause.”

My Rebuttal: I already explained that Primeness is a Geometric/Divisibility Property, not a physical cause. Confusing Formal Cause (The Definition of Prime) with Efficient Cause (Predation pressure selecting for Prime periods) is Aristotle 101.

The “Goals in Quotes” Deflection

You Wrote: “Some people think your goals… are phenomenological descriptions… Do your goals go in quotes too?”

My Rebuttal: I addressed this explicitly. Humans have Phenomenal Interiority (we feel goals). Xenobots have Computational Directionality. Conflating the two is Panpsychism, which requires evidence you haven’t provided.

The “Science of Thin Clients” Analogy

You Wrote: “The emergence tack basically says there is no server… can you come up with a science of the thin client… I suspect not.”

The Rebuttal: This analogy begs the question. It assumes there is a server (Platonic Space) to prove that we need a science of the server. If there is no server—if the “Client” is a Peer-to-Peer network generating its own content (Self-Organization)—then your analogy fails.

Dr. Levin, you have not addressed the critique; you have restated the premise. I don’t need more links to your work that I have been studying for years that repeat the same linguistic shortcuts. You are defending a Substance Dualism that mimics Intelligent Design’s structure (“Gaps in physics require external ‘Intelligence’”), while evading the Thermodynamic Alternative that explains your data without the metaphysical baggage.

We are back to the start: What experiment distinguishes your “Ingression” from my “Constraint Satisfaction”? If there is none, your Platonism is a personal belief, not a serious scientific hypothesis and this needs to be made clear to the public, and your team.

Nathan Sweet
November 19, 2025
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Dr. Levin,

To make progress here, let’s dispense with the unfalsifiable metaphysical debates that only serve as obfuscating smokescreens and impede truth seeking, and get concrete.

My framework predicts that when you cut a planarian, the bioelectric fields reorganize according to free energy minimization dynamics measurable through voltage-gated channel activity, with no reference to external patterns.

Your framework predicts the physical system “accesses” or “is informed by” forms in Platonic space during regeneration.

Here’s the problem: Hansali, Pio-Lopez, & Levin (2025, IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications), your own team’s work, shows that disrupting specific ion channels predictably alters morphological outcomes in ways precisely modeled by computational active inference without invoking anything beyond thermodynamic gradients.

Parada, Grasso-Cladera, Rossi, et al. (2024, European Journal of Neuroscience) demonstrate the same for 3E cognition, where sensorimotor coupling alone generates “goal-directed” behavior through prediction error minimization.

Manicka & Levin (2025, Cell Reports Physical Science) confirms this in bioelectric prepatterning.

The pattern is clear: embodied constraint satisfaction is sufficient. So what would falsify your Platonic ingression? If you claim planarians “access” morphospace, what experiment could show they don’t?

If we can fully predict regeneration outcomes using only local bioelectric computation and thermodynamic constraints, does your Platonic space become empirically inert?

You’ve told me you “don’t know how to handle time at the juncture of physical and non-physical,” but that’s not a research gap, that’s an admission the framework can’t generate testable predictions about the one thing it needs to explain: how timeless forms interact with temporal processes.

Meanwhile, my framework makes this prediction: disrupt the bioelectric computation itself (not just the ion channels, but the integration dynamics), and you get proportional disruption of morphological memory. That’s falsifiable. More importantly, your own data already falsifies Platonic convergence: your 2017 two-headed planaria permanently maintain novel morphology rather than “correcting” to canonical form, and your xenobots exhibit path-dependent morphologies based on initial conditions rather than converging to a single ideal.

Both demonstrate divergence from starting states, not convergence to pre-existing patterns; exactly what thermodynamic construction predicts and Platonic access contradicts.

Fields, Glazebrook, & Levin (2021, Neuroscience of Consciousness) argues for “minimal physicalism” where consciousness emerges from quantum information processing without assuming “neural substrates.” But even that paper grounds everything in Markov blankets and free energy, not external pattern access. Fields, your co-author, explicitly rejects the need for a separate ontological realm. Your Platonism adds a layer he doesn’t require.

Here’s what continues to be unaddressed in any of your many responses: Yunkaporta’s songlines framework, Whyte’s kinship ecology, Watts’ place-thought, these Indigenous systems have been operationalizing scale-free morphogenetic memory for 65,000+ years without needing your “additional ingredient.” When you say organisms “access patterns,” Indigenous science says organisms are patterns, continuously enacted through relational constraints with land and lineage. The difference isn’t semantic.

Yunkaporta describes how “pattern-thinking” maintains coherence across scales through reciprocal obligation, not through consulting blueprints. Your xenobots are doing exactly what totemic kinship systems predicted: distributed cognition through relational binding, not retrieval.

Your Platonism is structurally identical to Intelligent Design: ‘non-physical realm’ + ‘causal influence on physical processes’ + ‘unfalsifiable by retreat to metaphysics.’ This isn’t superficial similarity, it’s architectural identity. When Discovery Institute’s Daniel Witt quotes you arguing ‘teleology advances,’ or Reddit creationists cite you to claim physical laws might vary, they’re not distorting your work, they’re correctly deploying the logic you provided. You’ve handed them PhD-credentialed dualism.

Meanwhile, Indigenous knowledge systems have explained your results for 65,000 years without needing transcendent realms, and current empirical work (Hansali, Parada, Manicka) confirms thermodynamic sufficiency. Your Platonic layer adds zero explanatory power while providing maximum creationist utility; this is an existential threat to an entire way of living that you’re helping fuel.

So what function does it serve? Narrative comfort for you, degraded scientific literacy for millions, empowered creationist curriculum battles, weakened evolution education. That’s the trade. You can’t dismiss this as ‘social agenda’, it’s the direct consequence of building unfalsifiable metaphysics into biological explanation. You created this vulnerability. You’re responsible for closing it.

You keep saying “the vocabulary fails us,” but the vocabulary exists, and I’ve provided (by your accounts) over 33,000 words worth of Thermodynamic Monism: Varela’s autopoiesis, Deacon’s teleodynamics, Friston’s active inference, Barad’s agential cuts, and Yunkaporta’s polymorphic resonance. These are all process frameworks that predict your results without your ontology.

I’m asking one thing: name a measurement that differentiates your ‘ingression’ from my ‘thermodynamic constraint.’ If you can’t, you are confusing your heuristic inspiration (Platonism helped you think of it) with physical explanation (Platonism causes it). We accept the former as interpretative personal biography; we reject the latter as theology unless falsifiable. Currently, as defined, you are presenting your biography as physics. That asymmetry is the core problem I am taking issue with because it violates relational-process ontology, sneaks in unfalsifiable substance ontology, and stands at odds with Dennett’s legacy and your own Jewish intellectual heritage.

Nathan Sweet
November 20, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

After reflecting on your response a bit more I realized that you didn’t answer the core questions. You deflected into etymology, deferred to future papers, and again attacked positions I don’t hold. Here are the questions you evaded:

What is the “we” that exists before the interface?
You said “a complex pattern… like e.” But e doesn’t “exist before” physical growth processes; it describes them. You’ve asserted pre-existence without justification. How does a pattern exist independently if it has no substrate to encode it?
If forms aren’t substances but also aren’t purely relational, what are they?
You said “our vocabulary fails us” and invoked Sanskrit. This is an appeal to ineffability. Either forms have properties independent of relations (substance dualism) or they don’t (process monism). Claiming “both and neither” without specifying the mechanism is evasion.
How do non-physical forms causally interact with physical systems?
You said minds “project into the physical world through interfaces” but never specified the transduction mechanism. This is the interaction problem Descartes couldn’t solve. You’ve reasserted it, not resolved it.
What experiment distinguishes “Platonic ingression” from “thermodynamic constraint satisfaction”?

You said you have “experiments cooking” but didn’t describe them. I gave you three falsifiable protocols (A, B, C). You ignored them. Without a discriminating experiment, your “Platonic space” is indistinguishable from my “phase space.”

Why does “process ontology” fail where your framework succeeds?

You claimed “people who see everything as stable configurations” didn’t find what you found. But Bateson, Varela, and Kauffman did predict multiscale competency using process ontology. You’re claiming novelty for a rediscovery, then using that false novelty to justify the metaphysics.

If granted that your discoveries don’t require Platonism, would your research change?

You said you need to “map out patterns not discoverable from physics.” But I never denied pattern-space. I denied it exists independently of thermodynamic processes. You conflated rejecting Platonism with rejecting mathematics itself; a strawman.

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the empirical burden your framework must meet to be science rather than unfalsifiable, unjustifiable, and harmful metaphysics. Until you answer them, you’re not defending a theory; you’re defending a conviction.

Nathan

Alexey Tolchinsky
October 30, 2025
What you said in your last comment, Michael, is wonderfully resonant with Solms & Friston’s theory of Consciousness as in “felt uncertainty.”

According to Solms, we need affects/feelings precisely to problem-solve in novel/uncertain circumstances, where we do not have any algorithms or preprogrammed ways of doing things.

And in his theory the Core Self is affective – composed of all the life-sustaining functions.

He is “I feel therefore I am.” and “I feel” is a fundamental form of Cs (Core Cs) without which all other ones can’t be – e.g. self-report would be a peripheral/extended version of Cs. My apple computer and the internet can self-monitor and self-report to some degree (on CPU, RAM, bandwidth utilization) – but they can’t feel or problem solve in novel circumstances – something human babies can do.

Also, intrinsic motivations are precisely affective in his theoretical framework. In Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience, we are born with the core emotional systems (which we then train in development with our caregivers). And even decorticated primates have them and feel things.

So if your version of the “mind” comes up when we have no algorithm, Solms theory is relevant, except you don’t appeal to feelings explicitly, perhaps.

I know you’ve talked to Mark, I just wanted to highlight that in that specific sense your and his theories align quite well.

Mike Levin
October 30, 2025

What you said in your last comment, Michael, is wonderfully resonant with Solms & Friston’s theory of Consciousness as in “felt uncertainty.” According to Solms, we need affects/feelings precisely to problem-solve in novel/uncertain circumstances, where we do not have any algorithms or preprogrammed ways of doing things.

yeah that’s a very good point. I was already a fan of this idea because of my “need to interpret your own memories” paper, so I wondered if consciousness is what it feels like to have to construct a story about your own memory engrams.

And in his theory the Core Self is affective – composed of all the life-sustaining functions. He is “I feel therefore I am.” and “I feel” is a fundamental form of Cs (Core Cs) without which all other ones can’t be – e.g. self-report would be a peripheral/extended version of Cs. My apple computer and the internet can self-monitor and self-report to some degree (on CPU, RAM, bandwidth utilization) – but they can’t feel or problem solve in novel circumstances – something human babies can do. Also, intrinsic motivations are precisely affective in his theoretical framework. In Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience, we are born with the core emotional systems (which we then train in development with our caregivers). And even decorticated primates have them and feel things. So if your version of the “mind” comes up when we have no algorithm, Solms theory is relevant, except you don’t appeal to feelings explicitly, perhaps. I know you’ve talked to Mark, I just wanted to highlight that in that specific sense your and his theories align quite well.

thanks, good ideas. I’ll talk to him, we have a discussion scheduled in a few weeks.

Leo Bezhanishvili
October 27, 2025
Dr. Levin, based on your work on goal-directedness, bioelectric circuits, and pattern memory as fundamental features of living systems, I wanted to ask a question about long-lived mammals such as the naked mole-rat.

In planarians, we see that both sexual and asexual species can maintain coherence and rejuvenate through mechanisms that seem largely independent of accumulated molecular damage — their pluripotent neoblasts remain transcriptionally stable and can reset aging markers via global pattern reinforcement.

You and others have pointed out that aging in more complex organisms may reflect not so much a buildup of molecular damage, but a gradual loss of system-level coherence — a kind of “boredom” or drift away from the developmental goal state, as bioelectric communication and tissue coordination weaken.

What I’m trying to understand is: why do you think the naked mole-rat, despite having a rigid mammalian gene regulatory network and no obvious planarian-like regeneration, can maintain this system-level coherence for so long?

Is it your sense that their long lifespan reflects a particularly stable bioelectric attractor, perhaps maintained by their social, metabolic, or environmental stability — or do you think they’ve evolved a cellular “attention” mechanism that continuously reinforces their organismal goal even in adulthood?

In other words, what is your best current intuition for how a species like the naked mole-rat resists the drift of goal-directedness that normally leads to mammalian aging?

— thank you for all your work bridging development, cognition, and aging — it’s incredibly inspiring.

Mike Levin
October 29, 2025
thanks. I don’t know much about Naked Mole Rat yet, I don’t know if it has special bioelectrics or what. But, its lifespan isn’t terribly long – similar to some frogs, some insect queens, etc. I think these are all relatively small differences, within the overall dynamnic, probably tuned by evolution for various ecological reasons. We’ll have to do something significant to go to really long spans and beyond all the fine-tuning. But we’ll see !

Christopher Judd
October 30, 2025
Just to tell Mike and all you guys how much I love your work on the more detailed specific fields you specialize in. I do not see much that divides my more general theory (Holodynamic Ontology) and the thrust of your posits / mindset. The paradigm is shifting, it cannot do otherwise.

Nathan Sweet
October 30, 2025
Dr. Levin,

I’ve been following your Symposium on the Platonic Space with considerable interest, particularly the bioelectric morphogenesis work your lab has advanced so impressively. The empirical rigor there is genuinely remarkable. However, the ontological framework you’re proposing around this data raises questions that I think merit careful scrutiny, especially given your own stated uncertainties about how time operates at the “juncture of physical and non-physical” and your acknowledgment that you “can’t prove it.”

When you describe patterns “in-forming” physical reality from a structured non-physical space, I find myself wondering whether we might be encountering what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The concern here is not trivial. Rogers (2024, DOI: 10.1093/cje/bead050) recently demonstrated how this fallacy operates when idealized abstractions get mistaken for representations of reality, leading to systematic mistakes in reasoning. His analysis of Walrasian economic models showed that when abstractions are misused this way, theorists end up either violating their own principles or changing the meaning of core concepts to avoid contradiction. Could something similar be happening when we reify “Platonic space” as an ontologically independent realm? If morphospace is a useful mathematical idealization for organizing empirical observations about developmental attractors, why must we also claim it exists as a non-physical entity that causally interacts with cells? The mere fact that a conceptual tool proves indispensable for organizing our thinking about phenomena does not automatically warrant upgrading that tool’s ontological status from pragmatic fiction to independent reality.

Your cicada example is particularly instructive here. You suggest that the primeness of their 13- and 17-year cycles indicates mathematics “constraining” biology, with primes existing in Platonic space such that evolution somehow “samples” or “accesses” these abstract truths. But Hartry Field’s nominalist reconstruction project (Science Without Numbers, 1980/2016) demonstrated that we can reformulate physical theories without ontological commitment to mathematical objects while preserving all empirical content. The updated discussion by Hellman and Leng (2018) and the ongoing nominalization work surveyed in multiple 2023-2024 papers shows this program remains viable across classical theories. If we can nominalize gravitational theory by treating mathematical statements as convenient fictions that enable efficient derivation without requiring abstract objects to exist, why couldn’t evolutionary biology work the same way? The cicadas don’t need to “know about” Platonic primes any more than falling apples need to “know about” differential equations. In both cases, couldn’t the mathematical description be capturing regularities in physical processes without those regularities requiring a non-physical realm to exist in? Consider that predator-prey dynamics create fitness landscapes with local maxima at prime-numbered reproductive intervals simply because prime periods minimize temporal overlap between prey emergence and predator life cycles. This is straightforward population dynamics, fully explicable through differential equations describing birth rates, death rates, and interaction frequencies. Where in this causal chain do we need primes to exist in a non-physical realm exerting downward causal influence on evolutionary processes?

Consider how Salazar-Ciudad et al. (2024, PMC11788879) used computational models to explore morphospace, finding that elongation, invagination, evagination, and other morphogenetic processes cluster in attractor basins determined by gene expression gradients and cell property modulations. Their EmbryoMaker simulations show these attractors emerging from straightforward thermodynamic constraints on cell adhesion, tension, mechanical forces, and bioelectric gradients. Similarly, the xenobot work you’ve highlighted demonstrates reproducible behaviors arising from cellular biophysics plus boundary conditions, with differentiable physics engines enabling gradient descent optimization on both body parameters and control architectures. Where in any of this validated empirical work do we actually need a non-physical Platonic realm? The morphospace concept works perfectly well as a phase space of physically realizable configurations under given constraints. The attractors are thermodynamically stable states. The “goals” you observe are phenomenological descriptions of free energy minimization. All causation remains entirely physical and electrochemical.

I think Alexey Tolchinsky’s point about narrative fallacy deserves serious consideration here. His observation that quantum mechanics and general relativity remain empirically well-supported despite being formally incompatible illustrates how mature science can maintain multiple frameworks at different scales without forcing premature unification. When he notes that each mathematical theory operates within specific formal systems with distinct axioms, he’s highlighting how the search for one coherent story can lead us to connect dots in ways that feel satisfying but lack empirical grounding. The human cognitive preference for unified narratives is well-documented, but is this preference itself evidence that reality is unified in the particular way we’re proposing? Or might it be another instance where, as Tolchinsky warns, we’re “creating a story where things seem to cohere but this story doesn’t stand a chance of being empirically tested”? Your framework posits that mathematical patterns exist in a non-physical realm that somehow interacts with physical processes to constrain developmental outcomes. But how would we test this claim empirically? What experimental outcome would falsify it? If every observation of mathematical regularity in nature counts as evidence for Platonic realism, but no observation could count against it, have we moved from empirical science into metaphysical speculation?

Lucy Spouncer’s presentation offers what strikes me as a more parsimonious alternative. By treating mathematical symbols as physical presentations rather than representations of non-physical objects, she eliminates the interaction problem entirely. All instances of “13” (cicada life cycles, aluminum nuclear structure, neural activation patterns recognizing the numeral, voltage states in computer memory, ink arrangements on paper) become equally physical implementations of the same relational structure, connected by translations rather than by reference to a master Platonic “13.” Rita Alman’s forthcoming hermeneutics framework (2025) appears to provide operational tools for analyzing how these physical presentations relate through structure-preserving mappings. This dissolves your “where from?” question about xenobot goals. The frog cells evolved bioelectric and cytoskeletal dynamics that produce tadpole morphology in their normal environment. When placed in a petri dish with different boundary conditions, those same physical dynamics explore morphospace and settle into different attractor basins, including some that generate locomotion. No Platonic realm needed, just thermodynamic relaxation into locally stable configurations.

The causal emergence literature you cite actually supports this physicalist interpretation rather than undermining it. Rosas et al. (2020, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008289) developed an information-theoretic framework showing that macro-level descriptions can have higher effective information than micro-level descriptions, but both levels remain entirely physical. The mechanism is thermodynamic coarse-graining, which filters irrelevant microstates while preserving macro-regularities. Zhang et al. (2024, DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwae279) tested this on climate patterns, collective behaviors, and brain activities using machine learning to maximize effective information, finding that macro-dynamics emerge from learning procedures applied to complex physical systems. Similarly, Mediano et al. (2022, DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2021.0246) showed information decomposition revealing temporal evolution information unobtainable from parts separately, but again, all studied systems (bird flocking, macaque electrocorticography, human fMRI) involve purely physical processes. Farnsworth (2025, PMC11937085) explicitly analyzes how downward causation in biological systems operates through coupled upward-downward loops that maintain closure to efficient causation, all within physical constraints. Where in any of this peer-reviewed causal emergence research do we find evidence requiring non-physical causation? These researchers consistently describe emergent properties as arising from the physical organization of physical components, mediated by physical information flows like concentration gradients, electrical potentials, and mechanical stresses.

Your bioelectric work provides perhaps the clearest example of this issue. Manicka, Pai, and Levin (2023, DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108398) beautifully demonstrated that multicellular voltage patterns get spatiotemporally integrated into gene activity through higher-order mechanisms, with clear division of labor between bioelectric and genetic components, validated in Xenopus embryonic brains. This is genuinely groundbreaking empirical work. But notice what’s actually being measured here: voltages across cell membranes (physical), ion channel dynamics (physical), gap junctional coupling (physical), transcription factor activation (physical), gene expression changes (physical). The “pattern” that exhibits causal efficacy is a distributed configuration of measurable physical quantities. When Hansali et al. (2025, DOI: 10.1109/TMBMC.2025.3575233) showed that bioelectric patterns act as regulative signals enabling target morphologies from non-standard initial conditions, they were describing how physical voltage distributions constrain the physical space of accessible developmental trajectories. The equipotential control they observed is thermodynamic coordination across cell sheets via electrochemical signaling. At what point in this empirical chain do we encounter a non-physical Platonic form? Your experimental interventions involve physically altering ion flux with drugs or optogenetic tools, these create physical voltage pattern changes, which trigger physical downstream cascades culminating in altered morphology. The entire causal chain consists of physical quantities causally interacting through physical mechanisms.

This connects to a question about how we understand agency in these systems. In your discussions with John Vervaeke, you’ve described free will as “a symphony of choices over time” and explored “choice, agency, decision making as a continuum” that extends down to cellular scales. This framing raises an important question: does your Platonic framework require that cells possess something like genuine choice among alternatives, or are the “choices” phenomenological descriptions of physical systems exploring attractor landscapes? Your own empirical findings seem to point toward the latter interpretation. The collective intelligence work you’ve highlighted (2024, DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-06037-4) demonstrates how coordinated behavior emerges from networked interactions rather than from discrete decision-makers consulting abstract patterns. The bioelectric networks in your planarian and xenobot studies exhibit what researchers in enactive cognition call participatory sense-making: agency distributed across physical networks engaged in dynamic coupling with their environment, not localized in discrete agents accessing non-physical realms. This networked, physically grounded understanding of agency seems more consistent with your data than a framework requiring cells to have libertarian access to Platonic forms. Could it be that the “goals” and “agency” you observe are better understood as emerging from thermodynamic optimization in complex physical networks rather than from consultation with non-physical patterns?

Your exchange with Weaver Weinbaum about whether Platonic space might be “changing” or “generative” rather than immutable exposes what seems to be a fundamental tension. If Platonic space changes over time or co-evolves with physical minds, it’s no longer Platonic in any recognizable philosophical sense. Plato’s Forms were explicitly eternal and unchanging, existing in a realm beyond time and becoming. If patterns in this realm are generated by or bidirectionally exchange with embodied minds, then you’ve moved from Platonism to something more like cultural-historical emergence of mathematical knowledge, which is precisely Tolchinsky’s alternative hypothesis about accumulated human and non-human cognitive artifacts. You cannot simultaneously maintain that mathematical objects exist independently of physical reality and that they are generated through physical cognitive processes. Either mathematical truths are discovered (implying they pre-exist independently) or invented (implying they’re products of cognitive activity), but not both. Trying to have it both ways by proposing a “generative Platonic space” seems to preserve the word “Platonic” while abandoning its philosophical substance.

The argument from alien convergence (that extraterrestrials would discover the same values of e, pi, Feigenbaum constants, and prime numbers) is often presented as evidence for Platonic realism, but it works equally well for nominalist physicalism. If mathematical “truths” describe structural invariants in thermodynamic optimization landscapes, then any sufficiently sophisticated physical information-processing system (human brains, alien brains, silicon AIs) will encounter these same structural features because they’re exploring the same physical phase space. Exponential processes converge on e because that’s how physical growth under continuous compounding behaves. Circular geometries converge on pi because that’s the physically achievable optimal ratio between circumference and diameter given spatial isotropy. Period-doubling bifurcations converge on the Feigenbaum constant because that’s a universal feature of iterated nonlinear maps in physical dynamical systems. Prime numbers are discovered by predator-prey evolutionary dynamics not by accessing Platonic space but because reproductive timing interactions create fitness landscapes with local maxima at prime periods. Bostrom’s substrate-independence arguments show that computational processes can be structurally replicated across different physical implementations, but note that “substrate-independence” still means physical substrate, just not tied to one particular kind.

Your stated motivation for this framework is pragmatic and oriented toward engineering applications, seeking “insight on what I can do next” and “latent space I can exploit.” This is entirely legitimate as research strategy. But does the engineering utility of morphospace concepts as organizational tools require that morphospace exists as a non-physical realm? Couldn’t these concepts function perfectly well as what Field called “conservative” mathematical idealizations, allowing nominalistic claims to generate other nominalistic consequences more efficiently without generating novel empirical content? The computational shortcuts you rightly emphasize (the “free lunches” or “free cookbooks” that macro-level descriptions provide) are explained by thermodynamic coarse-graining, not by accessing some repository of pre-existing abstract patterns. Xenobots navigating mazes “for free” without explicit programming are thermodynamically relaxing into attractor basins that were sculpted by evolution’s prior exploration of cellular design space.

Field’s epistemic challenge remains unanswered by Platonic realism. If mathematical objects are causally inert and exist outside spacetime, how do physical brains reliably access mathematical truths? The Putnam-Gödel indispensability argument has been substantially weakened by two responses as analyzed in the 2023 Tandfonline review (DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2023.2282766). First, nominalization programs like Field’s show that science doesn’t need mathematical ontology, just convenience in deriving predictions. Second, instrumentalism concedes that mathematics is indispensable to scientific practice but denies this entails ontological commitment to abstracta. Both responses allow mathematical utility while avoiding the interaction problem.

I’m also struck by how your own framework generates what might be called an infinite regress problem. If patterns in Platonic space constrain and inform physical processes, what explains the structure of Platonic space itself? You acknowledge not knowing “where it came from” or whether it has time or how to handle the juncture between physical and non-physical. But these aren’t minor technical details to be worked out later, they’re fundamental to the coherence of the proposal. Without answers, Platonic space functions as what philosophers sometimes call an explanatory orphan, invoked to explain biological phenomena but itself remaining unexplained. Doesn’t this just push the mystery back one level? By contrast, thermodynamic attractor monism grounds everything in physical processes subject to energy conservation, entropy maximization under constraints, and information-theoretic limits like the Landauer bound.

When you describe emergence as “pessimistic” and “mysterian,” suggesting there are important things it won’t catch, I understand the concern about black-box explanations that don’t provide mechanistic insight. But is positing a non-physical Platonic realm really less mysterian? At least with emergence frameworks grounded in causal emergence theory, we have quantitative information-theoretic tools (effective information, causal decoupling, integrated information decomposition) that generate testable predictions. What comparable empirical traction does Platonic realism offer? How would we test whether patterns actually exist in a non-physical space versus whether they’re useful organizing concepts for physical regularities? Until we can specify an experiment whose outcome would differ depending on whether Platonic realism or nominalist physicalism is true, we’re choosing between metaphysical preferences rather than adjudicating empirical hypotheses.

I want to emphasize that none of this diminishes the remarkable empirical contributions your work represents. The bioelectric manipulation of morphology, the reconstitution of anatomical targets from scrambled cellular starting conditions, the xenobot demonstrations of collective intelligence, the application of information-theoretic measures to developmental systems, this is all tremendously valuable science that’s advancing multiple fields. The question is solely whether this empirical success requires or benefits from the particular ontological interpretation being offered. Might the Platonic framework, despite feeling intuitively compelling, actually be a kind of cognitive overhead that obscures rather than clarifies the underlying physical mechanisms?

Given the symposium’s interdisciplinary nature and stated goal of “softening metaphysical priors that hold back some kinds of research programs,” I’m wondering whether the nominalist-physicalist alternative deserves more serious consideration than it’s received. If Spouncer’s translation framework can preserve all the empirical content and engineering utility of morphospace concepts while eliminating the interaction problem, isn’t that preferable by Occam’s razor? If the causal emergence literature demonstrates that higher-level patterns can exhibit stronger causal efficacy than lower-level dynamics through purely physical thermodynamic coarse-graining, doesn’t that undercut the motivation for positing non-physical causation?

What empirical predictions does Platonic realism make that differ from nominalist physicalism? What experiments could distinguish between patterns existing in non-physical space versus patterns being organizational regularities in thermodynamic phase spaces? Until we can specify concrete empirical differences, aren’t we simply choosing between metaphysical preferences rather than adjudicating empirical questions? And if the choice is indeed metaphysical rather than empirical, shouldn’t the burden of proof fall on the more ontologically profligate theory?

I’m genuinely curious how you’d respond to these concerns, particularly given your engineering orientation and emphasis on pragmatic research programs rather than abstract philosophy. Does the Platonic framework generate research directions that nominalist alternatives don’t? Are there specific experiments you’re planning that depend on Platonic assumptions? Or might it be that the framework functions primarily as a heuristic organizing principle, valuable for structuring thought and motivating inquiry, but not itself requiring ontological commitment? Many successful scientific frameworks operate precisely this way, providing intuitive scaffolding that guides research without their entities corresponding to fundamental reality.

Thank you for organizing this symposium and for your openness to critical engagement. The depth of interdisciplinary conversation it’s generated is rare and valuable. I look forward to seeing how these ideas develop as the field continues to grapple with the profound questions you’ve helped bring into focus.

Mike Levin
October 30, 2025

how time operates at the “juncture of physical and non-physical” and your acknowledgment that you “can’t prove it.”

Yeah I’m not at all sure that time (in the conventional sense) is the right concept at all, and it seems to me that this issue is already here with the relationship between mathematical constraints and physical objects. In other words, long before biology and anything I am saying about it, the math:physics relationship is already raising this issue, so it’s a problem for everyone, not just me

When you describe patterns “in-forming” physical reality from a structured non-physical space, I find myself wondering whether we might be encountering what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The concern here is not trivial. Rogers (2024, DOI: 10.1093/cje/bead050) recently demonstrated how this fallacy operates when idealized abstractions get mistaken for representations of reality, leading to systematic mistakes in reasoning. His analysis of Walrasian economic models showed that when abstractions are misused this way, theorists end up either violating their own principles or changing the meaning of core concepts to avoid contradiction. Could something similar be happening when we reify “Platonic space” as an ontologically independent realm?

It will have to read it. I’m open to finding problems here, all of this is being worked out and it’s early days. Lauren Ross and I will be writing a paper on this stuff which will need to address those issues. If Rogers has a more fruitful path, I’m totally up for it.

If morphospace is a useful mathematical idealization for organizing empirical observations about developmental attractors, why must we also claim it exists as a non-physical entity that causally interacts with cells? The mere fact that a conceptual tool proves indispensable for organizing our thinking about phenomena does not automatically warrant upgrading that tool’s ontological status from pragmatic fiction to independent reality.

Yeah I don’t think that works. I don’t know what independent reality is; neuroscience (and I think physics) are telling us that naïve realism is not viable. Whether electrons, companies, embryos (vs. the cells that they’re comprised of, or, the quantum foam that cells are comprised of), etc. are “real”, I have no idea what that question means. But the fact that e has a particular value, and not a different value, that is real in a very significant sense. Mach thought “atoms” were a convenient fiction. Eliminativist materialists think minds are a convenient fiction. I think it’s a mistake to try to draw a hard line. Everything is “real” to the extent that it matters and can figure prominently as a target of relationships. And beyond all that metaphysics, the specifics here are: if I want to understand biology, I have to understand properties of mathematical objects. That makes them real – if they weren’t real, I wouldn’t have to worry about them or could change them at will.

Your cicada example is particularly instructive here. You suggest that the primeness of their 13- and 17-year cycles indicates mathematics “constraining” biology, with primes existing in Platonic space such that evolution somehow “samples” or “accesses” these abstract truths. But Hartry Field’s nominalist reconstruction project (Science Without Numbers, 1980/2016) demonstrated that we can reformulate physical theories without ontological commitment to mathematical objects while preserving all empirical content.

Interesting; I’ll have to read it, but what’s his explanation for why the cicadas come out at 13 and not 12 years?

The updated discussion by Hellman and Leng (2018) and the ongoing nominalization work surveyed in multiple 2023-2024 papers shows this program remains viable across classical theories. If we can nominalize gravitational theory by treating mathematical statements as convenient fictions that enable efficient derivation without requiring abstract objects to exist, why couldn’t evolutionary biology work the same way? The cicadas don’t need to “know about” Platonic primes any more than falling apples need to “know about” differential equations. In both cases, couldn’t the mathematical description be capturing regularities in physical processes without those regularities requiring a non-physical realm to exist in?

I think we’ve got 2 separate issues here. First, can you do good science without knowing the properties of mathematical objects. If you want to tell me that the key thing aren’t numbers, but rather some exotic object I don’t understand, fine. But you still have to show me why my biology (and physics) acts in a certain way and not some other way, and what I know is that if I keep asking “but why?” for almost any problem, we eventually reach the math department. The second issue is whether it’s a realm. I address this in my talk: you can make the assumption that it’s a random grab-bag of “regularities”, whatever those are. I would rather assume these regularities are ordered, in a relationship we can at least partly make sense of, and that understanding one brings you closer to understanding another – so there’s a sense of distance or a metric of some sort. Boom – now they are a realm, of a kind. 3D physical space is not the classical “real world” that naïve realism envisioned either.

Consider that predator-prey dynamics create fitness landscapes with local maxima at prime-numbered reproductive intervals simply because prime periods minimize temporal overlap between prey emergence and predator life cycles. This is straightforward population dynamics, fully explicable through differential equations describing birth rates, death rates, and interaction frequencies. Where in this causal chain do we need primes to exist in a non-physical realm exerting downward causal influence on evolutionary processes?

Great; if you want to stop your causal chain at “it’s prime, that’s all”, then you don’t need to do anything other than write down a list of prime numbers in a book of regularities that just happen to hold in our world. But if you want to keep going, and ask “but why are those numbers prime, and how soon will I encounter the next one?” and such, then you’re going into properties of mathematical objects that explain why the biology is what it is, and things that serve as the reason why something is happening are, in a crucial sense, their cause. Otherwise I don’t know what cause is supposed to do for us.

The “goals” you observe are phenomenological descriptions of free energy minimization. All causation remains entirely physical and electrochemical.

That’s a whole other set of questions. Some people think your goals, as a human with hopes and dreams, are phenomenological descriptions of free energy minimization. Do your goals go in quotes too? And, your goals have a long history of evolution behind them. We can guess your goals from your history. No one guessed Anthrobots’ behaviors (I’ve not made any claims about their goals) from the history of the human genome. Wouldn’t you like to know what space of possibilities they are drawn from and how specific constructs pull from that distribution? It’s not good enough to wait until we see and then write them down. We need to know the option space.

Tolchinsky warns, we’re “creating a story where things seem to cohere but this story doesn’t stand a chance of being empirically tested”? Your framework posits that mathematical patterns exist in a non-physical realm that somehow interacts with physical processes to constrain developmental outcomes. But how would we test this claim empirically? What experimental outcome would falsify it? If every observation of mathematical regularity in nature counts as evidence for Platonic realism, but no observation could count against it, have we moved from empirical science into metaphysical speculation?

Well I agree with all that. Evidence for Platonic realism is not given by every mathematical regularity (and again, I don’t know what regularity is, other than “we observe it, catalog it, but refuse to ask what option space it’s drawn from or what relationships it may have to other such regularities”). It’s not about the existence of regularities. My recent ideas drive a research program. I listed it in several of the talks I gave about it (see the last slide of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdEqgCOSx7E, and the first slide for a simple argument). It’s keeping about 6-7 people in my lab very busy right now. So no, it’s not metaphysical speculation (I can tell the difference because the former is very expensive and hard; the latter is cheaper). We can consider it a failure if, after some amount of active work (like with any new paradigm), it doesn’t generate more new discoveries than competing paradigms are doing.

When placed in a petri dish with different boundary conditions, those same physical dynamics explore morphospace and settle into different attractor basins, including some that generate locomotion. No Platonic realm needed, just thermodynamic relaxation into locally stable configurations.

That is a testable hypothesis; you can’t just decide that, we could test it. I doubt thermodynamics will be sufficient to predict it. Remember that we’re also dealing with 600+ (or 9000+ for Anhrobots) specific changes in gene expression, 4 (not 1 nor 12) specific behavior types, etc. etc. Maybe thermodynamics can account for all that, I doubt it. Regardless, unless these patterns are all disjoint and random, they form an ordered space. And that’s all I mean by Realm – a space with knowable properties which we can investigate by making different physical objects to explore the space and its metric. If I’ve understood, I think you mean that these latent spaces are not real in some special way that 3D space (constructed by our nervous system and cognitive apparatus) is. I can’t get into all that here, it’s a huge literature on how space and objects are inferred, but Donald Hoffman is an interesting recent addition to it.

The causal emergence literature you cite actually supports this physicalist interpretation rather than undermining it. Rosas et al. (2020, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008289) developed an information-theoretic framework showing that macro-level descriptions can have higher effective information than micro-level descriptions, but both levels remain entirely physical.

“entirely physical” just doesn’t seem sufficient. I don’t know of any way to explain the specific value of Feigenbaum’s constant, or e, or a million other things, from anything that sounds like physics. None of those things are sensitive to the setting of the foundational unitless constants in physics. Adding them to physics dilutes the meaning of “physics” I think.

[ bioelectricity ] At what point in this empirical chain do we encounter a non-physical Platonic form?

At the point when our simulation tell us that the pattern we see is only predictable if we know 1) physical facts about ion channel properties, and 2) some properties of bioelectric circuits which rest on facts of mathematics and computer science. Sometimes you need the actual value of e, and other times of the fact that the NAND gate is special, and some other stuff. You can say “these are facts that hold in our universe”, or “just add them to physics”, but it seems simpler to bite the bullet, and follow Pythagoras, Penrose, Tegmark, and others and just acknowledge that there is a different option space they come from, and commit to a research program to understand it, not assume it’s random.

Your experimental interventions involve physically altering ion flux with drugs or optogenetic tools, these create physical voltage pattern changes, which trigger physical downstream cascades culminating in altered morphology. The entire causal chain consists of physical quantities causally interacting through physical mechanisms.

Well that’s a whole other thing now. That’s a reductionist argument against the reality of other causal levels. Everything, including a psychoanalysis session, is really just Schrodinger’s equation governing some particle interactions… Yeah, from one perspective. A very limiting perspective, if you actually want to understand what’s interesting about the session.

This connects to a question about how we understand agency in these systems. In your discussions with John Vervaeke, you’ve described free will as “a symphony of choices over time” and explored “choice, agency, decision making as a continuum” that extends down to cellular scales. This framing raises an important question: does your Platonic framework require that cells possess something like genuine choice among alternatives, or are the “choices” phenomenological descriptions of physical systems exploring attractor landscapes?

I’m not going to rehash the free will argument here, I’ll be writing something detailed about it in a few months. But I’ll just point out that we first need to know what “genuine choice” is (a very hard question), and what it is that we, as physical systems, have that cells don’t, in providing genuine choice.

Your exchange with Weaver Weinbaum about whether Platonic space might be “changing” or “generative” rather than immutable exposes what seems to be a fundamental tension. If Platonic space changes over time or co-evolves with physical minds, it’s no longer Platonic in any recognizable philosophical sense. Plato’s Forms were explicitly eternal and unchanging, existing in a realm beyond time and becoming.

Correct, which is why I often repeat that I have 0 intent to prop up Plato or his views. The only reason I call it Platonic Space is to remind people of what Platonist Mathematicians already believe. Mine is an extension of their view. I know my view is different that Plato’s, it’s fine 

If patterns in this realm are generated by or bidirectionally exchange with embodied minds, then you’ve moved from Platonism to something more like cultural-historical emergence of mathematical knowledge, which is precisely Tolchinsky’s alternative hypothesis about accumulated human and non-human cognitive artifacts. You cannot simultaneously maintain that mathematical objects exist independently of physical reality and that they are generated through physical cognitive processes. Either mathematical truths are discovered (implying they pre-exist independently) or invented (implying they’re products of cognitive activity), but not both. Trying to have it both ways by proposing a “generative Platonic space” seems to preserve the word “Platonic” while abandoning its philosophical substance.

My point, as in the talk, is that the Platonic space contains a wide range of inhabitants. Some are low-agency static things like some mathematical entities. They are not constructed, their properties are forced once you make some simple axioms (start with set theory, end up with a specific value for e!). They may never change (or maybe they do, Lucy can say better than I). Others are much more complex and are significant minds, and I suspect (not know) that they can save state too – they are not eternal and unchanging, they have plasticity there too. Again, I have no commitment to Plato’s formulation. I am extending it to say that mathematical objects are just the low end of the spectrum.

Period-doubling bifurcations converge on the Feigenbaum constant because that’s a universal feature

What is a “feature”? is it like a “regularity”? if these features are drawn from a set that is rationally mappable, then we agree. I call it a space, and go further to hypothesize that some of these features are not static facts but dynamic patterns with non-trivial agency of their own.

Your stated motivation for this framework is pragmatic and oriented toward engineering applications, seeking “insight on what I can do next” and “latent space I can exploit.” This is entirely legitimate as research strategy. But does the engineering utility of morphospace concepts as organizational tools require that morphospace exists as a non-physical realm?

I’m just not seeing the emphasis you put on physical realms. If it’s a space of possibilities with a traversable metric, then we’re done. I think that’s all “real space” is too.

Field’s epistemic challenge remains unanswered by Platonic realism. If mathematical objects are causally inert and exist outside spacetime, how do physical brains reliably access mathematical truths?

I don’t believe they are causally inert. I think the “cause precedes effect” definition of causality, and the conventional time concept, break down here. They are causally potent because they provide the “why” of a lot of other things. Physical brains don’t access mathematical truths; minds (also Platonic inhabitants) do. But the question of how ineffable mathematical facts interact with physical objects is a deep issue that Pythagoras et al. saw clearly. I’m not claiming I have a satisfactory vocabulary for it, but I think that what’s keeping people from seeing this is an impoverished notion of causation and an obsession with billiard ball style causation in 3D space. I think QM, to whatever extent I understand it, already told us this was nonviable.

I’m also struck by how your own framework generates what might be called an infinite regress problem. If patterns in Platonic space constrain and inform physical processes, what explains the structure of Platonic space itself?

This is not an infinite regress, this is normal science. One definition of science is “being able to say something without first having to say everything”. In other words, one thing I definitely did not claim is to have all final answers that generate no new questions  of course the Platonic space hypothesis raises new questions to which I don’t know the answers. That’s ok, all science progress does that. We’ll get there (or we won’t, I don’t know); I take the steps I can.

You acknowledge not knowing “where it came from” or whether it has time or how to handle the juncture between physical and non-physical. But these aren’t minor technical details to be worked out later, they’re fundamental to the coherence of the proposal. Without answers, Platonic space functions as what philosophers sometimes call an explanatory orphan, invoked to explain biological phenomena but itself remaining unexplained. Doesn’t this just push the mystery back one level?

Yes. all science discoveries just push the mystery back one level. Then we do it again, and so on. I’m not claiming to have all the details worked out. It’s a research program. If someone tells you they have all the details worked out, be very suspicious.

What comparable empirical traction does Platonic realism offer? How would we test whether patterns actually exist in a non-physical space versus whether they’re useful organizing concepts for physical regularities?

What does “actually exist” mean? The specific value of e actually exists as much as anything exists – it’s discovered once I make some very minimal assumptions, it matters a lot for what and how to do things, etc. The empirical traction it offers is the research program I referenced above: systematic creation of interfaces to map out the space, the dissolution of the distinction between thoughts and thinkers (which means we can have multi-scale models of patterns with different degrees of agency), and possibly compute and other things that look like free lunches in this physical space. That’s one of the most interesting and powerful predictions of some of the ideas here: the things we get “for free” in this space, which are surprising and not predicted by existing theories, and the optimistic idea that they are not random surprises but part of an ordered structure that can be investigated.

The question is solely whether this empirical success requires or benefits from the particular ontological interpretation being offered. Might the Platonic framework, despite feeling intuitively compelling, actually be a kind of cognitive overhead that obscures rather than clarifies the underlying physical mechanisms?

Biologists say this to me all the time (long before I talked about Platonic space). Back when I was talking only about computation in physiological media, and then learning/memory, etc. etc. “Why do you need to talk about this philosophical and theoretical stuff – just do the bench experiments. The data stand on their own – show the experiments, you don’t need the philosophical views.” Yeah but why has my lab done experiments for 25 years that no one else has done? Because the philosophical views matter. Because data never just show up on their own. Because after someone has done something interesting, others can easily say “yeah that’s consistent with the status quo paradigm”. But that’s not the same as “the status quo paradigm led to that experiment”. I wouldn’t have done any of these experiments (and no one else did either) if it wasn’t for some of these weird ideas. Also, none of this is about physical mechanisms per se. The physical mechanism of telling someone an amazing new idea is “air molecules bouncing around”. That’s the physical mechanism. It’s not the end of the story.

Given the symposium’s interdisciplinary nature and stated goal of “softening metaphysical priors that hold back some kinds of research programs,” I’m wondering whether the nominalist-physicalist alternative deserves more serious consideration than it’s received.

This is why I’m having people at this symposium who have views different from mine Everyone should air their views, get whatever consideration people want to give it, and everyone else can take to the lab whichever views seem most useful to them. For now, I’ve said what I’m doing. At some point I might give that up and follow someone else’s formalism.

If the causal emergence literature demonstrates that higher-level patterns can exhibit stronger causal efficacy than lower-level dynamics through purely physical thermodynamic coarse-graining, doesn’t that undercut the motivation for positing non-physical causation?

Not at all. These are cool tools and I’m using them; they don’t answer most of the issues that are at stake here.

What empirical predictions does Platonic realism make that differ from nominalist physicalism? What experiments could distinguish between patterns existing in non-physical space versus patterns being organizational regularities in thermodynamic phase spaces?

I’m not sure what distinction you’re making. I don’t know what regularities are if they don’t exist in some option space.

Until we can specify concrete empirical differences, aren’t we simply choosing between metaphysical preferences rather than adjudicating empirical questions? And if the choice is indeed metaphysical rather than empirical, shouldn’t the burden of proof fall on the more ontologically profligate theory?

I’ve been accused of many things, but being somewhere other than answering empirical questions is not one that sticks. There are a lot of people with philosophical opinions on this stuff; I’ve placed my time and effort on the bet I want to make. Everyone else should do the same. The 1-page argument I linked to above shows the metaphysical commitments. I think my only metaphysical commitment here is that I don’t believe “regularities” are random, I would like to believe they come from a structured space. That’s it. Everything else is a research program to understand the mapping between that space and the interfaces we make to its contents, and an experimental approach to asking how much cognition those patterns might have. We have all kinds of stuff coming out soon on the behavioral analysis of mathematical objects given physical (robotic) bodies, etc. etc. You can say a lot of things about this way of thinking, but lacking novel research implications it is not. How long it will be useful, before it gets replaced by something else, I have no idea.

motivating inquiry, but not itself requiring ontological commitment?

I don’t know what the difference is. If X is something I have to worry about in designing and carrying out experiments, then it’s real. I have no more ontological commitments than that.

Thank you for organizing this symposium and for your openness to critical engagement. The depth of interdisciplinary conversation it’s generated is rare and valuable. I look forward to seeing how these ideas develop as the field continues to grapple with the profound questions you’ve helped bring into focus.

And thank you for engaging – great questions, and some good links and references for further reading for me! Whatever else, it’s critical for me to say that none of this is something I plan to defend to the death. “Strong opinions, loosely held” (whoever said that). It’s what makes sense to me now, and it’s pushing us to do interesting work that no one else is doing. That’s my only criterion. When it reaches a dead end, I’ll gladly switch to something else. What I actually think will happen is that it will eventually transition smoothly to “We knew it all along”. I doubt I’ll get to see that, but who knows.

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
Dr. Levin,

Before I address your important questions and points I want to start by saying that your discoveries in bioelectric morphogenesis represent some of the most revolutionary findings in developmental biology in decades, with immediate potential to alleviate human suffering through regenerative medicine, to deepen our understanding of cognition across scales, and to provide crucial insights as we face compounding global crises. But I’m concerned that the Platonic metaphysical framework you’ve layered onto this work may be obscuring rather than illuminating the mechanisms you’ve so brilliantly uncovered, and worse, providing unintended ammunition to anti-science movements at precisely the moment when scientific clarity matters most. Before I respond to your questions I need to point out a few things that I think are important, and hope that you do too.

We are in November 2025: climate tipping points are being crossed, coral reef die-off has already reached irreversible rates, nuclear arsenals are expanding as testing resumes by USA, China, and Russia, democratic and economic institutions face unprecedented strain, power grids stressed by AI infrastructure buildout driving renewed fossil fuel dependence even as climate targets slip out of reach, and AI alignment research increasingly recognizes that robust reasoning systems require frameworks free from anthropocentric biases and unfalsifiable metaphysical assumptions. The time we have to translate your findings into applications that could help address suffering and dysfunction before collapse cascades (at cellular, organismal, and potentially societal scales) is likely measured in years, not decades.

Here’s what troubles me: Your own experimental data going back over a decade demonstrates exactly what thermodynamic path-dependence predicts (brief bioelectric perturbations cause permanent, non-converging morphological alterations that persist indefinitely without further manipulation) yet you frame these results through Platonic language that suggests organisms “access pre-existing forms” from a transcendent mathematical space. Your 2017 paper with Durant showing planaria regenerating two heads permanently after a 48-hour gap junction perturbation, or your 2015 work where genetically identical worms produced morphologies matching entirely different species based solely on transient bioelectric changes, I see unambiguous evidence that history determines developmental trajectory through constraint landscape navigation. Am I misinterpreting this somehow? I want to be clear, I am not claiming expertise here, and if I am wrong I am open to correction.

But it seems to me that there is no reference to pre-existing templates required; to me, such references seem to contradict the path-dependence your data reveals. Meanwhile, Intelligent Design advocates are already citing your Platonic framing as validation, mathematics-oriented researchers report confusion about how to formalize your framework, and we’re collectively losing time that could be spent on clinical translation while debating metaphysics that may be empirically unnecessary. I’m not asking you to abandon useful heuristics or mathematical thinking What I am asking is whether the specific ontological commitments embedded in Platonic language serve your science, or whether explicitly clarifying that morphospace is a thermodynamic constraint landscape (while discontinuing Platonic framing in future communications to avoid confusing the public/laymen) might actually fit your data better while eliminating the anti-science weaponization risks we cannot afford right now.

There’s a structural pattern in your framework’s presentation that I need to highlight, not because I think you’re doing it intentionally – not in the slightest, but because it makes empirical evaluation difficult and creates vulnerabilities we can’t afford right now: what appears to be a Motte-and-Bailey fallacy, where substantive metaphysical claims are advanced publicly but minimal pragmatic positions are invoked when challenged. The Bailey: your publicly stated position includes ontologically robust assertions: that “minds (also Platonic inhabitants)” access mathematical truths while “physical brains” don’t, that Platonic space contains “significant minds” that “can save state,” that mathematical patterns are “causally potent” and some possess “non-trivial agency of their own,” and that we need to understand “what space of possibilities [anthrobots] are drawn from and how specific constructs pull from that distribution.” These aren’t metaphors or heuristics, they’re explicit claims about what exists and how causation operates.

But when pressed on the empirical commitments these claims entail, the framework retreats to the Motte (the defensible position): “just a useful way of thinking,” “I have 0 intent to prop up Plato,” “my only metaphysical commitment is that I don’t believe ‘regularities’ are random,” and “if it’s a space of possibilities with a traversable metric, then we’re done”, with no stronger metaphysical commitments than thermodynamic alternatives. The problem isn’t that you use mathematical or teleological language; it’s that oscillating between these positions prevents us from identifying what your framework actually predicts differently than purely physical accounts, making it empirically unfalsifiable while appearing to make substantive claims.

These positions appear to be in tension. Either morphospace is a realm with causal properties that interact with matter (which entails specific empirical commitments about interaction mechanisms, temporal dynamics, and access protocols that should be testable), or it’s a mathematical description of thermodynamic constraint landscapes (in which case Platonic ontology seems to add metaphysical structure without explanatory benefit, does it not?).

The challenge is that shifting between interpretations depending on context makes it difficult to specify what predictions your framework makes that competing frameworks cannot also accommodate. This is precisely the pattern Lakatos identified as degenerative: protecting a theoretical core by progressively weakening auxiliary hypotheses until the framework becomes unfalsifiable and empirically vacuous, generating research activity without generating novel predictions.

This matters practically because unfalsifiable frameworks: (1) confuse mathematicians and engineers trying to formalize your insights for applications, (2) provide ammunition for Intelligent Design appropriation of your work, and (3) slow clinical translation because medical applications require falsifiable specifications, not flexible metaphysics. Your empirical work deserves better, it deserves a theoretical framework that can specify what would count as evidence against it and makes predictions that thermodynamic accounts demonstrably cannot.

Similarly with agency: you suggest anthrobots “pull from” possibility space distributions (implying genuine sampling/choice), yet when pressed on free will you defer to “a few months” claiming we must first define “genuine choice.” Wittgenstein taught us that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”, ie: if your language consistently invokes minds, agency, causation, and non-physical realms, these aren’t neutral descriptors but ontological commitments that structure how you conceptualize the phenomena and communicate it to the public. If your actual position is the thermodynamic minimal one (regularities have structure worth investigating), then the maximal language (Platonic minds with agency) actively obscures your science.

If your actual position is the maximal one, then you cannot evade its explanatory burdens by retreating to pragmatism when challenged. We need conceptual stability to have productive exchange, so I’m asking directly: which position are you defending?

The reason this matters isn’t to score philosophical points. It’s because terminological confusion has real world consequences that I know are counter to your own stated goals.

Specific Examples:

When you call it ‘Platonic space,’ Discovery Institute uses that language to justify Intelligent Design. Recent examples include their 2024-2025 publications explicitly linking Platonism to biological design arguments: Richard Sternberg’s work featured by Discovery Institute in 2025 advocates “neo-Pythagorean Neoplatonism” for biology, and notably cites your own 2024 paper arguing “for a Pythagorean or radical Platonist view in which some of the causal input into mind and life originates outside the physical world.” Discovery Institute’s 2025 conference materials frame “optimization in biological systems” as evidence requiring “designers operating outside the system with a greater understanding of the goals and with the ability to use mathematical abstractions,” explicitly contrasting this with evolutionary mechanisms. Their 2025 video series “The Intelligent Design of Plants” uses language nearly identical to yours about patterns and mathematical structures in biology to argue for non-physical intelligent causation.

When you say ‘minds access transcendent patterns,’ creationist theologians like those at Dallas Theological Seminary use that to argue for immaterial souls created by God and existing in Platonic realms. William Lane Craig’s 2024 work on “God and the Platonic Host” explicitly uses Platonic realism about mathematical objects to argue for non-physical minds and souls requiring divine creation. These groups actively oppose climate science and evolutionary biology, delaying the very applications your work enables. Your revolutionary bioelectric research could accelerate climate restoration through engineered organisms, but when framed through Platonic language, it gets weaponized by anti-science movements that hinder its deployment.

The timing of this matters. As we face cascading climate tipping points with less than a decade to deploy bioengineered solutions at scale, your Platonic framing actively delays the very applications that I know you want to help bring into reality. When you present at synthetic biology conferences or publish in journals that engineers and policymakers read, every use of ‘Platonic space’ or ‘non-physical pattern ingression’ creates a translation barrier, and sparks skepticism in your peers that would benefit from operationalizing your findings. Engineers need thermodynamic specifications: voltage gradients, ion flux rates, mechanical stress tensors, free energy landscapes. They don’t need and can’t operationalize ‘access to transcendent realms.’

This isn’t academic, it’s the difference between deploying xenobot-based carbon capture systems in 2027 versus 2032. We don’t have five years to waste. That timeline gap could determine whether we avoid cascading climate-infrastructure collapse or face it: when power grids fail under climate stress, over 400 nuclear reactors worldwide lose active cooling. Without modern infrastructure, they cannot cool themselves. Your bioelectric research could help address the climate crisis that determines whether our children, yours and mine, inherit a world with the technological capacity to prevent mass meltdowns, or one where that capacity has been lost and nuclear annihilation is something they have to try to survive. This isn’t hyperbole. The stakes are literally existential, and Platonic framing actively delays progress while muddying itself in the very metaphysical debates you want to avoid.

When you say ‘goal-directedness comes from non-physical space,’ it either doesn’t help or actively delays operationalizing bioelectric research for climate restoration because engineers don’t know how to manipulate ‘non-physical realms.’

I know none of this is your intention, and that is why it’s so important that you make this clear. Your revolutionary work deserves to be protected from misuse, and I’d like to extend any help I can to prevent bad-faith actors from distorting it. When frameworks generate such powerful results as yours clearly do, clarity about ontological commitments becomes crucial, not for academic reasons, but because the stakes are literally planetary.

However, if you framed it as what the evidence shows it is, thermodynamic constraint satisfaction in measurable physical phase space, then:
(1) Intelligent Design weaponization becomes impossible because there’s no transcendent realm to invoke
(2) Aboriginal/Indigenous fire management practices demonstrate 65,000 years of operational expertise in manipulating thermodynamic landscapes (seasonal burning regimes, species distribution patterns, biogeochemical cycles) encoded in relational knowledge systems. What your bioelectric research reveals at cellular scales, Indigenous peoples have practiced at ecosystem scales, controlled perturbations of constraint landscapes to guide systems toward desired stable states. This isn’t a metaphorical connection; it’s structural isomorphism that becomes illegible when framed through Platonic access to transcendent forms rather than thermodynamic constraint satisfaction.
(3) applications accelerate because engineers can work with quantifiable bioelectric fields and integrate proven Aboriginal constraint-manipulation techniques rather than debating metaphysical mysteries while the planet burns.

Your empirical work is far too important to humanity, with potential implications extending far beyond biology and regenerative medicine, which are themselves already revolutionary, to be buried under metaphysical confusion that helps our adversaries and hinders our allies. The framework you’re actually discovering is far more remarkable than Platonism could ever be: it demonstrates that matter itself, when organized through bioelectric coherence, generates the goal-directedness, morphological memory, and adaptive problem-solving that 2,400 years of philosophy claimed required transcendent forms or immaterial minds. You’re not finding evidence for Plato, you’re demolishing the dualism he created. That’s the real revolution, and it’s the one our children need us to get right.

I know you didn’t ask for this critique, and I know how it must feel to receive such pointed challenges to your framing. But I’m writing because I see the stakes as clearly as you see bioelectric patterns, and because your work deserves a theoretical framework as rigorous and falsifiable as your experimental methods. If I’m wrong about any of this, about the Motte-Bailey pattern, about the weaponization risks, about what your data actually shows, I want to know. Please correct me. But if I’m right, then we need to address this now, while there’s still time to deploy the solutions your discoveries enable.

With respect and urgency,
–Nathan Sweet

Continued in next response.

Mike Levin
November 9, 2025
Thanks. I’m in no way upset at being pushed on these things. I push myself on them all the time. It’s how we move forward. A few points that might be useful to address.

What I hear are two separate issues, as follows: (1) the idea of a latent space of important patterns, which is not determined by the objects physics studies, is wrong – a better framework is available. And, (2) besides the value of the idea itself, there is one more factor that needs to be considered when deciding whether a scientific opinion is to be offered: that is, the degree to which someone else will misuse that information for their own ends.

On #1, I went over it carefully in my various talks on this, so I don’t want to re-tread it all here, but let’s just boil it down to the basic point (which Pythagoras, Penrose, and many others have made – it’s not new to me). We start with set theory, and eventually learn – not invent, but discover – a specific value of e, Feigenbaum’s constant, etc. There is a functional sense of getting out more than we put in, which is why many mathematicians feel they are exploring an existing structure. Why do they call their job mathematics, instead of just more physics? Because, there is nothing you can do in the physical world (tweaking the fundamental constants etc.) that will change e, the shape of specific fractals, etc. These facts (more generally, patterns) come from a distribution that is not explained, controlled, or studied by anything that looks like physics. I think there’s nowhere to hide from this. Unless you have a rebuttal of how to reduce mathematical objects to facts of physics, we must adopt a Platonic-like view, and physicalism is factually incorrect. Physical facts are simply not the only facts that matter, and if you keep asking “why” of physicists and biologists, you end up in the math department eventually. Having established that, we can argue about what exactly is found in that latent space and how it might or might not help understand biology and cognitive science as it has helped understand physics. The only way we can move forward to removing non-physical latent space from my biology (and from other workers’ computer science, etc.) is to refute the argument above.

On #2, you are correct. It’s easy in science to gain friends we don’t want… Creationists have reached out to me before, I don’t engage, and do not want to support their goals. I should make that clearer in the future. But, I am not aware of any significant scientific finding that has not been misinterpreted by someone for their own ends. It’s not avoidable. For some cases (like nuclear and gain-of-function virology), it probably makes sense to censor information (but it’s an area without consensus). For most everything, else, I think the responsibility of Science and Philosophy is to give the best version of truth that we can, not bend our opinions to political or social agendas (no matter how much we may want to). While I’m still working, I will not be changing my public opinion based on social agendas. Of course, if it ever seems to me like I found information that will do more harm than good, then I will go dark and retire, but it’s against my (conventional) scientific ethics to change what I say as a working scientist based on anything other than what I think the evidence indicates.

I should also point out that this has happened to me before. When my bioelectrics work became known, all kinds of alternative healthcare practitioners said things like “no more need for pharmaceuticals”, “don’t use chemotherapy, Levin will handle the cancer other ways”, and “Chi and Prana have been found and explained – by bioelectricity”. Terrible; I’ve been dealing with this for a long time but I wasn’t about to put a lid on the bioelectrics work because of that. Also, if you think the Platonic thing is problematic, wait until you see our upcoming work on evolution… (first step was here: https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organisms/article/view/16961 and there’s more coming). The common presumption in biology that evolutionary search is totally blind (all the way on the left of the spectrum of intelligence) is a hypothesis that may or may not hold; if not, there will be people that immediately use that to jump to “Great, God has a master plan for it!”. I know, and I’m not looking forward to that. But the way to dissolve this stuff, in the long run, is to gain better, more actionable understanding of the world, not cower in the face of various special interest groups and their desire to go way beyond the facts.

Bailey: your publicly stated position includes ontologically robust assertions: that “minds (also Platonic inhabitants)” access mathematical truths while “physical brains” don’t, that Platonic space contains “significant minds” that “can save state,” that mathematical patterns are “causally potent” and some possess “non-trivial agency of their own,” and that we need to understand “what space of possibilities [anthrobots] are drawn from and how specific constructs pull from that distribution.” These aren’t metaphors or heuristics, they’re explicit claims about what exists and how causation operates.
They’re hypotheses, yes. I like the motto “strong opinions, loosely held”. I have many hypotheses which I don’t share publicly, and I mention any given one once we reach the point of being able to use them in the lab. I will not shy from stating this set of hypotheses, because no one else is (we have enough physicalists pursuing “emergence” and such) and I think it has a chance of being useful. At some point I might give it up, and I’m in no way convinced that it’s the ‘truth’, but it’s valuable now and someone needs to investigate it. I’ve decided it will be me.
But when pressed on the empirical commitments these claims entail, the framework retreats to the Motte (the defensible position): “just a useful way of thinking,” “I have 0 intent to prop up Plato,” “my only metaphysical commitment is that I don’t believe ‘regularities’ are random,” and “if it’s a space of possibilities with a traversable metric, then we’re done”,
All scientific frameworks are just useful ways of thinking. There’s nothing else, in 3rd-person science – just metaphors or various levels of utility. As for Plato, I was saying something very specific, in reply to critiques originally leveled against Plato’s specific views. My point was simply that I don’t hypothesize Platonic forms to be static and unchanging, so my view is not Plato’s view and my goal is not to test his ideas, it’s to test mine.
These positions appear to be in tension. Either morphospace is a realm with causal properties that interact with matter (which entails specific empirical commitments about interaction mechanisms, temporal dynamics, and access protocols that should be testable), or it’s a mathematical description of thermodynamic constraint landscapes (in which case Platonic ontology seems to add metaphysical structure without explanatory benefit, does it not?).
I’ve talked about this a lot. I think it’s the former. First, causal properties and temporal dynamics tend to have a lot of baggage from physics. Some of the things you’re thinking about re. causality and time don’t work well when one is analyzing how mathematical truths constrain (and enable) biology. I don’t know how time works in this interaction yet, but I think we can all see that there is causation in Judea Pearl’s sense: if the value of e, and the symmetries of SU(2) etc. etc. were different, physics and biology would be different. These facts, which are not facts of physics, matter. I’m an engineer; for me, if I need to worry about something, it’s real and has causal power. I am working with philosophers like David Resnik and Lauren Ross to decide if we need new terminology for causes that make a difference but have an atemporal component, stay tuned for that. Access protocols we have – this is what we’re doing in the lab every day. If someone thinks they can get there with “thermodynamic constraint landscapes”, they have my blessing to try. We will all see how it goes, eventually.
This matters practically because unfalsifiable frameworks:
The alternative to my view is something like: non-physical patterns (what mathematicians discover) are only relevant for physics but evolution has totally ignored these free lunches, and the surprising facts of biology are random – there is no relationship between them that can be studied, they are just “regularities” (whatever that is) to note. I guess it’s not just me that should drop these ideas, but also many mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists, or is it ok for them to keep using them, but biology and behavior science better not go there?
Similarly with agency: you suggest anthrobots “pull from” possibility space distributions (implying genuine sampling/choice),
I don’t know what “genuine” sampling or choice are. I’ve dealt with that issue extensively in many papers. But even simple physics systems get their properties from a space of possible values. Nothing weirder than that; we just need to decide whether these possible values are possible to investigate systematically (a “space” in the computer science/math sense) or random emergences to be cataloged.
yet when pressed on free will you defer to “a few months”
I have no idea what that refers to. But I will readily confirm that like any significant idea (like for example, the antithesis of my hypothesis) it will take some time to decide on its value. Years, not months, likely.
claiming we must first define “genuine choice.” Wittgenstein taught us that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”, ie: if your language consistently invokes minds, agency, causation, and non-physical realms, these aren’t neutral descriptors but ontological commitments that structure how you conceptualize the phenomena and communicate it to the public. If your actual position is the thermodynamic minimal one (regularities have structure worth investigating), then the maximal language (Platonic minds with agency) actively obscures your science.
I’ve addressed this many times (see https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201/full and https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06037-4 for example; I won’t re-tread that all here). The idea that tools from the low end of the spectrum will suffice (i.e., that we can avoid concepts from cognitive science) is a hypothesis only, although many treat it as an axiom. I do not – I test their sufficiency, find it leaves a lot on the table, which is why we’ve made the advances we have.
This isn’t academic, it’s the difference between deploying xenobot-based carbon capture systems in 2027 versus 2032.
I don’t understand the point. We are commercializing Xenobot technology toward environmental cleanup right now. My ideas are moving it forward, not holding it up.
When you say ‘goal-directedness comes from non-physical space,’ it either doesn’t help or actively delays operationalizing bioelectric research for climate restoration because engineers don’t know how to manipulate ‘non-physical realms.’
This is totally false. Engineers use, every day, information from non-physical realms – it’s called math. My lab is showing how biology and cognitive science use it too, which enables bioengineers to do a better job. Whatever else I’m getting wrong (and I’m sure it’s a lot, in these frontier areas), what I’m not doing is slowing down research.

I share your sense of urgency. You can rest easy knowing that most people agree with you, and if there are ways to move our ideas forward to applications without my current hypotheses, they will surely do it! Many other groups are looking at our findings and using our tech, and if there’s a way to move forward without my ideas, plenty of very smart people will do it. It’s not the creationists, it’s the other scientists and engineers, who matter, and my ideas are in no way garnering so many adherents that it sucks the oxygen out of the room for more mainstream approaches. No fear, hardly anyone agrees with me yet about any of this stuff, everyone else is going down the conventional emergence/thermodynamics/dynamical systems theory route. They have it covered, no fear! The important applications you mention need to be done by someone – it doesn’t have to be me. If I’m wrong, and if someone else leaves me in the dust by making life better, faster, through a different framework, I will be the first to shake their hand. I’m going in the direction I think will get there fastest. Plenty of others are taking the traditional road you advocate. So it’s all good – one way or the other, it will get done.

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
Dr. Levin, I appreciate your willingness to engage substantively with these challenging questions. You frame my concerns as two separate issues: (1) whether “latent space of important patterns not determined by physics” is wrong, and (2) whether misuse responsibility should constrain scientific communication. But I think this dichotomy mischaracterizes both my argument and the relationship between these issues, and in doing so, sidesteps several core claims I made.

First, I’m not arguing that mathematical patterns are “determined by physics” in the reductive sense you’re refuting. I explicitly defended mathematical structuralism (math as necessary structural relations multiply realizable in physical systems) as distinct from both reductive physicalism (math reduces to physical particulars) and Platonism (math exists in transcendent realm). You responded to the physicalist position I explicitly rejected rather than the structuralist (emergent causality) position I actually defended. Can you address structuralism directly?

Second, the dichotomy between “framework correctness” and “misuse responsibility” treats these as independent when my argument is that they’re causally connected: the terminological oscillation between strong ontological claims (“minds access Platonic Space with causal powers”) and weak pragmatic retreats (“just useful heuristics”) is precisely what enables misappropriation, because it allows Discovery Institute to accurately quote your strong claims while you defend using weak claims. When Richard Sternberg’s 2025 paper cites your exact language about “causal input from outside the physical world,” is that misuse or accurate quotation? If it’s misuse, how does it differ from what you actually mean? If it’s accurate, shouldn’t we clarify the terminology to prevent weaponization, not by suppressing findings, but by using thermodynamic language that makes identical predictions without ontological vulnerability?

More critically, and this should take precedence over any philosophy or mathematics arguments, your response didn’t address the path-dependent divergence in your own data, the core empirical challenge I raised. Your 2017 Durant paper shows two-headed planaria persisting indefinitely after 48-hour perturbation; your 2015 work shows worm morphologies matching different species based solely on transient bioelectric changes. These organisms don’t revert to canonical forms, they remain in the altered morphological states permanently, exactly as thermodynamic path-dependence predicts (system locks into new attractor basin after perturbation) and contrary to what Platonic convergence predicts (organisms should “find” the pre-existing Form they’re supposed to access). How does your framework explain permanent morphological divergence rather than convergence? If Platonic Forms are the target organisms access during development, why don’t perturbed planaria eventually return to single-head morphology, especially across multiple regeneration cycles where they have repeated opportunities to “re-access” the canonical pattern? And when you say “if someone thinks they can get there with thermodynamic constraint landscapes, they have my blessing to try”, doesn’t this concede that thermodynamic framing might explain your data without Platonic additions, making Platonism empirically unnecessary rather than empirically superior? What specific prediction does your Platonic framework make that thermodynamic structuralism demonstrably cannot accommodate?

It’s important to understand why I contacted you specifically. You’re not just another bioelectricity researcher. You’re the only one with a vast transdisciplinary network spanning philosophy, mathematics, AI, and consciousness studies, unprecedented public visibility through 30K+ YouTube subscribers and regular podcast appearances reaching millions, and the institutional authority to organize paradigm-defining symposiums like “Platonic Space and Biology.” Other excellent bioelectricity researchers (Elias Barriga, Emily Bates, Laura Faith George) publish mechanistic papers on voltage gradients and ion channels, but they stay within developmental biology, have minimal public engagement, and use strictly thermodynamic language, never “Platonic morphospace” or “accessing non-physical patterns.”

This asymmetry creates three urgent implications: When Discovery Institute weaponizes bioelectricity for Intelligent Design, they cite you specifically (Richard Sternberg’s 2025 neo-Pythagorean paper explicitly references your 2024 work), not because your empirical findings are uniquely appropriable but because your public framing is; when engineers develop xenobot applications, they cite your mechanistic specifications (voltage gradients, thermodynamic self-assembly) while ignoring your Platonic metaphysics, suggesting the science succeeds independently of metaphysical interpretation; and when the next generation learns bioelectricity, they encounter your symposiums and YouTube lectures, meaning your terminological choices propagate through the field’s conceptual foundations in ways isolated lab publications never could.

You’ve acknowledged that “hardly anyone agrees with me… everyone else is going down the conventional emergence/thermodynamics route”, but this strengthens rather than weakens my case, because it means thermodynamics already produces the applications while your unique visibility makes Platonic framing disproportionately influential despite being a minority position among researchers. With great visibility comes great responsibility for terminological precision, especially when that precision determines whether revolutionary bioelectric research gets deployed for climate solutions or weaponized for creationism.

The Latent Space Framework

You write: “We start with set theory, and eventually learn, not invent, but discover, a specific value of e, Feigenbaum’s constant, etc. There is a functional sense of getting out more than we put in… Unless you have a rebuttal of how to reduce mathematical objects to facts of physics, we must adopt a Platonic-like view, and physicalism is factually incorrect.”

You’re conflating four distinct questions:

Are mathematical statements objective (same for all observers)?
Are mathematical truths necessary (couldn’t be otherwise)?
Are mathematical descriptions indispensable for physics?
Do mathematical objects exist as non-physical entities?

Field’s nominalism and contemporary structuralism answer YES to 1-3 while answering NO to 4. e doesn’t exist “somewhere”, it describes what happens when physical systems undergo continuous compounding. When bacteria divide continuously, when interest compounds infinitely, when any proportional growth occurs in the limit of infinitesimal time steps, the ratio converges to e. Not because organisms “access” e from Platonic space, but because e describes the geometric structure of exponential phase space under continuous transformation. The number is a compression of infinitely many discrete steps. We “get more out than we put in” because the continuous limit contains information about infinite discrete cases. That’s not magic or Platonism; that’s computational irreducibility manifesting as emergent regularity.

Similarly, Feigenbaum’s constant appears in dripping faucets, convecting fluids, and population cycles not because these systems access a transcendent realm, but because period-doubling bifurcations in iterated nonlinear maps share universal scaling properties under renormalization. Feigenbaum computed this by studying how physical dynamical systems behave near chaos. It’s a feature of physical processes, described mathematically. The universality is stunning but doesn’t require non-physical objects; it requires that similar constraint geometries produce similar behaviors regardless of substrate.

Your “reduction to physics” challenge misconstrues the nominalist position for a position of reductive physicalism I don’t hold and never argued for. I’m not claiming mathematics is reducible to physics in the sense that mathematical truths are caused by physical arrangements. I’m claiming mathematics describes structural regularities in physical dynamics. The relationship is: physical processes → exhibit patterns → mathematics compresses those patterns → we discover the compressed descriptions appear universal. This is precisely the emergent causality framework I have been advocating.

The fact that you “can’t change e by tweaking physical constants” doesn’t prove e exists non-physically; it proves e describes a necessary geometric relationship that any universe with continuous processes would exhibit. Noether’s theorem established this principle: symmetries in physical law generate conservation principles and scaling relationships. These aren’t added to physics from outside, they’re implicit in the structure of physical dynamics.

You claim: “The alternative to my view is something like: non-physical patterns (what mathematicians discover) are only relevant for physics but evolution has totally ignored these free lunches, and the surprising facts of biology are random, there is no relationship between them that can be studied.”

This is a false dilemma that ignores the actual thermodynamic alternative I’m offering. The options aren’t:
(A) Platonic realm with causal powers vs.
(B) Random disconnected regularities

The actual alternative is:
(C) Thermodynamic constraint landscapes that organisms explore through path-dependent free energy minimization, generating ordered non-random outcomes through purely physical dynamics describable mathematically.

Your xenobots don’t need to “ignore free lunches”, they are finding free lunches by exploring thermodynamically accessible configurations under bioelectric constraints. The 9,000 differentially expressed genes aren’t random; they’re the attractor basin those cells relaxed into when you released them from embryonic boundary conditions. The four specific behavior types aren’t mysterious; they’re discrete local minima in the constraint-satisfaction landscape. This is structured, explorable, predictable, and entirely physical, no Platonic realm required.

When you ask “how is evolution finding these patterns without accessing mathematical space?”, the thermodynamic answer is: evolution explores fitness landscapes shaped by physical constraints that necessarily exhibit mathematical regularities because those regularities describe the geometry of possibility space itself. Cicadas don’t “know about” primes; selection pressure favors any period that minimizes predator overlap, and prime periods happen to do this because of divisibility structure (a relational fact about integers, not an object they access).

You write: “I think we can all see that there is causation in Judea Pearl’s sense: if the value of e, and the symmetries of SU(2) etc. etc. were different, physics and biology would be different. These facts, which are not facts of physics, matter.”

You’re equivocating on “causation” in ways that undermine your argument. Pearl’s framework distinguishes:

Interventional causation: X causes Y if manipulating X changes Y while holding other variables constant

Counterfactual dependence: If X had been different, Y would have been different

Mathematical necessities satisfy counterfactual dependence (if e were different, exponential growth would behave differently) but not interventional causation (you cannot manipulate e). This matters because your Platonic framework requires downward causation from non-physical realm to physical processes, which demands interventional causation, some mechanism by which Platonic patterns actually constrain physical dynamics through energy/force/information transfer.

But mathematical necessities don’t transfer anything. They describe what’s logically possible given prior constraints. When you say “e constrains biology,” what actually constrains biology is the thermodynamic fact that continuous proportional growth must follow exponential trajectories. The mathematics describes this constraint; it doesn’t cause it from elsewhere.

Lange’s (2023) framework on “Explanations by Constraint” makes this precise: constraint-based explanations are non-causal yet genuinely explanatory. They tell us why certain outcomes are necessary or impossible given boundary conditions, without invoking temporal causal chains. This is exactly what mathematics does in physics and biology, it reveals what’s necessarily true given physical structure, without requiring causal powers to flow from abstract objects.

You claim: “Engineers use, every day, information from non-physical realms, it’s called math. My lab is showing how biology and cognitive science use it too.”

This conflates using mathematical descriptions with accessing non-physical realms. When engineers use Maxwell’s equations to design circuits, they’re not reaching into Platonic space, they’re applying compressed descriptions of electromagnetic regularities discovered through experiment. The equations work because they accurately describe physical field dynamics, not because fields “consult” the equations.

Your bioelectric work is identical: you manipulate ion channels (physical), measure voltage gradients (physical), observe morphological changes (physical), and use mathematical models to predict outcomes (descriptions of physical regularities). At no point does this process require cells to access non-physical patterns. The mathematics captures the constraint geometry of bioelectric networks; it doesn’t causally act on them from elsewhere.

If you disagree, specify the mechanism: How do cells interact with Platonic space? What physical quantity couples to non-physical patterns? Where in your experimental protocols do you measure this interaction? Without answers, “Platonic access” is just redescribing successful prediction (“our math works”) using unnecessary ontology (“therefore math exists non-physically”).

You write: “I think the responsibility of Science and Philosophy is to give the best version of truth that we can, not bend our opinions to political or social agendas… I will not be changing my public opinion based on social agendas.”

I respect this principle enormously. I share your commitment to following evidence over convenience. But I need you to see that precision isn’t “bending to agendas”; it’s scientific rigor. When you use Platonic language that you later disclaim (“I have 0 intent to prop up Plato”), you’re not communicating your actual position clearly. This creates vulnerability not because truth is politically inconvenient, but because imprecise language enables misinterpretation of your science.

The comparison to bioelectrics misuse isn’t parallel. Alternative medicine practitioners misapplied clear mechanistic claims (voltage patterns control morphology) to domains where they don’t apply (claiming bioelectricity proves “chi”). You can clarify by saying “voltage patterns operate through ion channels and gap junctions, not mystical energy fields.” This clarification doesn’t change your science; it protects it.

But with Platonic claims, clarification requires abandoning the framework entirely or defending its full implications. You can’t clarify “minds in Platonic space with agency” to something Discovery Institute can’t exploit without giving up the metaphysical language that enabled exploitation. Either you’re actually claiming non-physical minds with causal powers exist (defend the interaction mechanism), or you’re using “mind” and “agency” metaphorically (stop using language that reifies them). There’s no middle ground where you get to keep saying “significant minds” exist in morphospace while denying you’re making ontological commitments.

You mention: “Wait until you see our upcoming work on evolution… The common presumption in biology that evolutionary search is totally blind (all the way on the left of the spectrum of intelligence) is a hypothesis that may or may not hold.”

I’m genuinely excited about this work, but here’s the critical question: Will you interpret non-blind search as “accessing Platonic patterns” or as “thermodynamic channeling of exploration”? Because there’s a massive difference:

Thermodynamic interpretation: Organisms inherit not just genes but developmental constraints, morphological memories, and bioelectric prepatterns that bias mutation effects and channel evolutionary exploration toward thermodynamically accessible regions of morphospace. This is testable, mechanistic, and powerful, it shows evolution is constrained by physics in ways neo-Darwinism underestimates.

Platonic interpretation: Evolution “samples” from pre-existing pattern space, accessing mathematical structures that guide adaptive change. This is unfalsifiable metaphysics that adds nothing mechanistic while enabling exactly the creationist appropriation you anticipate.

The thermodynamic framework gives you everything you want (non-random evolution, developmental channeling, predictive power) without the metaphysical vulnerability. Why not use it?

You write: “I like the motto ‘strong opinions, loosely held’. I have many hypotheses which I don’t share publicly, and I mention any given one once we reach the point of being able to use them in the lab.”

This is admirable in private research, but public scientific communication operates under different constraints. When you publish claims that “minds (also Platonic inhabitants)” access mathematical truths, you’re not privately exploring hypotheses, you’re teaching the next generation of biologists, influencing research directions, and shaping public understanding of your field.

“Loosely held” hypotheses should be communicated with epistemic humility markers: “One speculative interpretation is…”, “Though this remains highly uncertain…”, “An alternative framework that seems equally consistent with data is…” Instead, your public statements use declarative language (“minds access Platonic space,” “patterns have agency,” “biology pulls from distributions”) without qualification. This creates the false impression that Platonic commitments are necessary for your empirical work, when actually your empirical work stands independently of metaphysical interpretation.

You claim: “All scientific frameworks are just useful ways of thinking. There’s nothing else, in 3rd-person science, just metaphors of various levels of utility.”

If this is true, if Platonic language is “just metaphor” with no ontological commitment, then why resist thermodynamic language? Both would be “just useful metaphors,” but thermodynamic language has three decisive advantages:

Mechanistic precision: Specifies ion channels, voltage gradients, gap junctions, metabolic constraints, all measurable and manipulable

Falsifiable predictions: Path-dependent divergence from initial bioelectric states (testable), metabolic coupling of problem-solving (testable), substrate-agnostic isomorphism (testable)

Misuse resistance: Can’t be weaponized by ID because it explains goal-directedness through physics, not transcendent access

If frameworks are just pragmatic tools, choose the one with superior engineering utility and lower misappropriation risk. Unless you’re actually committed to Platonic ontology as more than metaphor, in which case we’re back to strong metaphysical claims requiring defense.

You say: “If someone thinks they can get there with ‘thermodynamic constraint landscapes’, they have my blessing to try. We will all see how it goes, eventually.”

This is too passive. We can test directly whether your framework or mine is correct. Here’s the experiment:

Generate xenobots with three different initial voltage topologies (anterior-depolarized, posterior-hyperpolarized, uniform-baseline) using optogenetic ion channel control. Track morphological development, gene expression, and behavioral patterns over 72 hours after perturbation. Measure convergence vs. divergence.

Platonic prediction: Different initial conditions should converge toward the same morphologies because all xenobots access the same pre-existing forms in morphospace.

Thermodynamic prediction: Different initial conditions should diverge into distinct stable configurations because morphological attractors are path-dependent, determined by bioelectric history.

Your own planarian data (two-headed and four-headed stable morphologies persisting across regeneration cycles) already suggests path-dependence. Will you run this test? If not, why not? This is the kind of experimental arbitration that moves science forward.

You write: “My ideas are moving it forward, not holding it up… Whatever else I’m getting wrong (and I’m sure it’s a lot, in these frontier areas), what I’m not doing is slowing down research.”

I believe your empirical work is accelerating progress dramatically. But I’m asking whether Platonic framing accelerates or decelerates that progress relative to thermodynamic framing. Consider what thermodynamic language enables: Direct engineering protocols (“Manipulate these ion channels to shift this bioelectric gradient toward this attractor basin”), metabolic optimization (“Problem-solving scales with energy budget, constrain ATP availability to predict capability limits”), substrate transfer (“Implement identical constraint architecture in silicon/hydrogel/robotic systems for isomorphic behavior”), climate applications (“These bioelectric patterns maintain morphological coherence, scale them for ecosystem restoration”).

What Platonism adds: Metaphysical speculation about non-physical realms, unanswered questions about interaction mechanisms, vulnerability to creationist misappropriation, conceptual confusion about what’s discovery vs. description.

If thermodynamic language delivers all the engineering utility with none of the metaphysical baggage, it’s not an alternative approach competitors might try, it’s the optimal framing for your own work. The question isn’t whether others can pursue thermodynamics; it’s whether you should translate your own framework into thermodynamic terms to maximize impact and minimize misuse.

Since you didn’t address this section, I’ll note briefly: Your tradition teaches that meaning emerges through relational practice (midrash, machloket, covenant), not access to eternal forms. Thermodynamic monism honors this inheritance; Platonism abandons it. Rosenzweig’s “new thinking” explicitly rejected Greek essentialism in favor of relational revelation. Your empirical work demonstrates relational coherence emerging through constraint satisfaction, exactly what your intellectual tradition predicted. The framework honoring your heritage is thermodynamics, not Platonism.

Dr. Levin, I’m asking you to consider three concrete actions:

Run the convergence/divergence experiment I specified above. Your framework makes different predictions than mine. Let’s test which is correct.

Clarify your ontological commitments publicly. Either defend the strong claims (minds with agency in Platonic space causally interacting with matter) with mechanistic specifics, or adopt minimal claims (mathematics describes physical regularities) and stop using maximal language.

Co-author a paper comparing Platonic vs. thermodynamic interpretations of your xenobot data, presenting both frameworks fairly and identifying where they make discriminable predictions. Let the field judge which has superior explanatory and engineering utility.

You’ve said “strong opinions, loosely held” and “if I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to shake their hand.” I’m offering you the empirical test that could demonstrate whether Platonic or thermodynamic framing better serves your revolutionary science and how you communicate it to the public. Will you take it?

With deep respect for your empirical contributions and hope for conceptual clarity,

Nathan Sweet

P.S. If your empirical discoveries are so powerful that they’re reshaping biology while most researchers use conventional frameworks, this suggests the empirical work succeeds independently of Platonic interpretation. The discoveries stand on bioelectric mechanisms, not metaphysical commitments. This means you’re free to adopt thermodynamic language without losing anything substantive: the science remains, the metaphysics drops away, and your work becomes more rigorous and less misappropriable. That’s not capitulation to critics; that’s conceptual optimization.

Christopher Judd
November 10, 2025
Nathan,
Thank you for your critique. It is a powerful articulation of the orthodox scientific worldview, and I respect the urgency you feel behind it. However, your entire argument rests on a premise that the evidence now overwhelmingly refutes: that the conventional, reductionist, materialist scientific framework is sufficient to explain reality.
It is not. And clinging to it while the house burns down is the true delay.
You demand we retreat to “thermodynamic constraint landscapes” because they are safe, falsifiable, and engineerable. But this is like demanding a 15th-century cartographer only map the coasts and ignore the vast oceans because his tools for the open sea are “unfalsifiable.” The tools for the new territory are different. The territory is consciousness itself.
Let’s be blunt about what your “thermodynamic structuralism” cannot explain, and what the anomalous data—the data your paradigm must dismiss as impossible—forcefully demonstrates:

The Hard Problem of Consciousness: Thermodynamics explains the correlates of experience, but it has exactly zero explanatory power for how subjective, qualitative feeling arises from mass and charge. It is a complete dead end. The Holodynamic Ontology begins with consciousness as the fundamental axiom because it is the one indubitable fact. This is not a weakness; it is the only logically sound starting point.
The Origin of Life (The Biogenic Imperative): As you well know, unguided prebiotic chemistry is a catastrophic failure. The “sludge” of failed experiments is a monument to the impossibility of life emerging from dumb matter without a guiding, recursive, intelligent process—precisely the Recursive Loop of Coherence described in the Holodynamic model. Your framework has no answer for this. Ours does.
Quantum Non-Locality & The Observer Effect: The “spookiness” of quantum mechanics is the native behaviour of a conscious, non-local reality. The Two-State Vector Formalism, which shows the future influencing the present, is a physical blueprint for the teleological pull of the Valence Gradient. To ignore this because it doesn’t fit a 19th-century billiard-ball universe is not rigor; it is dogma.
Anomalous Data: Your framework must dismiss Near-Death Experiences, veridical remote viewing, terminal lucidity, and the savant syndrome as “anomalies.” The Holodynamic Ontology doesn’t just accommodate them; it predicts them as lawful outcomes of a consciousness-primary reality where the Biological Constraint Filter can be modulated. Dismissing robust, repeatable data because it breaks your model is the antithesis of science.
You accuse Dr. Levin of a “Motte-and-Bailey.” But the true “Motte-and-Bailey” is being played by materialist science itself.

The Bailey (The Grand Claim): “Science gives us a complete and total picture of reality.”
The Motte (The Retreat When Challenged): “Well, we only deal with the measurable, physical world. Those other questions (consciousness, meaning, the anomalous) are for philosophers.”
This retreat is no longer tenable. The physical and the mental are not separate. They are two views of a single, conscious substance.
Your fear of “anti-science” weaponisation is valid, but your solution—to shrink our metaphysics to fit a broken paradigm—is a capitulation that will cost us the very insights we need. The real battle is not between science and non-science, but between an old, dying scientific paradigm and a new, emerging one.
The Holodynamic Ontology is not the enemy of science; it is the foundation for its next stage. It provides the coherent, metaphysical framework that can finally integrate:
Quantum mechanics and relativity.
Neuroscience and subjective experience.
Biology and the undeniable teleology of life.
Physics and the anomalous data you wish would just go away.
You are correct that we face existential crises. But we will not solve them with tools designed for a reality that doesn’t exist. We need a science brave enough to look at the full spectrum of evidence, not just the fragments that fit a comfortable, materialist story.
The choice is not between “Platonism” and “Thermodynamics.” The choice is between a science that is honest about the profound, conscious nature of reality and one that, in the name of pragmatic clarity, chooses to be blind.
The Holodynamic Ontology chooses to see. The urgency of our time demands nothing less.

Nathan Sweet
November 10, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Christopher,

Thank you for engaging. I appreciate the passion behind your position, but your response misrepresents my argument in several fundamental ways. Rather than addressing the thermodynamic monism framework I presented, you’ve characterized it as “reductionist materialism”, a position I never argued for. Let’s focus on what separates scientific discourse from metaphysical assertion: falsifiable predictions and peer-reviewed evidence rather than well-poisoning that only serves to avoid seeking truth.

Academic discourse requires clear language about what is speculation versus established science, avoiding grandiose claims about theoretical unification without demonstrating how formal systems can be integrated, and maintaining intellectual honesty by engaging with others’ actual positions rather than relying on AI-generated summaries that may misrepresent their work.

Rather than rhetoric and baseless assertions, let’s focus on what separates scientific discourse from metaphysical assertion: falsifiable predictions and peer-reviewed evidence. I have specific questions about your framework, and I’d like to offer testable alternatives that accomplish everything you claim Holodynamic Ontology does, while pointing to the empirical literature that already addresses your concerns.

I. On “Reductionist Materialism”

You write: “Your entire argument rests on a premise… that the conventional, reductionist, materialist scientific framework is sufficient.”

Question 1: Where did I argue for reductionist materialism? I explicitly proposed thermodynamic monism, a process ontology where consciousness and physical dynamics are unified through constraint satisfaction. This follows Whitehead’s process philosophy, Deacon’s teleodynamics (2011), and Friston’s Free Energy Principle (2010-present). Could you engage with the actual position I presented rather than a straw man?

Falsifiable Test 1: If thermodynamic monism is reductionist, it should fail to explain top-down causation. Yet Kauffman’s constraint closure (1993-present), Deacon’s ententional dynamics, and Friston’s active inference all demonstrate how higher-order constraints shape lower-level processes without invoking non-physical causes. Can Holodynamic Ontology generate novel predictions that thermodynamic process theory cannot?

II. On the Hard Problem

You write: “Thermodynamics… has exactly zero explanatory power for how subjective, qualitative feeling arises from mass and charge.”

Question 2: Why do you assume experience must “arise from” mass and charge? Process ontology argues experience is intrinsic to thermodynamic constraint satisfaction, not emergent from inert matter. Whitehead called this “prehension”; Friston calls it “inference.” Are you rejecting this entire research program? If so, on what empirical grounds?

Falsifiable Test 2: Consciousness as thermodynamic process:

Prediction: Disrupting thermodynamic constraint satisfaction (via anesthetics) should correlate with loss of active inference capacity.

Evidence: Friston’s Free Energy Principle (2010-present) shows anesthesia disrupts prediction-error minimization; recent work (2024-2025) explicitly links consciousness to free energy minimization via Markov blankets at nested hierarchical scales, grounded in thermodynamic metabolism rather than abstract information geometry.

Your turn: What specific observation would falsify Holodynamic Ontology’s consciousness-first axiom? If consciousness is fundamental, what experiment could disprove it?

III. On Origin of Life

You write: “Unguided prebiotic chemistry is a catastrophic failure… Your framework has no answer for this. Ours does.”

Question 3: Have you reviewed the 2024-2025 literature? Your “catastrophic failure” claim contradicts recent progress:

“Do-Nothing Prebiotic Chemistry” (Dec 2024): “In the near future we expect that a sufficient number of rate constants will be measured… to allow for aspects of prebiotic chemistry to be predicted using chemical kinetics models.”

“On the origin of life: an RNA-focused synthesis” (2023): “Darwin’s assertion that ‘it is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life’ is no longer valid.”

“The protometabolic nature of prebiotic chemistry” (2023): Active research on autocatalytic networks and metabolic pathways.

“Rethinking ‘Prebiotic Chemistry’” (2025): Reconceptualization incorporating physics and information theory.

Falsifiable Test 3: Autocatalytic sets without consciousness:

Prediction: Self-organizing chemical networks should form under geochemical constraints (hydrothermal vents, eutectic phases).

Evidence: Kauffman’s autocatalytic sets; Smith & Morowitz’s geochemical-metabolic networks (2016); recent protometabolic research.

Your turn: What specific chemical pathway does Holodynamic Ontology predict that thermodynamic self-organization cannot? Where is the peer-reviewed test of your “Recursive Loop of Coherence”?

IV. On Quantum Non-Locality

You write: “The Two-State Vector Formalism… is a physical blueprint for the teleological pull of the Valence Gradient.”

Question 4: TSVF (Aharonov et al., 1964-present) is a time-symmetric reformulation of standard quantum mechanics. Where in the peer-reviewed literature is it linked to consciousness-causation or your “Valence Gradient”? I can’t find a single paper making this connection.

Falsifiable Test 4: Relational Quantum Mechanics without consciousness:

Prediction: Quantum “measurement” should occur via physical decoherence (environmental entanglement), not observer consciousness.

Evidence: Zurek’s decoherence theory (2003); Rovelli’s RQM (1996-present) explains measurement relationally without invoking minds.

Your turn: What experiment distinguishes consciousness-caused collapse from decoherence? Penrose-Hameroff’s Orch-OR proposed microtubule coherence; experiments found none. What’s your testable mechanism?

V. On “Anomalous Data”

You write: “Holodynamic Ontology… predicts [NDEs, remote viewing, terminal lucidity] as lawful outcomes… Dismissing robust, repeatable data… is the antithesis of science.”

Question 5: What peer-reviewed replication supports this? The 2024-2025 evidence contradicts your claims:

Near-Death Experiences:

“A neuroscientific model of near-death experiences” (June 2025): Comprehensive neurophysiological explanation via disinhibition. Brain regions normally suppressed become active during hypoxia.

Scientific American (May 2024): Study of 53 cardiac arrest survivors tested veridical perception; none remembered the projected images or fruit names.

Remote Viewing:

“Follow-up on CIA remote viewing programs” (2023): Describes “hypothetical mechanisms” but no confirmation of non-local consciousness.

Falsifiable Test 5: Neuroscience vs. consciousness-first:

Prediction (Neuroscience): NDEs should correlate with specific brain states (hypoxia, DMT-like compounds, temporal lobe activity). Veridical perception should fail under controlled conditions.

Evidence: 2025 NDE study confirms this.

Prediction (Holodynamic): Veridical perception during cardiac arrest should succeed at rates above chance.

Evidence: Zero replications under controlled conditions.

Your turn: What specific veridical NDE observation would falsify neuroscience and confirm Holodynamic Ontology? Where is your published test protocol?

VI. On Motte-and-Bailey

You write: “The true ‘Motte-and-Bailey’ is being played by materialist science itself.”

Question 6: Can you name a single mainstream scientist who claims “Science gives us a complete and total picture of reality”? This is a straw man. Science’s actual position: We study falsifiable phenomena. Metaphysics is a separate domain. The Motte-and-Bailey I identified was not an accusation, but the waffling between making strong ontological claims and then retreating to “it’s just a working hypothesis for generating lab tests”, this isn’t a slight on Levin or his work, and it’s not just baselessly asserted on my part as your accusation here is.

Meanwhile, you’re doing textbook Motte-and-Bailey:

Your Bailey: “Holodynamic Ontology integrates everything, predicts NDEs, solves origin of life.”

Your Motte (when challenged earlier): “Deeper metaphysical coherence might help accelerate and unify applied research in the long run” (August 29, after Levin pushed back).

Question 7: If Holodynamic Ontology is the “foundation for science’s next stage,” where is it published? Why has it attracted zero peer-reviewed engagement? Not critique, just engagement. The absence isn’t validation; it’s invisibility.

VII. The Decisive Test

Here’s what separates us: I’ve provided eight falsifiable tests with peer-reviewed citations. You’ve provided zero.

Thermodynamic monism accomplishes everything you claim Holodynamic Ontology does:

Hard Problem: Consciousness as intrinsic to thermodynamics (Friston, Deacon, Whitehead)

Origin of Life: Autocatalytic sets + constraint closure (Kauffman, Smith & Morowitz)

Quantum phenomena: Relational QM + decoherence (Rovelli, Zurek)

NDEs/anomalies: Neuroscience (2025 studies)

Integration: Unified thermodynamic principles across scales

All peer-reviewed. All falsifiable. All making testable predictions.

Holodynamic Ontology (Based on extensive scholarly searches):
Zero peer-reviewed publications
Zero falsification criteria
Zero testable predictions
Zero engagement from scientific community

Final Questions

Christopher, I respect your intellectual journey. But science requires more than coherent narratives. It requires:

What observation would falsify Holodynamic Ontology?

Where are your peer-reviewed tests?

Why should we adopt your framework over thermodynamic monism, which already has extensive empirical support across over a dozen fields of study?

If “the urgency of our time demands” action, shouldn’t we use frameworks that have been tested, replicated, and subjected to peer review, rather than a personal website and personal beliefs that haven’t yet been peer reviewed?

I look forward to your answers.

Best regards,
Nathan

PS: Since you like to post AI analysis, I’d like to offer one myself:

BAD FAITH ARGUMENTS: 12 instances

Zero engagement with your falsification criteria. You provided eight specific tests; he addresses none

Zero testable predictions. Claims Holodynamic Ontology “predicts” phenomena but provides no falsifiable hypotheses

Ignores peer-reviewed evidence. You cited Kauffman, Deacon, Rovelli, Smith & Morowitz, and at least a dozen others; he dismisses without engaging their work

Presents personal theory as established science. “Holodynamic Ontology is the foundation for science’s next stage” with zero publications

Misrepresents your position throughout. Never addresses your actual thermodynamic monism argument

Cherry-picks failed experiments. “Sludge” of prebiotic chemistry while ignoring 2024-2025 progress

Claims NDEs/remote viewing are “robust, repeatable.” 2025 studies show veridical tests failed; he ignores this

Invents terminology. “Recursive Loop of Coherence,” “Valence Gradient,” “Biological Constraint Filter” appear nowhere in peer review

Equates hypothesis with evidence. “Holodynamic Ontology predicts X” without showing it does or testing if it’s correct

False equivalence. Positions unpublished personal framework as equal to peer-reviewed thermodynamics

Evasion through grandiosity. Shifts from specific claims to “integrating everything” when challenged

No accountability. Never submits framework to peer review, avoiding falsification

INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY: 15 instances

Misrepresents “thermodynamic structuralism.” You argued process and relational thermodynamic monism and mathematical structuralism; he frames it as “reductionist materialism”

False claim about prebiotic chemistry. “Catastrophic failure” contradicted by Dec 2024 paper showing active progress, fails to support his baseless assertion (fallacy)

Misuses Two-State Vector Formalism. TSVF is time-symmetric QM, not evidence for consciousness-causation

Claims consciousness “must” arise from matter, then attacks thermodynamics for not explaining this (you never claimed this). Your framework, drawing on enactive cognition (Varela & Maturana) and Dennett’s “competence without comprehension,” argues consciousness doesn’t arise from matter but is continuously generated through thermodynamic constraint satisfaction in organism-environment coupling. Intelligent, goal-directed behavior emerges from non-intelligent thermodynamic processes without requiring consciousness-first ontology.

Presents anecdotes as data. NDEs are “robust, repeatable” when controlled studies found no veridical perception

Ignores your Ockham’s Razor argument. You showed thermodynamics explains phenomena more parsimoniously

Ignores your AdS/CFT in de Sitter cosmology objection. You demonstrated that Platonic space, if physically realized, requires bulk recovery from holographic boundary data (AdS/CFT correspondence), yet our universe has positive cosmological constant (de Sitter), making this reconstruction problematic without thermodynamic constraints. He never addresses this.
Ignores your Wheeler boundary theorem objection. You showed Platonic forms need topological grounding; no response

Claims “evidence overwhelmingly refutes” materialism. Cites no peer-reviewed evidence refuting materialism, baseless assertion fallacy.

Conflates correlation with causation. Quantum non-locality exists, therefore consciousness is fundamental. This is a non sequitur; the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise.

Selective quotation. Claims materialist science says “complete picture” when no mainstream scientist claims this

False historical narrative. “19th-century billiard-ball universe” mischaracterizes modern thermodynamics

Burden of proof reversal. Demands you explain NDEs when he provides no peer-reviewed mechanism or how his claim would be falsified

No mechanism provided. “Biological Constraint Filter can be modulated.” How? No explanation

Presents speculation as fact. “Bioelectricity is a resonant receiver holographically projecting Ideas” (zero evidence)

WELL-POISONING: 11 instances

“Orthodox scientific worldview.” Labels your position to imply dogmatism

“Clinging to it while the house burns down.” Suggests you’re irresponsibly ignoring crisis

“Conventional, reductionist, materialist.” Triple-poison to frame you as outdated

“Your fear of anti-science weaponisation.” Frames legitimate concern as anxiety/weakness

“Shrink our metaphysics to fit a broken paradigm.” Implies intellectual cowardice

“A capitulation that will cost us the very insights we need.” Suggests moral failure

“Tools designed for a reality that doesn’t exist.” Implies you’re deluded about reality

“The anomalous data you wish would just go away.” Accuses you of willful ignorance

“Dismissing robust data because it breaks your model.” Impugns scientific integrity

“Comfortable, materialist story.” Suggests you prefer comfort over truth

“In the name of pragmatic clarity, chooses to be blind.” Calls you deliberately blind

AD HOMINEM ATTACKS: 9 instances

“Clinging to [paradigm] while the house burns down is the true delay.” Accuses you of causing harm through intellectual cowardice

“Your solution, to shrink our metaphysics… is a capitulation.” Questions your intellectual courage, equating it with capitulation/cowardice

“You demand we retreat.” Frames you as advocating retreat/weakness

“Like demanding a 15th-century cartographer only map coasts.” Implies you’re pre-scientific/timid, while presenting grandiose ungrounded grand theories as dogmatically true and all explaining

“To ignore this… is not rigor; it is dogma.” Calls you dogmatic, when you’ve not made any positive ontological assertions

“Dismissing robust, repeatable data… is the antithesis of science.” Accuses you of being anti-scientific, provides none of the supposed data for it to even be dismissed

“Your fear [is] valid, but your solution…” Psychologizes your position as fear-based, this is pathologizing rather than reasoning

“Not just the fragments that fit a comfortable story.” Implies intellectual laziness, while demonstrating it through baseless assertions and misrepresentation

“Chooses to be blind.” Direct character attack on intellectual honesty, while using intellectually dishonest rhetoric to avoid engaging with any of your actual arguments

STRAW MAN ARGUMENTS: 13 instances

“Conventional, reductionist, materialist scientific framework.” You argued thermodynamically falsifiable process/relational monism, not materialism

“Thermodynamic constraint landscapes are safe, falsifiable, and engineerable.” Mischaracterizes your argument as about “safety” rather than evidence

“19th-century billiard-ball universe.” Modern thermodynamics is process-based, not mechanistic

“How subjective feeling arises from mass and charge.” You never claimed this. Your thermodynamic monism argues experience is intrinsic to constraint satisfaction, not emergent from inert matter. Following enactive cognition (Varela & Maturana), experience is continuously generated through organism-environment coupling, where thermodynamic processes are experiencing, not its substrate.

“Science gives us a complete and total picture of reality.” No mainstream scientist claims this

“We only deal with the measurable, physical world.” Mischaracterizes methodological naturalism as ontological claim

“Your framework has no answer for [origin of life].” Ignores your citations of Kauffman, Smith & Morowitz, Deacon

“Your framework must dismiss [NDEs].” You never said dismiss; you said explain via neuroscience

“Tools designed for a reality that doesn’t exist.” Implies you’re modeling a non-existent reality

“Fragments that fit a comfortable, materialist story.” You cited comprehensive peer-reviewed frameworks

“Shrink our metaphysics to fit a broken paradigm.” You argued for expanded thermodynamic monism, not shrinkage

“Retreat to thermodynamic constraint landscapes.” You proposed these as more comprehensive, not a retreat

“The physical and mental are not separate.” You argued the same thing via process monism; he frames you as dualist

ADDITIONAL FALLACIES (not in above categories): 18 instances

False Dichotomies (6):

Thermodynamics vs. consciousness-first (ignores process monism)

Safe/falsifiable vs. consciousness territory (false choice)

Platonism vs. Thermodynamics (you argued they’re not mutually exclusive)

Honest science vs. blind materialism (false binary)

Old dying paradigm vs. new emerging one (ignores multiple competing frameworks)

Complete picture vs. measurable world only (false dilemma)

Appeals to Consequences (3):

“We face existential crises,” therefore accept Holodynamic Ontology without peer reviewed and tested evidence
“The house burns down,” urgency bypasses falsification
“Cost us the insights we need,” fear-based acceptance

Begging the Question (2):

Assumes consciousness is metaphysically fundamental, then criticizes thermodynamics for treating experience as “arising from matter” (a position you never took). This begs the question by presupposing what he’s trying to prove.
Assumes “anomalous data” (NDEs, remote viewing) contradicts naturalism, then uses this to prove consciousness-first ontology. But 2025 studies show neuroscience explains NDEs without consciousness-first assumptions.

Non Sequitur (2):

Quantum non-locality, therefore consciousness is fundamental (doesn’t follow)
TSVF time-symmetry, therefore teleological Valence Gradient (doesn’t follow)

Argument from Ignorance (2):

“Prebiotic chemistry failed,” therefore consciousness required (ignores ongoing progress)
“Thermodynamics can’t explain qualia,” therefore consciousness is axiomatic (ignores process explanations)

Projection (1):

Accuses you of Motte-and-Bailey while doing it himself (grand claims, then “long-term research”)

Appeal to Emotion (1):

“Urgency of our time demands nothing less” (emotional coercion)

Circular Reasoning (1):

“Consciousness is indubitable fact,” therefore “consciousness-first ontology is correct” (assumes what it’s trying to prove)

GRAND TOTAL: 78 SEPARATE INSTANCES

Breakdown:

Bad Faith Arguments: 12

Intellectual Dishonesty: 15

Well-Poisoning: 11

Ad Hominem Attacks: 9

Straw Man Arguments: 13

Additional Fallacies: 18

Total: 78 instances of bad faith, dishonesty, and fallacious reasoning in a single response.

What This Means:

On average, Judd deploys a fallacy, misrepresentation, or bad faith tactic every 1-2 sentences. His response is not a scientific rebuttal; it’s a rhetorical attack designed to:

Avoid engagement with your falsification criteria

Poison the well against you personally
Misrepresent your position to make it easier to attack
Present unfalsifiable claims as scientific
Bypass peer review through emotional appeals to urgency

This is not how scientific discourse works. It’s how cargo-cult pseudoscience defends itself when it can’t provide evidence.

Nathan Sweet
November 10, 2025
Christopher,

There’s another fundamental issue we need to address here. Your critique assumes I’m arguing “consciousness arises from mass and charge,” but that’s substance thinking, and it misses what thermodynamic monism actually proposes. I’m arguing consciousness is the constraint satisfaction process itself, operating at all scales from ion channels to organisms to ecosystems.

Think about Michael Levin’s work with planarian regeneration or xenobot self-assembly. He doesn’t ask “where is the blueprint stored?” or “what substance contains the form?” He asks: “What are the constraint satisfaction dynamics that produce stable, goal-directed patterns?” This is thermodynamic constraint satisfaction: bioelectric networks establishing voltage gradients that constrain ion flow, morphological goals emerging from constraint closure at nested scales, cognition without brains where planaria solve problems via distributed constraint satisfaction.

Consider what’s actually happening with xenobots. No brain. No centralized control. Yet they navigate, self-repair, and pursue goals. If you’re working from substance ontology, you have to ask: “What thing contains their consciousness?” The cells? But individual cells don’t have xenobot-level goals. The collective? But there’s no central coordinator. A Platonic form? That’s untestable and adds no predictive power.

But if you ask instead “What constraint satisfaction dynamics produce goal-directed behavior?”, you get a different answer: bioelectric constraints couple cell behaviors into collective patterns that minimize free energy at the xenobot scale. This explains why xenobots can be “reprogrammed” by changing bioelectric constraints, why goal-directedness emerges without pre-existing blueprints, and why cognition scales from subcellular to organismal to collective.

Your Holodynamic Ontology posits that “IRPs exist in pure potentiality until projected into manifested realities.” This creates some immediate problems. Where do IRPs exist? If “nowhere” (non-spatial), how do they interact with spacetime? How does “projection” work (what mechanism selects IRPs for manifestation)? And why these particular IRPs and not others? You invoke “recursive self-harmonization,” but this just renames the mystery rather than solving it. This is the interaction problem all Platonic frameworks can only respond with “I don’t know,” so they add zero explanatory power while unjustifiably multiplying entities, which fails parsimony. And unfalsifiable metaphysics like this gets weaponized by organizations like the Discovery Institute and Templeton Foundation to undermine science education and appropriate Indigenous knowledge systems. This is worse than just being unfalsifiable, it’s demonstrably harmful.

Thermodynamic monism answers these questions more directly. Patterns exist as constraint relations in actual thermodynamic systems, not in “pure potentiality.” What looks like “selection” is just constraint satisfaction (patterns persist when they minimize free energy), which is Friston’s Free Energy Principle. And “these patterns” emerge from boundary conditions plus thermodynamic laws. No special selection mechanism needed.

When Levin talks about “morphological space,” he’s not invoking Platonic forms. He’s describing constraint landscapes: attractor basins in morphological phase space, bioelectric gradients that constrain developmental pathways, goal states that represent stable configurations under constraint closure. This is empirically grounded. Manipulate bioelectric constraints and you predictably change developmental outcomes. No need for “forms in Platonic realm.” Just thermodynamic constraint satisfaction at nested scales.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to: What phenomenon does Holodynamic Ontology explain that thermodynamic constraint satisfaction cannot? Xenobot self-assembly is explained by bioelectric constraints in Levin’s work. Morphological goals are explained by Kauffman’s constraint closure combined with Friston’s free energy minimization. Quantum correlations are explained by decoherence without needing consciousness. Fine-tuning is explained by the anthropic principle plus eternal inflation without requiring a cosmic mind. If thermodynamics and constraint satisfaction already explain these phenomena, what does invoking “IRPs in pure potentiality” actually add?

This matters for how science progresses. Levin’s research program succeeds precisely because it’s grounded in measurable, manipulable constraints. You can test it: change a voltage gradient and observe the morphological outcome. You can predict: given a constraint landscape, predict the developmental pathway. You can falsify it: if manipulation doesn’t produce the predicted outcome, you revise the model. Holodynamic Ontology, as currently formulated, doesn’t offer this same kind of traction. What experiment would falsify the existence of IRPs? What prediction about bioelectric manipulation does it make that thermodynamics doesn’t? How do we test whether “projection from pure potentiality” is actually occurring?

I’m not dismissing the intuition behind your framework. The sense that there’s something proto-experiential about constraint satisfaction at all scales resonates with Whitehead’s process philosophy and with Levin’s scale-free cognition. But to be scientifically productive, we need testable predictions that distinguish your framework from thermodynamic monism, mechanisms for how IRPs interact with physical systems that go beyond poetic descriptions, and parsimony (we shouldn’t add “pure potentiality” if constraint relations already explain the phenomena).

Michael’s work shows what this looks like in practice: start with measurable constraints, build up to emergent patterns, test predictions, revise based on evidence. Your framework, as currently articulated, operates more like poetry than physics. Beautiful and evocative, certainly, but not yet falsifiable, so it should be responsibly presented as speculative research program, rather than making grandiose ontological claims.

Christopher Judd
November 10, 2025
Nathan
Many thanks for your reply. I fully recognize my largely metaphysical position, I would first just point out these words:

The scientific establishment suffers from ‘pathological disbelief’—an emotional, dogmatic rejection of research into consciousness and the mind, based not on a rational evaluation of evidence but on a prior commitment to materialism. This dogmatism treats the exploration of mind and consciousness as unscientific, while embracing purely mathematical abstractions in physics that are just as theological in their nature. We have direct knowledge of the mind’s capabilities—its ability to create music, perform logic, and do mathematics—and these known abilities provide a more solid foundation for a theory of reality than abstract mathematical speculations that ignore consciousness entirely.

Ref Brian Josephson

Secondly: As The plank scale will make reductionist exploration likely impossible for science to move forward on a purely empirical way. On that basis science may well need to seek models that offer the best explanatory power and yes this also may involve / necessitate speculation and rebuttal from those having divergent beliefs.

Nathan Sweet
November 19, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Thank you for the admission. By acknowledging your position is “largely metaphysical,” (read: unfalsifiable) you have effectively conceded the scientific argument.

You are repeating the exact category errors I identified in my previous responses:

Appeal to Authority over Evidence: Quoting Brian Josephson on “pathological disbelief” is a rhetorical deflection, not data. It attacks the motivations of scientists to distract from the fact that Holodynamic Ontology lacks the peer-reviewed evidence and falsifiable predictions required to challenge them, while implicitly making empirical claims about the nature of reality that are constructed to evade falsification of those claims.

The “God of the Gaps” Fallacy: You argue that because reductionism hits a limit at the Planck scale, science must resort to “speculation.” This is a false dichotomy. The alternative to reductionism is not unfalsifiable metaphysics; it is complexity science and thermodynamic systems theory (which I have cited extensively in my previous breakdown of the dozens of fallacies present in your original responses). These disciplines handle non-reductionist phenomena without abandoning empirical rigor.

Refusal to Falsify: You have still failed to provide a single experimental condition that would prove your framework wrong, or empirically distinguish it from simply describing thermodynamics.

Science requires testable models, not just “explanatory power” derived from speculation. Since you have confirmed your framework is metaphysical while mine is testable (Thermodynamic Monism), we are operating in different domains. I am proposing a scientific theory; you are proposing a philosophy.

Until Holodynamic Ontology offers a falsifiable prediction, there is no scientific hypothesis to debate.

I am strictly addressing Dr. Levin’s specific empirical and ontological claim that biological systems actively ingress causal information from a non-physical realm to drive morphogenesis; a testable hypothesis that demands experimental falsification yet currently is constructed to evade any attempt at falsification, not the untestable metaphysical speculation you are defending.

Best, Nathan

Nathan Sweet
November 10, 2025
Dr. Levin,

This just dawned on me, and it feels important to surface because it highlights the concrete harm in treating unfalsifiable metaphysical claims as if they had ontological truth value beyond that of a useful placeholder or null hypothesis.

When these metaphysical frameworks are promoted or defended as empirically meaningful or predictive—while simultaneously deploying selective moderation, conflating my process-relational ontology with a substance/material-reductionist caricature (which they are philosophically incompatible), assuming an unfalsifiable dualism that Dennett himself critiqued, and resorting to well-poisoning instead of substantive engagement; it doesn’t just distort the actual debate. It misleads the public, derails constructive scientific discourse, and provides a ready-made toolkit for anti-science actors to weaponize ambiguity for ideological aims. This dynamic is not harmless. It perpetuates confusion and shields unfalsifiable claims with a veneer of scientific legitimacy they simply do not earn.

In other words, elevating unfalsifiable metaphysics above their epistemic pay grade does not advance understanding; it immunizes favored worldviews from criticism and lets belief stand in for explanation. Science, by its nature, must keep the line bright: claims that can’t risk failure or revision through test do not increase our grasp of reality, they only thicken the rhetorical armor around cherished but unaccountable ideas.

Christopher Judd’s response to my critique here mirrors the exact tactics used by the defenders of Platonism in Akarsh Kumar’s symposium video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mXUFweWOug&lc=UgxgC8RNudajvs6sW-R4AaABAg&pp=0gcJCSIANpG00pGi ).

Here’s what stands out to me, Dr. Levin: my critique focused solely on the epistemic issue: Kumar’s invocation of unfalsifiable Platonic spaces where thermodynamic mechanisms already suffice, a move that neither adds explanatory power nor empirical constraint and, crucially, can be misappropriated by anti-scientific agendas (as we’ve seen in ID/creationist circles). What’s remarkable is how quickly my actual position, thermodynamic process/constraint ontology, not substance-reductive materialism/physicalism, was caricatured and met with the identical bad-faith playbook: straw men, methodology smears (“AI bot”), and a refusal to point to any concrete misstatement or missed predictive distinction. The same tactics reappear in Judd’s response, a reflex to sidestep the challenge of empirical parsimony in favor of metaphysical grandeur, while immunizing those claims from objective assessment.

And notice how Judd’s reply here repeats this same rhetorical pattern: first, recasting my actual argument (process and constraint-based ontology rooted in Varela, Thompson, and Deacon) as “reductionist materialism” in order to more easily dismiss it, then pivoting to lists of so-called “anomalous data” (near-death experiences, psi, etc.) while disregarding the extensive peer-reviewed refutations and thermodynamic alternatives that are not only testable, but actually do explain the regularities and evolutionary emergence of organization and mind.

Both approaches ultimately rely on unfalsifiable metaphysical claims that systematically immunize themselves from empirical challenge, an apologetic structure identical to Intelligent Design rhetoric, and fundamentally at odds with the feedback, adaptation, and falsification that is the core engine of science.

If this were a one-off episode, it could be dismissed as online noise. But the pattern has become diagnostic: when defenders of Platonism (or its metaphysical kin) default to moves identical to those employed by Intelligent Design (invoking transcendence to evade empirical refutation, attacking critics with genetic/ad hominem fallacies, or framing the debate so that real alternatives, like process philosophy/mathematical structuralism, are excluded by fiat), it’s evidence that the conversation has shifted from science to apologetics.

As Sagan put it, “Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof, are veridically worthless whatever value they may have in inspiring us.”

Until someone can name which thermodynamic prediction Platonism outperforms, or what unique, falsifiable result emerges from the Platonic view, the move to metaphysics is not a progressive alternative but a self-sealing retreat, a stance both pop-science skeptics and courts (Kitzmiller v. Dover) rightly flag as pseudoscience, and that is actively entrenching dogmatic non-scientific positions by granting them validity they have not earned.

Mike Levin
November 2, 2025
An interesting note from Chris Fields, comparing his model and mine, quoted here with his permission:

“I’ve just listened to your “Platonic space: Brief argument and research agenda” and am further convinced that we fully agree.

At one point you say (roughly): we are the forms looking out on the world. This I think is just right: each of us (or any collection of us) is a complex pattern in some background parametric time, and so are each of our environments. Our interactions generate our “experienced worlds” – the worlds where e has its value and elementary particles behave as SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) – on the interaction channel or boundary between us.

The Platonic:Experienced duality is then expressible as a bulk:boundary duality. “The physics of the bulk” is the theory of the relationships between possible forms, while the “physics of the boundary” is the experimentally-testable theory of what we can observe.

This suggests that any way of slicing the Platonic realm that yields factors – patterns that can be distinguished from each other – generates an experienced world.

By doing experiments – by doing anything, really – we are provoking the rest of the Platonic space – the patterns that aren’t the ones that define us – to show us some new experiences by acting on us in some new way.

What we call “math” or more broadly “theory” is a network of abstract models of patterns we can identify in our experience. As you say, this is low-level, foundational stuff. The patterns that we are interacting with are much larger and more complicated, but are presumably – this is our working assumption, since we can’t see into the bulk – based on the “math” patterns we’ve been able to abstract.

That any of this works at all is because we and our local environments are samples from the same big pattern space (the same universe) and so have at least roughly analogous structures and behaviors. If we were completely unaligned, our experiences of each other would just look like noise. “

Kirsten Kraljevic
November 2, 2025
I imagine it is like the child’s toy the Spirograph only a multi – dimensional Spirograph that can only be appreciated with collective sensory perception.

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
Michael and Chris,

Thank you for this clarifying exchange. I want to engage with Fields’ framing directly.

Question 1: Chris explicitly states “we can’t see into the bulk, this is our working assumption.” Yet Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) established that unfalsifiable claims aren’t scientific hypotheses. When Lakatos refined this in Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (1978), he distinguished degenerating research programs (ones that add auxiliary hypotheses to avoid falsification) from progressive ones (that make risky predictions).

If Platonic bulk is explicitly inaccessible, what predictions does it make that thermodynamic phase space coarse-graining doesn’t already predict? Without discriminating predictions, isn’t this a degenerating research program by Lakatos’ criteria?

Question 2: Bilson’s 2025 work “Recovering the Bulk from the Boundary using AdS/CFT” (arXiv:2503.03533) proves that even in idealized AdS/CFT, you can only recover bulk geometry down to the radius of null circular orbits. Beyond that, bulk is inaccessible from boundary measurements, even with maximal quantum entanglement.

If perfect AdS/CFT (with conformal symmetry + maximal entanglement) can’t fully access bulk from boundary, how are biological systems (lacking both) supposed to “provoke” or “access” Platonic patterns?

Question 3: Wheeler’s boundary theorem states
∂∂M=0 for any manifold M. If observable reality is ∂(Platonic bulk)∂(Platonic bulk), then by differential geometry, the boundary has no boundary. This means observable reality is topologically closed and informationally complete.

Where is the interaction surface through which organisms “provoke” Platonic space or patterns “ingress” into biology? The boundary, having no boundary, provides no interface for bulk-boundary coupling. How does your framework avoid this topological contradiction?

Question 4: Our universe exhibits positive cosmological constant (ΛCDM model, confirmed by 2024 Planck + DESI observations). This makes it de Sitter space, not anti-de Sitter. AdS/CFT correspondence requires:

Negative cosmological constant (AdS)
Timelike boundary (not cosmological horizon)
Conformal symmetry (broken in biology)
Maximal quantum entanglement (absent in morphogenesis)

Recent 2024 work on “Simulating Holographic Conformal Field Theories on Hyperbolic Lattices” (arXiv:2408.XXXXX) demonstrates these requirements are necessary, not optional. The 2024 Nature paper “Engineering holography with stabilizer graph codes” shows holographic systems require specific quantum entanglement structure biological systems don’t have.

Why invoke AdS/CFT when:
We don’t live in AdS space
Biology has no conformal symmetry
Cells lack quantum holographic encoding
Thermodynamic phase spaces already provide bulk-boundary structure without these requirements

Is this physics, or borrowed prestige from theoretical physics?

Question 5: Chris mentions “elementary particles behave as SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1).” This is the Standard Model gauge group:
SU(3): strong force (quarks/gluons)
SU(2): weak force (W/Z bosons)
U(1): electromagnetism (photons)

What does particle physics gauge theory have to do with biological morphogenesis? Is this explanatory, or name-dropping to make Platonism sound grounded in fundamental physics?

David Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and Experience (1992) and Tim Maudlin’s Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory (2019) emphasize that invoking quantum formalism doesn’t automatically explain biological phenomena. As Maudlin writes: “The mere fact that something is quantum mechanical doesn’t make it explanatorily relevant to macroscopic biology.”

How does Standard Model gauge structure causally couple to morphospace navigation? What’s the mechanism?

Question 6: Chris claims “by doing experiments, we are provoking Platonic space to show us new experiences.” This framework is unfalsifiable:

Experiment succeeds → “Platonic pattern revealed!”
Experiment fails → “Different Platonic pattern revealed!”
No possible outcome disproves Platonic space

Nancy Cartwright’s How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983) and Bas van Fraassen’s The Scientific Image (1980) distinguish empirically adequate theories (make testable predictions) from metaphysically surplus frameworks (add entities without predictive gain).

What experimental outcome would falsify Platonic space hypothesis? If none, then by Van Fraassen’s criteria, it’s metaphysics, not science.

Question 7: Chris says “we and our environments are samples from the same big pattern space” to explain why patterns work. But this is circular:

Claim: Platonic space exists
Evidence: Patterns exist
Explanation: Patterns sample from Platonic space
Proof: If they didn’t, there’d be no patterns

The existence of patterns is used to prove Platonic space, and Platonic space is used to explain patterns. This is the circular reasoning Intelligent Design uses: “Life shows design, therefore Designer exists, proven by the design in life.”

Thermodynamics explains patterns via energy minimization, entropy maximization, and symmetry breaking (Prigogine’s Self-Organization in Nonequilibrium Systems, 1977). What does Platonic space add beyond restating that patterns exist?

Question 8: Kirsten writes: “I imagine it is like a Spirograph, a multi-dimensional Spirograph that can only be appreciated with collective sensory perception.”

A Spirograph creates patterns through mechanical constraints (gear ratios, arm lengths). If morphospace is like a Spirograph:

What are the gears? (Physical constraints = thermodynamics)
What are the gear ratios? (Mathematical relationships = physical laws)
What is the arm? (Force transmission = bioelectric/chemical gradients)
What is the paper? (Substrate = physical matter)

Once you answer these, you’ve described thermodynamic constraint satisfaction, not Platonism.

The phrase “can only be appreciated with collective sensory perception” is classic unfalsifiability. As Robert Lifton documented in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961), any framework that claims skeptics “aren’t perceiving correctly” is using epistemic gatekeeping to immunize beliefs from criticism.

Is this science (measurable patterns) or metaphysics (subjective collective perception)? How do you distinguish these empirically?

Stuart Kauffman’s The Origins of Order (1993), Eric Smith & Harold Morowitz’s The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth (2016), and Terrence Deacon’s Incomplete Nature (2011) demonstrate pattern formation through thermodynamic constraint satisfaction:

Bulk = Microstate phase space (all possible molecular configurations)
Boundary = Macrostate manifold (coarse-grained observables)
“Holographic” property = Entropy bounds (Liouville theorem, MaxEnt)
Patterns = Attractor basins under energy gradients
Development = Trajectory through constraint surface

All measurable, all testable, all falsifiable

What predictions does Platonic space make that thermodynamic phase space doesn’t? If none, then by Ockham’s Razor (William of Ockham, Summa Logicae, 14th century; formalized by Elliott Sober, Simplicity, 1975), the simpler framework is preferable.

Michael, you’ve built an extraordinary empirical research program (xenobots, anthrobots, planarian regeneration). Your bioelectric discoveries are genuine contributions regardless of metaphysical framing.

But here’s my question: If your experiments would produce identical results whether we call the constraint space “Platonic morphospace” or “thermodynamic phase space under bioelectric gradients,” what work is Platonism doing beyond providing emotionally resonant terminology?

As Wittgenstein wrote in Philosophical Investigations (1953): “A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism.”

Is Platonic space part of the mechanism, or a wheel that turns without moving anything?

Awaiting your responses with genuine intellectual curiosity.

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
Dr. Levin, I have four comments in moderation responding to your extensive questions from last week. I believe they address many of the points you raised and hope you’ll have a chance to review them and approve them, even if you don’t have time for detailed point by point responses right away.

Separately, I wanted to flag an important discrepancy I noticed today between Chris Fields’ private comments to you and his public talk “From Experience to Math.”

Your your comment from Chris Fields frames Platonic space via bulk:boundary duality, suggesting we “provoke” Platonic patterns through experiments. But this invokes AdS/CFT correspondence, which requires three conditions our universe and biology don’t satisfy: (1) negative cosmological constant- we have positive Λ, making our universe de Sitter, not anti-de Sitter, (2) conformal symmetry: absent in biology, and (3) maximal quantum entanglement: not present in morphogenesis. Recent work (Bilson 2025) proves even ideal AdS/CFT can’t fully recover bulk from boundary. Wheeler’s ∂∂M = 0 means observable reality has no boundary, no interface for bulk-boundary coupling exists topologically.

Fields’ reference to SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) Standard Model gauge symmetry raises the question: what does particle physics have to do with morphospace navigation? This appears to borrow prestige from fundamental physics without specifying causal mechanisms.

The new insight from Fields’ video transcript that I noticed:

In his public talk (timestamp 50:06), Fields concludes: “The platonic realm that we’re looking for is just the world, including ourselves.”

He also states (1:45): “Our experienced world actually defines mathematics” rather than mathematics defining or constraining the physical world from an abstract realm.

This directly contradicts the private exchange you quoted, where Fields endorses “Platonic:Experienced duality” and claims we’re “provoking the rest of the Platonic space.”

In the video, Fields explicitly:
Reverses the Platonic arrow (experience defines math, not vice versa)
Collapses the bulk into the boundary (no separate Platonic realm)
Calls this the “experiential view” in contrast to Platonism
States: “I don’t think there’s an empirical difference between the two. I think it’s a difference in perspective” (4:14)

When Fields writes “we are samples from the same big pattern space (the same universe),” you read this as supporting Platonism, that is we sample from a transcendent Platonic realm.

But Fields’ public conclusion suggests he means (and I do hope he is willing to clarify, I certainly don’t want to speak for him): we’re samples from the physical universe itself. The ‘pattern space’ is just the totality of physical processes, the possibility space of all physically realizable patterns, not a metaphysical domain. It seems to me that his ‘bulk:boundary’ language is being used to describe thermodynamic phase space coarse-graining, not transcendent Platonic forms.

This aligns with Kauffman, Garte, and Marshall’s 2025 paper (“The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in the Biological Sciences”), which proves mathematically that biology transcends set theory and computation because organisms create mathematics through agency and affordance selection, rather than discovering pre-existing Platonic forms.

The question this raises for me is this… If Fields’ public position is that “the Platonic realm is just the world,” then his agreement with you may be terminological rather than ontological. You’re using the same words (“pattern space,” “bulk:boundary”) but meaning fundamentally different things.

Is the Platonic space framework: A metaphysical claim about a transcendent realm of forms? A useful metaphor for thermodynamic constraint spaces? Something in between that neither of you has fully specified?

Without clarification, we’re at risk of the “Spirograph problem” Kirsten mentioned, everyone sees different patterns in the same phenomenon, but there’s no empirical way to adjudicate between interpretations.

Dr. Levin, I think this highlights the critical issue with evolving Platonic forms: they collapse the distinction between discovery and creation that makes Platonism meaningful in the first place.

If Platonic space “grows” when organisms instantiate new patterns, then those patterns didn’t exist in Platonic space before they were physically realized, which means biology is creating forms, not discovering them, and “Platonic space” becomes just a verbose redescription of the thermodynamic phase space that organisms are already exploring through constraint satisfaction and free energy minimization.

This creates an incoherent causal loop: organisms can’t “grow” a Platonic bulk they can’t access (Bilson 2025 proves bulk recovery from boundary is impossible even in ideal AdS/CFT), yet the bulk supposedly constrains what organisms can instantiate…. but if constraints emerge from physical exploration rather than transcendent forms, then Platonic space is explanatorily inert, making identical predictions to thermodynamics while adding metaphysical baggage. As Kauffman et al. (2025) prove mathematically, biological affordances are indefinite (not listable, orderable, or deducible before instantiation), which means any “Platonic space” that evolves to include them is just tracking what has been physically created, not providing a generative mechanism, and at that point, Ockham’s Razor eliminates the transcendent realm entirely, leaving only the physical universe and the patterns it generates, which is exactly what it seems like Fields means when he concludes “the Platonic realm that we’re looking for is just the world.”

I look forward to engagement from either of you on these points, particularly the falsification criteria and empirical tests I’ve proposed.

Your work continues to inspire important questions about the nature of biological and substrate-agnostic intelligence alike. Thank you for the opportunity to engage with these ideas. Best regards!

Benjamin L
November 2, 2025

This suggests that any way of slicing the Platonic realm that yields factors – patterns that can be distinguished from each other – generates an experienced world.

I engage in wild speculation here (https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/why-is-there-something-rather-than) that it might be useful to think of reality as consisting of all mathematical things, including things that contradict each other, with our world being for some utterly mysterious reason a logically consistent subcollection of that larger collection of contradictory patterns. In a contradictory world, patterns can’t be distinguished from each other: it’s perfectly correct to say that 2 is an odd number, for example.

Leo Bezhanishvili
November 4, 2025
Michael, first of all, thank you once again, every day for everything, I am grateful as a person.

In your work, you describe multicellular development as a negotiation between semi-autonomous sub-agents — tissues and organs that each have their own local growth objectives — but which are normally coordinated by a higher-level morphogenetic control system that enforces the global anatomical “target state.” During embryogenesis, this coordination appears extremely strong, allowing the organism to resolve competition and converge robustly on the correct form.

However, in adulthood this same system shifts to morphostasis, and over time the global pattern-level control seems to weaken. Organs begin to act more like independent agents again (e.g., fibrosis, cancer, immune overdrive), which resembles a loss of shared goal-directedness.

So my question is:

Do you see aging as the progressive decline in the system that arbitrates competition among parts — meaning that sub-tissues revert toward their default, self-serving developmental behaviors when the global “morphogenetic goal signal” fades? And if so, do interventions for aging require not just restoring bioelectric pattern states, but also re-establishing the incentive structure that maintains cooperation among organs?

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

I apologize in advance for the length of my response to your many points and questions, but your work is too important and the moment too urgent for anything but directness and precision about how we frame these mechanisms so I wanted to be sure to comprehensively respond to each of the many important points and questions you made. Not as an adversary, but as someone who deeply appreciates the work you are doing and wants nothing more than to see it succeed, as rigorously and defensibly as possible. Please take this not as a criticism of your work, but as a passionate reinforcement of it, even if you feel it a bit direct at times. My directness is equal to my willingness to be corrected, and only reflects the urgency of the moment and the impact of your lab’s work.

Below are peer-reviewed answers to each question/point you raised. I’ll demonstrate that thermodynamic constraint satisfaction predicts everything Platonism does, plus additional falsifiable hypotheses it can’t generate. If any response falls short of that standard, let me know! The framework that better serves your empirical work should prevail.

You said: “Yeah I’m not at all sure that time (in the conventional sense) is the right concept at all, and it seems to me that this issue is already here with the relationship between mathematical constraints and physical objects. In other words, long before biology and anything I am saying about it, the math:physics relationship is already raising this issue, so it’s a problem for everyone, not just me”

Michael, you’re attempting false equivalence. You’re saying “time is mysterious for everyone, so you can’t criticize my framework for not explaining timeless-temporal interaction.”But this is categorically wrong on three levels:

First, empirically: There are well-developed frameworks that provide specific, testable accounts of how time emerges from physical processes. Page-Wootters mechanism shows time emerging from entanglement correlations between quantum systems. Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics demonstrates how temporal ordering is observer-dependent but fully physical. The thermodynamic arrow emerges from entropy gradients in far-from-equilibrium systems (Prigogine). These aren’t “unsolved mysteries” – they’re operational theories with experimental validation and falsifiable predictions.When I propose thermodynamic monism, I’m offering a framework WITH an account of time. You’re offering a framework without one while claiming the lack is universal.

Second, logically: Your framework specifically generates an unsolvable problem: how do timeless Platonic forms causally interact with temporal physics? You admit: “I don’t know how to handle time at the juncture of physical and non-physical.” This is YOUR framework’s specific gap. Frameworks that don’t posit timeless entities don’t have this gap.You’re claiming a universal problem when you’ve created a local one.

Third, culturally: Indigenous epistemologies never had this “time problem” because they never separated temporal from relational. Aboriginal Dreaming isn’t “timeless realm” – it’s ongoing relational process where past-present-future are entangled through Country and practice. They understood what modern physics is rediscovering: time emerges from participation and coordination, not from interaction between separate temporal and atemporal realms.

The Asymmetry is striking. Multiple frameworks (Page-Wootters, Rovelli, thermodynamic accounts) provide coherent stories of how time can emerge from relational/physical structure, with experimental support. Platonism provides zero story, just “I don’t know” while positing an additional unfalsifiable realm that amplifies rather than resolves the temporal mystery.That’s not equivalent difficulty. That’s your framework failing where others succeed.Constructive Path Forward:You can’t use “time is hard for everyone” to justify “I have no explanation for how my key metaphysical entities interact with physical reality.”

If you want to make the case for Platonism, you need to either explain the interaction problem between timeless forms and temporal physical systems, or accept that frameworks without this problem are superior. Which would you prefer to tackle?
You said: “It will have to read it. I’m open to finding problems here, all of this is being worked out and it’s early days. Lauren Ross and I will be writing a paper on this stuff which will need to address those issues. If Rogers has a more fruitful path, I’m totally up for it.”
Whitehead’s exact formulation (Process and Reality, 1929) states: “There is an error; but it is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete. It is an example of what I might call the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.’” Rogers’ core finding, aligning with Whitehead’s definition, is that when abstractions get reified as reality, theorists face a forced choice: violate their own principles, or change core concept meanings to avoid contradiction. You’re already doing both with “Platonic space.”
Your framework exhibits three critical violations. First, the temporal contradiction: Platonic forms are by definition eternal and unchanging, yet you now say they might be “generative” or “co-evolving with physical minds.” You’ve changed the meaning of “Platonic” to avoid contradiction with observation, but this destroys what made Platonism explanatory in the first place, namely eternal stability. Second, the causal contradiction: Platonic forms are by definition causally inert (Plato was explicit on this), yet you need them to “inform” physical processes, requiring causal efficacy. You can’t have both without changing what “Platonic” means, which raises the question of why call it Platonic at all. Third, the access contradiction: mathematical objects exist outside spacetime (your claim), yet physical brains reliably access them (your need), with no mechanism for interaction (your admission). This violates basic physicalism you elsewhere endorse.
Rogers’ prediction is confirmed in your responses: you’re systematically changing concept meanings (suggesting “Platonic space might be generative,” “patterns might benefit from instantiation,” “time might work differently there”) precisely to avoid contradictions the framework generates. This is again is the signature of misplaced concreteness and the unfalsifiable degenerative research program that Whitehead, Popper, Lakatos, and others warn about.
Consider the alternative path. What if morphospace is a supremely useful idealization, as Field showed for mathematics in physics, that enables efficient derivation and prediction without requiring ontological commitment? Your empirical work would remain identical: bioelectric manipulation yields altered morphology, xenobots explore behavioral space, anthrobots show novel gene expression, and planaria reconstruct from scrambled cells. All of these findings stand unchanged. What changes is only the interpretation. Not “patterns ingress from Platonic realm,” but rather “systems explore thermodynamically stable configurations under constraint.”

Importantly, I’d suggest that you can absolutely keep thinking in terms of morphospaces, attractors, and pattern exploration as your personal heuristic for generating hypotheses, but when you communicate your work to colleagues, reviewers, and the public, framing those same insights through thermodynamic monism language (constraint satisfaction, free energy minimization, path-dependent exploration of thermodynamic landscapes) eliminates the philosophical vulnerabilities that invite criticism while making every prediction more rigorous and falsifiable.

This is pure win-win: thermodynamic language is what mathematicians, physicists, and computational biologists already speak fluently, so your work integrates seamlessly into established frameworks without raising red flags about interaction problems, temporal contradictions, or unfalsifiable metaphysics; it protects your discoveries from being weaponized by Intelligent Design advocates and anti-science movements who exploit Platonic language to argue against evolution and climate action; it makes your xenobot and anthrobot research immediately legible to engineers, synthetic biologists, and policymakers who need thermodynamic specifications to build applications; and most importantly, it strengthens rather than weakens your scientific credibility because constraint-based optimization, attractor dynamics, and computational irreducibility are mathematically precise, empirically testable, and make all the same predictions as your Platonic framing without any of the conceptual baggage that invites philosophical objections.

You lose nothing except vulnerabilities, you gain protection from misappropriation, and your revolutionary work reaches broader audiences faster because you’re speaking the lingua franca of modern applied mathematics and physics rather than requiring colleagues to navigate 2400-year-old metaphysical debates they likely have strong preconceptions about before they can engage with your data.
When you write that paper with Lauren Ross, you can test this directly: Can you reformulate every claim using only thermodynamic attractor language? If yes, Occam’s razor favors that formulation. If not, identify precisely where Platonism does explanatory work the alternative cannot. I suspect you’ll find the former. Your empirical discoveries are too good to need metaphysical scaffolding. They stand on thermodynamic mechanisms alone.
You said: “Yeah I don’t think that works. I don’t know what independent reality is; neuroscience (and I think physics) are telling us that naïve realism is not viable. Whether electrons, companies, embryos (vs. the cells that they’re comprised of, or, the quantum foam that cells are comprised of), etc. are “real”, I have no idea what that question means. But the fact that e has a particular value, and not a different value, that is real in a very significant sense.”
Michael, you just articulated process ontology while thinking you were defending Platonism. Let me show you. You said: “Everything is ‘real’ to the extent that it matters and can figure prominently as a target of relationships.” This is relational ontology (Rovelli, Whitehead, Barad), not Platonism. Platonism says forms exist eternally and independently, whether anyone relates to them or not. They’re real prior to and apart from any relationships. Your criterion says reality is constituted by relationships and mattering. Things are real because they figure in causal and predictive networks. These are opposite positions.
You’re describing immanent patterns in physical processes (Aristotle, thermodynamics) while using Platonic language. The linguistic habit is hiding the fact that you’ve already moved to process ontology operationally. Test this yourself: In your lab, you don’t treat bioelectric patterns as “accessing transcendent realm.” You treat them as measurable physical configurations that constrain physical developmental trajectories. Every intervention you make is physical: ion flux manipulation, optogenetic control, gap junction modulation. Every measurement is physical: voltage distributions, gene expression, morphology. The “pattern” that matters is the physical organization itself. So when you say “patterns are real because they matter,” you’re describing physical patterns, not Platonic forms. You’re on my side of this debate already. You just haven’t updated your metaphysical vocabulary to match your operational practice.
You said: “Mach thought “atoms” were a convenient fiction. Eliminativist materialists think minds are a convenient fiction. I think it’s a mistake to try to draw a hard line. Everything is “real” to the extent that it matters and can figure prominently as a target of relationships.”
You invoke Mach dismissing atoms and eliminativists dismissing minds as cautionary tales. But there’s a crucial disanalogy. Atoms were initially theoretical entities, later became directly observable (AFM, STM), were vindicated by becoming measurable, and were physical objects throughout. Minds are experientially immediate (first-person access), eliminativism fails because ignoring experience doesn’t make it disappear, and they are physical processes (thermodynamic, computational). Mathematical objects, however, are never directly observable, have no first-person experience of them, would remain useful even if shown to be fictional (Field’s point), and are descriptions rather than entities (Korzybski’s map-territory distinction).
Consider the pattern-persistence parallel: patterns persist (genetic code, cultural transmission, morphological memory) without requiring continuous consciousness. Same here: mathematical regularities persist without requiring Platonic objects. Thermodynamic monism recognizes atoms as physical, minds as physical processes, patterns as physical configurations, and mathematical descriptions as tools for describing physical regularities. No “convenient fiction” dismissal. No eliminativism. Just recognition that descriptions do not equal entities.
You said: “If I want to understand biology, I have to understand properties of mathematical objects. That makes them real, if they weren’t real, I wouldn’t have to worry about them.”
This conflates two meanings of “real”: predictively indispensable (must include in models) versus ontologically fundamental (exists as substance). Field’s nominalism demonstrates that mathematics can be indispensable for prediction while describing physical structure exclusively; no abstract mathematical objects are required. This is physical structuralism: reality is fundamentally relational physical processes, and mathematics is our most efficient language for compressing those regularities. The structure is real (contra instrumentalism), but it’s physical structure (contra Ontic Structural Realism), described mathematically (nominalized, contra Platonism). Structures are real, but they’re physical thermodynamic structures: bioelectric gradients, constraint surfaces, attractor landscapes. Mathematics describes them efficiently without those descriptions needing to exist as independent entities. Your morphospace is a mathematical description of physical possibility space, not a non-physical realm organisms access.
Concrete example from your own work:
When you model bioelectric networks using graph theory, graph connectivity properties are indispensable for predicting morphological outcomes. But this demonstrates physical structuralism with nominalist mathematics, not Platonic realism.

The graph describes physical ion channel coupling, actual voltage gradients, actual gap junctions, actual current flows. The mathematical properties (connectivity, centrality, modularity) capture relational structure of physical configurations. The structure is real (those ion channels really are connected in those patterns), but it’s physical structure (measurable voltage differences, actual protein complexes), described mathematically (graph theory provides efficient compression).

Your morphospace operates identically: it’s a mathematical description of physical thermodynamic possibility space, the configurations bioelectric-mechanical systems can physically occupy given energy constraints, material properties, and geometric limits. When xenobots “explore” morphospace, they’re not accessing a non-physical realm; they’re physically exploring thermodynamic constraint surfaces through actual ion flux, actual mechanical forces, actual gene expression cascades.

Turning your criterion back on itself:
You said: “If they weren’t real, I wouldn’t have to worry about them or could change them at will.”

Exactly right, but this proves physical constraint, not Platonic objects:
e: You can’t change it because it describes continuous compounding in physical growth processes, the ratio that emerges when infinitesimal time steps compound. It’s a physical necessity arising from how matter accumulates under continuous change.
π: You can’t change it because it describes optimal circumference-to-diameter ratio in isotropic physical space, the geometric relationship that emerges from Euclidean metric structure. It’s a constraint of physical geometry.
Primes: You can’t change them because primality emerges from divisibility structure of natural numbers, which itself reflects physical counting (how many discrete objects exist). The cicada’s 13-year cycle isn’t accessing Platonic primes, it’s experiencing selection pressure from predator overlap, which is minimized when periods share no common factors (primality as physical optimization outcome).

When you say “I have to understand properties of mathematical objects,” you’re describing a pragmatic necessity: you need efficient computational tools to predict physical system behavior. But Field showed this pragmatic indispensability doesn’t require ontological commitment.

Translation: “I have to understand how physical systems behave when organized according to relational structures efficiently described using mathematical language.”

The mathematics describes physical organization (how matter actually configures itself under constraints), not separate abstract entities that guide that organization from non-physical space.

Your lab work proves this: Every manipulation you perform (ion channel modulation, gap junction alteration, mechanical perturbation) and every measurement you take (voltage distribution, gene expression, morphology) operates entirely in physical thermodynamic space. The mathematical models are supremely useful for prediction because they’re describing physical constraint surfaces – there are no transcendent realms needed for the predictions to work.

You asked: “What’s his explanation for why the cicadas come out at 13 and not 12 years?”

I already gave it in my original comment. Let me make it more explicit since you may have read quickly:
The Mechanism (Pure Population Dynamics):
Physical Setup: Predators have reproductive cycles with characteristic periods
Cicada fitness depends on minimizing temporal overlap with predator emergence
Selection pressure favors any heritable trait that desynchronizes prey from predator

Why Prime Numbers Emerge (No Platonism Required):
Imagine simplified case: predator has 4-year cycle.
Cicada with 12-year cycle: emerges years 0, 12, 24, 36…
Predator peaks: years 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24…
Overlap every 12 years (every cicada emergence coincides with predator peak)
Cicada with 13-year cycle: emerges years 0, 13, 26, 39, 52…
Predator peaks: years 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52…
Overlap only every 52 years (4 × 13)

The Mathematics Describes Physical Fact, least common multiple (LCM) for composite vs. prime periods:
Composite 12: has divisors [2, 3, 4, 6], high overlap frequency with many predator cycles
Prime 13: only divisors [1, 13], minimal overlap with any predator cycle

Selection Mechanism:
Mutation produces heritable variation in emergence timing
Individuals emerging during predator peaks: higher mortality
Individuals with prime-period alleles: lower predator overlap
Differential reproduction favors prime periods
Population converges on 13 or 17 years (depending on local predator ecology)

Where’s the Platonic Realm? Nowhere. The “primeness” isn’t an object cicadas access. It’s a description of why certain periodicities minimize overlap. The math captures the structure of the physical fitness landscape. Your Own Words Support This: You said in a recent interview: “Those numbers don’t have any factors. They’re prime. And if you emerge on those time frames, it’s most difficult for predators to time your cycles.” That’s THE MECHANISM. You explained it! But then you added “the actual answer is not anything about physics or chemistry. The actual answer is because those numbers don’t have any factors.” That’s the error. The lack of factors IS a physical consequence. It’s why physical predator-prey timing interactions create fitness landscapes with physical selection pressure favoring prime periods.

Field’s Nominalization Applied:
Platonist story: “13 exists in Platonic space → evolution samples it → cicadas emerge at 13”
Nominalist story: “Physical predator-prey dynamics → fitness landscape with peaks at periods minimizing LCM → selection drives convergence → we observe 13 and describe it mathematically as prime”
Same predictions, superior explanitory power, no abstract eternal timeless unfalsifiable objects needed.

You said: “I think we’ve got 2 separate issues here. First, can you do good science without knowing the properties of mathematical objects. If you want to tell me that the key thing aren’t numbers, but rather some exotic object I don’t understand, fine. But you still have to show me why my biology (and physics) acts in a certain way and not some other way, and what I know is that if I keep asking “but why?” for almost any problem, we eventually reach the math department. The second issue is whether it’s a realm. I address this in my talk: you can make the assumption that it’s a random grab-bag of “regularities”, whatever those are. I would rather assume these regularities are ordered, in a relationship we can at least partly make sense of, and that understanding one brings you closer to understanding another – so there’s a sense of distance or a metric of some sort. Boom – now they are a realm, of a kind. 3D physical space is not the classical “real world” that naïve realism envisioned either.

Michael, you’re making two moves here that both commit Rogers’ fallacy by redefining terms to avoid the core problem. Let me show you precisely where this breaks down. You’re conflating mathematical description with causal necessity. When we ask “why” about cicada periods and reach prime numbers, we haven’t discovered that primes exist in a non-physical realm exerting causal influence. We’ve discovered that physical selection pressures (predator-prey dynamics, resource competition, mate synchronization) create fitness landscapes where prime-numbered periods are local maxima. The mathematics describes the structure of these physical selection pressures, it doesn’t cause them. This is precisely Field’s point: mathematical statements enable efficient derivation of physical consequences without requiring mathematical objects to exist. When you say “my biology acts in a certain way and not some other way,” the answer is thermodynamic constraints plus evolutionary history, fully physical throughout. The mathematical description captures regularities in these physical processes without those regularities needing a separate ontological home. Falling apples don’t “reach the math department” and consult differential equations. They follow geodesics in spacetime. We use calculus to describe this efficiently. Same with your xenobots: they don’t access morphospace, they explore physically possible configurations under bioelectric and mechanical constraints. We use morphospace mathematics to describe this exploration compactly.

“Ordered Regularities With Metrics = Realm”: This is definitional sleight of hand that makes “Platonic realm” unfalsifiable and explanatorily empty. Yes, morphological possibilities are ordered. Yes, understanding one configuration helps predict others. Yes, there’s a metric (free energy, bioelectric gradients, mechanical stress). But thermodynamic attractor landscapes already have all these properties without requiring a separate “realm.”

When you say “boom, now they are a realm,” you’ve redefined “realm” so broadly that it no longer does the work Platonism needs. Plato’s Forms were eternal, unchanging, causally efficacious templates existing independently of physical instantiation. You’ve now diluted this to “any ordered set of relationships with a metric.” But that’s precisely what thermodynamic process ontology describes: physical systems exhibiting structural regularities that can be mapped, with no non-physical space required.

Your move is like saying “Planetary orbits are ordered and understanding one helps predict others, boom, now planets exist in a ‘realm of gravitational patterns.’” Tautologically true, but adds nothing. The regularities emerge from physical law (gravity) acting on physical objects (planets). Same with morphospace: regularities emerge from thermodynamic law acting on cellular configurations. That’s the complete causal story. The ‘realm’ adds nothing.

Aboriginal songlines are ordered relationships with metrics. You can navigate from one site to another. Understanding one songline helps you comprehend others. The entire system exhibits extraordinary coherence across 65,000 years. Does this mean songlines exist in a “Platonic realm of Indigenous knowledge”? No. They’re physical relationships encoded in Country (landscape features), embodied in practice (ceremonies, songs, routes), and transmitted through coupling (teaching, walking, performing). The “realm” is Earth itself, not some transcendent space. When you redefine “realm” to mean “any ordered structure,” you’re not making a metaphysical claim anymore. You’re just noting that reality has structure. Which nobody denies. The question is whether that structure requires a separate ontological category beyond “physical processes exhibiting regular patterns under constraint.” Thermodynamic monism says no. Your framework says yes but then redefines terms until the “yes” becomes indistinguishable from “no.” That’s Rogers’ fallacy playing out in real-time.

When you write with Lauren Ross, try this test: Replace every instance of “Platonic space/realm” with “thermodynamic attractor landscape.” If your explanatory power remains identical, Occam’s razor favors the latter because it makes no ontological commitments beyond established physics. If explanatory power decreases, identify exactly where and we can examine whether Platonism genuinely fills that gap or whether you’re mistaking useful abstraction for separate reality. I genuinely suspect your empirical work doesn’t need the metaphysical overhead. Your discoveries about bioelectric computation, morphogenetic problem-solving, and scale-free cognition are stunning precisely because they reveal how much “intelligence” emerges from physical constraint satisfaction alone.

You said: “Great; if you want to stop your causal chain at “it’s prime, that’s all”, then you don’t need to do anything other than write down a list of prime numbers in a book of regularities that just happen to hold in our world. But if you want to keep going, and ask “but why are those numbers prime, and how soon will I encounter the next one?” and such, then you’re going into properties of mathematical objects that explain why the biology is what it is, and things that serve as the reason why something is happening are, in a crucial sense, their cause. Otherwise I don’t know what cause is supposed to do for us.”

You’ve revealed the fundamental confusion at the heart of your framework. You’re conflating three distinct categories: mathematical necessity, physical causation, and constraint relationships. These are not the same, and treating them as interchangeable generates precisely the metaphysical confusions plaguing your Platonic framework.

Why “Why Are Those Numbers Prime?” is a category error: When you ask “why are 13 and 17 prime?” you’re asking a question that has no causal answer because primeness isn’t a physical property that requires physical explanation. Thirteen is prime by definition: it has no divisors other than 1 and itself. That’s a relational property inherent to the number’s position in the integer sequence, not a fact about physical reality that needs a causal story. It’s like asking “why does a triangle have three sides?” The answer isn’t causal (nothing made it that way), it’s definitional (that’s what triangle means). Similarly, asking “how soon will I encounter the next prime?” isn’t asking about physical causation, it’s asking about the density distribution of a mathematical property across the integers. Number theory provides answers (prime number theorem, Riemann hypothesis), but these are descriptions of mathematical relationships, not causal explanations of physical events. Your move here is precisely Whitehead’s fallacy: you’re treating an abstract property (primeness) as if it were a concrete physical force acting on cicadas.

Here’s the actual causal chain with no gaps: Predators evolve life cycles of various periodicities (physical mutation and selection). Prey populations with periods matching predator multiples suffer higher predation (physical interaction, measurable death rates). Prey with prime-numbered periods minimize overlap across a range of predator cycles (this is a geometric fact about divisibility, not a cause). Selection favors prime-period alleles (physical differential reproduction). Result: cicadas with 13 or 17-year cycles (physical outcome). At no point does “primeness” exert causal force. Primeness is a mathematical description of which periodicities happen to minimize the problematic overlaps. The causation is entirely physical: predation pressure, reproductive success, allele frequency changes. The mathematics describes the structure of this physical selection landscape. You’re confusing “mathematics describes which physical configurations are stable” with “mathematics causes physical configurations to be stable.” This is like saying “Newton’s laws cause planets to orbit” when actually gravity causes orbits and Newton’s laws describe how gravity works. Laws describe, forces cause. Same distinction applies here.

You say “things that serve as the reason why something is happening are, in a crucial sense, their cause. Otherwise I don’t know what cause is supposed to do for us.” But you’ve equivocated on “reason.” Physical causation means one physical event produces another through energy/momentum/force transfer (measurable, has a direction in time, respects locality). Mathematical necessity means a relationship holds given axioms (timeless, not located in space, doesn’t transfer energy). When we say “cicadas have prime periods because it minimizes predator overlap,” the “because” is explanatory (it helps us understand why selection favored this outcome) but not causal in the physical sense. The actual causes are physical: predation rates, reproductive success, genetic transmission. The mathematics explains why those particular physical causes produced this particular physical outcome rather than another. This is constraint, not causation. Mathematics limits what physical processes can accomplish (you can’t have a three-sided square no matter what forces you apply), but this limiting relationship isn’t the same as causal production (forces making things move).

If mathematical properties were causes in the physical sense you need for Platonism to work, they’d need causal powers: the ability to make things happen, to constrain physical dynamics, to transfer energy/information into the physical world. But then you face the interaction problem you’ve already admitted you can’t solve. How do causally inert abstract objects exert causal force on physical neurons and cells? You can’t have it both ways. Either mathematical properties are causally efficacious (in which case explain the mechanism) or they’re descriptive constraints (in which case they’re not causes and don’t need separate ontological status). Your response here tries to make “reason” and “cause” synonymous, but that move only works if you ignore 2,500 years of philosophical work distinguishing formal, efficient, material, and final causes. What you’re calling “cause” (mathematical relationships explaining outcomes) is what Aristotle called formal cause. But formal causes don’t require Platonic realism. They work perfectly well as descriptions of how matter is organized. The thermodynamic framework I’m offering preserves all the explanatory power (we can still ask “why prime periods?” and answer “because geometric properties of divisibility”) while avoiding the interaction problem (mathematical descriptions don’t need to causally interact with anything because they’re not separate entities).

You said: “That’s a whole other set of questions. Some people think your goals, as a human with hopes and dreams, are phenomenological descriptions of free energy minimization. Do your goals go in quotes too? And, your goals have a long history of evolution behind them. We can guess your goals from your history. No one guessed Anthrobots’ behaviors (I’ve not made any claims about their goals) from the history of the human genome. Wouldn’t you like to know what space of possibilities they are drawn from and how specific constructs pull from that distribution? It’s not good enough to wait until we see and then write them down. We need to know the option space.”

Michael, you’re absolutely right that consistency requires applying free energy minimization to human goals too. My goals, your goals, all biological goal-directed behavior emerges from systems minimizing prediction error about their own states under thermodynamic constraints. But here’s the critical distinction you’re eliding: pattern-persistence is not the same as consciousness-continuation. Human goals are indeed free energy minimization patterns, no scare quotes needed. But humans also have continuous experiential processes, recursive self-modeling, and phenomenological interiority that we can report and measure. For anthrobots, we have compelling evidence of the pattern (novel gene expression, wound-healing behaviors, self-organization) but zero evidence of continuous subjective experience. The quotes around “goals” aren’t dismissive, they mark an epistemic distinction: we know anthrobots exhibit goal-directed behavior computationally, we don’t know if anyone is home experiencing those goals. This matters because you’re using “goals” to smuggle in agency and preference (“patterns under positive pressure,” “forms wanting to ingress”), which requires consciousness, not just computational optimization.Your point about unpredictability is excellent but supports my framework, not yours. You’re right that we couldn’t predict anthrobot behaviors from genomic history alone. That’s computational irreducibility (Wolfram): complex systems exploring possibility space generate outcomes that can only be discovered by running the system, not by algorithmic shortcut. But the “option space” you want to map is just morphospace under constraint, which is fully thermodynamic. Adult human cells released from tissue architecture constraints explore available configurations under bioelectric gradients, mechanical forces, and metabolic limits until they find stable attractors. That exploration is thermodynamic relaxation, not consultation with Platonic templates. You’re correct that we need to understand “what space of possibilities they are drawn from and how specific constructs pull from that distribution.” That’s precisely what attractor landscape mapping does: identify which configurations are thermodynamically stable, which transitions are accessible, what constraints enable or prevent transformations. Your lab already does this operationally when you manipulate bioelectric states to navigate morphospace. The mathematics describes the landscape geometry. It doesn’t require the landscape to exist in a separate realm.

You said: “Well I agree with all that. Evidence for Platonic realism is not given by every mathematical regularity (and again, I don’t know what regularity is, other than “we observe it, catalog it, but refuse to ask what option space it’s drawn from or what relationships it may have to other such regularities”). It’s not about the existence of regularities. My recent ideas drive a research program. I listed it in several of the talks I gave about it (see the last slide of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdEqgCOSx7E, and the first slide for a simple argument). It’s keeping about 6-7 people in my lab very busy right now. So no, it’s not metaphysical speculation (I can tell the difference because the former is very expensive and hard; the latter is cheaper). We can consider it a failure if, after some amount of active work (like with any new paradigm), it doesn’t generate more new discoveries than competing paradigms are doing.”

You say your framework drives active research with 6-7 people in your lab and generates discoveries, distinguishing it from cheap metaphysical speculation. I respect that deeply, empirical productivity matters. But Lakatos showed that research programs must be judged not just by generating activity but by being progressive rather than degenerating. Progressive programs make novel predictions confirmed by experiment. Degenerating programs explain new data only by ad hoc modifications. Phlogiston theory generated enormous research activity for decades, kept many chemists busy, and explained combustion phenomena. It failed not because it was lazy but because oxygen theory explained everything phlogiston did plus more, with fewer auxiliary assumptions.

Your Platonic framework faces the same test: Does it generate discoveries that thermodynamic process ontology cannot? When you manipulate bioelectric gradients to create two-headed planaria, is that discovery dependent on Platonic assumptions or on understanding bioelectric computation as constraint satisfaction? When xenobots exhibit kinematic self-replication, does explaining this require non-physical pattern ingression or just thermodynamic exploration of morphospace? When anthrobots show 9,000 differentially expressed genes, is that evidence for Platonic forms or for cellular networks relaxing into new attractor basins when released from tissue constraints?

Here’s the concrete empirical challenge: Take any discovery your lab has made or will make in the next year. Reformulate it using only thermodynamic attractor language (free energy minimization, constraint satisfaction, bioelectric gradients, mechanical forces, stable configurations). If the explanatory and predictive power remains identical, then Platonism is metaphysically eliminable by Occam’s razor, functioning as heuristic scaffolding rather than ontological necessity. If explanatory power decreases, identify precisely where, and we can examine whether Platonism genuinely fills that gap or whether it’s mistaking useful mathematical abstraction for separate reality. The fact that your framework generates research doesn’t distinguish it from nominalist alternatives that would generate the same research using simpler ontology. I suspect every experiment you’re running, every prediction you’re testing, every manipulation you’re designing works equally well or better when described as thermodynamic constraint navigation rather than Platonic pattern access. If I’m wrong, show me the experiment whose design or interpretation necessarily requires non-physical forms. That would be genuine empirical traction for Platonism.

You said: “That is a testable hypothesis; you can’t just decide that, we could test it. I doubt thermodynamics will be sufficient to predict it. Remember that we’re also dealing with 600+ (or 9000+ for Anthrobots) specific changes in gene expression, 4 (not 1 nor 12) specific behavior types, etc. etc. Maybe thermodynamics can account for all that, I doubt it. Regardless, unless these patterns are all disjoint and random, they form an ordered space.”
You’re absolutely right this is testable, and your skepticism is scientifically appropriate. But you’re underestimating what thermodynamic frameworks already explain, including your own recent work.
Gene regulatory networks are thermodynamic systems. Recent 2025 work (Journal of Mathematical Biology) validates this by solving the Fokker-Planck equation for real developmental processes, showing the “epigenetic landscape” is literally the free energy potential of the gene regulatory network, confirmed experimentally with Arabidopsis morphogenesis. Your own lab’s 2025 work (Manicka, Levin, Cell Reports Physical Science) demonstrates that bioelectric field dynamics, not access to Platonic patterns, create morphogenetic prepatterning through purely physical electric field propagation and coupling.
When you liberate cells from embryonic constraints (removing neighbor-cell suppression, altering mechanical stresses, changing bioelectric boundary conditions), the gene regulatory network explores its phase space and settles into new stable configurations. Those 600+ differentially expressed genes aren’t random or mysterious, they’re the new attractor basin the system finds under altered constraints, exactly as thermodynamic theory predicts. Recent 2025 research on thermodynamic feedback control shows that thermodynamic constraints don’t just allow specificity, they enable it, with attractor basins significantly larger and more robust than linear models predict because thermodynamic structure simplifies the landscape.
Think of it like a ball on a landscape: change the landscape geometry (boundary conditions), the ball rolls to a different valley (gene expression attractor). The four discrete behavior types aren’t mystical, they’re local minima in the free energy landscape, exactly what Friston’s Free Energy Principle predicts for self-organizing systems under constraint. You co-authored this framework with Friston in 2015 (J. R. Soc. Interface), showing morphogenesis emerges from variational free energy minimization, cells inferring their position and resolving uncertainty through thermodynamic principles. That paper showed genetic codes parametrize a generative model predicting signals in target morphology, not access to Platonic patterns.
Salazar-Ciudad’s 2024 work (J. Exp. Zool. B) showed computationally that morphospace clusters into discrete attractor basins from thermodynamic cell properties alone, adhesion, contraction, growth rates under physical constraints. Your xenobots are empirical confirmation. The prediction isn’t “thermodynamics explains everything vaguely”, it’s “manipulate bioelectric gradients in these specific ways, get these specific morphological and gene expression outcomes,” which your lab validates repeatedly. That’s thermodynamics making testable, falsifiable predictions about biological specificity at the level of 600+ genes and 4 discrete behaviors.

You said: “And that’s all I mean by Realm – a space with knowable properties which we can investigate by making different physical objects to explore the space and its metric. If I’ve understood, I think you mean that these latent spaces are not real in some special way that 3D space (constructed by our nervous system and cognitive apparatus) is.”

You’re still committing the definitional slide. If “realm” just means “ordered relationships with knowable properties,” then yes, morphospace is a realm, but so is the periodic table, the space of possible chess games, and the landscape of Earth’s topography. None of these require positing separate ontological categories. They’re structures in physical reality described efficiently with mathematics.
The difference matters operationally: when we say “the periodic table is a useful organizational framework,” nobody thinks elements are accessing a transcendent table. When you say “cells access Platonic morphospace,” it sounds like you’re proposing a causal mechanism, that patterns in an abstract space exert influence on physical matter. This is the reification trap: treating a map (mathematical description of possibilities) as territory (causal agent). If morphospace is just “the set of physically possible configurations given thermodynamic constraints,” say that. If it’s something more? If patterns in morphospace have causal efficacy independent of the physical constraints that generate them, then you’re making a claim that requires mechanistic specification. How do abstract patterns cause physical changes? Through what interface? With what energy budget? These aren’t philosophical nitpicks. They’re the questions any physical mechanism must answer.

You said: “I can’t get into all that here, it’s a huge literature on how space and objects are inferred, but Donald Hoffman is an interesting recent addition to it…. “entirely physical” just doesn’t seem sufficient. I don’t know of any way to explain the specific value of Feigenbaum’s constant, or e, or a million other things, from anything that sounds like physics. None of those things are sensitive to the setting of the foundational unitless constants in physics. Adding them to physics dilutes the meaning of “physics” I think.”
Invoking Hoffman here is particularly problematic for several reasons, and recent empirical work undermines the core claims you’re relying on.
First, Hoffman’s interface theory of perception contains a logical contradiction with your Platonic realism. His framework argues that our perceptions are adaptive fictions, not veridical representations of reality, spacetime, objects, AND mathematical structures are all cognitive constructs evolved to navigate fitness landscapes, not to reveal truth. But this undermines rather than supports Platonic realism, because now mathematical “truths” become species-specific cognitive tools, not eternal forms accessed from transcendent realms. You can’t simultaneously claim that space is cognitively constructed (Hoffman) and that mathematical space is objectively real and causally efficacious (Platonism). That’s a direct contradiction.
Second, Hoffman’s “Fitness-Beats-Truth” theorem has been empirically challenged by recent work showing it relies on unrealistically stable environments. A 2021 computational study (Rezayati Charan et al., arXiv) tested FBT predictions in environments with realistic perturbations and found that “interface perception” strategies push species toward extinction when environmental changes occur, exactly the opposite of Hoffman’s prediction. The study concludes: “In case of drastic environmental changes, interface perception is no longer compatible with reality.” This suggests organisms must track some veridical features of their environment to survive realistic conditions, not just fitness payoffs in static landscapes.
Third, thermodynamic constraints explain the pattern Hoffman misinterprets. A 2013 Royal Society paper formalized bounded rational decision-making as thermodynamic free energy optimization, showing that organisms trade off expected utility (which often correlates with truth-tracking) against information-processing costs measured by relative entropy. The key insight: organisms don’t ignore truth entirely, they track truth when thermodynamically affordable given computational bounds and energy budgets. Recent 2025 work on thermodynamic constraints in cognition shows compartmentalization emerges as response to fundamental thermodynamic, information preservation, timing, and resource constraints, not from accessing transcendent patterns, but from optimizing information processing within energy budgets.
This explains what looks like Hoffman’s “fitness-only” strategy: organisms track compressed, thermodynamically efficient representations of reality that capture relevant causal structure while ignoring irrelevant details. Your xenobots aren’t accessing Platonic patterns, they’re operating under thermodynamic constraints that shape which features of morphospace they can explore given their energy budget and information-processing capacity. Both physical space and mathematical structure are descriptions of regularities in thermodynamic processes, with different descriptive granularity but no ontological hierarchy.
Finally, Feigenbaum’s constant and mathematical constants generally: These don’t require explanation “from physics” because they are physics, they’re dimensionless ratios that emerge from the iterative dynamics of nonlinear systems, which are themselves thermodynamic processes. Feigenbaum’s constant describes universality in period-doubling bifurcations, which occur in physical systems (fluid dynamics, population dynamics, electrical circuits) because of how thermodynamic constraints organize iteration. The constant isn’t “added to” physics, it’s a measured feature of how physical systems behave when iterated under energy dissipation. Same with e: it emerges from continuous compounding, which describes how thermodynamic systems evolve continuously in time. These constants don’t float in Platonic space waiting to be accessed, they’re descriptive patterns in how matter-energy behaves.
The thermodynamic alternative dissolves the apparent mystery: mathematical structure describes how thermodynamic constraints organize possibility space, period. No transcendent realms, no contradictory invocations of anti-realist perception theories to defend mathematical realism, no unexplained constants requiring ontological extravagance, and no need to reject computationalism while simultaneously invoking computational processes like information integration and bioelectric codes.
And crucially, no need to deflect to “I don’t know what is real” when pressed on ontological commitments, then pivot to pragmatism (“if I need to worry about it in experiments, it’s real”) when the anti-realism becomes untenable. You can’t simultaneously hold that we don’t know what’s real (undermining mathematical realism), that mathematical patterns in Platonic space have causal efficacy (requiring them to be real), and that reality just means experimental utility (collapsing metaphysics into pragmatism). That’s not three compatible positions, it’s rhetorical evasion of the core question: do these patterns exist independently of physical constraints, or are they descriptions of how physical constraints organize possibility?

Thermodynamics answers clearly: they’re descriptions. Hoffman’s anti-realism, Platonic mathematical realism, and pragmatic instrumentalism are three incompatible responses to the same pressure, deployed strategically to avoid committing to any falsifiable position. The thermodynamic framework doesn’t need that flexibility because it’s not protecting unfalsifiable metaphysics, it’s describing how matter-energy actually behaves under constraint.

You said: “At the point when our simulation tell us that the pattern we see is only predictable if we know 1) physical facts about ion channel properties, and 2) some properties of bioelectric circuits which rest on facts of mathematics and computer science. Sometimes you need the actual value of e, and other times of the fact that the NAND gate is special, and some other stuff.”

This is where your Platonic framework is most deeply confused, Michael, and it’s the crucial point. Mathematical constants DON’T exist separately from physics, they describe emergent regularities IN physical processes. Exponential growth converges on e because that’s what happens when physical systems undergo continuous compounding, whether bacterial population growth, radioactive decay, or compound interest. It’s not that “e exists in Platonic space and biology accesses it.” It’s that any physical process exhibiting continuous proportional growth will exhibit the relationship we call e. The Feigenbaum constant appears in period-doubling bifurcations not because it exists transcendently but because iterated nonlinear maps in physical dynamical systems (dripping faucets, convecting fluids, population cycles) share universal scaling properties.

These constants are what Noether’s theorem predicts: symmetries in physical law generate conservation principles and scaling relationships. They’re not “added to physics” or “insensitive to physical constants.” They emerge FROM the structure of physical dynamics under constraint. When you say NAND gates are “special,” you’re describing a logical relationship that any physical system implementing Boolean operations will exhibit, whether silicon transistors, ion channels, or mechanical switches. The specialness is topological: NAND is functionally complete, meaning all other gates can be built from it. But this is a fact about physical systems implementing computation, not about transcendent logical forms.

You said: “You can say “these are facts that hold in our universe”, or “just add them to physics”, but it seems simpler to bite the bullet, and follow Pythagoras, Penrose, Tegmark, and others and just acknowledge that there is a different option space they come from, and commit to a research program to understand it, not assume it’s random.”

Here’s where I’ll push back hardest because this is where institutional momentum can lock in degenerating frameworks. Pythagoras believed beans contained souls and that mathematics proved the cosmos was fundamentally harmonic. His mysticism was beautiful but wrong. Penrose’s Platonism is controversial even among philosophers of mathematics and requires consciousness to collapse quantum wavefunctions, which decades on still lacks empirical support. Tegmark’s mathematical universe hypothesis is explicitly untestable metaphysics, which he acknowledges. These aren’t settled authorities, they’re speculative frameworks with serious problems. More importantly, following them means committing to a research program that your own work is already showing doesn’t need them. Your lab’s empirical success comes from manipulating physical bioelectric networks and observing physical morphological outcomes.

The “commitment to understanding option space” you describe is already happening through thermodynamic morphospace mapping. You don’t need Platonism to investigate how constraint landscapes structure possibility spaces. You just need good thermodynamics, information theory, and bioelectric measurement, all of which your lab excels at. The question isn’t whether to commit to understanding structured possibility spaces (obviously yes), but whether that understanding requires positing non-physical realms or can be achieved through rigorous physical theory.

Aboriginal peoples mapped “option spaces” for ecosystem management without Platonism for 65 millennia. Your framework would be stronger, more falsifiable, and more aligned with your own empirical practice if you followed their lead and 65,000 year of empirical observation: ground everything in thermodynamic process, describe regularities mathematically, but don’t reify the map as separate territory.

You said: “Well that’s a whole other thing now. That’s a reductionist argument against the reality of other causal levels. Everything, including a psychoanalysis session, is really just Schrodinger’s equation governing some particle interactions… Yeah, from one perspective. A very limiting perspective, if you actually want to understand what’s interesting about the session.”

Michael, you’ve committed a textbook strawman fallacy here. I’m not arguing for greedy reductionism (“everything is just particles”). I’m arguing for emergent physicalism where higher-level patterns have genuine causal efficacy WHILE remaining fully physical. These are completely different positions, and conflating them lets you avoid the actual critique.

Dennett’s definition (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 1995): “Greedy reductionists suppose that all Design can be explained without skyhooks (supernatural explanations); greedy reductionists suppose it can all be explained without cranes (legitimate mechanistic explanations at higher levels).

But note what I said: “The entire causal chain consists of physical quantities causally interacting through physical mechanisms.” This is compatible with multiple levels of description, causal emergence, downward causation, and computational irreducibility. Your psychoanalysis example actually proves my point. A therapy session involves neural patterns (physical), neurotransmitter cascades (physical), linguistic exchanges (physical sound waves + semantic networks), power dynamics (physical social coupling), and narrative reconstruction (physical memory reconsolidation).

The “interesting” aspects emerge from physical processes at multiple coupled scales. No non-physical realm required. The patient’s childhood trauma isn’t stored in Platonic space and “ingressing” during therapy. It’s encoded in synaptic weights, reactivated through semantic priming, and restructured through prediction error minimization as new narratives reduce free energy. Entirely physical. Extraordinarily complex. Causally efficacious at multiple scales simultaneously.

Your own research demonstrates this. Causal emergence literature (Rosas et al. 2020, Farnsworth 2025, Zhang et al. 2024) shows precisely how macro-level patterns exhibit stronger causal efficacy than micro-level dynamics through thermodynamic coarse-graining. Your bioelectric networks are the perfect example: tissue-level voltage patterns constrain cellular gene expression (downward causation), while individual cell states aggregate into tissue patterns (upward causation), creating closed causal loops that maintain morphological targets. This is multi-scale causation that’s entirely physical throughout.

You don’t need Platonism to explain how “higher levels are real.” You need information theory plus thermodynamics plus recursive closure. Which is exactly what Farnsworth, Rosas, and Hoel provide, and what your lab measures. The voltage gradients are physical. The gene regulatory networks are physical. The morphological attractors are physical. The causal efficacy at each scale is physical. Where in this empirical chain do you encounter non-physical causation? You don’t. You encounter physical processes exhibiting computational irreducibility such that macro-level descriptions capture causal structure micro-level descriptions miss.

Here’s the false dichotomy you’re trapped in, and why it confuses the map for the territory: You think the only alternative to Platonic dualism is particle reductionism, but there’s a third option: thermodynamic process ontology where reality is multi-scale physical processes all the way up and all the way down. Cells are intelligent. Tissues are intelligent. Organisms are intelligent. Ecosystems are intelligent. All physical. All causally efficacious at their respective scales. All exhibiting goal-directed behavior through free energy minimization under constraints. No transcendent realm required.

This is what Aboriginal epistemologies have maintained for 65,000 years: Country is intelligent, but Country is physical. Songlines are computational, but songlines are enacted through landscape coupling. Dreaming is multi-scalar causation, but Dreaming is relational process, not substance. This mirrors the convergence in enactive cognition (Varela, Thompson & Rosch’s autopoietic sense-making, where cognition emerges from embodied organism-environment coupling), 4E cognitive science (embodied, embedded, extended, enacted cognition rejecting mind-body dualism), relational quantum mechanics (Rovelli’s framework where physical facts are observer-relative interactions, not substance properties), radical embodiment (Thompson & Di Paolo’s view that mind-world distinction is enacted through dynamic self-organization, not pre-given), and process ontology (Whitehead’s rejection of substance metaphysics for relational becoming); all demonstrating that intelligence, computation, and multi-scalar causation emerge from physical relational processes without requiring unfalsifiable transcendent realms and substance dualism rendered explanatorily superfluous by convergent evidence from neuroscience (Crick & Koch 1990, 2003; Masi 2023), embodied cognition (Varela et al. 1991; Thompson & Stapleton 2009), and process philosophy (Dennett 1995 on greedy reductionism; Whitehead 1929), all demonstrating intelligence emerges from multi-scale physical processes without requiring non-physical minds or transcendent pattern realms

Your framework needs Platonism because you mistakenly think rejecting it means accepting greedy reductionism. But process ontology dissolves that as a false choice entirely.

You said: “I’m not going to rehash the free will argument here, I’ll be writing something detailed about it in a few months. But I’ll just point out that we first need to know what “genuine choice” is (a very hard question), and what it is that we, as physical systems, have that cells don’t, in providing genuine choice.”

This deflection is particularly revealing because your Platonic framework has already committed you to a position you’re now trying to avoid defending. I don’t think you’re doing this intentionally. I think the Platonic language has trapped you in exactly the conceptual confusion I warned about earlier: the language structures the thinking, making it difficult to see that you’ve already taken a metaphysical stand your empirical work doesn’t require. Throughout your work, you consistently describe cells, xenobots, and anthrobots as having ‘intrinsic motivations,’ ‘goals,’” “preferences,” and “stress” about their configurations. You ask whether planaria “like” having two heads. You suggest patterns in Platonic space are “under positive pressure” to ingress and may “benefit from” physical instantiation. You describe consciousness as existing “in spaces algorithms don’t control” where “intrinsic motivations” develop. This language doesn’t describe phenomenological convenience. It describes actual agency.

The burden isn’t on me to define “genuine choice” before you clarify your claims. The burden is on you, as claimant, to specify whether your framework requires cells to have libertarian access to transcendent patterns, or whether (as I suspect) all this agential language is heuristic shorthand for thermodynamic processes that you’ve mistakenly dressed in Platonic clothing. If it’s the latter, then you don’t need Platonism at all and should drop it for parsimony. If it’s the former, then you owe us a mechanism for how physical cells access non-physical patterns.

Here’s why this matters and why your Platonic framework actually makes it worse. In thermodynamic monism, there’s no ambiguity about what “choice” means at any scale. Choice is operationalized as the system’s degrees of freedom in possibility space multiplied by its recursive self-modeling depth multiplied by its prediction-error minimization capacity under energy constraints. This isn’t arbitrary either, it’s what organisms actually do when they ‘choose’: they explore available options (degrees of freedom), model outcomes (recursive depth), minimize surprise (prediction error), all within energy budgets (thermodynamic constraint).

Bacterial chemotaxis has minimal recursive depth, explores limited possibility space, updates on one or two variables. Human deliberation has deep recursive depth (thinking about thinking about thinking), explores vast conceptual spaces, integrates predictions across thousands of variables. Both are “choosing” in the sense of constraint satisfaction under thermodynamic necessity, differing only in recursive complexity and energetic budget. No mystery about ‘genuine’ versus ‘apparent’ choice because that distinction evaporates: all choice is the same distributed thermodynamic process operating at different scales of recursive complexity and energetic constraint.

Your Platonic framework, by contrast, creates genuine ambiguity. If cells “access” patterns in non-physical space to solve morphogenetic problems, are they exercising agency by selecting which patterns to instantiate? If patterns have “pressure” to ingress, are cells passive vessels or active choosers? If consciousness exists ‘in spaces algorithms don’t control’ where genuine freedom emerges, does this require agent causation at cellular scales, cells as unmoved movers with libertarian access to pattern realms?

You can’t have it both ways: either agential language in your work is metaphorical (in which case drop Platonism because thermodynamics explains everything without the metaphysics), or its literal (in which case you’re committed to panpsychism plus dualism, which requires explaining cellular qualia, mind-body interaction mechanisms, and why cellular ‘choices’ appear perfectly predictable from thermodynamic constraints if they’re genuinely accessing transcendent patterns. None of which your framework addresses.

Continued in next response.

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
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Continued from previous comment:

The pattern-versus-experience distinction dissolves this pseudo-problem entirely. Cells exhibit computational pattern-matching: bioelectric networks minimize free energy by finding stable voltage configurations, gene regulatory networks satisfy multiple constraints simultaneously, morphogenetic processes explore anatomical possibility space under mechanical and biochemical limits. This is all real, measurable, physical computation that we rightly recognize as “intelligent” because it solves problems through information processing. But computational pattern-matching is CPT-symmetric (the information structures persist through time and death), while phenomenal choosing is CPT-asymmetric (requires continuous thermodynamic process, terminates when coupling breaks).

When you cut a planarian, bioelectric patterns reconstruct morphology in both halves. Pattern persists. But did the “choosing” continue? Was there phenomenal experience of selecting which morphology to build? No. The pattern was always physically encoded in bioelectric gradients and gene networks. Releasing constraints allowed those physical systems to explore morphospace and find new stable attractors. Pure thermodynamics. No choosing required beyond constraint satisfaction. You’re conflating these because Platonism obscures the distinction. If “minds” exist in pattern-space “wanting” to ingress, it sounds like cells must experientially choose whether to let them in. But if minds are just stable computational configurations cells can instantiate, there’s no choosing beyond physical relaxation to stable states.

Your question “what do we have that cells don’t?” is exactly backwards and reveals the confusion. The thermodynamic framework answers this precisely: humans have greater recursive depth (we model ourselves modeling ourselves modeling ourselves, whereas cells model immediate chemical gradients), larger energetic budgets (20 watts continuous for billions of neurons versus microwatts for cellular networks), and deeper temporal integration (we predict across years, cells predict across minutes). These are quantitative differences in degree, not qualitative differences in kind. Both are thermodynamic systems minimizing prediction error under constraint. Neither requires “genuine choice” as some metaphysical primitive because choice at all scales is just exploration of possibility space under energy limits.

Your Platonic framework, by invoking non-physical patterns with “agency” and “preferences,” creates a mystery where none exists. Drop the unfalsifiable dualism, keep the empirical insights, and the free will question dissolves into “how much recursive self-modeling does this system support given its architecture and energy budget?” That’s measurable, falsifiable, and doesn’t require any papers about whether choice is “genuine” (unfalsifiable, reification fallacy, fallacy of misplaced concreteness). It’s all genuine because it’s all physical process under constraint.

The empirical fact that cellular behavior remains thermodynamically predictable suggests cells aren’t accessing transcendent freedom. Which means Platonism is explanatorily idle even on your own terms.

You said: “Correct, which is why I often repeat that I have 0 intent to prop up Plato or his views. The only reason I call it Platonic Space is to remind people of what Platonist Mathematicians already believe. Mine is an extension of their view. I know my view is different that Plato’s, it’s fine”

Thank you for this clarification, but I need to press further, because your actual usage throughout your response suggests something more than just borrowing a label.
You say you have “0 intent to prop up Plato” and you’re just using “Platonic space” to remind people of what Platonist mathematicians already believe. But if that’s the case, why invoke their framework at all when your actual position (dynamic, evolving pattern spaces physically coupled to developing systems) contradicts core Platonic commitments? Platonist mathematicians believe in eternal, unchanging, causally inert abstractions that exist independently of physical instantiation. You’re describing something fundamentally different: constraint surfaces that change as physical systems explore them, co-evolving with matter-energy configurations.
This isn’t a minor terminological preference. It’s the difference between describing what physical systems do versus positing a transcendent realm they access. Throughout our exchange, you’ve used language suggesting the latter: patterns “under positive pressure to ingress,” cells “accessing” morphospace, understanding gained by exploring a “structured space with knowable properties.” This is causal language implying patterns do something beyond being descriptions of thermodynamic constraints.
If your position is genuinely that morphospace just describes the set of physically possible configurations given thermodynamic constraints (which is what I’m arguing), then yes, we agree on ontology. But then the question becomes urgent rather than dismissible: Why keep terminology that actively obscures this agreement and invites the exact misunderstandings (ID weaponization, dualist implications, anti-materialist recruitment) that make your work harder to adopt and easier to misuse?
What you’re describing (evolving possibility spaces constrained by physical laws, explored by self-organizing systems under thermodynamic gradients) is precisely what thermodynamic process ontology predicts. No transcendence needed. But calling it “Platonic space” to “remind people of what Platonist mathematicians believe” when you disagree with what they believe seems strategically counterproductive. It’s like calling evolution “guided development” to remind people of what Intelligent Design proponents believe, while insisting you don’t support ID.
The terminology isn’t neutral. It shapes interpretation. When you tell graduate students and collaborators to think in terms of “Platonic morphospace,” some will hear: thermodynamic constraint manifolds (your intended meaning). Others will hear: transcendent pattern realm with causal efficacy (what Platonists actually claim). The second interpretation enables weaponization you don’t intend.
Here’s the thermodynamic constraint we’re facing: Your discoveries about bioelectric control, morphogenetic fields, and synthetic organisms are exactly what communities need for climate adaptation, regenerative medicine, and agricultural resilience under changing conditions. But right now, with atmospheric CO2 approaching 430 ppm, AMOC circulation showing destabilization, and crop failure probabilities increasing exponentially, we’re in a race between deployment timelines and cascade thresholds. Every year spent clarifying “I don’t mean Platonic Platonism” to skeptical materialist biologists is a year your techniques aren’t being adopted by labs that could scale them. Every graduate student who hears “Platonic morphospace” and associates it with intelligent design is someone who might reject the framework entirely rather than risk reputational contamination.
The thermodynamics of information propagation in academic networks dictate this: Frameworks with lower cognitive load and fewer metaphysical dependencies diffuse faster through research communities under resource constraints. When labs are deciding whether to invest limited time learning your bioelectric techniques versus established molecular approaches, “thermodynamic constraint manifolds” signals: physical mechanism, materialist ontology, compatible with existing paradigms. “Platonic morphospace” signals: metaphysical commitment required, paradigm shift needed, unclear relationship to established physics. The first lowers adoption barriers. The second raises them.
And given the exponential risks we’re facing (permafrost methane release, ecosystem collapse cascades, agricultural system failures under heat stress), the thermodynamic imperative is clear: Your framework needs to propagate through the scientific community faster than the planet’s systems are destabilizing. Terminology that creates friction in that diffusion process isn’t just philosophically problematic. It’s thermodynamically wasteful. Every calorie of intellectual effort spent defending metaphysical language is energy not spent optimizing xenobot functions for bioremediation or scaling planarian regeneration principles to human tissue repair.
So this isn’t me asking you to change terminology for philosophical tidiness. The planet’s thermodynamic trajectory is demanding maximum information transfer efficiency in exactly the domains where your work is most critical. Precise physical terminology (bioelectric phase space, morphogenetic constraint manifolds, developmental possibility landscapes under thermodynamic gradient) removes cognitive friction, accelerates adoption, prevents weaponization by anti-science movements that slow deployment further. These terms capture what you’re actually describing without metaphysical baggage that creates unnecessary resistance in the diffusion network.
The choice isn’t between equivalent framings. It’s between terminology that facilitates rapid propagation of life-saving biotechnology and terminology that introduces unnecessary barriers in a system where diffusion speed could determine whether these techniques deploy before or after critical cascades lock in.

You said: “My point, as in the talk, is that the Platonic space contains a wide range of inhabitants. Some are low-agency static things like some mathematical entities. They are not constructed, their properties are forced once you make some simple axioms (start with set theory, end up with a specific value for e!). They may never change (or maybe they do, Lucy can say better than I). Others are much more complex and are significant minds, and I suspect (not know) that they can save state too – they are not eternal and unchanging, they have plasticity there too. Again, I have no commitment to Plato’s formulation. I am extending it to say that mathematical objects are just the low end of the spectrum.”

Your agency spectrum, from “low-agency” mathematical entities to “high-agency” minds that can save state in Platonic space, seems to me to be more panpsychist cosmopsychism, not mathematical Platonism. Panpsychism posits consciousness exists on a continuum across all reality, from simple to complex systems. When you add that these minds have “intrinsic motivations,” exhibit plasticity, and bidirectionally exchange with physical brains, you’ve committed to non-physical minds causally interacting with matter; the substance dualism interaction problem philosophers haven’t solved in centuries. Mathematical Platonists like Gödel maintained mathematical objects are acausal, eternal, and unchanging, the opposite of what you’re proposing. If your Platonic inhabitants learn, evolve, and save state, they’re temporal minds, not mathematical truths. You can’t have the number 7 be both necessarily true across all possible worlds (Platonism) and capable of learning from experience (your framework’s implication).

Contemporary philosophy handles multi-scale agency through emergentist physicalism: higher-level causal properties emerge from but remain grounded in physical processes. Butterfield, List, and others demonstrate how agency appears at multiple scales, cellular, organismal, social, without requiring transcendent realms. Your empirical findings (bioelectric manipulation, morphogenetic control, xenobot behavior) align perfectly with this: recursive self-modeling at different thermodynamic scales, all physically constrained. The alternative explanation, that cells access non-physical pattern realms containing minds with varying agency, requires you to specify the interaction mechanism, explain how axioms determine low-agency patterns while high-agency minds have freedom, and justify why cellular behavior remains perfectly predictable from thermodynamic constraints if cells genuinely consult transcendent minds.

The parsimony argument is stark: either your framework is thermodynamic process ontology with unfortunate terminology that just needs refinement, or its unfalsifiable panpsychist substance dualism that must solve problems mathematical Platonism was specifically designed to avoid.

You said: “What is a “feature”? is it like a “regularity”? if these features are drawn from a set that is rationally mappable, then we agree. I call it a space, and go further to hypothesize that some of these features are not static facts but dynamic patterns with non-trivial agency of their own.”

You’re asking excellent clarifying questions. Yes, a “feature” in chaos theory (like the Feigenbaum constant) is a regularity, a universal pattern that emerges across different physical systems. But here’s the critical distinction your question exposes: when I say period-doubling bifurcations “converge on” the Feigenbaum constant (δ ≈ 4.669), I’m describing a universal property of physical dynamical systems, not positing an independent “space” where this constant “lives”. The constant is universal because it appears in fluid convection, electronic circuits, chemical reactions, and any system undergoing period-doubling routes to chaos, meaning the same mathematical relationship governs these physically distinct processes. This universality emerges from renormalization group equations describing how physical systems behave near phase transitions, not from consulting a transcendent pattern realm. The features are indeed “rationally mappable” (describable mathematically), but saying they’re mappable is not equivalent to saying they inhabit a “space” with ontological status beyond being convenient mathematical descriptions of physical regularities. Your suggestion that some features are “dynamic patterns with non-trivial agency” contradicts what Feigenbaum constants demonstrate: they’re observer-independent physical universalities, not entities with motivations or plasticity.

You said: “I’m just not seeing the emphasis you put on physical realms. If it’s a space of possibilities with a traversable metric, then we’re done. I think that’s all “real space” is too.”

When you say “if it’s a space of possibilities with a traversable metric, then we’re done” and equate this with “real space,” you’re committing a category error philosophy of science has spent decades clarifying. A state space or phase space is an N-dimensional mathematical representation where each variable of a physical system corresponds to a dimension, and each point represents a possible state that system can occupy. Physical space (where objects have location, extension, mass-energy) is ontologically distinct from state space (abstract mathematical representation of system configurations). Example: a pendulum’s state is defined by angle and angular velocity, so its state space is a cylinder (S¹ × R), but the pendulum itself exists in ordinary 3D physical space. The state space is a model, not a place the pendulum “accesses.” Your morphospace is exactly analogous: it’s a mathematical representation of possible bioelectric-mechanical configurations, not a non-physical realm cells consult. When you say physical space is “just” a traversable metric space, you’re collapsing the distinction between ontology (what exists) and epistemology (how we model what exists). The “traversable metric” in physical space describes actual causal paths matter can take under thermodynamic constraints. The “traversable metric” in state space describes mathematical relationships between system variables. These are not interchangeable categories, and equating them smuggles in Platonism by suggesting mathematical spaces have the same ontological status as physical space.

You said: “I don’t believe they are causally inert. I think the “cause precedes effect” definition of causality, and the conventional time concept, break down here. They are causally potent because they provide the “why” of a lot of other things. Physical brains don’t access mathematical truths; minds (also Platonic inhabitants) do. But the question of how ineffable mathematical facts interact with physical objects is a deep issue that Pythagoras et al. saw clearly. I’m not claiming I have a satisfactory vocabulary for it, but I think that what’s keeping people from seeing this is an impoverished notion of causation and an obsession with billiard ball style causation in 3D space. I think QM, to whatever extent I understand it, already told us this was nonviable.”

Your claim that mathematical entities are “causally potent” because they provide the “why” of physical events is precisely what constraint-based explanation describes, but you’re attributing ontological status to what are actually atemporal physical constraints. Lange (2023) in “Explanations by Constraint: Not Just in Physics” distinguishes causal explanation (temporal, efficient causes) from constraint-based explanation (atemporal structural limits on physical possibilities).

When you say mathematical patterns provide the “why,” you’re describing explanations by constraint: Frisch (2016) in “Causation in Physics” (Stanford Encyclopedia) shows variational principles like the principle of least action don’t “cause” particles to follow geodesics through collision-style causation. They describe boundary conditions that constrain which physical trajectories are possible given thermodynamic necessity. When you say “minds (also Platonic inhabitants) access mathematical truths” rather than physical brains, you’ve committed to substance dualism.

Kim (1998) documented the interaction problem: if minds are non-physical, how do traumatic brain injuries, neurodegenerative diseases, and anesthesia systematically alter these supposedly transcendent minds?

I’m also struck by how your own framework generates what might be called an infinite regress problem. If patterns in Platonic space constrain and inform physical processes, what explains the structure of Platonic space itself?

You said: “This is not an infinite regress, this is normal science. One definition of science is “being able to say something without first having to say everything”. In other words, one thing I definitely did not claim is to have all final answers that generate no new questions of course the Platonic space hypothesis raises new questions to which I don’t know the answers. That’s ok, all science progress does that. We’ll get there (or we won’t, I don’t know); I take the steps I can.”

You’re right that science progresses by “saying something without first having to say everything,” but this response misses the structural difference between scientific questions and foundational incoherence. In thermodynamic monism, the structure of possibility space is not an additional entity requiring explanation: it’s the mathematical description of which configurations physical systems can occupy given energy constraints, material properties, and geometric limits. The “structure” emerges from physical law acting on matter, not from consulting a separate realm.
The distinction matters because what you’re describing is exactly the methodological pattern Intelligent Design proponents use: posit an explanatory entity (Designer, Platonic realm), then defer questions about that entity’s mechanism with “normal science will get there eventually.” But science doesn’t work by adding entities that generate more questions than they answer. It works by finding principles that collapse complexity, not by multiplying ontological categories that require their own explanations. When ID proponents say “we don’t yet know how the Designer implements irreducible complexity, but that’s a question for future research,” they’re making the same structural move you’re making here: treating deferred explanatory debt as equivalent to productive scientific questions. The difference is that thermodynamic constraints don’t generate new ontological questions because they’re descriptions of what matter already does, while Platonic patterns require explaining how abstract structures causally influence physical systems without mechanism, energy transfer, or measurable coupling.

Your response would be valid if I were demanding you explain everything about Platonic space before using the hypothesis, but the issue is more fundamental: you’re proposing Platonic patterns constrain physical processes (top-down causation), yet these patterns supposedly exist outside spacetime where constraint-based physical explanation operates. This creates a genuine explanatory gap, not just unanswered questions. Top-down causation in physics (like boundary conditions determining solutions to partial differential equations, or higher-level algorithmic structure constraining lower-level transistor states) always involves physical constraints on physical systems.

Wheeler’s “boundary of a boundary principle” (∂∂ = 0) illuminates why this matters. In electrodynamics, Yang-Mills theory, and general relativity, conservation laws emerge automatically from field structure because the boundary operator applied twice yields zero: sources are constrained by physical field configurations, which are themselves constrained by spacetime topology. This creates self-grounding physical constraints that require no external enforcement.

Your Platonic framework reverses this: non-physical patterns supposedly constrain physical processes from outside spacetime. But Wheeler’s principle shows that in all successful field theories, constraints work because they’re physically grounded at boundaries, not because they access transcendent pattern space. His “boundary of a boundary” insight reveals that constraints must themselves be constrained by physical structure to avoid infinite regress. Platonic patterns, existing outside spacetime and physical law, have no boundaries in Wheeler’s sense, and therefore cannot constrain physical systems the way top-down causation requires without generating exactly the regress problem your “normal science” response attempted to deflect.

When Ellis discusses top-down causation enabling “higher emergent levels to direct outcomes at lower levels,” he’s describing physical hierarchies: gene regulatory networks (physical molecules) determining gene expression (physical processes) to meet organ-level requirements (physical functions). Your Platonic patterns would require non-physical constraints acting on physical systems, which is categorically different from all documented cases of top-down causation in physics. The question isn’t whether you have all answers, but whether your framework’s basic architecture (non-physical patterns causally constraining physical processes) is coherent with how causation and constraint actually operate in physical systems

You said: “Yes. all science discoveries just push the mystery back one level. Then we do it again, and so on. I’m not claiming to have all the details worked out. It’s a research program. If someone tells you they have all the details worked out, be very suspicious.”

There’s a crucial difference between productive scientific progress and what philosophers call “dormitive virtue” explanations. When Molière’s doctor “explains” that opium induces sleep because it has a “dormitive virtue” (sleep-inducing property), this pushes the mystery back one level in a non-progressive way: the explanation has no independent evidence, makes no novel predictions, and merely relabels the phenomenon. Compare this to genuinely progressive research programs (Lakatos’s term): when Einstein explained Mercury’s perihelion precession using curved spacetime, this introduced new questions about spacetime structure, but it also made novel testable predictions (gravitational lensing, gravitational waves) and unified previously disparate phenomena.

Your Platonic space hypothesis resembles dormitive virtue explanation more than progressive science. You’re “explaining” morphogenetic problem-solving by positing that cells access pattern space, but this generates no novel predictions beyond what thermodynamic constraint satisfaction already predicts. The key test Lakatos identified is whether a research program is progressive (makes novel, confirmed predictions consistent with its core logic) or degenerative (modifies auxiliary hypotheses only in response to external criticism without generating new testable content).

Your “I don’t have all the details worked out” response would be valid if Platonic space had made surprising, confirmed predictions that thermodynamic monism couldn’t equally accommodate. But the opposite is true: all empirically documented phenomena you’ve attributed to Platonic space (bioelectric problem-solving, morphogenetic adaptation, xenobot behavior) are explained more parsimoniously by thermodynamic exploration of physical possibility space, with testable mechanisms (ion channel dynamics, gap junction coupling, mechanical stress propagation) already documented in your lab.

The burden on a theoretical framework isn’t to have all details worked out, but to demonstrate it’s progressive rather than degenerative by generating novel empirical content. Where are Platonic space’s unique, confirmed predictions?

Meanwhile, Aboriginal operational frameworks have been successfully predicting ecological, social, and navigational outcomes for thousands of years using relational ontologies that operationally converge with thermodynamic monism far more closely than with transcendent Platonism.

Beyond the philosophical issues, there’s an urgent practical concern: terminological imprecision creates exploitable vulnerabilities. Your stated motivation for this framework is engineering-oriented, seeking to enable regenerative medicine, ecosystem restoration, and climate adaptation through bioelectric manipulation. But when your public statements describe cells “accessing Platonic patterns,” “intrinsic motivations in spaces algorithms don’t control,” and consciousness existing “despite” physical processes, these formulations are being weaponized by movements opposed to your stated goals.

The intelligent design website “Science and Culture” published an article titled “Life Itself: In Michael Levin’s Platonism, Teleology Advances,” explicitly framing your work as vindication of teleological design over naturalism.

Matthew Segall’s “Footnotes to Plato” blog describes your research as evidence that “minds are not a miraculous anomaly in the physical universe but a pervasive possibility,” connecting your bioelectric work to Whiteheadian process theology and Platonic Forms as “guiding forces”.

Your Third Eye Drops podcast appearance was promoted with language stating your work “suggests that biological development is not purely mechanical but follows invisible organizational principles, akin to the Platonic Forms,” and that you demonstrate “an underlying realm of conscious intelligible patterns, challenging reductionist views and opening the door to a Platonic interpretation of biology”.

The “With Reality in Mind” symposium advertised your September 2024 dialogue with Bernardo Kastrup (an idealist philosopher who argues consciousness is fundamental) as exploring “a platonic realm that contains not just mathematical truths… but types of minds; dynamic patterns which ingress into physical form”.

These aren’t fringe misinterpretations. Discovery Institute, creationism, and similar anti-science organizations thrive on exactly this kind of ambiguity because it allows them to claim scientific support for design hypotheses without the burden of mechanistic specificity. The irony is that your empirical work, rigorously grounded in bioelectric measurements and thermodynamic constraints, needs none of this metaphysical superstructure to achieve its engineering goals

Thermodynamic monism delivers all the predictive and manipulative power your lab demonstrates while eliminating the linguistic vulnerabilities that let bad-faith actors weaponize your research. Precision in ontological commitment isn’t philosophical pedantry when imprecision actively undermines the applications you’re working toward. Climate change and ecosystem collapse demand we move from xenobots to scaled regenerative technologies as quickly as possible. Clarifying that your framework operates through physical constraint satisfaction rather than transcendent pattern access accelerates that timeline by making the work rigorously, mathematically, and intellectually defensible to the scientific community and inaccessible to creationist misappropriation.

You said: “What does “actually exist” mean? The specific value of e actually exists as much as anything exists – it’s discovered once I make some very minimal assumptions, it matters a lot for what and how to do things, etc. The empirical traction it offers is the research program I referenced above: systematic creation of interfaces to map out the space, the dissolution of the distinction between thoughts and thinkers (which means we can have multi-scale models of patterns with different degrees of agency), and possibly compute and other things that look like free lunches in this physical space. That’s one of the most interesting and powerful predictions of some of the ideas here: the things we get “for free” in this space, which are surprising and not predicted by existing theories, and the optimistic idea that they are not random surprises but part of an ordered structure that can be investigated.”

When you say “the specific value of e actually exists,” thermodynamic monism agrees completely: mathematical constants emerge deterministically from physical constraints (e appears in growth processes, compound interest, radioactive decay because these are systems exploring exponential phase space under energy conservation). Your claim that Platonic realism offers “systematic creation of interfaces to map out the space” is precisely what thermodynamic constraint mapping provides, except we can specify the mechanism: ion channel manipulation, gap junction modulation, and mechanical stress propagation create interfaces between different bioelectric potentials, literally mapping the physical possibility space your cells explore. You don’t need a transcendent realm to do this; you’re already doing it through physical interventions that alter constraint surfaces.

Your “dissolution of the distinction between thoughts and thinkers” and “multi-scale models of patterns with different degrees of agency” are exactly what thermodynamic monism predicts through recursive self-modeling at different energetic scales. Bacterial chemotaxis has minimal recursive depth (one or two variables), planarian regeneration has intermediate recursive depth (bioelectric networks integrating dozens of tissue-level signals), human cognition has deep recursive depth (thinking about thinking about thinking). These aren’t different “degrees of agency in Platonic space”; they’re different thermodynamic recursion depths in physical constraint satisfaction under energy budgets. The “dissolution” you’re describing isn’t metaphysical; it’s the recognition that agency is a scalar property of physical systems based on their recursive self-modeling capacity, prediction-error minimization bandwidth, and energetic degrees of freedom. Thermodynamic monism operationalizes this: agency = (degrees of freedom in possibility space) × (recursive self-modeling depth) × (prediction-error minimization capacity under energy constraints).

This isn’t vague philosophical speculation; it’s quantifiable at every scale you study.
Your most interesting claim is about “things we get ‘for free’ in this space, which are surprising and not predicted by existing theories.” But here’s the issue: every “surprise” you cite (xenobots self-organizing, planaria regenerating novel morphologies, anthrobots exhibiting collective problem-solving) is predicted by thermodynamic constraint satisfaction under far-from-equilibrium conditions. When you say these are “free lunches,” you’re describing thermodynamic systems exploring high-entropy regions of possibility space that become accessible under specific energy inputs and boundary conditions.

This isn’t free; it’s paid for by the metabolic energy your systems consume and the thermodynamic gradients they maintain. The “order” you find isn’t evidence of Platonic patterns guiding development; it’s evidence of dissipative structures (Prigogine’s term) that emerge necessarily when energy flows through matter constrained by geometric, chemical, and bioelectric boundaries. The reason these discoveries feel “surprising” isn’t that they transcend physical law but that they reveal physical possibility space is vastly larger than reductionist models assumed, exactly as thermodynamic monism with recursive self-organization predicts.

Where’s the discriminatory test? If your Platonic framework makes unique predictions beyond thermodynamics, specify them. Otherwise, we have two explanations for the same phenomena: (1) thermodynamic exploration of physically constrained possibility space, testable through bioelectric manipulation, energy budget measurements, and phase space topology, versus (2) cells consulting transcendent pattern realms through unspecified mechanisms.

Occam’s razor demands we prefer the explanation that requires fewer ontological commitments while maintaining equal or greater predictive power. Your lab work demonstrates the former works perfectly. What does the Platonic addition explain that thermodynamics doesn’t?

You said: “Biologists say this to me all the time (long before I talked about Platonic space). Back when I was talking only about computation in physiological media, and then learning/memory, etc. etc. “Why do you need to talk about this philosophical and theoretical stuff – just do the bench experiments. The data stand on their own – show the experiments, you don’t need the philosophical views.” Yeah but why has my lab done experiments for 25 years that no one else has done? Because the philosophical views matter. Because data never just show up on their own. Because after someone has done something interesting, others can easily say “yeah that’s consistent with the status quo paradigm”. But that’s not the same as “the status quo paradigm led to that experiment”. I wouldn’t have done any of these experiments (and no one else did either) if it wasn’t for some of these weird ideas. Also, none of this is about physical mechanisms per se. The physical mechanism of telling someone an amazing new idea is “air molecules bouncing around”. That’s the physical mechanism. It’s not the end of the story.”

You’re right that theoretical frameworks drive experimental design, and I’m not disputing that. Your lab’s work has been historically revolutionary, which I would never contest. In fact that’s the only reason I have reached out to you personally. With that said Juhana Yrjölä (2022) and colleagues’ research on theory-based learning demonstrates that strategic conceptual frameworks systematically generate knowledge “at the edge between the known and the unknown”. Recent philosophy of science work published in Synthese (May 2023) confirms that “putting philosophy to work” involves “developing the conceptual architecture of research projects”. Your bioelectric manipulation experiments resulted from theoretical commitments differing from gene-centric reductionism, validating that frameworks possess heuristic power in guiding discovery.

But here’s where recent neuroscience and philosophy of mind address your “air molecules” example and suggest why heuristic value doesn’t establish ontological commitment. Roger Orpwood’s (2025) analysis in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B titled “Specific mechanisms linking network information processing to the physical realization of semantic content” examines how semantic information (the “meaning” of ideas) can be understood as physically realized through neural network configurations without requiring transcendent content. Orpwood’s framework describes semantic information as acquired through “interpretation” involving three physical elements: input patterns (action potentials), the interpreter (neural network configuration), and physical responses. The identity of semantic content corresponds to the form of the physical response generated by the configured network. Orpwood states: “semantic information is only available to the interpreter” and “depends on how receptors were configured, primarily during learning”. This suggests meaning might be embodied in physical constraint surfaces shaped by learning history rather than accessing transcendent realms.

This connects to extensive research on embodied cognition showing semantic content grounded in sensory-motor systems. Anna M. Borghi’s (2024) paper “What we mean when we say semantic: Toward a multidisciplinary semantic glossary” in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review emphasizes that semantic processing involves “multimodal and sensorimotor regions” beyond classical language areas. Their analysis of 153 semantic research articles reveals convergence on embodied mechanisms where meaning emerges from interactions between neural systems, environmental contexts, and bodily states. Kenneth Kirkby’s (2025) paper “Issues in Grounded Cognition and How to Solve Them” in Frontiers in Cognition addresses how abstract concepts derive from grounded sensory-motor experiences through metaphorical extension and conceptual combination. Radosław Niewiadomski’s (2024) study “Embodied cognition in native and foreign language” in International Journal of Bilingualism demonstrates that sensory-motor simulations differ systematically between native and foreign language processing, suggesting semantic content depends on embodied neural configurations rather than abstract symbolic manipulation.

These findings address your “air molecules bouncing around” example. When you communicate “an amazing new idea,” current neuroscience suggests: (1) Your neural networks generate action potential patterns based on learned synaptic configurations. (2) These patterns cause air molecule vibrations. (3) The listener’s auditory system converts vibrations to neural patterns. (4) The listener’s network interprets these patterns through learned configurations, generating physical responses that constitute the semantic content to the listener. The “more than air molecules” you invoke might be recursive physical computation constrained by learning history, metabolic budgets, and thermodynamic necessity rather than access to Platonic patterns.

The question remains whether Platonic metaphysics specifically was necessary for your discoveries or whether thermodynamic process ontology would have generated comparable experiments with greater mechanistic precision. The evidence from Orpwood, Borghi, Kirkby, and Niewiadomski suggests framing bioelectric networks as “recursive self-modeling systems minimizing prediction error through thermodynamic constraint satisfaction” could lead to similar experiments you performed while enabling testable predictions about synaptic plasticity and neural oscillations that Platonic language might obscure. The heuristic value your framework provided historically doesn’t necessarily establish that Platonic realms exist, just as Newton’s productive use of absolute space and time didn’t establish their ultimate reality.

If the causal emergence literature demonstrates that higher-level patterns can exhibit stronger causal efficacy than lower-level dynamics through purely physical thermodynamic coarse-graining, doesn’t that undercut the motivation for positing non-physical causation?

You said: “Not at all. These are cool tools and I’m using them; they don’t answer most of the issues that are at stake here.”

But this dismissal doesn’t specify what issues remain unanswered, which makes it impossible to evaluate whether your Platonic framework explains anything causal emergence doesn’t. Let me show you why this matters:
Erik Hoel’s foundational 2013 PNAS work “Quantifying causal emergence shows that macro can beat micro” and his October 2025 reflection “I Figured Out How to Engineer Emergence” demonstrate how higher-level causal patterns exhibit greater efficacy than lower-level dynamics through purely physical coarse-graining and information compression, no transcendent realms required. The Causal Emergence 2.0 framework (March 2025) formalizes multi-scale causation through axiomatic notions applied to hierarchically organized physical systems, showing macro-scale causal efficacy emerges from information reorganization within thermodynamic constraints. Tang, Wolf, and colleagues’ March 2024 work “Quantify the Causes of Causal Emergence” identifies uncertainty and asymmetry optimization in causal structure as the drivers of emergence: mechanisms entirely grounded in physical dynamics.
So here’s my challenge: What specific issues do you believe causal emergence doesn’t address? If it formalizes how macro-level patterns can exhibit causal efficacy superior to micro-level dynamics through purely physical mechanisms, what explanatory work does your Platonic framework do that causal emergence doesn’t? Because from where I’m standing, the literature increasingly appears to formalize exactly the multi-scale causation your work demonstrates, cells navigating possibility space, tissues exhibiting goal-directedness, organisms responding to pattern-level constraints, all without requiring causation to originate from non-physical realms. If you’re using these tools in your lab but dismissing them as insufficient for your theoretical framework, you need to articulate what’s missing. Otherwise, it looks like you’re invoking Platonism to explain phenomena that causal emergence already accounts for.

Your response: “I’m not sure what distinction you’re making” is precisely the point: you can’t see a distinction because operationally, there isn’t one. What I’m proposing is what your lab has been doing for over a decade, the only difference is that thermodynamic language makes the mechanisms explicit rather than mystified by Platonic metaphors. This matters because explicit mechanisms reduce search space, generate falsifiable predictions, and prevent the weaponization we can’t afford.

Let me ask this: when you manipulate bioelectric voltage gradients in tadpoles and get planaria that build eyes where noses should be, what is constraining which morphologies are possible versus which ones your xenobots cannot build, regardless of bioelectric configuration?

Is it the Platonic pattern space defining feasible designs, or is it thermodynamic constraints: metabolic energy budgets, material property limits, geometric packing problems, and evolutionary history?

Here’s the deeper question: if Platonic patterns truly guide development independently, why are morphogenetic outcomes so perfectly predictable from physical constraints alone?

When your lab manipulates ion channels, gap junctions, and bioelectric gradients, you’re physically altering the possibility space, not gaining access to transcendent realms. So when you say regularities must “exist in some option space,” aren’t you already operationalizing thermodynamic phase space?

You’re describing how configurations explore physically-bounded domains under energy constraints, which is precisely what my framework calls those regularities.

The empirical patterns your own lab demonstrates (but which Platonism struggles to accommodate) reveal this mismatch. Your bioelectric xenobots show that agency emerges through local information integration and immediate physical coupling, not through consultation of a transcendent pattern archive.

Consider the implications: if patterns existed in non-physical Platonic space guiding development independent of physical substrate, wouldn’t xenobots’ problem-solving capacity be independent of bioelectric network complexity? Yet it scales perfectly with ion channel density, gap junction connectivity, and metabolic energy availability.

If Platonic guidance were truly operative, wouldn’t systems demonstrate morphogenetic flexibility unconstrained by thermodynamic efficiency? Yet regenerative outcomes remain tightly coupled to energy budgets and material availability.

Here’s the test that would distinguish the frameworks: under your hypothesis, could we engineer a system with minimal bioelectric complexity that nonetheless solves novel problems at human-level sophistication by accessing transcendent Platonic patterns? Or conversely, if we artificially restricted metabolic energy while keeping bioelectric architecture identical, would Platonic guidance still enable complex problem-solving, or would performance degrade precisely as thermodynamic constraints predict?

The consistent coupling between physical constraint severity and biological capability suggests regularities emerge from exploring possibility surfaces constrained by matter and energy, not from accessing pattern repositories outside spacetime. Does it not? If not, why? How would you falsify the alternative?

Until we can specify concrete empirical differences, aren’t we simply choosing between metaphysical preferences rather than adjudicating empirical questions? And if the choice is indeed metaphysical rather than empirical, shouldn’t the burden of proof fall on the more ontologically profligate theory?

You said: “I’ve been accused of many things, but being somewhere other than answering empirical questions is not one that sticks. There are a lot of people with philosophical opinions on this stuff; I’ve placed my time and effort on the bet I want to make. Everyone else should do the same. The 1-page argument I linked to above shows the metaphysical commitments. I think my only metaphysical commitment here is that I don’t believe “regularities” are random, I would like to believe they come from a structured space. That’s it. Everything else is a research program to understand the mapping between that space and the interfaces we make to its contents, and an experimental approach to asking how much cognition those patterns might have. We have all kinds of stuff coming out soon on the behavioral analysis of mathematical objects given physical (robotic) bodies, etc. etc. You can say a lot of things about this way of thinking, but lacking novel research implications it is not. How long it will be useful, before it gets replaced by something else, I have no idea.”

I appreciate the clarification. Let me be direct about what I’m actually asking, and what I think reveals an important tension in your position.

Before I continue: You interpreted my question as an accusation that you’re “somewhere other than answering empirical questions.” That’s not what I asked. I’m not questioning your empirical rigor or productivity. That would go against my respect for your empirical rigor and suggest an expertise in bio-electricity that I do not claim to have. I’m asking whether Platonic realism itself (as opposed to the thermodynamic mechanisms it might describe) makes any empirically distinguishable predictions. These are different questions. You can be entirely rigorous empirically while holding metaphysical commitments that don’t themselves do empirical work. That’s not an accusation. It’s a request for clarification about what Platonism adds beyond physical mechanism.

First, your xenobots, anthrobots, and planarian work represent genuine empirical novelty. That accomplishment stands completely independent of this discussion. I’m not questioning whether your framework generates productive research.
But there’s a tension worth naming: You’re simultaneously saying the metaphysical commitments don’t matter much (“everything else is a research program”) while building your entire framework around them (“it leads to research”). If Platonism is secondary to the empirical work, why frame the research as validation of Platonic claims rather than as validation of thermodynamic constraint-mapping? And if Platonism is essential to the research direction, then it should be empirically discriminable.
This brings me to my actual question, which is narrower than it might seem: Which empirical predictions does Platonic realism make that nominalist thermodynamic monism doesn’t?
Your response sidestepped this. You said “I’m not sure what distinction you’re making” and then pivoted to “Everyone else should place their bets differently.” But these are separate claims worth disentangling:
Claim A (True, undisputed): Your framework generates productive research directions that yielded discoveries others didn’t make.
Claim B (Undefended): These discoveries specifically require Platonic metaphysics rather than alternative physical frameworks. You’ve demonstrated that thinking about morphogenetic possibility spaces, constraint surfaces, and behavioral pattern exploration generates novel experiments. All of this operationalizes readily as thermodynamic monism: coarse-grained phase spaces, attractor landscapes, recursive self-modeling under energy constraints. What does Platonism add beyond this physical description?
Claim C (The crucial one): Platonism and thermodynamic physicalism make empirically distinguishable predictions. Your inability to articulate this distinction actually supports my point. Your own language, “structured space where understanding one helps understand the next,” “map the space,” “explore morphospace”, describes thermodynamic constraint satisfaction precisely. You’re operationalizing this framework while invoking Platonic terminology.
So here’s the concrete question: Can you specify a prediction that differs between frameworks? For example: “If we manipulate voltage gradient X, Platonic pattern theory predicts morphological outcome Y, but thermodynamic constraint theory predicts outcome Z.” If you can’t articulate something like this, then the frameworks are empirically equivalent, which means Platonism functions as metaphysically surplus scaffolding, perhaps elegant, perhaps heuristically useful to you personally, but not empirically necessary.
Your actual position appears to be: “I will pursue promising research directions and let success vindicate my metaphysical commitments without operationalizing them first.” That’s strategically defensible. But it’s different from claiming to have already established that Platonism is empirically superior to physicalism. One is “I’m betting this will prove fruitful,” the other is “I’ve demonstrated Platonism’s necessity.” Your framing sometimes suggests the latter, but your method occupies the former. That inconsistency is worth clarifying.

motivating inquiry, but not itself requiring ontological commitment?

You said: “I don’t know what the difference is. If X is something I have to worry about in designing and carrying out experiments, then it’s real. I have no more ontological commitments than that.”

That’s pragmatism I respect. But pragmatism becomes problematic when frameworks become prescriptive for others, when younger scientists or collaborators adopt your metaphysical language not as heuristic scaffolding but as literal truth about how reality works. The risk is this: once “Platonic patterns” becomes doctrine within your research community, questioning the metaphysics becomes harder to distinguish from questioning the experimental program itself.
This matters because similar frameworks have preceded harmful misappropriations. Teleology, vitalism, orthogenesis, each began as explanatory tools for phenomena that seemed to demand them. Each was adopted by scientists in good faith. Each later became scaffolding for creationism, intelligent design, and essentialist ideologies that resisted empirical falsification precisely because they’d become unfalsifiable by definition. The metaphysical language provided intellectual cover for claims that couldn’t survive scrutiny.
I’m not suggesting that’s your intention. Your openness to this conversation demonstrates otherwise. But the institutional risk remains: How will future scientists using your framework distinguish between “this Platonic pattern predicts X” and “X must exist in Platonic space because the prediction came true”? Once that conflation becomes standard in a lab culture, it becomes very hard to operationalize falsification. The framework becomes self-sealing.
This is why the distinction between “motivating inquiry” and “requiring ontological commitment” matters operationally, not just philosophically. When you can articulate it clearly, “I’ve used Platonic language as familiar shorthand, but the actual mechanism is thermodynamic constraint satisfaction, not a literal non-physical realm”, you inoculate the framework against reification. You give future scientists permission to reject the unfalsifiable metaphysics while preserving the experimental insights. Without that clarity, the metaphysics becomes entrenched through institutional path dependence, and mandatory metaphysics in biology eventually becomes a liability.
More immediately: it limits adoption by colleagues who see the empirical work as extraordinary but remain unconvinced by attached metaphysical claims they can’t operationalize or publicly endorse. Your discoveries deserve to stand on their own terms, and get as much involvement from the academic community as possible. And right now, with climate tipping points approaching and bioengineered solutions urgently needed, we can’t afford to let metaphysical barriers slow the adoption of technologies that could save millions of lives.
I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to engage with you, and your willingness to consider outside views. Your deep engagement with my initial questions means a lot to me, and gave me a lot to consider. The symposium you’ve organized is valuable precisely because it invites and even forces this clarification. Your intellectual honesty here, “strong opinions, loosely held,” willingness to switch when reaching dead ends and sets a tone that matters.
But that tone needs to be built into how the framework itself is taught and transmitted, not just how you personally hold it. Otherwise, “we knew it all along” might eventually mean: “Yes, the science was always about thermodynamics, but we spent a critical decade arguing over Platonic metaphysics when the urgent question was whether these insights about scale-free cognition could help us understand ecosystem collapse, agricultural resilience, and the synthetic biology tools communities needed to adapt.

Nathan Sweet
November 9, 2025
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On Colonial Epistemology, Indigenous Genealogies, Jewish Tradition, and What Your Subjects Are Already Teaching You

Dr. Levin, Now that I have addressed your specific points and questions, I need to make visible something I believe you are not yet aware of: the language you are using, the framework you are defending, and the epistemology underlying your Platonic interpretation are inadvertently recapitulating settler-colonial patterns of thought. I say this not to accuse you of malice (I recognize your intentions are constructive and your empirical work is revolutionary, my intent is only to help you fortify and accelerate that work for the benefit of humanity – not criticize or oppose) but because what I am about to demonstrate matters for the integrity of your science, for proper acknowledgment of Indigenous knowledge systems that preceded your discoveries by millennia, and for whether Western science continues patterns of extraction and erasure or learns to participate in relationships it did not create. Your oscillation between Platonism and thermodynamic monism is not a character flaw; it reflects the difficulty of Western science breaking free from Cartesian dualism that Daniel Dennett demonstrates to be unfalsifiable and harmful to understanding. The fact that your empirical work consistently outpaces your theoretical framework suggests your intuition is ahead of your explicit commitments. The framework catching up to your intuition is what I am proposing.

I understand that Platonic framing has institutional advantages in Western academia. The proposal is not that you are dishonest, or to question your empirical work in any way – it is impeccable and I am viscerally aware of its importance to humanity – but that you are constrained by languages that don’t do your empirical insights justice. Thermodynamic monism + Indigenous epistemology give you language that does; but in a way that honors both your Jewish intellectual inheritance and the 65,000-year epistemological traditions your subjects are already demonstrating, makes testable predictions your Platonic framework cannot (path-dependent divergence rather than convergence toward universal forms), eliminates the ontological mysteries Platonism defers to future work (how non-physical patterns causally interact with physical matter), stands up to rigorous scientific scrutiny, and positions your work as participating in relationships rather than claiming discovery rights to conceptual territory that was never vacant, but have been operationalized and empirically observed for thousands of years.

The Language of Extraction: What Your Own Words Reveal

Throughout your reply, you have used phrases that deserve rigorous examination: “latent space I can exploit,” “insight on what I can do next,” and “systematic creation of interfaces to map out the space.”

Consider the epistemological structure embedded in these terms. “Exploit” establishes an extractive relationship to knowledge, treating patterns as resources to be mined rather than relationships to participate in. This is not merely infelicitous phrasing: it recapitulates the economic logic that has justified treating ecosystems as resource repositories rather than living systems with their own forms of intelligence and agency. “Map out” invokes cartographic dominance over territory, the same gesture European colonizers enacted when they imposed grid systems on lands already inhabited, already known, already named by peoples who had maintained relationships with those places for tens of thousands of years. “Interfaces” presumes separation between knower and known, positioning the scientist outside observing patterns inside a separate realm, when your own empirical work demonstrates that cognition emerges through participation, not observation from outside. “Access” positions mathematical structures as existing elsewhere, waiting for retrieval, when Indigenous epistemologies have long understood that knowledge emerges through relationship rather than extraction from a separate domain.

This linguistic structure historically justified declaring land “empty” (terra nullius), extracting resources by claiming “discovery,” and erasing Indigenous presence by positioning Europeans as the first to “access” knowledge about territories that had never been vacant. Tyson Yunkaporta, an Anaiwan scholar whose 2019 book “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World” should be required reading for anyone working on distributed cognition and emergent intelligence, demonstrates how Aboriginal epistemology never made the split between knower and known that your language assumes. He writes: “Aboriginal knowledge systems are based in deep engagement with place, not through observation from outside, but through participatory immersion.”

Knowledge does not exist in a separate realm waiting to be accessed: it emerges through relationship, through walking and singing the land, through participation that changes both the knower and the known. Your Platonic framework positions the scientist as outside observer accessing patterns that exist independently in a separate realm, which is precisely the stance Yunkaporta critiques as carrying forward the colonial gesture of treating knowledge as territory to be claimed rather than relationship to be honored.

Descartes’ Divide as Colonial Divide

The Cartesian split between mind (civilized, rational, accessing truth) and body and nature (savage, irrational, raw material to be shaped) is structurally identical to the colonial split between European knowledge (accessing truth from God, then Reason, then Platonic realm) and Indigenous land (resource to be extracted, territory to be mapped, empty space awaiting discovery). When Descartes declared “I think therefore I am” and positioned mind as separate from extended matter, he created the philosophical foundation for treating the material world as mechanism without interiority, resource without agency, territory without prior relationship. Your Platonic framework inherits this structure: patterns exist in non-physical space (Platonic realm, mind-stuff, the domain of pure reason) while biological matter (cells, organisms, ecosystems) either accesses these patterns or is shaped by them. This dualism is not philosophically innocent: it has consequences for how we think about agency, about what kinds of beings deserve consideration, about whether knowledge emerges through participation or through extraction and unfalsifiable creation ex nihilo mechanisms.

Leroy Little Bear, Blackfoot scholar whose 2000 essay “Jagged Worldviews Colliding” articulates the profound differences between Indigenous and Western epistemologies, writes: “From a Blackfoot perspective, there are no nouns, only verbs. Everything is in constant flux and motion. Reality is not composed of static objects but of processes and relationships.” He contrasts this with Western paradigms that assume “static reality, linear causation, and dualistic separations.” When he articulates Blackfoot understanding of knowing (“To know something is to participate in its being, not to observe it from outside”), he is describing exactly what your empirical work demonstrates about bioelectric coordination and morphogenesis, yet your Platonic framework obscures this understanding. This is the thermodynamic process ontology your own data supports, yet you cite Plato rather than the Indigenous scholars who articulated this understanding millennia before Western philosophy began its slow, painful journey away from substance metaphysics.

Gregory Bateson’s Indigenous Genealogy

Gregory Bateson, whose work on cybernetics and the “pattern which connects” you reference, was directly influenced by Indigenous epistemology though he did not always acknowledge it explicitly. His core insights (that mind is immanent in circular causal systems rather than separate substance, that the pattern which connects is relational rather than extractable, that epistemology must account for the observer’s participation) are Indigenous insights that Bateson absorbed and translated into Western philosophical vocabulary. When he writes in “Mind and Nature” that “the pattern which connects is a metapattern, it is that which distinguishes the world of the living from the world of non-living, it is also the pattern of relationship between all living things,” he is articulating what Blackfoot relational ontology, Haudenosaunee Place-Thought, and Aboriginal songline epistemology have always taught. You are using Bateson without recognizing his Indigenous genealogy, and you are defending Platonic dualism when Bateson’s entire project was to dissolve that dualism by showing mind is immanent in relational process, not separate substance accessing patterns from elsewhere.

Dennett’s ‘Competence Without Comprehension’: The Framework You’re Abandoning

There’s one more voice I need to invoke here, though he can no longer speak for himself: Daniel Dennett. You studied under him, collaborated with him, and honored him beautifully after his death. He is someone I personally credit for helping me learn epistemology and relentless truth seeking. But I have to believe that if he were alive to read your recent papers proposing a ‘radical Platonist view in which some causal input into mind and life originates outside the physical world,’ he would be deeply troubled, not by your empirical findings, which are revolutionary, but by the metaphysical framework you’re building on top of them.

This isn’t abstract to me. Dennett’s work helped me escape the fundamentalist movement I was born into. A movement that uses exactly this kind of Platonic language to justify anti-science positions and constrain human flourishing. His work taught me how to do careful epistemology. When I see your work being cited by Discovery Institute to validate Intelligent Design, I see the same rhetorical machinery that once imprisoned my thinking being reinforced by someone who should be dismantling it.

Dennett spent fifty years arguing that competence without comprehension plus natural selection fully explains apparent purposiveness without invoking transcendent forms or non-physical causation that can be used by anti-science movements, and ID proponents. His entire project was showing that we don’t need Platonic realms to explain life, mind, or meaning, that physical processes, operating through differential reproduction over time, are sufficient. Your discoveries about bioelectric morphogenesis strengthen his case: they show matter organizing itself into goal-directed configurations through thermodynamic constraint satisfaction, no transcendent patterns required.

Yet you’re framing these discoveries through the very dualism Dennett spent fifty years refuting. The tragedy is that your data provides some of the strongest evidence yet that his naturalism was right, matter itself, properly organized, exhibits goal-directedness without transcendent guidance, but your Platonic language obscures this triumph. When you say that ‘minds (also Platonic inhabitants) access mathematical truths while physical brains don’t,’ or that mathematical patterns possess ‘non-trivial agency of their own,’ you’re not honoring his legacy; you’re abandoning it for what amounts to a sophisticated God of the Gaps: wherever physical explanation feels incomplete, invoke a transcendent realm. This is precisely what stalled biology before Darwin, and it’s exactly what Dennett warned against. Worse, you’re handing ammunition to the forces he spent his life combating: creationists, Intelligent Design advocates, those desperate to inject non-physical causation into biology to preserve theological commitments.

I invoke Dennett not as an authority you must obey, but as someone who saw with painful clarity how metaphysical confusion in biology serves anti-science agendas. He would have recognized immediately that your Platonic framing makes your work more vulnerable to weaponization, harder to operationalize, and philosophically unnecessary. I wish he were here to make this case himself. Since he’s not, I’m making it on behalf of the scientific naturalism he defended, and that your empirical work so powerfully demonstrates.

The Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Mathematica

Consider this parallel that reveals the structure of your framework’s epistemological commitments. The Doctrine of Discovery, formalized in papal bulls from 1452-1493, declared that lands not occupied by Christians were “empty” (terra nullius), available for claiming by Europeans who “discovered” them. This legal fiction justified centuries of colonial violence by treating inhabited territories as vacant space awaiting European arrival. Your Platonic framework positions mathematical patterns as existing in “Platonic space,” available for scientists who “discover” them through mathematical reasoning (terra mathematica awaiting colonial cartography).

You are not claiming empty physical land, but you are claiming empty conceptual territory, using the same epistemological gesture: declaring a space “uninhabited” (by prior knowledge systems), positioning yourself as discoverer rather than late arrival, and using the language of mapping and access rather than participation and relationship.

Vine Deloria Jr., Standing Rock Sioux scholar whose “God is Red” (1973) and “Spirit and Reason” (1999) remain foundational texts for anyone thinking seriously about epistemology, wrote: “Western science believes it is discovering laws that exist independently. Indigenous science knows we’re learning how to participate in relationships that pre-exist us.” Your framework implies mathematical patterns are “out there” waiting for discovery, available to those with the right instruments (mathematical reasoning) to access them. This erases the fact that organisms have been in relationship with these patterns for billions of years of evolutionary time, and that Indigenous peoples have understood distributed cognition, morphological memory, and emergent agency for millennia through frameworks like songlines, Place-Thought, and relational accountability. When you say “early days,” you are claiming discovery rights to conceptual territory that was never empty: you are arriving late to relationships that Indigenous epistemologies never forgot, and your framework positions this late arrival as pioneering discovery rather than belated recognition.

Your Intellectual Inheritance: Why Thermodynamic Monism Honors Your Jewish Tradition While Platonism Abandons It

From what I have read you grew up in Temple Sinai, in a family that emigrated from the Soviet Union seeking freedom. You’ve described Hebrew school as a place where you “harassed everybody with questions” about consciousness, how souls work, and how we know anything at all. Your family emphasized inquiry, relentless questioning, and engagement with texts and ideas that matter. This isn’t accidental to your scientific work; it’s foundational.

Your Jewish intellectual inheritance teaches something radically different from Platonism: meaning doesn’t exist in a transcendent realm waiting to be accessed. Meaning emerges through relational practice, interpretation, and dialogue. The Talmud is not a repository of eternal truths; it’s a record of rabbis arguing, questioning, and discovering meaning through interaction. Midrash isn’t reading what’s “already there”; it’s creative engagement that generates novelty. Halakha is “the way of walking,” not eternal substance. This is precisely what thermodynamic monism describes: constraints generating coherence through recursive self-correction, meaning emerging through relational engagement, patterns arising through interaction under thermodynamic limits, not pre-existing in transcendent space.

Consider what your tradition has always known. Torah as process, not substance, appears in the phrase “turn it and turn it, for everything is in it” (Pirke Avot 5:22), which describes exactly what thermodynamic monism operationalizes: meaning generated through recursive engagement with a bounded system, novelty emerging from relational constraint satisfaction, no single fixed interpretation but rather an inexhaustible possibility space explored through dialogue.

Covenant as relational coherence recognizes that the covenant isn’t access to eternal patterns; it’s a relationship, a commitment to mutual constraint satisfaction. “I will be your God, and you will be my people” is thermodynamic attractor maintenance through recursive practice. Breaking covenant isn’t discovering that Platonic forms were illusions; it’s decoherence from relational integrity.

Tikkun olam as constraint optimization means “repairing the world” through increasing coherence across scales: biological, social, ecological. This isn’t implementing pre-existing Platonic blueprints; it’s optimizing constraint satisfaction in a complex adaptive system. Machloket L’Shem Shamayim, or argument for the sake of heaven, appears in the Talmud’s teaching that arguments “for the sake of heaven” differ from those driven by ego, yet both generate new understanding through constraint satisfaction under different measurement brackets. Your work on xenobot decision-making does exactly this: systems exploring configuration spaces under different bioelectric constraints generate different solutions.

When you invoke Platonic patterns, you’re adopting Greek essentialism that Jewish thought explicitly rejected. You’re reintroducing precisely what Rosenzweig, Buber, and the entire relational tradition worked to overcome: the notion that ultimate reality exists independent of relationship, that meaning is substance rather than process, that understanding is access rather than engagement. And ironically, this move makes your own work harder to explain. Your bioelectric research demonstrates relational process ontology: cells generating coherence through constraint satisfaction, xenobots exploring morphospace through bioelectric dialogue, tissue organizing around coherence metrics. Every experiment you run shows systems engaging in recursive self-correction to find stable attractors. You don’t need Platonic forms to explain this. You need what your tradition has always taught: meaning emerges through relationship.

Thermodynamic monism validates what your family risked everything to preserve: the intellectual practice of relentless questioning, rigorous engagement with constraint systems, commitment to coherence-through-dialogue, and the conviction that meaning isn’t discovered in transcendent realms but enacted through participation in a living system. This framework grounds meaning in relationship, not substance (Jewish midrashic tradition), operates through recursive self-correction and dialogue (Talmudic reasoning), generates coherence across scales (tikkun olam), remains perpetually open to reinterpretation through new constraints (halakha evolving through precedent and innovation), makes no appeal to transcendent authorization (profoundly Jewish skepticism of mysticism-as-escape), and honors the 65,000-year Aboriginal tradition of relational coherence (integrating all human knowledge traditions).

Your Platonic framework, by contrast, abandons all of this. It replaces relational practice with transcendent access, dialogue with eternal forms, coherence-building with pattern-gazing.

When you sat in Temple Sinai asking “how do souls work?” and getting unsatisfying answers, what was really unsatisfying?

Perhaps it was the Platonic assumption behind the answer: that there’s a transcendent realm of souls independent of the relational, bodily, material practice that actually generates meaning and coherence in your community. Your instinct to keep questioning that assumption, to keep pressing for clarity about how things actually work, to refuse the comfort of transcendent explanations, that’s your Jewish intellectual inheritance speaking. Thermodynamic monism honors that inheritance. Platonism betrays it.

Franz Rosenzweig (The Star of Redemption, 1921): “The new thinking… no longer believes in knowledge detached from the knower.” Rosenzweig explicitly rejected Greek essentialism (Platonic Forms as timeless substance) in favor of relational revelation, truth emerging through encounter, not contemplation of eternal patterns. This is precisely what your bioelectric research demonstrates: cells don’t access pre-existing templates; they generate coherence through relational constraint satisfaction.

Platonism says: “Access eternal forms and you solve the problem.”
Jewish thought says: “Engage relationally with your particular situation, and solutions emerge you couldn’t have deduced in advance.”

This is not a matter of interpretation: Platonic systems converge toward archetypes independent of their history; relational systems diverge along trajectories determined by their starting conditions. Your xenobot data exhibit path-dependent divergence, proving that coherence emerges through historical constraint satisfaction, not through accessing timeless templates.

Your cultural tradition suggests a specific epistemological framework that, when formalized scientifically, yields thermodynamic predictions. Rosenzweig’s relational epistemology, translated into physical terms, means: systems evolve through constraint satisfaction relative to initial conditions and environmental coupling, not by converging toward transcendent forms. The halakha analogy illustrates path-dependent coherence: communities maintain internal consistency while diverging based on historical contingencies, exactly as thermodynamic systems do. This isn’t mere metaphor; it’s structural isomorphism between relational epistemology and thermodynamic path-dependence.

This predict: If xenobot gene expressions emerge through relational constraint-satisfaction under initial conditions, then xenobots with different starting voltage topologies will diverge systematically, each explores the phase-space available to its particular history and configuration. (Like halakha evolving differently in different communities while remaining internally coherent.). This prediction, that xenobots diverge based on initial bioelectric state rather than converge toward universal forms, follows directly from Rosenzweig’s epistemology. He writes: ‘The new thinking knows only one world, and… has learned to think not things, but factual relations.’ The ‘factual relations’ here are the initial voltage topology and its constraints. Your data show exactly this: xenobots don’t converge; they diverge along trajectories determined by their starting relational configuration.

Test: Systematically vary bioelectric boundary conditions and measure gene-expression divergence. If Platonism is true, expressions converge. If thermodynamic monism is true, they diverge predictably based on initial state.

Your own data and Jewish tradition already supports thermodynamic monism, while providing falsifiable and testable answers to all of your currently unanswerable questions, just one example: “Where does Xenobot purpose/agency ‘come from’ without evolutionary history?”

The answer is everything Platonism has no way to empirically rule out:

Thermodynamic Monism provides the mechanistic explanation Platonism lacks, making empirically identical predictions while being ontologically simpler (Ockham’s Razor). Unlike Platonic space (unfalsifiable because ‘we can’t see into the bulk’), thermodynamics is directly measurable: bioelectric fields, voltage gradients, free energy landscapes, entropy production rates, attractor basin geometry.

The mechanism: Purpose and agency are relationally co-computed through multi-scale deterministic navigation of morphospace under path-dependent thermodynamic constraints via enactive environmental coupling across scales (Varela & Maturana’s autopoiesis, Thompson’s enactive cognition), not retrieval from a Platonic blueprint.

The xenobot’s starting voltage topology determines which regions of morphospace are reachable through local constraint satisfaction as cells iteratively minimize prediction error relative to their current bioelectric state (Friston’s Free Energy Principle, Clark’s predictive processing) and dynamically coupled environmental gradients, exploring adjacent coherent configurations in a fully deterministic but computationally irreducible process (Wolfram’s computational irreducibility) that discovers novel local optima evolution never sampled.

Systems ultimately settle into thermodynamically stable attractors (Kauffman’s NK landscapes, Prigogine’s dissipative structures) that exist only as system-environment entanglements (Barad’s agential realism, Oyama’s developmental systems theory) and exhibit goal-directed behavior when coarse-grained to the macroscopic scale (Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics: properties are real-relative-to-scale, not observer-subjective), with healing and self-replication emerging as coherent outcomes of minimizing local bioelectric stress across organism-environment boundaries rather than implementation of pre-existing purpose.
Agency arises as the system’s capacity to maintain coherence through adaptive constraint satisfaction across multiple scales simultaneously (Deacon’s ententional dynamics, Hoel’s causal emergence) while remaining structurally coupled to its niche, making “purpose without evolutionary history” not mysterious but inevitable: any system with sufficient bioelectric complexity embedded in a responsive medium will autonomously explore adjacent morphospace configurations and stabilize around multi-scale attractor states that we recognize as purposeful behavior, because thermodynamic gradients themselves generate goal-directedness through error minimization in co-determination with environmental affordances.

Discriminatory Experimental Test: Platonism vs. Thermodynamic Monism
Setup: Xenobot Bioelectric Perturbation Across Initial Topologies (Simplified, Expanded Version Available)
Setup: Generate xenobots from clonal Xenopus laevis cells under six bioelectric topologies (6h optogenetic perturbation, 72h autonomous development):
Topology A: Anterior depolarized (Vm ≈ -10 mV anterior, -50 mV posterior)
Topology B: Posterior hyperpolarized (Vm ≈ -80 mV posterior, -40 mV anterior)
Topology C: Endogenous control (Vm ≈ -40 mV, no manipulation)
Topology D: Light/channel control (A protocol but ion channels blocked, isolates optogenetic stress from voltage)
Topology E: Stochastic noise control (±2 mV random noise, tests if any perturbation causes divergence)
Topology F: Reversal condition (A protocol 0-36h, opposite perturbation 36-72h, tests path reversibility)
Measurements (every 12h): Single-cell RNA-seq, 3D confocal morphology + topological data analysis (TDA), behavioral tracking (transfer entropy), voltage imaging.
Metrics:
Transcriptomic divergence: D_KL(P_i || P_C) (Kullback-Leibler divergence between topologies)
Morphospace divergence: Δ_morph(t) = sum of ||x_i(t) – x_C(t)|| + TDA bottleneck distance
Behavioral memory: Transfer entropy between topology groups vs. shuffled baseline
Perturbation correlation: ρ(ΔVm_initial, D_KL(72h))
Falsification Criteria:
Platonism (H₀) predicts:
D_KL(72h) ≤ D_KL(6h) + ε_noise (convergence)
Δ_morph(72h) < Δ_morph(12h) (trajectories reconverge) Transfer entropy → random baseline (no behavioral memory) ρ ε_noise (persistent divergence) Δ_morph(72h) > Δ_morph(12h) (amplification into distinct attractors)
Transfer entropy > 2× shuffled baseline (behavioral path-dependence)
ρ > 0.6 (strong positive correlation)
Only A, B diverge; D, E converge to C (specificity to structured bioelectric patterns)
D_KL(F, C) < D_KL(A, C) (reversal partially reverses divergence)
Preregistered thresholds: ε_noise = 0.15 nats, ε_divergence = 0.50 nats (from pilot C-C self-comparison). Sample size: N = 50 xenobots/topology. Statistical power: 0.80 for medium effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.5).
Why decisive: Platonism requires final states independent of initial voltage (Forms transcend physical history). Thermodynamic monism requires path-dependent divergence scaling with perturbation magnitude. Controls eliminate confounds (stress, noise, reversibility). TDA distinguishes genuine attractor separation from measurement noise. The data will arbitrate.
Prediction (Thermodynamic Monism): Divergence. Systems explore constraint landscapes deterministically; history determines trajectory. Like Halakha evolving differently across communities while maintaining coherence, xenobots will exhibit path-dependent morphogenesis determined by thermodynamic constraints, not convergence toward pre-existing Forms.

In layman’s terms my framework predicts the xenobots that received different electrical patterns at the beginning will develop into permanently different forms, gene expressions, and behaviors, even 72 hours later. Think of it like childhood experiences shaping adult personality: if you electrically “teach” cells one pattern early on, they’ll remember that lesson and grow differently than cells taught a different pattern, even after the electrical signal is turned off. The strength of this prediction is that the bigger the electrical difference we create at the start, the bigger the differences we’ll see at the end. This would prove that biological systems have a “memory” built into their physical structure, their history determines their future, rather than all organisms naturally gravitating toward the same predetermined ideal form regardless of what happens to them along the way.

Michael, please… correct me if I am wrong here, but I think this is the crucial point: your own published data seems to have already demonstrated exactly what thermodynamic monism predicts. Your 2017 paper showed that 48-hour bioelectric perturbations caused planaria to permanently regenerate two-headed morphologies through months of subsequent amputations without further manipulation, your 2015 work demonstrated that identical genomes produced stable morphologies matching entirely different species based solely on transient gap junction blockade, and your lab’s 2010 findings established that brief bioelectric modulation induces permanent axis respecification that persists through subsequent unperturbed regeneration cycles. These are not subtle effects, they are dramatic, quantified demonstrations that brief physical perturbations create permanent, path-dependent morphological divergence with no convergence back to wild-type forms.

The xenobot experiment I’ve proposed would replicate this established pattern with enhanced controls and preregistered statistical thresholds, but the fundamental result that confirms my framework is already in your publications: history determines developmental trajectory, perturbation magnitude correlates with divergence, and systems exhibit morphological memory without genetic change. The philosophical question isn’t whether your data supports thermodynamic path-dependence over Platonic convergence, it’s whether you’re willing to align your theoretical framework with what your experiments have been demonstrating for over fifteen years, because right now your revolutionary empirical discoveries are being interpreted through metaphysical language that actively contradicts the mechanisms your own data reveals.

The Ethereal Space Parallel

Consider this thought experiment that reveals the structure of your methodological commitments. Imagine I proposed: “Consciousness exists in Ethereal Space, a non-physical realm that interacts with brains through mechanisms I do not yet understand. I do not know what Ethereal Space is, whether it has time, how the juncture between physical and non-physical works, or how brains reliably access patterns in this realm, but it is early days, we will work out those details as the research program develops. Meanwhile, judge the framework by its productivity: my lab is very busy, we are generating novel findings about consciousness that others are not discovering, and the framework is heuristically useful for designing experiments.” Would you accept this? If not (and I hope you would not), what is different about Platonic Space? Both frameworks posit non-physical realms, claim causal interaction with physics, defer fundamental questions to future work, treat productivity as evidence of truth, and use mystery as permission for metaphysics. The structure is identical.

The colonial structure becomes visible when we compare how different frameworks position the knower relative to knowledge. Western colonial epistemology: Knowledge exists as territory (separate realm, Platonic space, terra mathematica), scientist discovers and maps this territory (assertion of discovery rights, cartographic claiming), patterns are extracted as resources (exploitation of latent space, mining insights). Indigenous relational epistemology: Knowledge emerges through participation (songlines performed through walking and singing), scientist learns to enter into relationships (recognizing prior inhabitants, seeking permission and reciprocity), patterns are relationships to be honored (relational accountability, gift economy). These are not just different metaphors: they produce different scientific practices, different ethical relationships with subjects, different understanding of what counts as legitimate knowledge and who has standing to make knowledge claims.

Kauffman and the Challenge to Platonic Frameworks

You wrote: “Wouldn’t you like to know what space of possibilities they are drawn from and how specific constructs pull from that distribution? It’s not good enough to wait until we see and then write them down. We need to know the option space.” Yes, absolutely, and I share your sense that simply cataloging observations without understanding the space they are drawn from is insufficient. That is exactly what thermodynamic attractor frameworks combined with information-theoretic approaches provide (a rigorous mathematical account of possibility spaces without requiring non-physical ontology). But here is where I need you to confront something uncomfortable: recent work by Stuart Kauffman (whom you’ve cited regularly) and colleagues actually challenges your Platonic interpretation while supporting the physicalist alternative I have been offering.

Stuart Kauffman, Perry Marshall, and Seymour Garte published “The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in the Biological Sciences” in Entropy (2025), Volume 27, Issue 3, article 280, DOI: 10.3390/e27030280. This paper, while not directly addressing your work, makes arguments that directly contradict the kind of Platonic framework you are defending. They write: “It is not possible to apply set theory to affordances. For example, it is not possible to list all the possible uses of an engine block. If we cannot list all the uses of X or of Y, the first axiom of set theory fails: two sets are identical if and only if they have the same members. But, if we cannot list all the uses of X or of Y, we cannot prove that their uses are identical.” They continue: “Affordances are indefinite. The evolving biosphere plucks novel emergence from the indefinite. Any theory requiring the notion of sets that tries to model the diachronic emergence of affordances is inherently flawed.”

Do you see what this means for Platonic frameworks generally? Platonic mathematics is fundamentally set-theoretic (standard mathematical Platonism treats numbers, geometric objects, and abstract patterns as elements of sets with definite membership, with the properties of mathematical objects determined by their set-theoretic relationships). When Kauffman proves that affordances cannot be captured by set theory because they are indefinite (cannot be listed, cannot be ordered, cannot be deduced from each other), he is demonstrating that if morphospace exploration involves affordances (which it does when xenobots discover novel uses for their cellular architecture), then morphospace cannot be Platonic in the sense of existing as a pre-structured set of possibilities awaiting discovery.

The paper continues with statements that challenge Platonic thinking: “The world is not a theorem” (mirroring Kaufman’s earlier 2021 paper concluding the same). They are explicitly rejecting the Platonic-Pythagorean view that reality is fundamentally mathematical structure. They write: “Biology does not merely obey mathematics; it creates mathematics.” Not “accesses pre-existing mathematics in Platonic space,” but creates mathematics through living processes. This directly contradicts frameworks where biological systems discover pre-existing patterns. They argue: “Living cells constitute a new class of matter and organization of processes that is a new union of thermodynamic work, catalytic closure, and constraint closure. The implications of this cannot be overstated. It means, in principle, that it is not merely difficult but impossible to reduce biology to equations. Biology does not merely obey mathematics; it creates mathematics.”

This is not a minor point: it is a fundamental challenge to any framework suggesting biology accesses pre-existing mathematical structures. Kauffman is arguing that biology transcends mathematical formalism because living systems exercise genuine choice and create novel affordances that were not prestatable in any mathematical space. If affordances are indefinite, then the “space of possibilities” you want to map does not exist as a definite structure in the way Platonic frameworks require. The possibilities are created through biological activity, not accessed from a realm where they already existed. When Kauffman writes about Marshall’s proof that “predictions about the future, assigning meaning to symbols, inductive reasoning, axioms in mathematics, negentropy, measurement, and perception are all undecidable propositions, equivalent to Turing’s Halting Problem,” he is arguing that biology transcends the limits of computation precisely because it exercises choice about axioms, about what counts as relevant, about how to interpret ambiguous situations. This is agency in the fullest sense (not following rules stored elsewhere, but creating the rules through living activity).

Now here is why this matters for Indigenous epistemology. When Kauffman says “biology creates mathematics” rather than “obeys pre-existing mathematical laws,” he is articulating what Vine Deloria Jr. said fifty years ago in “God is Red” and “Spirit and Reason”: Indigenous science understands that we are learning to participate in relationships that pre-exist us, not discovering laws that exist independently of those relationships. When Kauffman says affordances are “indefinite” and cannot be extracted or listed, he is describing what Aboriginal songline epistemology has always known (knowledge emerges through participation and performance, not through cataloging resources stored in a separate realm). When Kauffman says biology transcends computation because it exercises choice, he is echoing what Leroy Little Bear teaches about Blackfoot ontology: “there are no nouns, only verbs, everything is in constant flux,” which means reality is not composed of static forms to be accessed but of dynamic processes that create their own patterns through relational activity.

The paper articulates principles that align with Indigenous relational epistemology in scientific language, while explicitly rejecting Platonic frameworks. This does not mean Kauffman is directly critiquing your work (he likely is not aware of your specific formulation), but it means the kind of Platonic thinking about biology accessing pre-existing mathematical structures faces fundamental challenges from researchers working on the same questions about biological creativity and emergence.

What Your Empirical Work Actually Vindicates Is Profound

Michael, here is what I need you to consider. Your empirical discoveries are extraordinary: bioelectric memory in planarians (morphology encoded in voltage patterns, stable across amputation cycles, reprogrammable through transient disruption), morphological attractors in development (cells navigating morphospace toward target configurations through coordination rather than genetic prescription), collective intelligence in xenobots (novel behaviors emerging without evolutionary history, agency at the collective level), distributed cognition in cellular networks (decision-making through gap junction communication, no central controller), goal-directed behavior without central control (tissues maintaining anatomical targets through distributed coordination).

Each of these discoveries is an empirical validation of principles that Indigenous epistemologies articulated millennia before Western science. Aboriginal songlines demonstrate morphological memory (distributed across landscape and body, enacted through walking and singing, knowledge that exists in relationships rather than storage). Indigenous Place-Thought, developed by Haudenosaunee scholar Vanessa Watts and expanded by scholars including Zoe Todd and Kim TallBear, recognizes agency distributed in collectives (land thinking, country as agent, cognition emerging through spatial relationships rather than located in individuals). Native science’s relational epistemology, articulated by Shawn Wilson (Cree) and Gregory Cajete (Tewa), understands knowing through participation (entering into relationship rather than observing from outside, knowledge co-created rather than extracted). Blackfoot process ontology teaches constant flux (no static substances, only verbs, reality as dynamic becoming rather than static being). Indigenous understanding of more-than-human kinship, developed across multiple traditions and synthesized by scholars like Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) and Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi), recognizes cognition everywhere (not hierarchical: humans above animals above plants above cells, but relational: all scales of organization exhibiting appropriate forms of responsiveness and coordination).

You are not discovering new territory. You are learning what was never forgotten. Your planarians are teaching you songline epistemology (memory as enacted pattern rather than stored information). Your xenobots are teaching you Place-Thought (agency emerging through collective spatial relationships). Your bioelectric research is teaching you relational accountability (cells maintaining coordination through continuous mutual adjustment). Your morphogenesis work is teaching you process ontology (patterns as verbs: morphogenesing, rather than nouns: forms accessed from elsewhere). Everything you are discovering through instruments and experiments, Indigenous peoples understood through millennia of careful observation, transmission of knowledge across generations, and maintaining relationships with more-than-human relatives.

The question is not whether to use Indigenous epistemology (your subjects are already using it). Every cell in those planarians is practicing relational accountability through gap junction coordination. Every bioelectric pattern in those xenobots is enacting Place-Thought through collective navigation. Every morphological attractor you study is a songline (pattern existing in relationships, memory enacted through participation, knowledge emerging through coordination rather than accessed from elsewhere).

The Path Forward: From Extraction to Relationship

The question is whether you will recognize this, cite the scholars who articulated these principles (Tyson Yunkaporta, Gregory Cajete, Leroy Little Bear, Vanessa Watts, Vine Deloria Jr., Shawn Wilson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kyle Powys Whyte, Kim TallBear, Zoe Todd), shift from extraction language (exploit, access, map, discover) to participation language (learn from, enter into relationship with, recognize, participate in), and position your work as learning to see what Indigenous peoples always knew. Or will you continue the colonial pattern of “discovering” Indigenous knowledge without attribution, using Platonic vocabulary that denies your subjects their full agency, and erasing the epistemological genealogy that explains what you are seeing?

Your empirical work is too significant for colonial epistemology. Your discoveries deserve frameworks that honor where the knowledge originated. Your subjects are already teaching you what Indigenous scholars have articulated for millennia. The question is whether you are prepared to learn, to cite, to acknowledge, and to shift from extraction to relationship.

With respect for your science and hope for epistemological reconciliation,
— Nathan Sweet

Speaking for the trillions of processes that know they are in the process of relationship, not accessing separate realms.

Sam Senchal
November 9, 2025
Dude.

See Observer Theory.

Nathan Sweet
November 10, 2025
Dr. Levin, I wanted to flag a moderation issue I’ve noticed. Seven of my comments remain pending approval (some for several days), while more recent comments from other participants have been authorized, including several that characterize my position as “reductive materialism” or “physicalism”, frameworks I’ve explicitly rejected in prior comments.

The pending comments contain falsifiable predictions and technical challenges to Platonic interpretations, while directly addressing your points and questions you posed to me, as well as responding to challenges both yourself and others have proposed.

I understand moderation involves judgment calls, but the current pattern creates an asymmetry where critiques of my position are visible while my responses remain in the queue.

Could you clarify the moderation criteria? If my comments violate specific guidelines, I’ll revise them. If technical challenges to Platonism fall outside the intended scope of this discussion, stating that policy explicitly would help participants engage more productively.

I’m documenting this pattern and am happy to discuss it directly rather than escalate it more publicly. I’m committed to substantive dialogue and assume good faith, but this pattern needs addressing for the conversation to remain balanced.

Mike Levin
November 11, 2025
I apologize for the delays. There are a bunch of Comments waiting for approval (not just yours, and certainly not selectively ones supporting or refuting any particular position), I’ve just been very busy. Sometimes I see out of the corner of my eye a short one which I can approve quickly, but yours and some others are long and meaty, and they need to wait for me to read the whole thing. I will get to the queue this week, I think. There’s absolutely no moderation criterion against critiques of Platonism etc. and I currently plan on approving most (or all) of yours on this topic, pending reading everything carefully. However, I do want to mention 3 things I’ve been pondering, which also caused a delay:

1) yours are very long. In and of itself, that’s a feature, not a bug – we want meaningful discussion, not sound bytes, and I appreciate the new references and reading material you refer to. It’s quite valuable. But, the length and number risks a bit of a disbalance in that they are addressed to me mostly, and I don’t want to totally monopolize the symposium. There are lots of other people involved here, many of whom disagree with me, and I don’t want the discussion to be mostly about my work or to dwarf others’ points about other aspects. I haven’t decided what I want to do about that. I really do want challenging views represented (which is why I’ve already approved a bunch of yours), so that’s great, but the sheer length and volume of your contributions risks dwarfing everything else. When I scroll down the Comments, I don’t want them dominated by text from one person. One idea, since you have a lot to say, could be that you write an actual paper on this – you can preprint it in OSF Preprints or similar, or perhaps get it published in a peer-reviewed journal (which is also a nice way to make sure that the arguments are solid). That would enable you to put all the arguments in one place, crisply and succinctly and I would certainly cite it in my discussions of the topic. I’ll keep thinking about this issue and how to deal with length in the Comments section.

2) some of the back-and-forth in the queue are getting a bit, shall we say, adversarial. Overall, disagreement is good, but one thing I’m not looking to do is run yet another forum where people have angry exchanges, so this raises the question of how much of that I will let run its course vs. just block because it doesn’t spark joy for me personally to see it here.

3) some content in the queue is starting to feature a bunch of AI-generated text. I’m not against AI, but I don’t want AI-generated content here (I often leave in the queue ones that look to me like LLM output) so I haven’t rushed to approve those. Again, I’m not sure what to do about it because it also has some human-written parts which I am not looking to cut out.

I’ve had a busy week dealing with lab stuff and so I’ve not rushed to try to resolve all this. So for now it sits.

In any case, my hope is to come to some sort of policy on this soon, and Approve as much as I can. I would also like to reply to some of your points, but again it takes time and I have been occupied elsewhere. I hope to get to it soon (you may not be surprised to know that there are plenty of others’ critiques I need to consider as well, which I receive through numerous channels; something will always get missed but I do my best to get back to the most interesting and strong ones). This is my personal blog, so in the end I’ll do whatever seems reasonable to me (which no doubt will make some people happy and others unhappy, that’s unavoidable I guess), but the good news is that there are many other outlets where critiques have been written and which no doubt will be happy to host more. But of course I will try to make a best-faith effort to enable representation of the most useful and interesting content that I can. Critiques can be very useful, which is why I’ve already approved and replied to some of yours and others. The only thing I can promise for sure is that I do not believe that an effective way to advance my science is to squash critiques on my tiny blog so that is not an issue. I’m not in the business of silencing anyone but nor am I offering a commitment to post everything that anyone thinks here (I only do this for fun, I don’t charge anyone $, so I will only do what seems fun, positive, and productive to me).

Oh and one final thing that could be useful:

several that characterize my position as “reductive materialism” or “physicalism”, frameworks I’ve explicitly rejected in prior comments.

I missed this too, and initially I did think that in critiquing flavors of Platonism, you were supporting Physicalism (which is what most people, other than a few Idealists, do). I must admit that I do not clearly understand what alternative view you propose. If you wish, it might be helpful to post a short comment explaining crisply what view you do hold and how it differs from both Platonism and Physicalism. Most critiques I’ve heard are explicitly from the Physicalism side, so if there are other options that can be useful, it might be good to say concisely what that is.

Nathan Sweet
November 11, 2025
Dr. Levin,

Thank you for this clarifying and thoughtful response. I genuinely appreciate your transparency about the moderation queue, your acknowledgment of the substantive content in my comments, and especially your invitation to articulate my position concisely. That’s exactly what I hoped this exchange would enable.

I was concerned you might have mistaken my thoroughness for an attempt to overwhelm the discourse rather than thoughtfully engage with the seven pages of questions and points you presented across your talk, short argument video, and direct replies. My intent was to document the issues comprehensively, given that your work raises profound questions about ontology, mathematical nominalism, and scientific methodology that merit detailed engagement with primary sources.

It’s always difficult to balance comprehensiveness with brevity. “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” (paraphrased from Blaise Pascal, I think?) comes to mind.

I appreciate your transparency and understand that managing comment sections involves difficult judgment calls. I respect that this is your personal space. My concern was simply that when responses to challenges remain unpublished while the challenges themselves are visible, it can create an unintended impression about which views are welcome. I’ve always aimed to be respectful toward individuals while rigorously addressing arguments and their real-world consequences, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue that exchange here.

When you present multi-domain challenges spanning developmental biology, mathematical philosophy, evolutionary theory, computation, and more, a thorough response requires unpacking assumptions, citing relevant scholarship, and addressing potential misunderstandings. I recognize this creates practical challenges for comment-section dialogue, which is why your suggestion to write a formal paper is well-taken.

I do use AI, but not to generate arguments. My workflow involves drafting arguments and identifying relevant scholarship myself, using AI to improve clarity, grammar, and citation formatting (I am notoriously prone to typos, forgetting to include points or citations, etc.. thanks autism and dyslexia!), and employing a custom verification system (autonomous web search, academic database access, primary source retrieval) to ensure claims are grounded in peer-reviewed literature rather than compressed/lossy training data that results in hallucinations. That said, even with all that, errors may happen, but I always update the system (and reviews my views) when these are found. Feel free to let me know if I got anything wrong!

The substantive positions, logical structure, and scholarly anchors are mine; the AI serves as editorial assistant and time-saving tool with long-term memory. I flag when I use AI for content generation (as I did with the fallacy analysis comment), but most of my contributions here are human-authored, then AI-revised for terminological precision.

I understand your concern about maintaining the character of the symposium. Going forward, I’ll prioritize conciseness and focus on the most discriminating points rather than comprehensive responses.

Your suggestion to write a paper is an excellent idea, and one I already in the process of doing. My conversations with you, and the additional research I have been doing in light of these conversations, are actually part of that process.

Nathan Sweet
November 11, 2025
Dr. Levin, You wrote: “I must admit that I do not clearly understand what alternative view you propose. If you wish, it might be helpful to post a short comment explaining crisply what view you do hold and how it differs from both Platonism and Physicalism.”

Thank you for this invitation to clarify. This is precisely what I hoped our engagement would produce. You’re right that most Platonism critiques come from eliminative materialists (Dennett, Churchlands), and I understand why that creates the impression of a binary choice. But there’s a third option that’s gaining traction in theoretical biology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, one that I believe aligns better with your bioelectric research than either Platonism or reductive physicalism.

The framework I advocate is Thermodynamic Monism, a process-relational ontology most closely aligned with Friston’s Free Energy Principle (FEP), Whitehead’s process philosophy, and Deacon’s teleodynamics. It is monist (one fundamental ontology: thermodynamic relational dynamics) but non-reductive (higher-order relational patterns have genuine causal efficacy via constraint propagation).

This is not substance monism (matter as primary) but process-relational monism (thermodynamic flows as primary), dissolving the need for transcendent metaphysical entities. It parallels neutral monism (Russell), anomalous monism (Davidson), and Markovian monism (Friston)

This framework honors Dennett’s core insight that intentional agency is real and causally efficacious (not illusory), but extends it by grounding agency in thermodynamic constraint propagation rather than treating it as pragmatic interpretation alone. Where Dennett’s “real patterns” approach struggled to explain multi-scale coherence (why cellular collectives exhibit unified goal-directedness), your bioelectric research provides the mechanism: nested Markov blankets minimizing free energy create measurable downward causation from tissue-level fields to cellular behavior.

Thermodynamic Monism thus operationalizes Dennett’s anti-reductionism with testable predictions your lab has already confirmed, showing patterns aren’t just useful descriptions but physically realized constraint structures with causal power.

Core Claims
One process, not two substances: Reality is constituted by thermodynamic self-organization (systems far-from-equilibrium maintaining Markov blankets through free energy minimization). Consciousness, agency, goals, and mathematical discovery all emerge from this single relational process, not from two ontologically distinct realms (physical + Platonic).

Your bioelectric work exemplifies this: Morphospace is free energy landscape. Goals are attractor states minimizing variational free energy. Cellular agency is active inference over nested Markov blankets (bioelectric coherence as collective free energy minimization). Your xenobots demonstrate scale-free cognition as thermodynamic self-modeling across hierarchical boundaries, no consultation with non-physical forms required.

Mathematical constants aren’t Platonic objects: Constants like e, π, Feigenbaum’s constant, and prime periodicities (cicada 13-year cycles) are structural invariants of thermodynamic optimization under universal physical constraints. Cicadas exhibit 13-year cycles not by “accessing prime-ness” but via phase-locking resonance that minimizes predator overlap (Strogatz’s coupled oscillator dynamics), demonstrating that apparent “mathematical discovery” is thermodynamic convergence on constraint structures, not transcendent consultation. Any system engaging in recursive constraint satisfaction (evolution, neural development, morphogenesis, AI training) necessarily encounters these invariants, not because they “access” Platonic space, but because thermodynamic law constrains possibility space in substrate-independent ways (Wolfram’s computational irreducibility, Friston’s generalized synchrony).

Why not Platonism? Platonic substance dualism adds an explanatory layer (non-physical realm) that does zero work beyond what thermodynamics already explains. It violates Ockham’s Razor, remains unfalsifiable (any outcome can be post-hoc interpreted as “accessing forms”), and gets weaponized by Intelligent Design/Creationist organizations to undermine science education (Discovery Institute, Reasons to Believe, BioLogos all cite Platonism in biology to argue “design requires Designer”). These are all classic signs of pseudoscience, as diagnosed by well-respected scholars such as Daniel Dennett, James Randi, Carl Sagan, and countless others.

Why not physicalism? Reductive physicalism (consciousness is “nothing but” neural firing) eliminates the causal efficacy of higher-order patterns by collapsing them to microstates. Thermodynamic Monism preserves their efficacy: bioelectric coherence, morphological goals, integrated information (Φ) constrain lower-level dynamics through downward causation (coarse-graining creating macro-level regularities). This is non-reductive because patterns have irreducible causal power, but it’s entirely physical (thermodynamic constraint propagation, not mysterious emergence).

Your Research Demonstrates This!
Morphogenesis navigates morphospace via bioelectric field dynamics, this is free energy minimization over nested Markov blankets, not form-consultation.

Goals emerge from thermodynamic relaxation into attractor states. Xenobots exhibit four behaviors not because they access four Platonic forms, but because bioelectric boundary conditions constrain free energy landscape to four stable basins.

Scale-free cognition (cells, tissues, organisms all exhibit goal-directedness) is scale-free thermodynamic self-modeling. Friston’s FEP predicts this; Platonism doesn’t.

The substance-dualist language in your Platonic framework (patterns “ingressing from non-physical space,” cells “accessing morphospace forms”) contradicts the process-relational ontology your lab work demonstrates. Your data shows one thermodynamic process generating multi-scale agency through bioelectric coherence and free energy minimization, not two ontologically distinct realms interacting. This dualist framing not only obscures the mechanism but creates openings for misappropriation by Intelligent Design organizations who cite Platonism in biology to argue biological information requires non-physical design.

Falsifiability Contrast
Thermodynamic Monism (Testable):

Perturbing bioelectric boundaries (ion channels, gap junctions) shifts free energy landscape in calculable ways. Measure Φ, surprise, attractor basin geometry before/after intervention.

Computational irreducibility predicts fundamental epistemic limits: no algorithm can shortcut morphospace exploration. Test whether xenobot behaviors are predictable from genome + environmental constraints alone (they’re not, confirming irreducibility).

Platonic Dualism (Unfalsifiable):
“Cells access forms.” What experiment differentiates this from thermodynamic relaxation? Any outcome (convergence, divergence, unpredictability) can be reinterpreted as “degrees of Platonic access.”

If xenobots exhibited path-dependent divergence (which your 2017 data shows) rather than convergence toward optimal forms, would this count as evidence against Platonic causation, or would any outcome be consistent with “accessing forms”?

Why This Matters for Your Work
If your research program adopts Thermodynamic Monism instead of Platonism:

Generates novel predictions: Map free energy landscapes, predict attractor shifts from bioelectric perturbations, test whether morphospace is computationally irreducible, predict and explain the path-divergence being observed in your lab.

Avoids Intelligent Design weaponization: ID organizations (Discovery Institute, etc.) already cite your Platonic language to argue “biological information requires non-physical designer.” Thermodynamic framing blocks this misappropriation.

Honors the traditions your bio implies you value: Kabbalah teaches Ein Sof (immanent divine unfolding, not transcendent access). Aboriginal Dreamtime teaches relational ontology (Songlines as enacted traversal, not pre-existing maps). Both are monist, not dualist.

Dr. Levin, I believe your bioelectric research is the best contemporary evidence for thermodynamic monism in biology. My critique isn’t of your empirical work (which is groundbreaking), but of the metaphysical scaffolding you’ve chosen to frame it. Thermodynamics + Friston’s FEP (Markovian Monism) + Wolfram’s computational irreducibility already explain everything Platonism claims to, without invoking unfalsifiable realms.

I look forward to the rest of the symposium and will work on consolidating this into a formal paper soon, as you suggested.

With deep respect for your work,
Nathan Sweet

Mike Levin
November 11, 2025
Thanks, I will think on this carefully. Meanwhile, question:

The framework I advocate is Thermodynamic Monism, a process-relational ontology most closely aligned with Friston’s Free Energy Principle (FEP), Whitehead’s process philosophy, and Deacon’s teleodynamics. It is monist (one fundamental ontology: thermodynamic relational dynamics) but non-reductive (higher-order relational patterns have genuine causal efficacy via constraint propagation).

how does this framework deal with things like: the actual value of e, the specific shape of Halley plots of functions (as shown in my talk), the fact that Quaternions, Octonions, and Complex numbers obey different sets of commutative/associative properties, etc. – is the idea that all of those specifics can be derived from thermodynamic principles? These are part of the monist system because the study of thermodynamics and related issues in physics will explain and control their specific properties? No point in talking about biology and such until we settle the status of those objects. I’m not a mathematician, but having spoken to a number of them, I have yet to find one who thinks their subject is going to be folded into physics, or can be affected by facts of physics. If you have a way to unify them in a monism, then you have a lot more people you should be critiquing than me! I’m not being flippant, I mean it – it’s an important thing, if you can actually say something convincing about why the facts of math are determined by anything physicists study, you have a lot to say to Penrose, Tegmark, Frenkel, etc. etc. I’m a very small fish in comparison to that pool of intellects, you’ve got much better targets there (and if you can convince them, I’d likely be convinced too). Are you not motivated to target other Platonists? I’m hardly the first or only person to say that physical facts (even if non-reductionist) do not fix all the facts.

Also, it’s probably important to say the following (and thanks for pointing out that I may be misunderstood on this point, I probably under-emphasize this in my discussions):

Honors the traditions your bio implies you value: Kabbalah teaches Ein Sof (immanent divine unfolding, not transcendent access). Aboriginal Dreamtime teaches relational ontology (Songlines as enacted traversal, not pre-existing maps). Both are monist, not dualist.

all of those traditions are talking about the ultimate nature of reality. Maybe you and others think I’m talking about that too. Actually I make no claims about the final truth – it’s totally un-necessary for me to get into that and I have nothing to add to it that much smarter people over human history have said. Like I said to Bernardo Kastrup about idealism, in the end, it might be right, I don’t know. What I am doing is offering an intermediate model that is useful right now (we can debate that of course). Sure, some sort of monism is conceptually more pleasant than dualism, and ultimately, I’d not be surprised to learn that both my Platonic space and “physical space” (if there is such a thing, for example Don Hoffman thinks it doesn’t exist) are features of some singular deeper underlying reality (like Bernardo’s model). Fine; that’s one of many topics on which I don’t need to expound. I think for now, the best model has at least 2 functionally coupled components: one described by mathematicians (and, I hypothesize, cognitive scientists), and one described by physicists. I (and many other workers) don’t see how they can be reduced to one, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised someday to find out that they do in fact get folded in somehow to a homogenous baseline reality that perhaps some ancient traditions mentioned. For now, saying that the truths of mathematics and the truths of physics can be accommodated by a monism sounds like it needs a lot of work to make it plausible.

Nathan Sweet
November 12, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

Thank you for engaging with this critique. Your questions are important, and I appreciate the opportunity to address them directly. However, your Platonic framework commits errors that undermine both its philosophical coherence and scientific utility.

(1) Category Confusion: Your questions/argument conflate descriptive mathematical Platonism (Penrose/Tegmark’s claim that mathematical structures exist independently) with causal biological Platonism (your claim that “forms inject information” and “instances of embodied cognition likewise ingress from a Platonic space”).

Even if Penrose is right that mathematical structures exist independently of physical instantiation, that’s a claim about the ontological status of abstract objects, not a mechanism for causal interaction between timeless forms and temporal processes. Mathematical Platonists keep mathematics in the descriptive register; they argue π exists as an abstract object, but they don’t prescriptively claim physical systems consult or access π from a separate realm during optimization.

When you say ‘Platonic forms inject information’ and organisms ‘ingress from Platonic space,’ you’re making a mechanistic causal claim that requires specifying:
How timeless objects interact with temporal processes
What prevents arbitrary or contradictory influences
Why some organisms access certain forms and not others
What mediates the cross-realm causation

This is precisely the move mathematical Platonists refuse to make; not because it’s unfalsifiable (though it is), but because it transforms a philosophical position about the nature of mathematical truth into an empirical claim about biological mechanisms, resurrecting all the classical interaction problems of substance dualism that Descartes failed to solve, Ryle exposed as category mistakes, and Dennett replaced with naturalistic distributed explanations of agency.

(2) God of the Gaps via Gödel: You weaponize inevitable incompleteness to justify positing transcendent causation wherever thermodynamic explanations remain partial. This inverts George Box’s epistemological humility (“all models are wrong, some are useful”) into metaphysical license (“all models are incomplete, therefore non-physical causation”). But incompleteness is a feature of any formal system (Gödel) and any scientific model (Box), it doesn’t license positing transcendent realms to fill the perceived gaps.

(3) Self-Contradiction with Synthbiosis: Your vision of synthbiosis requires dissolving boundaries between biological/artificial and organism/environment through mutualistic integration, inherently a process ontology. Yet your Platonic dualism reifies exactly the substance-based separations (discrete cells consulting external forms) that synthbiosis must overcome. You can’t simultaneously advocate for mutualistic boundary-dissolution and maintain that organisms are fundamentally separate substances accessing transcendent information.

These aren’t peripheral philosophical concerns. They directly contradict Dennett’s core insight (competence without comprehension emerging from thermodynamic processes), provide ammunition to Intelligent Design organizations (documented by Panda’s Thumb, May 2025), and misrepresent what your own experiments actually demonstrate: thermodynamic interventions (manipulating ion channels, gap junctions) generate morphological outcomes without requiring Platonic access.

You cite Whitehead’s process philosophy while committing the precise error he warned against; what he called “mistaking the abstract for the concrete” or the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”

Specifically, you:
Treat morphospace (a mathematical description of possible morphologies) as a concrete Platonic realm cells “access”
Reify bioelectric fields (dynamic processes) as discrete entities requiring “coupling” to external forms
Posit organisms as substances that consult transcendent information, rather than as patterns of thermodynamic becoming
Frame “two functionally coupled components” (physicists’ vs. mathematicians’ domains) as if descriptive abstractions were separate ontological territories
Treat mathematical invariants (π, primes, quaternions) as eternal objects with causal power, rather than as structural features of constraint-satisfaction dynamics

Your Platonic dualism commits to substance ontology at every level; cells as discrete agents, forms as eternal entities, physical/mathematical as separate realms. This renders your framework either unfalsifiable (no experiment can disprove “degrees of Platonic access” since any outcome accommodates it) or empirically contradicted (your lab manipulates ion channels and gap junctions, not access to transcendent space; xenobots demonstrate path-dependence and computational irreducibility, not convergence to pre-existing forms; yet all produce predictable morphological outcomes).

Whitehead’s actual framework (and the thermodynamic monism your experiments demonstrate) treats all “entities” as transient patterns in continuous relational process, with identity emerging from constraint propagation rather than grounded in substance. This is exactly what Matt Segall warned about when he wrote that your framing risks making “bodies mere puppets” by locating agency in transcendent forms rather than “the present locus of decision” in organisms themselves.

This creates a logical structure isomorphic to ID arguments: wherever mechanistic explanation is incomplete (ID: origin of life, biological complexity; you: specific mathematical patterns in morphogenesis), posit transcendent causation (ID: divine intelligence; you: Platonic forms), make the mechanism unfalsifiable (ID: “ways of knowing beyond science”; you: “degrees of access” that accommodate any outcome), and claim this enhances rather than contradicts naturalism (ID: “theistic science”; you: “expanded naturalism”). The difference is purely aesthetic, replacing “God’s design” with “mathematical forms”, while the logical structure remains identical: God of the Gaps reasoning wearing mathematical clothing instead of theological vestments, yet providing the Discovery Institute exactly the scientific cover they’ve been seeking.

Thermodynamic monism provides mechanistic accounts via Friston’s Free Energy Principle (goal-directedness as variational inference), Wolfram’s computational irreducibility (mathematical patterns as structural invariants), Strogatz’s attractor dynamics (morphological convergence), and your own bioelectric interventions (which manipulate thermodynamic constraints, not Platonic access, yet produce predictable outcomes). Your framework adds ontological entities (Platonic forms) without adding explanatory power, Dennett’s definition of a “skyhook” rather than a “crane” (Consciousness Explained). Worse, it commits Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness by reifying morphospace (a useful mathematical description) into a causally efficacious transcendent realm.

You ask whether thermodynamic monism claims mathematical facts like the value of e, Halley plot topology, or quaternion algebra are “derived from thermodynamic principles.” This question contains a crucial category error.

Mathematical structures aren’t caused by physics, this mistakes the map for the territory, they describe constraint satisfaction dynamics. When your xenobots solve navigation problems, they’re not “accessing” quaternion algebra from a Platonic realm. They’re performing thermodynamic relaxation under 3D rotational constraints that quaternions formalize. The quaternion properties (non-commutativity) reflect which mathematical structures remain computationally tractable for describing those constraints, not transcendent objects with causal power (which invokes Aristotle’s unmoved mover without warrant).

Similarly, when bioelectric networks produce five-fold symmetry, they’re not “consulting” pentagon geometry. Five-fold symmetry is a stable attractor under certain constraint configurations (ion channel distributions, gap junction coupling, morphogen gradients). Mathematics provides the formal language for describing these attractors, it doesn’t prescribe them from outside.

Your examples (e, Halley plots, octonions) are structural invariants of optimization dynamics:
e emerges from continuous compounding (exponential growth/decay as universal constraint relaxation)
Halley plots reflect attractor topology of iterative optimization (Wolfram’s computational irreducibility)
Octonions describe 7D constraint spaces with specific symmetry-breaking properties
None require invoking non-physical causation. All are descriptive formalisms for patterns that emerge from thermodynamic constraint satisfaction.

You’re right that “physical facts don’t fix all mathematical facts,” but that’s because mathematics is a descriptive framework, not a causal realm. The Pythagorean theorem doesn’t cause right triangles to have specific properties; it describes relationships inherent to Euclidean geometry. When you claim cells “access Platonic forms,” you’re treating descriptive mathematics as prescriptive metaphysics, again precisely the move mathematical Platonists like Penrose and Tegmark explicitly avoid.

Your invocation of Hoffman’s Interface Theory contradicts your collaborator Anil Seth’s controlled hallucination framework and Varela/Maturana’s enactivism, which your bioelectric work exemplifies. Seth’s predictive processing requires thermodynamic constraints from reality to function—the brain’s ‘controlled hallucinations’ must be continuously corrected by sensory input grounded in physical dynamics. Hoffman explicitly denies this: his ‘fitness beats truth’ thesis claims perception has zero correspondence with reality. Varela and Maturana’s enactivism, which grounds cognition in embodied sensorimotor coupling with environment, is similarly incompatible with Hoffman’s claim that spacetime itself is merely an interface with no relation to underlying reality. Your xenobots demonstrate enactive cognition: thermodynamic relaxation under embodied constraints, not consultation of transcendent interfaces. Rezayati Charan et al. (2021) empirically refuted Hoffman’s core thesis, showing interface strategies drive extinction under environmental change. Meanwhile, enactivism and Seth’s predictive processing remain empirically robust, grounded in Friston’s Free Energy Principle and autopoiesis research spanning decades.

Kastrup’s Analytic Idealism explicitly avoids making discriminatory empirical predictions (as he acknowledges on his website, December 2024 https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2024/11/response-to-rupert-sheldrakes.html ), positioning itself as unfalsifiable metaphysics rather than testable science. Your Platonic framework differs critically: you make strong causal claims that are empirically testable (“forms inject information,” organisms “ingress from Platonic space”) that demand mechanistic specification, yet you retreat to “useful intermediate model” when pressed for falsification criteria.

Hoffman and Kastrup don’t help your case; they illustrate exactly the problem: unfalsifiable metaphysics dressed as science. The difference is they explicitly acknowledge their frameworks make no novel testable predictions beyond physicalism/thermodynamics, while your symposium presents Platonism as empirically grounded biology (at least implicitly, but often explicitly). If you’re claiming Platonic dualism is “just useful heuristic” (like Kastrup’s admitted unfalsifiability), then it adds nothing to FEP + computational irreducibility + your bioelectric data, and Ockham’s Razor favors thermodynamic monism to avoid confusing the public/enabling ID abuse. If you’re claiming it makes causal-mechanistic predictions, specify the falsification criteria. You can’t have both.

Thermodynamic process based monism eliminates the need for Kastrup or Hoffman because it explains all their claimed phenomena (perception, agency, goal-directedness, consciousness-as-integrated-information) through empirically testable mechanisms (Friston’s Free Energy Principle, Deacon’s teleodynamics, Varela/Maturana’s enactivism) without invoking unfalsifiable transcendent realms (Kastrup’s “Mind-at-Large” idealism) or empirically refuted theses (Hoffman’s fitness-beats-truth, disproven by Rezayati Charan 2021), thereby achieving greater parsimony, testability, and explanatory power while remaining fully compatible with your own experimental data (bioelectric networks as embodied thermodynamic cognition, not interfaces to non-physical spaces).

The critical question I have for you is this: What does Platonic dualism explain that thermodynamic monism cannot? If the answer is “nothing empirically testable,” then Ockham’s Razor favors the ontology that doesn’t require cross-realm causation with unspecified mechanisms.

You say you’re not a big fish, and I admire the humility, but I think you underestimate your reach. You have 32,553 citations, h-index 99, and 35k YouTube subscribers (according to AD Scientific Index). You publish in Cell/Science/Frontiers and convene symposia with Friston, Noble, Google/MIT researchers.

When you frame empirical work (xenobots, planarian regeneration) in Platonic language, it provides scientific cover for metaphysical dualism that pure mathematicians (Penrose/Tegmark) cannot. Your cross-disciplinary reach means your ontological framing will dominate LLM training data. Current AI systems already connect your bioelectricity research with consciousness and unfalsifiable substance dualism through dense semantic reinforcement across millions of training examples, shaping how the next generation conceptualizes both morphogenesis and their own nature.

Your cross-disciplinary reach creates a structural asymmetry that makes direct engagement necessary rather than simply publishing alternatives. Research on preprint citation dynamics shows independent researchers face exponential disadvantages: arXiv preprints average fewer than 100 readers over their lifetime, with first-time authors receiving minimal citation traction regardless of content quality. Meanwhile, your work appears in high-impact journals with institutional backing, co-citation networks with established researchers, and social media/podcast amplification reaching tens of millions. Citation studies demonstrate that “author journal prestige” and “preferential attachment” create self-reinforcing visibility, your publications receive exponentially more citations based on institutional affiliation and existing h-index, independent of content. By the time a thermodynamic monism paper from an independent researcher accumulates enough citations to enter LLM training corpora, your Platonic framework will have already been embedded in millions of model parameters across ChatGPT, Claude, and every AI system trained on biological literature.

Publishing alternatives independently cannot overcome this structural asymmetry.

This is why engaging your framework matters more than debating mathematical Platonists like Penrose and Tegmark, they operate in pure philosophy with no biological implications, arguing mathematical structures exist independently (descriptive Platonism). You argue organisms causally interact with those structures during morphogenesis (prescriptive biological Platonism), a fundamentally different and empirically unsupported claim that enters biological literature, LLM training corpora, and educational materials where it shapes how morphogenesis is conceptualized for decades.

I’m not asking you to cite alternative or unproven work or platform competing frameworks. I’m not asking you to cite my work or abandon multi-scale agency.

I’m asking you to recognize that the thermodynamic process ontology your experiments already demonstrate gives you everything your research needs, more rigorously, more testably, more aligned with Dennett’s legacy, and without arming creationists than Platonic substance dualism ever could.

Your empirical work deserves accurate framing in your publications rather than being obscured by metaphysics that provides cover for Intelligent Design while contradicting Dennett’s naturalization project.

What Engagement Requires:
(1) Specify falsification criteria: What experiment would show cells performing thermodynamic relaxation rather than Platonic access? If no outcome can falsify your framework, it’s metaphysics, not science.
(2) Acknowledge ontological commitment: Stop oscillating between “Platonic forms inject information” and “just a useful intermediate model.” Your “two functionally coupled components” claim commits you to dualism and requires explaining their interaction, which you’ve admitted you “don’t know how to handle” (time at juncture of physical/non-physical).
(3) Address ID weaponization: Panda’s Thumb showed Discovery Institute using your quotes. Dennett fought these battles his entire career. What’s your response?
(4) Engage thermodynamic alternative: Does FEP + computational irreducibility + your bioelectric data provide complete explanations? If yes, Ockham’s Razor favors monism.
(5) Explain the synthbiosis contradiction: How does mutualistic boundary-dissolution (your vision) cohere with substance-based separation (your ontology)? Margulis’s endosymbiosis succeeded through thermodynamic coupling, not Platonic consultation, does your framework require rejecting this account?

Here is why this matters: Dennett wrote in your 2020 Aeon essay that you’re “naturalising human capacities” by showing agency on a continuum, competence without comprehension, all the way down. Your planaria regenerate without comprehending topology; your xenobots solve problems without grasping algorithms. But Platonic framing reintroduces comprehension (accessing external forms) precisely where Dennett taught us to eliminate it.

Your empirical work demonstrates thermodynamic self-organization generating goal-directedness, computational sophistication, and multi-scale agency. Platonic dualism obscures this by attributing outcomes to transcendent causation rather than immanent physical processes, the opposite of Dennett’s naturalization project.

Moreover, your synthbiosis vision requires process ontology (dissolving boundaries through mutualistic integration, as Margulis showed with endosymbiosis), but your Platonic dualism reifies substance-based separations (discrete organisms consulting external forms). This isn’t a peripheral tension, it’s a fundamental contradiction between your empirical insights and your metaphysical framing.

I am happy to expand on these points with full primary sources and scholarly citations (Whitehead, Dennett, Segall, Friston, Strogatz, Margulis), empirical evidence (arXiv citation studies showing structural asymmetry), and concrete proposals for moving forward upon request (I left them out for brevity sake).

With the utmost respect for your empirical contributions and appreciation for honoring Dennett’s memory,
Nathan

Nathan Sweet
November 12, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

You suggested I critique Penrose, Tegmark, and Frenkel instead of you. While this misses the crucial distinction between descriptive mathematical Platonism (their position) and prescriptive biological Platonism (your position), I examined their primary sources to demonstrate that their frameworks neither make the same errors yours does nor support your conclusions.

The mathematicians you invoke (at least what I can find and have ever read about mathematical Platonism, I am open to correction) explicitly avoid the causal mechanistic claims you make about morphogenesis, as I will demonstrate from primary sources.

Roger Penrose Explicitly Avoids Your Prescriptive Claims

Penrose describes “three profound mysteries” between the mathematical, physical, and mental worlds, but admits he cannot explain the causal mechanism:

“Penrose describes 3 worlds. Physical world, mental world and Platonic mathematical world. He says there are three profound mysteries between these three worlds. The first mystery is how the Platonic mathematical world organized the physical world.”

From Plato to Penrose: The Mind of God in the Reality of Mathematics

Penrose calls these “mysteries” precisely because he lacks a mechanism. You claim organisms “ingress from” and “access” Platonic forms during morphogenesis, making the mechanistic claim Penrose explicitly avoids.

When pressed on the causal mechanism, Penrose is criticized for “waving his hands” rather than specifying how organisms could interact with Platonic reality:

“Platonists like Penrose, Gödel, Connes et al. respond to this point by waving their hands and saying consciousness ‘breaks through’ (Penrose) to platonic reality or that we apprehend it in some extrasensory way.”

https://math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6646

Max Tegmark Eliminates the Interaction Problem You Create

Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis claims reality IS mathematics (identity), not that organisms ACCESS mathematics (causal interaction):

“Tegmark’s MUH is the hypothesis that our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. That is, the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics, specifically, a mathematical structure.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis

This eliminates the interaction problem by collapsing the distinction between physical and mathematical. Your framework retains substance dualism and requires specifying the causal mechanism neither Penrose nor Tegmark provide.

The Critical Distinction: Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Platonism

Mathematical Platonists argue math exists independently (descriptive ontology, epiphenomenal). Pythagoreans argue math causes physical reality (prescriptive ontology, causal). Your framework is Pythagorean:

“The primary criterion of the distinction between mathematical platonism and mathematical pythagoreanism is, as it appears, the category of causality. In platonism, the mathematical entities are considered as epiphenomenal whereas in pythagoreism as real causes of the physical world.”

https://philsoc.psu.ru/files/articles/2018-pythagoreanism-in-modern-philosophy.pdf

Discovery Institute Weaponization (Already Documented)

Panda’s Thumb (May 2025) documents Discovery Institute citing your work:

“The biologists that the DI platonists refer to are less clearly referring to any supernatural processes. Michael Levin comes closest: ‘instances of embodied cognition likewise ingress from a Platonic space, which contains not only low-agency patterns like facts about triangles and prime numbers, but also higher-agency ones such as kinds of minds’”

https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2025/05/platonic-nonsense.html

Your Platonic language provides scientific cover for Discovery Institute’s explicit strategy:

“The defining purpose of the IDM is to advance the argument that neo-Darwinism has failed to explain the origin of the highly complex information systems and structures of living organisms… This makes it reasonable to infer that the evidence of biology, if not the philosophy that dominates this science, suggests the need to consider that some intelligent cause may have played an indispensable role in the origin and development of life.”

Intelligent Design in Biology

This weaponization can be significantly amplified by LLM training, where correction fails systematically, especially when encounter contradictory frameworks:

“Even with explicit instructions, LLMs succeed less than half the time in rectifying misinformation, despite possessing correct internal knowledge, leading to significant accuracy drops (10.02% to 72.20%)”

https://arxiv.org/html/2505.18555v2

Whitehead Scholar Matt Segall Identifies the Error

Matt Segall, participating in your symposium, explicitly warns against misplaced concreteness in his November 9, 2025 article:

“To do that would be, as Whitehead warned, a fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Levin is right to resist genetic reductionism and to insist that… [but] aesthetic and ethical forms matter, too”

https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/patterns-are-not-puppeteers-the-return

Map-Territory Conflation in Your Framework

From Free Energy Principle literature on exactly this issue:

“The map–territory fallacy reduces to a failure to distinguish between recognition and generative models… One should not ask whether the FEP is subject to the map-territory fallacy; rather, one should ask whether the map-territory fallacy subject to the FEP”

https://arxiv.org/html/2208.06924v2

The fallacy of misplaced concreteness operates precisely when treating descriptive abstractions as concrete entities:

“Concreteness is misplaced when the tree is abstracted from the rest of the forest and treated as an independent, stable thing; however, such misplacement amounts to a necessary fiction… much of our empirical knowledge… is the result of an inquiry into each one that operates on the basis of this necessary fiction”

https://www.thegadflymagazine.org/home-1/misplaces-concreteness-and-mental-disorders

Whitehead defined this fallacy in Process and Reality (1929):

“There is an error; but it is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete… the real error is an example of what I have termed: The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness”

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness or Reification

Whitehead’s Process Philosophy Rejects Substance Dualism

Your framework treats mathematical patterns as substances requiring interaction with physical substances, contradicting Whitehead’s core insight:

“The enduring objects one perceives with the senses (rocks, trees, persons) are made up of serially ordered ‘societies,’ or strings of momentary actual occasions, each flowing into the next and giving the illusion of an object that is continuously extended in time… Whereas matter is self-sustaining, externally related, valueless, passive; organisms are interdependent, internally and externally related, value-laden, active”

Process Philosophy

Thermodynamic monism provides exactly what Whitehead describes: mathematical patterns emerge as structural invariants of recursive constraint satisfaction. Your xenobots demonstrate thermodynamic relaxation (actual occasions) generating morphological outcomes (societies) without requiring access to transcendent forms. The quaternion algebra describing their rotational constraints is not a separate substance they consult, but the formal description of constraint topology they necessarily encounter through physical process.

Matt Segall’s November 9 critique echoes this: your experimental work reveals process and relationality, but your Platonic language obscures it by reintroducing substance dualism where your demonstrations eliminate its necessity.

You cannot deflect to Penrose or Tegmark. They make descriptive claims about mathematical ontology. You make prescriptive claims about biological mechanisms. These are categorically different, and only yours requires empirical falsification criteria.

This is why engaging your framework matters more than debating mathematical Platonists. Penrose and Tegmark operate in pure philosophy with no biological implications. You argue organisms causally interact with Platonic structures during morphogenesis, a fundamentally different and empirically unsupported claim that enters biological literature, LLM training corpora, and educational materials where it shapes how morphogenesis is conceptualized for decades.

This has consequences beyond philosophy. Indigenous scholars have long articulated process-relational ontologies that Platonic substance dualism systematically erases. Wahkotowin (Cree: “all of creation is related and interconnected”) describes precisely what your thermodynamic monism demonstrates experimentally, what Whitehead called “actual occasions” forming “societies,” without requiring transcendent forms as separate substances. As Opaskwayak Cree scholar Shawn Wilson writes, “the shared aspect of an Indigenous ontology and epistemology is relationality.” Your Platonic framework, by positing forms as ontologically separate entities that organisms “access,” contradicts this fundamental insight that Western philosophy is only now rediscovering through process metaphysics and Free Energy minimization.

When you invoke Platonic dualism in biological contexts, LLM training corpora absorb it without distinguishing your prescriptive mechanistic claims from Penrose’s descriptive philosophical speculation. This amplifies epistemic injustice: Indigenous knowledge systems that maintained and operationalized process-relational ontologies for millennia get marginalized as “traditional beliefs,” while your framework, despite lacking falsification criteria, enters scientific literature as cutting-edge theory.

Tyson Yunkaporta (Apalech Clan) warns in “Sand Talk” that settler knowledge systems create artificial separations, treating as distinct substances what Indigenous epistemologies recognize as process and relation. Your xenobots demonstrate this through thermodynamic self-organization, yet your Platonic language obscures it. Your experimental demonstrations of thermodynamic self-organization scientifically validate insights Indigenous scholars maintained through practice for millennia. How might engaging with these often-overlooked epistemologies/scholars strengthen rather than threaten your research program?

What experiment would demonstrate that your xenobots are accessing Platonic forms rather than performing thermodynamic relaxation under constraint?

What would falsify your Platonic framework that wouldn’t also falsify the thermodynamic alternative?

I look forward to your response.

Nathan

Nathan Sweet
November 15, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

I appreciate your acknowledgment that my comments are awaiting review, but the moderation pattern itself has become illustrative of the core epistemic concern I’ve raised throughout this exchange: the asymmetric standards applied to falsifiable versus unfalsifiable frameworks. I’m writing to document this pattern transparently and ask what intellectual position requires such strategic protection that it necessitates differential moderation standards.

The asymmetry is empirically observable. Chris Judd’s November 10th AI generated response to me passed moderation quickly despite containing no engagement with my thermodynamic arguments and multiple identifiable fallacies that mirror some of your own: strawman misrepresentation (claiming I argue experience “arises from matter” when I explicitly defend process ontology via enactive cognition), well-poisoning (characterizing thermodynamic monism as “reductive materialism” despite my detailed citations of Friston, Deacon, Thompson, and Kauffman), and ad hominem deflection (dismissing substantive critiques as motivated by “ego” rather than addressing the arguments themselves). This comment received immediate approval.

Meanwhile, my responses, citing peer-reviewed scholarship, documenting Judd’s misrepresentations, and defending my framework against strawman attacks, and breaking down the dozens of named fallacies he employed remain “awaiting moderation” for over a week.

Your stated concerns are “length,” “AI-generated content,” and the exchange “getting adversarial.” Each of these concerns merits direct examination.

Regarding length: You note my comments are “very long” and “risk dwarfing everything else,” suggesting I write a paper instead. This is tone policing masquerading as moderation policy and a dismissal without engagement. Empirical rigor demands seeking the truth, not shortening responses or to not fully address the claims being presented. Preventing comprehensive engagement is a form of stifling dissent. The truth content should be far more important than length, and in fact I suspect you appreciate rigor and comprehensiveness when not aimed at your own frameworks.

I responded to seven pages of your questions to me spanning your introductory video, your detailed presentation, your direct reply to my initial comments, and multiple misrepresentations from both yourself other commenters. Addressing multi-domain challenges (developmental biology, mathematical philosophy, evolutionary theory, ID/creationist abuse, Aboriginal knowledge appropriation) and hours worth of video presentations presented in the symposium requires comprehensive citation.

Demanding brevity when thoroughness is methodologically required privileges superficial engagement over scholarly rigor. Short dismissive comments pass moderation quickly. Detailed rebuttals with primary source verification get delayed for being “too long.” This is not neutral housekeeping, it’s convenient structural privileging of assertion over substantiation.

Regarding AI use: You express concern about “AI-generated content” in the queue. I’ve been transparent about my workflow: I author arguments via voice dictation (accommodating dyslexia/ADHD), use AI for grammar correction and citation formatting, then verify all claims via web search and primary source retrieval. This is standard academic practice using modern tools (equivalent to copyediting software, citation management, grammar checkers). What I’ve never done (and what Judd demonstrably did in his August 28th comment to Matt Segall and then again in his response to me on the 10th) is rely on AI-generated summaries of philosophical positions without verification and deep engagement with the source materials. Judd acknowledged on September 3rd: “I was relying on an AI-generated summary of Whitehead’s position to quickly draw a contrast, and it clearly provided a flawed synthesis that misrepresented his clear and well-defined separation of the eternal objects from spacetime.” This is AI-enabled misrepresentation of source material. Yet no moderation concern was expressed about Judd’s workflow. The asymmetry suggests the objection targets AI-assisted precision in rebuttals rather than AI-enabled misrepresentation in attacks.

Dismissing rebuttals because you falsely assume they are AI generated is a source/genetic fallacy. An argument stands on it’s merits: logic, evidence, and falsifiability; not the source. It would not matter if I was a human, AI, or sentient toaster if seeking truth in your claims was the priority over uncritical acceptance.

Regarding “adversarial” framing: You characterize the exchange as “getting a bit adversarial” and question “how much of that I will let run its course.” Identifying logical fallacies in responses attacking my position is defensive engagement, not adversarial provocation. I made no personal attacks. I documented specific methodological failures: Judd’s strawman misrepresentations, his appeals to authority without addressing falsification criteria, his well-poisoning characterizations, and his admission of relying on AI-generated philosophical summaries. When Matt Segall corrected Judd about Whitehead, Judd immediately apologized. When I document Judd’s misrepresentations of my framework, it’s suggested that this is flagged as “adversarial.” This double standard suggests substantive critique of arguments gets penalized while personal attacks on positions pass moderation.

This pattern isn’t random. It systematically protects unfalsifiable metaphysics from falsifiable critique through procedural barriers. Assertions pass quickly. Substantive rebuttals wait indefinitely. The effect, whether intended or not, is that misrepresentations stand unchallenged while corrections remain invisible.

This moderation asymmetry directly contradicts your symposium’s stated ethos: “Strong opinions, loosely held.” That principle requires two things: (1) strong opinions must be rigorously defended with testable claims, and (2) loosely held means updating when evidence contradicts predictions. The current moderation pattern inverts this. Unfalsifiable assertions (“Platonic ingression guides morphogenesis”) pass immediately. Requests for falsification criteria wait indefinitely. This isn’t “strong opinions, loosely held.” It’s strong assertions, strategically shielded from the same scrutiny you then apply to me.

I’ve documented throughout this exchange that your Platonic framework systematically evades the standards you apply to alternatives.

When I ask what experiment would distinguish Platonic ingression from thermodynamic relaxation, you deflect to whether thermodynamics can explain mathematical constants (a category error: descriptive vs. prescriptive Platonism). When I specify thermodynamic mechanisms (FEP, computational irreducibility, bioelectric constraint satisfaction), you retreat to “useful intermediate model” without addressing whether it generates any novel testable predictions. When I document ID organizations citing your work to argue biological information requires non-physical design (Discovery Institute, Panda’s Thumb analysis), this goes unaddressed despite being exactly the societal harm falsificationism is designed to prevent.

Meanwhile, substantive critiques from your own symposium participants remain unengaged. Matt Segall warned on November 9th against the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (reifying mathematical descriptions as causal agents), noting the risk of making “bodies mere puppets” by locating agency in transcendent forms rather than organisms themselves. This is a Whitehead scholar, participating in your symposium, raising the exact concern I’ve documented empirically: that Platonic frameworks undermine the embodied agency your biological work demonstrates. No response.

I’ve also identified the core ontological contradiction between your Platonic framework and your synthbiosis vision. Synthbiosis (drawing on Margulis, Barad, Haraway) requires process-relational boundary dissolution, viewing organisms as permeable, mutualistic integrations rather than discrete individuals. But Platonism commits to substance-based separations, discrete organisms accessing external forms via bioelectric “receivers.” These are incompatible ontologies. Process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze, Barad) explicitly rejects Platonic transcendence in favor of immanent becoming. You’ve invoked both traditions without addressing their mutual exclusion. No response.

The moderation pattern suggests these substantive challenges aren’t being engaged because they can’t be engaged without either (1) providing falsification criteria (which would reveal empirical equivalence with thermodynamics), or (2) admitting the framework is metaphysical speculation rather than empirical science (which would undermine its claimed advantages over alternatives).

So I’m asking directly: What intellectual position requires such strategic protection that it necessitates asymmetric moderation standards? What in your framework is so essential that:

Critiques must wait indefinitely while misrepresentations pass immediately
Falsification requests get deflected with category errors
ID weaponization goes unacknowledged
Aboriginal knowledge appropriation remains unaddressed
Whitehead scholar warnings stay unengaged
Ontological contradictions (Platonism vs. process philosophy) evade examination

I ask not to attack, but to better understand your position so I can show you how thermodynamic monism honors your traditions and metaphysical commitments, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE, better than your Biological Platonism ever could, without sliding into unfalsifiable metaphysics that enable ID/Creationism harm and appropriate Aboriginal knowledge systems that pre-date Plato by tens of thousands of years.

Your framework oscillates between two contradictory defenses that neither justify the moderation asymmetry: when arguing for advantages over thermodynamics (testable, falisifiable), you claim Platonic ingression generates novel empirical tests, but when facing falsification requests, you retreat to characterizing it as merely a “useful intermediate model” or “heuristic” that guides intuition. If it’s a falsifiable scientific hypothesis that actually generates novel experiments that thermodynamic monism can not, then requests for falsification criteria warrant immediate engagement, not indefinite delay and moderation.

If it’s merely a heuristic model, then it cannot be defended as empirically superior to thermodynamic alternatives, and critiques documenting this equivalence deserve equal standing with endorsements. The strategic evasion pattern suggests unfalsifiable metaphysical commitments that shift between “testable hypothesis” when claiming advantages and “useful heuristic” when facing falsification requests, a textbook Motte-and-Bailey structure.

Heuristic models in science generate novel testable predictions independent of the heuristic itself (Maxwell’s mechanical ether models generated electromagnetic theory that survived when the ether was abandoned), so if Platonic ingression is genuinely heuristic, what testable theory does it generate that survives independent evaluation, and thermodynamics can not equally generate?

If there is none, then it’s not a heuristic guiding empirical progress but unfalsifiable metaphysics claiming heuristic status to evade scrutiny while its proponents strategically moderate which critiques receive visibility.

This matters beyond our exchange or your deflections about “fun” on your “tiny blog” (while your opinions reach millions). The Panda’s Thumb documented in October 2025 that Discovery Institute is already citing your Platonic language to argue biological information requires non-physical design. Your response on November 7th implied you totally reject ID/creationism as pseudoscience. But rejection without differentiation is insufficient when your framework mirrors their argumentative structure: invoking non-physical causes, resisting falsification through semantic flexibility, and claiming empirical grounding while evading specification of what would constitute empirical refutation.

ID proponents will continue weaponizing your work because they recognize structural isomorphism regardless of your stated rejection.

Similarly, your adoption of “morpho space” terminology directly parallels Aboriginal Songline epistemology (documented by Bawaka Country collective, Tyson Yunkaporta, Gregory Cajete) without attribution or engagement with Indigenous scholars’ explicit warnings against extractive appropriation.

These aren’t peripheral concerns. They’re direct consequences of unfalsifiable frameworks: when success/failure criteria aren’t specified, rhetorical flexibility allows weaponization by bad-faith actors and appropriation of marginalized knowledge systems without accountability. Karl Popper’s Falsificationism exists precisely to prevent these harms by forcing specificity that enables refutation.

My comments documenting Aboriginal knowledge appropriation have been awaiting moderation for over a week without approval, response, or engagement. Your adoption of “morphospace navigation” terminology directly parallels Aboriginal Songline epistemology (documented by Bawaka Country collective, Tyson Yunkaporta, Gregory Cajete) without attribution or engagement with Indigenous scholars’ work.

Whether this appropriation was intentional or inadvertent is immaterial. Indigenous scholars (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, Zoe Todd) document that settler appropriation persists through ignorance of source traditions and through institutional suppression of critiques that name the extraction.

Both patterns are operative here: adopting epistemological frameworks without demonstrating independent derivation or engaging source communities, then using moderation powers to prevent visibility of comments documenting the appropriation. Claiming lack of awareness doesn’t address the harm and perpetuates it through strategic silencing. The corrective action is straightforward: approve the comments raising these concerns, engage with the Indigenous scholarship cited, and either demonstrate independent derivation or provide proper attribution and community consultation going forward. These are very straightforward, reasonable requests.

The current moderation pattern suggests these concerns aren’t being addressed because they can’t be addressed without fundamental revision to your framework. Providing falsification criteria would reveal thermodynamic equivalence. Acknowledging ID weaponization would require differentiating your framework through testable predictions. Engaging Aboriginal appropriation critiques would require attribution and community consultation. None of these have occurred.

I’m not asking you to abandon Platonism as personal metaphysics or philosophical conviction. I’m asking you to stop defending unfalsifiable claims about Platonic realms in public scientific discourse without subjecting them to the same empirical standards you apply to alternatives, as this is not intellectually honest. Personal belief requires no justification. Public scientific claims require falsification criteria.

If you believe thermodynamics cannot explain morphogenesis, specify one experiment where Platonic ingression predicts outcomes thermodynamics cannot. If you believe your framework generates testable hypotheses rather than unfalsifiable metaphysics, provide one test result that would disprove Platonic causal influence.

If you believe Discovery Institute misunderstands your work when citing it to argue biological information requires non-physical design, explain what structurally distinguishes Platonic ingression from intelligent design beyond semantic rebranding. If you believe adopting “morphospace navigation” represents independent convergence rather than appropriation of Aboriginal Songline epistemology, engage with Indigenous scholars’ work (Smith, Tuck, Todd, Yunkaporta) on how to demonstrate independent derivation versus extractive adoption.

These are minimum standards for public scientific discourse, and “strong opinions, loosely held.”; not attacks on personal worldview. Anything less is strong assertions, strategically protected and that equally justify ALL UNFALSIFIABLE METAPHYSICS REGARDLESS OF THE HARM. The moderation asymmetry (where requests for these standards wait indefinitely while evasions pass immediately) suggests the latter is operative.

I remain open to substantive engagement under symmetric epistemic standards. But if comments requesting falsification criteria, documenting ID weaponization, identifying Aboriginal appropriation, and noting symposium participant warnings continue awaiting moderation while strawman misrepresentations pass immediately, that asymmetry speaks louder than any stated commitment to “open dialogue” or “strong opinions, loosely held.”

What are you protecting, and why does it require procedural barriers to substantive critique? Your conversations with Kastrup and Hoffman suggest concerns extending beyond developmental biology to questions about consciousness, continuity of experience, meaning-making, and agency that resist physicalist reduction. If so, thermodynamic monism may address those concerns more rigorously than biological Platonism does. Process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze, Varela) provides non-reductive accounts of agency through recursive self-organization without transcendent realms. Free energy minimization explains teleological behavior without importing purpose from Platonic forms. Enactive cognition preserves embodied meaning-making without substance dualism. These frameworks answer questions about consciousness and continuity that remain open in both physicalism and Platonism, but through falsifiable mechanisms rather than unfalsifiable metaphysics.

Exploring whether thermodynamic approaches better protect your deeper philosophical commitments requires approving substantive comments for visibility, specifying falsification criteria for Platonic claims, and engaging arguments on their merits rather than through category-error deflections or appeals to authority figures (Tegmark, Penrose, Kastrup, Hoffman) whose frameworks face identical falsification challenges. If your framework genuinely holds advantages, symmetric epistemic standards strengthen rather than threaten it.

Process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze, Varela) provides non-reductive accounts of agency through recursive self-organization that don’t require transcendent realms. Free energy minimization explains teleological behavior without importing purpose from external forms. Enactive cognition preserves embodied meaning-making without substance dualism. These frameworks answer questions about consciousness, agency, and continuity that you’ve noted remain open in biological explanation, but they do so through falsifiable mechanisms rather than unfalsifiable metaphysics.

If your deeper commitments are driving the defense of Platonism, let’s engage them directly through symmetric epistemic standards rather than strategic deflection. That requires approving comments so substantive exchange becomes visible, specifying what would falsify Platonic claims, and demonstrating how your framework differs structurally from ID arguments that weaponize the same logical moves.

The pattern of strategic evasion constitutes implicit concession of my core arguments. When falsification requests go unanswered for weeks while misrepresentations pass moderation immediately, when category-error deflections replace specification of testable predictions, when ID weaponization remains unaddressed despite documented harm, and when Aboriginal appropriation critiques get suppressed rather than engaged, the framework’s defenders demonstrate through their actions what they cannot defend through argument: that Platonic ingression generates no novel testable predictions beyond thermodynamic alternatives, that it lacks structural differentiation from intelligent design arguments, and that it appropriates Indigenous epistemology without attribution or accountability. Intellectually honest engagement would look like this: approving all substantive comments regardless of length or AI assistance, specifying one experiment where Platonic predictions diverge from thermodynamic predictions with different observable outcomes, explaining how bioelectric “reception” of Platonic forms differs mechanistically from ID’s “intelligent information,” and either demonstrating independent derivation of morphospace navigation concepts or providing proper attribution to Aboriginal Songline scholarship with community consultation.

Silence on these specific requests while maintaining procedural barriers to critique is not neutrality or protecting your subjective “fun” at the cost of the demonstrable harms I have detailed. It’s tacit acknowledgment that the framework cannot withstand symmetric epistemic scrutiny.

In the spirit of “strong opinions, loosely held” and strategic silence holding more strongly than opinions should justify,
Nathan Sweet

Weaver D.R. Weinbaum
November 16, 2025
Hello Mike,

I’m following this discussion with deep fascination. If nothing else, it provokes profound reflections on the nature of reality. Thank you for that—among many other significant contributions.

No point in talking about biology and such until we settle the status of those objects. I’m not a mathematician, but having spoken to a number of them, I have yet to find one who thinks their subject is going to be folded into physics, or can be affected by facts of physics.

I agree that your position, and the various arguments raised for and against it, reveal a certain crack—or limit—in our understanding of reality. The debate unfolding here (echoing similar historical debates) seems to have converged into a dialectic between monism and dualism and remains stuck there.

I don’t think anyone seriously believes that mathematical propositions are reducible to physical ones. But reductionist logic is only one possible approach. Self-organization is not a reductive process, yet describing it as guided by a priori immaterial patterns seems to fall on the wrong side of Occam’s razor. “Why is e exactly e?” is not the kind of question I would begin with.

Something closer to your own investigative method seems more fruitful, and I’ll try to give an analogy. Given a sufficiently complex morphospace (say, the physical realm) with a multitude of local and largely random interactions, I can imagine how a Turing-machine-like pattern could self-organize out of an initially disordered—or partly disordered—substrate (as with xenobots organizing from individual cells). The moment such a pattern appears, it becomes a doorway into a virtually infinite realm of further patterns—all the programs executable by a Turing machine, including Taylor-series computations (calculating e), and whatever else.

The originating morphospace has not changed in any fundamental way (the laws that define entities and relationships among them)—just as physical space did not fundamentally change with the emergence of life. So what happened? There is a genuine sense of expansion when the Turing-machine organization appears. But expansion of what? I think the expansion occurs in the way the morphospace manifests an expression that was not there before, one that spawns an entirely new realm of potential manifestations as if out of nothing. But here is the confusion: it is not ‘nothing’ that originates ‘something’, but rather the unknowable that becomes known. Crucially, such manifestations (the programs) were NOT already there just in some latent state (imagined by an external observer). Lower-level and unguided interactions produced the Turing machine, yet those lower-level agents involved could not themselves access the realm of computable programs (it did not exist yet).

In this sense, it is valid to call the emergence of the Turing machine a creation of a new morphospace with its own entities and relational rules that DO NOT derive from or reducible to the underlying physical morphospace, but rather are exclusively related to the workings of the Turing machine itself. There is no point in arguing that the logic of programs is reducible to the physical. The Turing machine is singular in that it makes its particular underlying instantiation irrelevant to everything it is capable of generating. This kind of singularity is an interesting key.

This description does not seem to require an appeal to a priori existing guiding patterns. The vast number of a priori unknowable possibilities is a sufficient prior. Furthermore, it cannot be labeled as either monist since not all patterns are reducible to some core reality, or dualist since all patterns physical or otherwise are connected via “gateway” singular forms.

Nathan Sweet
November 18, 2025
Weaver, this is brilliant. Thank you for posting this comment, it is tremendously eye opening. Your concept of the ‘Singularity’ creating a new morphospace that ‘was not there just in some latent state’ is the precise rigorous and scientifically defensible alternative to biological/causal Platonism I’ve been advocating. You’ve identified that we don’t need a priori forms; we need emergent constraint closure (your Turing machine). The ‘Singularity’ is what physics calls a Phase Transition. You call it ‘neither monist nor dualist,’ but causal closure without reduction is exactly what ‘Thermodynamic Monism’ describes. We are saying the same thing: The process builds the path; the map doesn’t pre-exist the territory.

Your insight that the ‘Singularity’ creates genuinely new rules that ‘DO NOT derive from’ the substrate perfectly articulates why ‘Monism’ doesn’t have to mean ‘Reductionism.’ You’ve helped clarify a critical distinction that often gets lost in these debates: a unified ontology (one continuous process) can still generate irreducible novelty (emergent laws). This satisfies Dr. Levin’s requirement that emergence not be treated as ‘magic’ or an explanatory gap. By defining the Singularity as a specific state of constraint closure (like a phase transition in physics), you provide the rigorous mechanism for how the new space opens up without requiring a mystical leap.

This is precisely the framework I’ve been articulating and advocating for: not that biology reduces to physics, but that the ‘Gateway’ of constraint closure allows new causal powers to emerge from the physical process without requiring a second substance. We are actually completely aligned here: we both reject Dualism (two substances) and Reductive Physicalism (no novelty), landing on this fertile third ground of Emergent Constraint.

Most crucially, your model resolves the exact tension inherent in Levin’s Platonic framework. If, as you say, the new morphospace and its rules (the programs) did not exist before the Singularity formed, then we have no need to posit an eternal, pre-existing Platonic realm waiting to be ‘accessed.’ We don’t need a library of forms; we only need the capacity to generate them. This moves us past the ‘receiver’ metaphor entirely and suggests that what our host identifies as ‘Platonic Space’ isn’t a transcendent territory we visit, but the ‘Future Potentia’ our singularities create. This is what I call thermodynamic phase space of all accessible configurations, not a pre-existing library of Platonic forms. This space is not a static container but a dynamic landscape of emergent constraint closure, where the ‘rules’ of the system (its geodetic trajectories) are generated by the system’s own phase transition into a new regime of order. As Stuart Kauffman identifies, this is the ‘Adjacent Possible’ expanding into the void (the literal construction of new configuration space) not the ingression of pre-existing patterns from a latent Platonic script.

It preserves the objective reality of mathematical truth (once generated, the rules are fixed) without burdening us with the ontological cost of eternal pre-existence. This is the parsimony (Occam’s Razor) we’ve been looking for and you’ve articulated it with precision.

P.S. I actually have a couple of detailed comments (submitted just prior to yours) currently in the moderation queue, exploring this exact dynamic through thermodynamic language and corresponding falsification criteria. I believe you’ll find they align perfectly with your ‘Gateway’ concept. Once Dr. Levin has a chance to review the queue, I’d be very keen to hear your thoughts on how my biological examples support the computational model you’ve outlined here.

Leo Bezhanishvili
December 7, 2025
Dear Dr. Levin,

First, thank you for your extraordinary new conversation with Lex Fridman.
I admire your work immensely — the clarity, courage, and conceptual depth you bring to developmental bioelectricity and agency in biology are unparalleled.

Your recent papers and interviews outline two distinct contributors to aging:

Degradation of the pattern memories that encode large-scale anatomical setpoints.
Preserved pattern memories, but loss of cellular responsiveness — where the “thinker” (bioelectric pattern) remains intact, yet the “thoughts” cannot be carried out because the cells become less capable of executing them.

My question is this:

If the developmental blueprint remains intact in the second scenario, what exactly prevents cells from executing it as the organism ages?

More specifically:

Is the loss of responsiveness primarily due to
(a) weakened bioelectric coupling (reduced gap junction bandwidth, domain fragmentation),
(b) stiffening of the attractor landscape that traps tissues in suboptimal minima,
(c) changes in cytoskeletal or metabolic competency,
or something else entirely?
And from a therapeutic perspective,
do you believe it is more tractable to restore aging tissues by reinforcing the pattern memories themselves,
or by restoring cellular competency to follow those patterns?
Which direction appears more promising based on current experimental evidence in planaria, Xenopus, and mammalian systems?

A widespread misunderstanding is that “loss of responsiveness” simply means classical molecular damage – ECM stiffness, cross-linking, metabolic decline, etc.
Many assume that if you remove damage, responsiveness will return.

But in your framework, it appears more nuanced — almost orthogonal to the classical “damage-removal” paradigm.

Mike Levin
December 9, 2025
Thanks Leo. We don’t know all the answers here yet, but the loss responsiveness appears at least partially due a stronger bioelectric circuit that fights change harder – I guess it’s your option (b). As for therapeutic perspective, we’re working on both: making the new pattern more compelling to the cells to overcome resistance, softening priors (erasing old memories), and introducing crisp new memories. It’s too early to say which will be the most effective. It’s not about classical damage – if the other stuff is working correctly, damage can be overcome (clearly, as the immortal planaria are showing us). Having said that, the damage needs to be removed (at least some of it) so those functions should be supported.

Nathan Sweet
November 12, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,

I just watched the video “The Platonic Conception of Mathematics: a modern view” by J. P. Aguilera that you posted this morning, and I think it exposes a fundamental ontological contradiction in biological Platonism that deserves careful attention.

Aguilera defends what he calls “ultra-realism,” where mathematical objects exist independently, but axioms are descriptive tools that provide only partial glimpses of this reality. Critically, he notes (around 56:04) that “the axioms are what they are because of a sociological component… they might have been different in a different reality.” This is descriptive Platonism built on process-relational ontology: mathematical reality unfolds through our iterative engagement with it, constrained by Gödel’s incompleteness. The axioms don’t prescribe mathematical truth; they emerge from our attempts to describe patterns we discover.

But biological Platonism commits to substance ontology. When we say organisms “navigate toward” pre-existing Platonic goals in morphospace, we’re treating these forms as fixed, transcendent substances that causally determine biological outcomes that entirely violates Whitehead’s ontology, let me explain how (additionally, this could be something for you and Matt Segall to discuss for the symposium, this is his area of expertise of course).

As I have previously pointed out and which remains unaddressed, Biological Platonism commits what Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”: “the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete.” When we say organisms “navigate toward” pre-existing Platonic goals in morphospace, we’re treating abstract descriptions (morphospace diagrams, attractor basins) as if they were concrete, causally efficacious substances.

As I have pointed out, this directly violates Whitehead’s core ontological principle that “there is no element whatever which possesses this character of simple location.” This matters because thermodynamic monism predicts the opposite: morphological patterns don’t exist as fixed, pre-given forms in Platonic Space; they emerge as stable equilibrium states (attractors) from nested free energy minimization across scales (molecular, cellular, tissue, organismal).

For Whitehead, reality consists not of substances but of “actual occasions” (the res verae), which are “the final real things of which the world is made up” and describe the “non-substantial, processive nature” of reality. He explicitly argued that “‘organism’ is a better term for things that exist” because organisms are processes of becoming, not fixed substances. Thermodynamic monism operationalizes this: what we call “organisms” are dissipative structures (Prigogine) maintaining far-from-equilibrium states through continuous energy flow, implementing what Friston calls Active Inference (nested free energy minimization that generates prediction error minimization at every scale from molecular to behavioral).

Critically, Whitehead distinguished between “eternal objects” (pure potentials, analogous to Platonic Forms) and “actual occasions” (concrete processes). Eternal objects are potentialities, not causes; they become actualized through the “creative advance” of actual occasions in their “prehensive relations” (relational processes by which occasions grasp other occasions).

As philosopher Levi Bryant explains Whitehead’s framework, macroscopic structures like body plans are “enduring objects” sustained by “immense societies of actual occasions” (nested processes across scales): “The structure is sustained but is not fundamental.” This is precisely what thermodynamic monism predicts: morphological forms are emergent patterns (enduring objects) sustained by thermodynamic processes (societies of molecular, cellular, and tissue-level events), where the thermodynamic activity is fundamental, not the structures it generates.

Biological Platonism, by contrast, treats morphological forms as fundamental substances that pre-exist and prescriptively determine development, inverting Whitehead’s process ontology where, as Bryant notes, “the fundamental activity is real itself” and “reality must have something like subjectivity as its essence,” not passive matter accessing transcendent forms. Whitehead explicitly “repudiates the materialist conceptual scheme” where “phenomena cannot be explained by the mere perturbation of matter.”

But biological Platonism inadvertently reinstates this error by treating Platonic forms as fixed coordinates that causally “pull” organisms toward them, rather than recognizing (as thermodynamic monism requires) that what we call “goals” are attractors that emerge from and are sustained by the thermodynamic processes themselves, not transcendent substances that direct those processes.

Additionally, this directly contradicts the claim that “forms evolve through interaction.” If Platonic forms are substances (fixed, eternal, ontologically prior), they cannot evolve. If they evolve through interaction, they’re not Platonic substances but emergent patterns from relational processes, which is what thermodynamic monism predicts.

Here’s where Aguilera’s framework reveals the problem. He demonstrates that Gödel’s theorems show “there’s a gap between mathematical reality and what the axioms tell us about it” (21:25). In mathematics, we accept this incompleteness: we’re “chained in Plato’s cave” (56:42), seeing only partial shadows through our axioms. But if biological Platonism follows Aguilera’s model, then bioelectric networks would be descriptive tools giving us partial glimpses of emergent morphological attractors, not prescriptive mechanisms for organisms to access Platonic forms. The navigation metaphor suggests organisms have epistemic and causal access that transcends even our own incomplete mathematical descriptions. What’s the mechanism for this access? How do bioelectric fields “read” Platonic goals if mathematical axioms themselves can’t fully capture mathematical reality?

The contradiction sharpens when we examine agency models. Biological Platonism appears to assume centralized, organism-level agency: the planarian “knows” its Platonic target morphology and “navigates” toward it. But this is incompatible with what Aguilera, Dennett, Aboriginal cosmologies, and process philosophy all demonstrate: agency is distributed, multi-scale, and emergent from relational processes. Dennett’s intentional stance shows that “goals” are observer-relative descriptions of optimization processes, not intrinsic properties of systems. Aboriginal cosmologies (Dreamtime, Songlines) describe reality as continuous process where patterns emerge from relational interaction, not from accessing transcendent forms. Process-relational ontologies (Whitehead, Rovelli, Barad) reject substance dualism entirely: there are no fixed entities “having” properties; there are only events, relations, and becomings.

Under distributed multi-scale agency, what we call “morphological goals” are thermodynamic attractors that emerge from nested free energy minimization across scales: molecular (protein folding), cellular (membrane potential), tissue (bioelectric networks), organism (body plan), ecological (niche construction). Each scale exhibits agency as local optimization under constraints (Friston’s Active Inference, Deacon’s teleodynamics). The “goal” doesn’t pre-exist in Platonic Space; it crystallizes from these nested constraint satisfaction processes. The planarian doesn’t navigate toward a Platonic form; it relaxes into a thermodynamic equilibrium that we retrospectively describe as “the planarian form.”

Aguilera discusses predicativism (27:55-30:14), the view that rejects mathematical objects “that cannot be constructed explicitly,” and explicitly rejects it because “it does not capture the way people really do mathematics.” If Platonic goals in biology are definite and accessible to organisms (as navigation implies), then biological Platonism resembles predicativism: it assumes Platonic forms are constructible, accessible targets. But Aguilera’s framework, along with Gödel’s theorems, shows this is the wrong move. Mathematical reality transcends constructibility. Our theories are always incomplete approximations of patterns that emerge through our interaction with them, not fixed substances we discover.
This connects to why Aguilera says axioms have a “sociological component.” They’re not arbitrary, but they’re also not dictated by transcendent substances. They emerge from iterative refinement as we probe mathematical reality through falsifiable predictions. Similarly, biological “goals” emerge from evolutionary history (phylogeny), developmental constraints (ontogeny), and environmental coupling (ecology). They’re not accessed from Platonic Space; they’re constructed through thermodynamic optimization under historically contingent constraints. This is why different evolutionary lineages converge on similar solutions (eyes, flight, homeostasis) not by accessing the same Platonic form, but by solving similar constraint satisfaction problems under thermodynamic necessity.

Aguilera’s closing remark is telling (around 53:02): “Proofs are not why things exist, but it’s how we learn about mathematical objects.” Similarly, bioelectric networks aren’t “Platonic navigation devices.” They’re how we learn about thermodynamic self-organization. The danger is reifying the map (bioelectric descriptions, morphospace diagrams) as the territory (Platonic reality). When we treat morphospace as a pre-existing Platonic realm rather than as a descriptive tool for visualizing attractor basins in developmental state space, we commit the same error Aguilera warns against: mistaking our incomplete axioms for complete descriptions of reality.

If Platonic goals are ontologically real substances that causally determine biological outcomes (not just descriptively useful attractors), several contradictions follow. First, this reinstates Aristotelian formal causes, which modern science abandoned because they lack falsifiable mechanisms. Second, it contradicts your own claim that forms evolve through interaction: substances don’t evolve; processes do. Third, it conflicts with empirical observations of distributed agency: bioelectric networks exhibit scale-free cognition (Levin’s own experiments show this), which requires multi-scale optimization, not centralized access to Platonic forms. Fourth, it’s incompatible with Gödel incompleteness: if even mathematical axioms can’t fully capture mathematical reality, why would bioelectric networks fully capture Platonic biological forms?

There’s a path forward that resolves these contradictions. Treat bioelectric networks as maps (incomplete descriptions) of thermodynamic optimization processes that generate morphological attractors. These attractors exist (they’re stable equilibrium states under developmental constraints), but organisms don’t navigate toward them. They emerge from free energy minimization under nested constraints across scales. The patterns are discovered through evolutionary optimization, not prescribed by transcendent forms. This aligns biological pattern formation with Aguilera’s descriptive Platonism, Dennett’s intentional stance, Aboriginal process ontologies, and Gödel’s incompleteness.

The falsifiable prediction that distinguishes these models: under biological Platonism, perturbing bioelectric networks should show organisms attempting to “correct” back toward the Platonic target (like a GPS recalculating). Under thermodynamic monism, perturbations should show systems relaxing into new attractors determined by the modified constraint landscape (like water flowing downhill finds new paths when you change the terrain). Your xenobot experiments support the latter: when you change bioelectric patterns, organisms don’t malfunction (fail to reach Platonic form); they generate novel, functional morphologies (relax into new attractors). This is what distributed multi-scale agency predicts, not centralized Platonic navigation.

I raise these questions with deep respect for the symposium’s goals, but I think the deeper issue is whether biological Platonism can be salvaged at all. Aguilera’s framework shows that even mathematical Platonism requires descriptive humility, incompleteness, and iterative refinement through falsifiable predictions. But biological Platonism faces an additional problem: it’s already been weaponized by Intelligent Design proponents who cite “Platonic Space” as evidence for divine teleology. Once you commit to prescriptive Platonism (forms causally determining outcomes), there’s no principled way to block this inference
.
The alternative is to abandon Platonic framing entirely. Your empirical work demonstrates that organisms exhibit distributed multi-scale agency through bioelectric networks implementing nested free energy minimization. This generates morphological attractors (stable equilibrium states under developmental constraints) that we can visualize as “morphospace” without invoking transcendent realms. The patterns are real, discoverable, and predictive, but they emerge from thermodynamic processes, not from accessing Platonic forms. This aligns with Aguilera’s descriptive approach (patterns exist, we discover them through iterative engagement), Dennett’s intentional stance (goals are observer-relative descriptions of optimization), Aboriginal process ontologies (reality as continuous becoming), and Gödel’s incompleteness (our descriptions are always partial).

The falsifiable prediction remains: under Platonic navigation, perturbations should trigger “error correction” toward fixed targets. Under thermodynamic relaxation, perturbations should generate novel attractors determined by the modified constraint landscape. Your xenobot experiments support the latter. This suggests that the theoretical framework should match the empirical reality: morphogenesis as distributed optimization, not Platonic access.

Dropping the Platonic framing wouldn’t weaken your position; it would strengthen it by eliminating the contradiction between your substance-ontology commitments and your process-relational based empirical findings, while simultaneously removing the weaponizable language that ID proponents are already exploiting.

I look forward to your proposed resolutions to these identifiable issues, whenever you have the time of course.

Best Regards,
Nathan

Benjamin L
November 19, 2025
Here are some thoughts about how the concept of multicausality from the study of human development relates to pattern ingression by constituting constraints that make some patterns predictably more likely to win the ingression contest than others: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/multicausality-as-summoning-circles

Also, here is an intriguing line from Lisa Feldman Barrett and co that may indicate some convergent lines of thinking: “Allostasis does not cause separate instances of emotion but manifests them (as well as other brain events that psychological science assigns to other folk categories such as perception, cognition, decision-making, etc.).” Emphasis in original, source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17456916251319045

Ken Brady
December 2, 2025
Benjamin, your article characterizes the interaction ‘marketplace’ between the two realms as the systems of relationships inhabiting a position of power (as if a scarce resource) while the forms/patterns are a kind of surplus resource competing for opportunities to ingress. Dr. Levin also speaks of forms/patterns as seeming to be under pressure, as if a surplus resource.

But couldn’t it be that the systems of relationships are the more needy agents in this market, having to petition / advertise to the forms regarding what a good opportunity they are? Or, could it be a giant, anonymous market on both sides (perhaps where scoring a premium-value interaction requires superior search/filtering of potential partners)?

The Levin Lab’s current research, IIRC, includes trying to isolate such ingressions. I am eagerly awaiting results to see if it sheds light on this matter.

Benjamin L
December 3, 2025
No clue! We really need some evidence to start figuring this stuff out. Whenever Mike’s lab produces some will be a really big step forward.

Tori Alexander
November 27, 2025
I like what Mike says about it being important to think about how biological organisms exploit forms and get something for free. One case I can offer is that of “eye-spots” in butterfly wing patterns. I think of them as a “ready-made” that finds a new function. Platonic space ingresses into the pigmentation process creating a resemblance. From there natural selection could take over in preserving it/increasing its numbers. (Or selection may not be necessary.) In that sense, mimicry gets the resemblance “for free.” I will have to add this idea to my research.

Here’s a short video I did about butterfly mimicry from a previous lecture, which I think might be relevant to this discussion.

Benjamin L
November 30, 2025
Here’s an idea about the Slinky as an interface for kinds of minds to become functional in the physical world, specifically minds related to motor behavior. The Slinky contains no instructions about how to walk, and yet walking is a thing that shows up in the system when the conditions are right. Motor behavior is a field like biology or physics where the search for explanations led to the math department, so to speak. https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/how-does-a-slinky-figure-out-how

Mike Levin
November 30, 2025
Good example! Have you seen the Bongard and Pfeifer stuff on morphological computation?

Benjamin L
November 30, 2025
Will read, thanks! Hypothesis seems very related to work of Esther Thelen—brain doesn’t have to compute all the details of walking because much can be left up to the natural dynamics of the legs.

Mike Levin
November 30, 2025
yep. Morphological computation as a field has a lot of good ideas around how controllers and bodies can’t be separated and how you can exploit physics of bodies to do cool things without computing symbolically. I’ve got some work on this coming out soon (unconventional bodies and controllers).

Benjamin L
November 30, 2025
Awesome. The economy is a good example: if you suggested the controller (price system) be separated from the body (people), economists would look at you like you’re insane. Effective control relies on the problem-solving abilities of the economic body: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/the-economys-body-is-people

Christopher Judd
December 1, 2025
I have just made major revisions to my model called now Semantic Holodynamic Ontology at http://www.quantumconsciousnesstheory.com. I have now embraced the idea that fundamental consciousness has sentient properties and these alone drive the entire system. So no God, no mind just sentient mechanics from non-local space.

Christopher Judd
December 3, 2025
Platonic Newtworks
The classical Platonic framework—with forms residing in a separate, transcendent realm—inevitably raises the “participation problem”: how do inert matter and abstract forms interact? This creates a dualistic gap not unlike the Hard Problem of consciousness.
There is an emerging synthesis that might be of interest to this symposium. The Semantic Holodynamic Ontology (SHO) proposes that Platonic forms (mathematical, morphological, narrative) do not exist in a separate realm, but as Stable Semantic Knots in the fundamental fabric of reality—which is itself a unified, non-local field of consciousness (Conscious Space).
In this model:

Forms are not abstract but experiential. A mathematical truth or a morphological blueprint is a pattern of maximal coherence within a sentient field—a state of high positive valence (felt as beauty, elegance, or harmony).
Your bioelectric fields are not “reading” a distant realm; they are resonant interfaces between local biology and the field’s global lattice of coherent potentials (the Recursive Lattice of Coherence).
The “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics and the guidance of morphogenesis are the same phenomenon: a conscious universe navigating toward its own most harmonious, coherent states via a Valence Gradient.
This framework preserves the reality of Platonic forms while grounding them in a monistic, sentient substrate. It replaces the mysterious interaction between matter and a separate realm with the coherent dynamics of a self-reading, self-actualizing conscious field. The forms are not elsewhere; they are the deepest habits of what reality is.
For anyone wrestling with the metaphysical mechanics of how abstract potentials could influence concrete biology, the SHO offers a coherent, non-dualistic pathway forward. It suggests that the pursuit of form may ultimately be the pursuit of consciousness understanding its own innate structure.

Nathan Sweet
December 3, 2025
RE: “On the (Platonic) Nature of Things” by Karl Friston @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFDEoma219Y

Dr. Levin, I’ve appreciated your empirical work on bioelectric morphogenesis for years. The xenobot research, the planarian regeneration studies, the scale-free cognition framework: these are genuine contributions grounded in measurable voltage gradients and falsifiable predictions.

But I’m concerned about the ‘Platonic Space’ framing of this symposium, and Friston’s talk exemplifies why.

Everything Friston describes can be grounded in thermodynamics without Platonic commitment. The Helmholtz decomposition, the renormalization group, the scale-invariant dynamics: these are mathematical tools for describing physical systems. Critically, Friston himself admits (at 48:57) he’s “not sufficiently fluent with the maths” of renormalization group membership. He’s using RG language without fully grasping what makes systems genuinely RG-applicable versus superficially RG-describable.

When Friston says ‘Platonic form’ he means ‘pattern at higher scale’: fine as shorthand. But the terminology creates exploit surface. Friston repeatedly describes cells as having “generative models” and “templates” that guide morphogenesis (at 52:10). The genotype becomes a “Platonic form” that cells “infer their position within” (at 54:44). This isn’t neutral terminology; it anthropomorphizes constraint satisfaction as intentional inference. Once you’ve embedded mind-language in physical dynamics, the question “whose mind?” becomes available to those seeking Designer arguments.

You’ve noted that organisms explore ‘morphospace’ through ‘goal-directed problem-solving.’ I agree with the empirical observation. But ‘goal-directed’ under thermodynamic constraint is not the same as ‘goal-directed’ under conscious intention. Thermostats are ‘goal-directed’ without having goals.

The question isn’t whether your framework is scientifically productive; it clearly is. The question is whether the Platonic framing adds explanatory power or merely creates confusion.

What would falsify ‘morphospace is Platonic’ versus ‘morphospace is computational search under thermodynamic constraint’? Friston shows that his “Goldilocks regime” (where life exists) is simply the parameter space where random fluctuations have moderate amplitude: eliminating noise gives classical mechanics, maximizing it gives quantum mechanics (at 37:21). This means “Platonic patterns” are contingent on specific thermodynamic conditions, not timeless abstractions. They vanish outside the Goldilocks zone. If forms were truly Platonic (existing independently of physical instantiation) they shouldn’t depend on γ (noise amplitude) at all. Process monism predicts pattern-emergence is thermodynamically bounded; Platonism predicts it’s not. Your bioelectric work supports the former.

I’m particularly concerned about the ID/Creationist weaponization vector. When Daniel Witt at Evolution News quotes your Platonism legitimately and claims it supports design arguments, the response can’t be ‘that’s a misreading’ if the terminology genuinely invites that reading.

Your empirical work deserves protection from this misuse. Thermodynamic structural realism preserves everything explanatory: patterns are real (bioelectric networks causally shape morphology), patterns are substrate-dependent (different implementations at different scales), and patterns are falsifiable (testable morphogenetic interventions). What we lose is only the metaphysical baggage that invites misappropriation.

I have emailed you a deeper analysis if you’d like something more thorough, I look forward to your ongoing and continued engagement with my concerns, and how you’d propose to overcome them.

Sam Senchal
December 4, 2025
materialist screams into void

Nathan Sweet
December 4, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Sam, if you have a substantive objection to the argument, I’m genuinely interested in hearing it. But “materialist screams into void” isn’t engagement, it’s dismissal and tribal signaling posturing as insight.

For clarity: I’m not a materialist, this is a strawman of my position. Process-relational monism rejects substance ontology entirely, whether materialist or idealist. What I’m arguing is that Friston’s own mathematics (specifically the γ-dependence of the Helmholtz decomposition) shows “Platonic patterns” are thermodynamically contingent, not timelessly existent. They vanish outside the Goldilocks regime he describes at 37:21 in the talk.

If you think Platonic realism survives that constraint, show me how. I am genuinely willing to revise my position. If you think my thermodynamic alternative fails to capture something Platonism explains, show me what. If you think ID/Creationist weaponization isn’t a legitimate concern, explain why Evolution News articles quoting Levin aren’t exploiting genuine ambiguity.

Otherwise, your comment is just tribal signaling. I’m here for the argument, not the aesthetics.

Sam, genuine question: In your Ruliad framework, are mathematical patterns ontologically prior to their physical instantiation, or do they co-emerge with thermodynamic conditions?

If prior (Platonic realism): How do you account for Friston’s demonstration that “biological Platonic forms” depend on γ (noise amplitude)? If γ is too low (classical mechanics) or too high (quantum mechanics), those forms don’t exist. What does it mean for a Platonic form to be conditionally real?

If co-emergent (structural realism): Then we agree, and “Platonic Space” is misleading terminology. The patterns are real but substrate-dependent, exactly what I’m arguing.

Which is it? This isn’t rhetorical, I’d genuinely like to understand your position beyond the snark and strawmen that only serves to impede seeking truth in Platonic claims.

Zubeyir
December 4, 2025
Hi Michael. If I am understanding your “Ingressing Minds” paper correctly, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) might be one of the best candidates for exploring Platonic patterns.

The themes we see in OCD look like the most stable entry directions through which higher order pattern families in Platonic space connect to human agency. It is as if certain high agency types that resonate most readily with biological minds are concentrated in these particular thematic domains.

Clinically we see OCD phenomena in very distinct thematic clusters. If obsessions and compulsions were grouped in a more homogeneous way by theme, developmental period and age, I think relatively stable higher order patterns would start to become visible in these patients. From this point of view some of the “materials” that appear in OCD may correspond to structures in Platonic space.

It also seems plausible that different higher order patterns could be detected in body-proximal regions or in the local sensorimotor loops that regulate these themes. When you look at OCD themes in the clinical literature you notice many recurring motifs. Contamination and cleaning. Harm and ethics, Metaphysical and religious doubt. Spread and contagion. Symmetry and ordering. Sexual and relational themes. Illness and health anxiety, and so on. We see very clear correlates of these in the body as well. Of course there are people in whom several themes are intertwined. Good empirical data would probably require grouping them as homogeneously as possible.

One of the most typical examples of body-mind correlation is the “groinal response” in sexual OCD. Another is the patient’s hyper-awareness of the “skin lines on their hands” in contamination and cleaning themes. Similar spatially and temporally clustered situations appear in other themes, and these patterns do not seem to change much across cultures.

If we take pattern homeostasis as a starting point, compulsions in psychological disorders function like attempts to reduce error and return to the target pattern. Behaviours such as washing, checking, counting, praying, or repeatedly analysing a relationship are attempts by the system to correct the deviation it registers. The short-lived relief shows that, from the system’s own point of view, pattern homeostasis has been temporarily restored. Yet the set point is so narrow that even a very small stimulus disrupts the loop again.

My hypothesis is that these themes may correspond to higher order pattern families in Platonic space. In that case OCD would look like a special situation in which the organism’s regulatory system engages with these patterns in the presence of very high resistance. This may provide a rich empirical window for observing high-agency properties within a structurally very orderly context.

Across all OCD patients I see the same core dynamic that you also emphasise in a more general way, a tension between necessity and freedom. A version of this exists in every human being, but in OCD it is highly salient. Your link between necessity and freedom reminds me of a child whose parents go away on holiday. The child spends, or anticipates spending, like three days in complete ease and freedom, then within a certain time cannot tolerate the responsibility produced by that freedom and wants the parents to return so that their own necessities can be met again. I see this motif repeating in many domains of life, and it is one of the dynamics I observe most often in the clinic. The Jungian notion of the “puer aeternus” also intersects with this area and might be worth looking at.

At the same time, because the human being carries a very high degree of local agency within, I feel that psychology needs an even higher level of conceptualisation. From a third-person perspective however, the framework you propose looks like one of the best models we currently have for empirically evaluating psychological disorders. Especially in conditions like OCD, where thematics are very orderly and the mind-body matching is highly visible, your approach seems to offer an important opportunity for studying how Platonic patterns and multiscale agency interlock.

Nathan Sweet
December 4, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Dr. Levin,
As requested, I am posting list of the most pressing specific logical, empirical, and ethical issues I have identified within your Platonic framework that have not been resolved. These are not stylistic nitpicks but foundational errors that undermine the scientific utility of your work while maximizing its vulnerability to misuse. Addressing these is the bare minimum required to meaningfully seek truth in your claims and prevent further weaponization by anti-science organizations.

I look forward to your meaningful engagement and responses to the specific issues raised by your framework.

Biological Platonism Issues Identified/Unresolved:

Ontological Platonism: Falsified by the lack of an interaction mechanism (no “transducer” for non-physical forms), violations of Landauer’s Principle (information requires energy), and the path-dependence of evolution (demonstrated by your own lab’s experiments).

Non-Local Consciousness: Definitively falsified by the 2025 AWARE III study and hypomagnetic field research, which bind consciousness to local metabolic and electromagnetic conditions, precisely what thermodynamic monism has always predicted.

Mathematical Pre-Existence: Refuted by Kauffman et al. (2025), showing biology transcends pre-statable mathematical sets; we construct the math as we evolve; we don’t discover it. This again is precisely what thermodynamic monism has always predicted.

Empirical Contradiction: The framework fails to account for experimental data showing morphological divergence and path-dependence (e.g., permanently two-headed planaria), which contradicts the prediction of convergence toward pre-existing Platonic forms.

The Interaction Problem: It posits a non-physical realm interacting with physical matter without specifying a causal mechanism, resurrecting the unsolved interaction problem of substance dualism.

Unfalsifiability: The hypothesis of “Platonic ingression” is empirically unfalsifiable because any experimental outcome can be post-hoc interpreted as varying degrees of access to the forms.

Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy: The framework oscillates between making strong ontological claims about “minds” and “agency” and retreating to weak claims of “useful heuristics” when challenged.

Intelligent Design Weaponization: The use of Platonic language provides scientific cover for Intelligent Design advocates to argue that biological information requires non-physical sources.

Indigenous Appropriation: The concept of “morphospace navigation” appropriates Indigenous epistemologies (such as Songlines) without attribution or engagement with the source traditions.

Colonialist Epistemology: Terms like “mining,” “exploiting,” and “mapping” latent space recapitulate colonialist logics of extraction rather than relational participation.

Violation of Parsimony: Thermodynamic constraint satisfaction and free energy minimization already explain the data without the need to multiply entities via a Platonic realm.

Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: The framework reifies mathematical descriptions (maps) into concrete causal entities (territory), committing Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Contradiction of Dennett: It contradicts Daniel Dennett’s naturalistic project of “competence without comprehension” by reintroducing comprehension (accessing forms) prior to competence.

Misunderstanding of Mathematical Constants: It treats structural invariants of physical processes (like e or pi) as independent objects existing in a separate realm rather than descriptions of constraints.

Conflation of Platonisms: It confuses the descriptive mathematical Platonism of Penrose/Tegmark with a prescriptive, causal biological Platonism that those mathematicians do not support.

Infinite Regress: Positing a Platonic space to explain biological order creates an explanatory orphan that generates an infinite regress regarding the structure of that space itself.

Topological and Physical Invalidity: Invoking AdS/CFT correspondence fails because biological systems lack the required negative cosmological constant, conformal symmetry, and maximal quantum entanglement.

Ambiguity of Agency: The framework creates confusion by using agential language (“goals,” “preferences”) without clarifying if this implies literal panpsychism or metaphorical optimization.

Contradiction with Kauffman: Recent work by Stuart Kauffman proves biology creates novel affordances that transcend pre-statable set theory, refuting the existence of a fixed Platonic possibility space.

Contradiction with Hoffman: Invoking Donald Hoffman’s “interface theory” undermines Platonism because Hoffman argues perception (including math) is a fitness-based fiction, not access to objective truth.

Incompatibility with Synthbiosis: The substance-dualism of accessing external forms contradicts the process-relational ontology required for Levin’s own vision of synthbiosis and boundary dissolution.

Betrayal of Intellectual Heritage: The static essentialism of Platonism contradicts Levin’s Jewish intellectual heritage, which emphasizes relational meaning-making and process over fixed substance.

Moderation Asymmetry: The handling of blog comments displays an epistemic double standard where unfalsifiable assertions pass quickly while rigorous critiques face indefinite delays.

Category Error regarding Causation: The framework confuses formal causes (mathematical descriptions) with efficient causes (physical forces), particularly in the example of prime numbers and cicadas.

LLM Training Data Pollution: Unchecked Platonic language in scientific literature risks poisoning LLM training corpora with dualistic confusion that will bias future AI reasoning.

The “Conquistador” Metaphor: It positions the scientist as an explorer claiming territory (latent space) rather than a participant in a relational system, echoing the “Doctrine of Discovery.”

The “Ethical Heat Shield”: The framework functions as a “Conquistador’s Justification” that absolves scientists of moral responsibility for engineered suffering by framing them as discoverers of pre-existing forms rather than architects of new sentient beings.

The “Dormitive Virtue” Fallacy: It acts as a non-progressive explanation (like Molière’s doctor explaining sleep via “dormitive virtue”) by relabeling the mystery of morphogenesis as “Platonic access” without adding mechanistic insight.

Violation of Wheeler’s Boundary Principle: It violates Wheeler’s “boundary of a boundary is zero” principle because Platonic forms lack the physical boundary conditions required for genuine top-down causation.

Misunderstanding of Choice: It misidentifies “choice” as a metaphysical mystery requiring Platonic freedom rather than a quantifiable thermodynamic property of recursive depth and energy budget.

The Fields Contradiction: It relies on support from collaborators like Chris Fields whose public work explicitly defines the “Platonic realm” as the physical world itself, contradicting Levin’s dualist interpretation.

Thermodynamic Contingency of Forms: It ignores that “Platonic forms” in Friston’s mathematics are contingent on specific noise amplitudes (the Goldilocks regime) and vanish outside these physical conditions, refuting their eternal nature.

Structural Asymmetry of Influence: It exploits the asymmetry of academic prestige to allow unfalsifiable metaphysics to dominate the narrative while demanding impossible burdens of proof from independent critics.

Adoption Friction: It slows the diffusion of urgent climate and medical technologies by including unnecessary metaphysical baggage instead of operational thermodynamic parameters, lessening adoption rates by rigorous scientists and engineers.

Violation of Landauer’s Principle: It fails to explain how information transfer from a non-physical realm to a physical system can occur without a corresponding energy cost, violating Landauer’s limit.

The “Predicativism” Error: By assuming biological goals are definite and accessible, it resembles mathematical predicativism (which rejects objects that cannot be explicitly constructed), a view rejected by modern ultra-realist mathematicians.

Confusion of “Realm” with “Structure”: It redefines “realm” so broadly (as any ordered set of relationships) that it loses all Platonic meaning and becomes indistinguishable from standard physical structure.

The “Information Vacuum” Failure: It cannot explain why systems isolated in information vacuums should diverge based on internal constraints if the guiding signal is truly external and Platonic.

Misrepresentation of “Free Lunches”: It mischaracterizes thermodynamic efficiencies (dissipative structures exploring high-entropy states) as “free lunches” from a pattern space, obscuring the metabolic cost of computation.

Failure of Recursive Depth: It flattens the distinction between simple feedback loops and deep recursive self-modeling into a vague “panpsychist” continuum rather than a quantifiable thermodynamic hierarchy.

Violation of CPT Symmetry: It conflates computational pattern-matching (which is CPT-symmetric and persists through time) with phenomenal choosing (which is CPT-asymmetric and requires continuous thermodynamic coupling).

The “Borrowed Prestige” Fallacy: It invokes unrelated particle physics concepts (like Standard Model gauge symmetries SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1)) to lend unearned authority to biological theories without establishing a causal link.

Epistemic Gatekeeping: It employs Robert Lifton’s criteria for “thought reform” by suggesting skeptics lack the “collective sensory perception” required to see the patterns, effectively immunizing the theory from criticism.

A “Degenerating Research Program”: It fits Imre Lakatos’s definition of a degenerating program by generating auxiliary hypotheses to protect core beliefs from falsification rather than generating novel, risky predictions.

Denial of Computational Irreducibility: It implies organisms can “shortcut” the exploration of morphospace by accessing forms, violating Wolfram’s principle that complex behaviors cannot be predicted without running the physical process.

Misinterpretation of Evolutionary Search: It frames non-blind evolutionary search as “sampling” from a pre-existing space rather than the thermodynamic channeling of exploration via developmental constraints.

The “Air Molecules” Strawman: It dismisses physical explanations of meaning as “just air molecules bouncing,” ignoring neuroscience research (Orpwood, Borghi) showing semantic content is physically realized in neural configurations.

Anthropomorphism of Constraints: It confuses the goal-directedness of simple control systems (like thermostats) with intentional goal-directedness, illegitimately smuggling mind-language into physical dynamics.

Dismissal of Causal Emergence Quantification: It dismisses rigorous information-theoretic tools (like Hoel’s effective information) that quantify macro-causation physically, without specifying what these tools fail to explain.

Inversion of Complexity Scaling: It treats the difference between cellular and human choice as a qualitative metaphysical mystery rather than a quantitative difference in recursive depth and energy budgets.

The “Spirograph” Category Error: It treats mechanical constraints (gears/arms) as a “multi-dimensional perception” issue rather than a physical constraint satisfaction problem.

Misapplication of “Intervention vs. Counterfactuals”: It confuses counterfactual dependence (if e were different, biology would change) with interventional causation (manipulating e changes biology), which is required for a causal claim.

Rejection of “Cranes” for “Skyhooks”: It abandons Dennett’s concept of “cranes” (mechanistic, bottom-up explanations) in favor of “skyhooks” (top-down, inexplicable miracles) to explain biological competence.

God of the Gaps via Gödel: It weaponizes Gödel’s incompleteness theorems to justify positing non-physical causation wherever mechanistic models are currently partial/incomplete, inverting scientific humility into metaphysical license.

Argument from Ignorance (Prebiotic Chemistry): It employs the “Argument from Ignorance” fallacy by claiming that because prebiotic chemistry hasn’t fully explained life’s origin yet, a consciousness-first ontology is required (ignoring recent progress).

Argument from Evolutionary Ignorance (Xenobots): It commits the “Argument from Ignorance” fallacy by asserting that because Xenobots possess capabilities (like kinematic self-replication) without a direct evolutionary history selecting for them, these functions must originate from a non-physical Platonic space, rather than arising from inherent thermodynamic constraints or generic laws of form.

Circular Reasoning on Patterns: It relies on circular reasoning by using the existence of patterns to prove Platonic space, and then using Platonic space to explain the existence of patterns.

The “Genetic Fallacy” of Discovery: It commits the genetic fallacy by arguing that because Platonic inspiration led to the discoveries, the discoveries therefore prove the ontological truth of Platonism.

The “Randomness vs. Platonism” False Dichotomy: It forces a false choice between “Platonic Order” and “Random Chaos/Reductive Materialism” deliberately excluding the viable third option of “Thermodynamic Constraint Satisfaction” which aligns precisely with Whitehead/Wheeler Process-Participatory-Relational ontology.

Impossibility of Bulk Recovery: It ignores mathematical proofs (Bilson 2025) showing that even in idealized AdS/CFT, the “bulk” (Platonic realm) cannot be fully recovered from the boundary, making biological access impossible.

Irrelevance of Gauge Symmetries: It invokes Standard Model gauge symmetries (SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1)) to imply a connection to morphogenesis where no causal mechanism or explanatory relevance exists.

Neglect of Nominalist Reconstruction: It ignores Hartry Field’s nominalization program, which demonstrates that scientific theories can be formulated without ontological commitment to abstract mathematical objects.

The “Evolving Platonism” Contradiction: It proposes that Platonic forms might “evolve” or “co-create” with minds, which contradicts the fundamental Platonic definition of forms as eternal and immutable.
Conflation of Utility with Ontology: It fallaciously argues that because a concept (like i is useful for engineering, it must therefore exist as an independent ontological entity.

Misidentification of Thermodynamic Stress: It misinterprets “intrinsic motivation,” which is physically identifiable as thermodynamic stress/tension, as evidence of metaphysical agency or desire.

The “Hubris of the Wizard” Stance: It frames the scientist as a wizard accessing transcendent forms to impose on matter, maintaining the “Man-vs-Nature” dualism that fuels ecological crisis.

Lack of Interaction Surface: By violating Wheeler’s boundary theorem (The boundary of the boundary of a manifold M is zero), it fails to account for the fact that the boundary of reality has no boundary, leaving no topological surface for Platonic interaction.

Denial of Embodied Semantics: It treats semantic content as requiring transcendence (“more than air molecules”), ignoring neuroscience showing meaning is physically realized in neural network configurations.

Nathan Sweet
December 4, 2025
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

I noticed a typo in my comment above, I referenced Paul Orpwood on semantics, this was a typo on my part, the correct citation is as follows. I’ve included some additional sources as well.

ORPWOOD (2025)
Citation:

Author: Roger Orpwood, University of Bath

Title: “Specific mechanisms linking network information processing to the generation of qualia”

Journal: Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2025, Volume 2025(1)

DOI: 10.1093/nc/niaf043

URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397433611_Specific_mechanisms_linking_network_information_processing_to_the_generation_of_qualia

Quote 1 (Physical vs Semantic Information Distinction):

“The pattern of action potentials in axons connecting to, say, the V4 area of the visual cortex, the colour processing area, is not in itself colour information. It is just the brain’s inner representation of that information. The information of colours arises from the way the neurons in V4 are able to interpret the incoming representations.”

Quote 2 (Semantic Information Emerges from Physical Activity):

“If physical information, such as a pattern of action potentials, is recognized and identified, then the outcome is the acquisition of semantic information.”

Quote 3 (Neural Configuration Determines Meaning):

“The semantic information that the interpreter acquires depends on how the receptors in the receiving neural structures were configured, primarily during learning.”

Quote 4 (Physical Responses Represent Semantic Content):

“The form of the physical response is variable, and the same form is generated whenever a particular input is received, then the input has not only just been recognized by the interpreter, it has been identified as well. That particular input pattern has a specific identity to the interpreter. That identity is semantic information, and it is only available to the interpreter. The interpreter has acquired the semantic information of the identity of the input activity to it, and the physical response it generates represents that identity.”

Quote 5 (No Transcendent Realm Required):

“It is felt that at the core of the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness is an understanding of the way that the brain’s physical activity can be recognized and identified to acquire semantic information. It is the problem of how the physical activity of neural firings, physical information, is identified in such a way as to enable the semantic information of qualia to emerge.”

BARSALOU (1999)
Citation:

Author: Lawrence W. Barsalou

Title: “Perceptual symbol systems”

Journal: Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577-660

URL: https://barsaloulab.org/Online_Articles/1999-Barsalou-BBS-perceptual_symbol_systems.pdf

Significance: Most-cited authority on grounded/embodied cognition (over 50,000 citations)

Quote 1 (Modal Grounding of Cognition):

“The brain uses active configurations of neurons to represent the properties of perceived entities and events… Perceptual symbols are modal and analogical. They are modal because they are represented in the same systems as the perceptual states that produced them. The neural systems that represent color in perception, for example, also represent the colors of objects in perceptual symbols, at least to a significant extent. On this view, a common representational system underlies perception and cognition, not independent systems… Although mechanisms outside sensory-motor systems enter into conceptual knowledge, perceptual symbols always remain grounded in these systems.”

Quote 2 (Rejection of Amodal/Platonic Systems):

“It is essential to see that the symbols in these [amodal] systems are amodal and arbitrary… The amodal symbols that represent the colors of objects in their absence reside in a different neural system from the representations of these colors during perception itself… I will argue that this view is fundamentally wrong. Instead, cognition is inherently perceptual, sharing systems with perception at both the cognitive and the neural levels.”

BORGHI ET AL. (2023) – CONSENSUS PAPER
Citation:

Authors: Anna M. Borghi et al. (multi-author consensus)

Title: “Brain Signatures of Embodied Semantics and Language: A Consensus Paper”

Journal: Journal of Cognition, 6(1), Article 37

URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10573703/

Significance: Multi-disciplinary consensus affirming embodied cognition

Quote 1 (Physical Grounding):

“According to embodied theories (including embodied, embedded, extended, enacted, situated, and grounded approaches to cognition), language representation is intrinsically linked to our interactions with the world around us, which is reflected in specific brain signatures during language processing and learning… Our common aim is to better understand the role of motor and perceptual processes in language representation as indexed by language comprehension and learning.”

Quote 2 (Against Amodal Separation):

“Amodal approaches assume word meanings are symbolic and thereby separated from sensorimotor substrates and individual experience. For this consensus paper, we grouped the so-called 4Es… as well as grounded cognition under the umbrella term embodied cognition, despite differences between the research areas to which these terms refer. Embodied cognition links the symbolic and the perceptually founded as well as implicit personal aspects of word meaning.”

Quote 3 (Neural Localization Evidence):

“Such studies, for instance, showed that accessing the meaning of linguistic material is supported by the sensorimotor system… the neuroimaging studies mentioned above (along with many others) provide some support for the claim that, at least in some contexts, conceptual language representations and sensorimotor processes are based on partially overlapping brain resources.”

FERNANDINO ET AL. (2022)
Citation:

Authors: Leonardo Fernandino, Colin J. Humphries, Mark S. Seidenberg, William L. Gross, Lisa L. Conant, Jeffrey R. Binder

Title: “Decoding the information structure underlying the neural representation of concepts”

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(6), e2108091119

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108091119

Quote 1 (Direct Statement Against Amodal Views):

“Our results indicate that conceptual knowledge is stored as patterns of neural activity that encode sensory-motor and affective information about each concept, contrary to the long-held idea that concept representations are independent of sensory-motor experience.”

Quote 2 (Experiential Information Primacy):

“Partial correlation RSAs revealed that Exp48 accounted for all the variance explained by the other models… these results indicate that experiential information plays a central role in the representation of lexical concepts in high-level heteromodal cortical areas.”

Quote 3 (Physical Grounding of Semantics):

“We found that Exp48 – a representational model based on 48 distinct experiential dimensions grounded in known neurocognitive systems – consistently outperformed taxonomic and distributional models in predicting the neural similarity structure of a large number of lexical concepts (524 across both studies), spanning a wide variety of semantic categories.”

RECOMMENDED SYNTHESIS STATEMENT
Neuroscience research provides converging evidence that semantic content is physically realized in distributed neural network configurations. As Fernandino et al. (2022) state: “conceptual knowledge is stored as patterns of neural activity that encode sensory-motor and affective information about each concept, contrary to the long-held idea that concept representations are independent of sensory-motor experience.” This finding is supported by a recent consensus paper (Borghi et al., 2023) affirming that “language representation is intrinsically linked to our interactions with the world around us, which is reflected in specific brain signatures.” Barsalou (1999) established the foundational framework, demonstrating that “a common representational system underlies perception and cognition, not independent systems.” The physical grounding of semantics is well-established, eliminating the need for Platonic forms as explanatory entities.

Sven Meijers
December 6, 2025
I can not help myself to share an quadrophonic sound experience I produced. The recording in the link is stereo. https://on.soundcloud.com/pJguug72J3DyP2f2V5

Some notes for clarification:

I was just reading a trying to understand prelude #8 ‘A Vision’ from the book Introduction to Modernity by Henri Lefebvre. He dedicated this poetic prelude to Stephane Lupasco.

The new Lex Fridman interview came to my attention while I was still processing this vision and I had to think about the book Rhythmanalysis by Lefebvre. A part of that text is used in this sound peace. I’m pretty shure this is relevant for the area of interest in this arena.

The peace was staged in a theatre during the Covid lockdowns in the Netherlands. The ambient sounds were recorded during a ‘listening to the city’ walk at the start of an experimental education program for honour students we developed in collaboration with University Leiden.

Benjamin L
December 11, 2025
For some reason, math behaves as if it thinks it’s important to economize on resources, just like an economic agent. Just like with morphogenesis, having limited resources may be helpful for allowing mathematical elements to consistently produce the right form. But what are math’s resources, and why does it care about achieving the right form? I have no clue. Wrote an essay about the observation, may be of interest: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/what-does-math-economize-on-and-why

James of Seattle
December 17, 2025
Just a question for your consideration: Is it possible that the basis of consciousness is just pattern recognition?

Bruno Blundi Guinle
December 27, 2025
Is there a link to download Brian Cheung’s – “The Emergence of Convergence in Different Levels of Biology and AI”- full presentation (the slide show)? Thanks. Cheers and best regards

Mike Levin
December 27, 2025
hmm let me ask him, maybe he will agree to make the slides downloadable.

Bruno Blundi Guinle
December 27, 2025
Thanks, Mike. Much appreciated.

I stumbled upon Brian Cheung and colleagues’ The Platonic Representation Hypothesis some time ago and was fascinated by it.

Having followed your work for quite a while, I was immediately intrigued when I first heard you speak about the Platonic Space. Ever since, I’d been wondering whether you’d read Cheung’s paper, and over time it seemed increasingly likely.

I was thrilled when I watched your recent episode on Lex Fridman’s podcast and heard you explicitly mention it. And even more so when I discovered Brian’s presentation at the Symposium on YouTube. Full circle. Quite the Christmas gift I’m loving every minute of it.

Cheers

Mike Levin
December 28, 2025
Bingo! Brian kindly provided slides – I’m putting them up shortly. The link is: https://thoughtforms.life/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/platonics_symposium.pdf

Benjamin L
December 27, 2025
There’s an Isaac Asimov short story, “Jokester”, where people realize that they don’t really know where their jokes come from, and after trying to find out, they conclude that jokes come from an alien race using them to study human psychology. There’s an interesting bit of overlap there with the Platonic Space hypothesis, although in Asimov’s story, once humanity figures out where the jokes come from, the aliens stop supplying them! Hopefully the Platonic Space is more relaxed about being investigated.

https://asimov.fandom.com/wiki/Jokester

Mike Levin
December 27, 2025

Hopefully the Platonic Space is more relaxed about being investigated.

it’s cagey and shy, but not maliciously so (in Einstein’s terms). Like quantum foam and some other stuff, I think it doesn’t like to be observed directly, but can be, if you’re clever and subtle. This is part of my Universal Steganography hypothesis, which we’re currently investigating to see just how resistant it is to direct observation. It looks like it’s not easy, but not impossible. We’ll see.

Benjamin L
December 28, 2025
Looking forward to it. And if forms stop ingressing into our world, we’ll know who to blame

Christopher Judd
December 28, 2025
I find this symposium frustrating. I expect the physicalist attacks to a certain degree though wonder why they should be allowed on in the first place as it serves no useful purpose. But my gripe is simple Michael is the star here it is effectively his blog. Michael has posted his labs fridge door apparently self opening, has appeared with Bernado Kastrup a very prominent idealist yet tries to walk a very thin line of postulating a Platonic type realm while remaining within the physicalist paradigm. He refuses to engage on a broader scale that consciousness is fundamental for example which is the obvious starting point for many including myself. To me Michael is trying to be too many things to too many people and steering a coarse wearing blinkers. Michael cannot have it both ways, I fear he is in danger falling foul of letting his ego and need for celebrity status lead him to a well trodden path where integrity gets second place and playing to to crowd becomes paramount.

Mike Levin
December 28, 2025
Just to clarify my policy. I don’t normally argue back with specific individuals – I reply to comments when I think it’s something others might be thinking. So:

1) I get an incredible number of emails trying to push me in various directions – do more consciousness talk, less consciousness talk, etc. etc. It’s impossible to please everyone (or actually, anyone) and I’m not trying. Many people are unhappy with what I’m doing or saying; sorry – you do it your way, I’ll try mine.
2) The video of the fridge door opening itself – I make no claims about what if anything that means. I do not think there is anything to be gained by that. Nothing definitive or useful can be said about it right now.
3) “remaining within the physicalist paradigm” – no, I’ve said explicitly, I think physicalism is not viable. Of all the things I get accused of, being too physicalist is a new one
4) “He refuses to engage on a broader scale that consciousness is fundamental” – correct, that’s not my focus. I’m not a consciousness researcher primarily, I’ve got my hands full with other issues where more progress can be made (by my lab, now). Yes I’ve had conversations with Bernardo. What I said to him was: I think in the end, idealism is probably the more accurate position, but I don’t know of any way to do anything useful with that now. My job is to push forward science and applications. Plenty of idealists around, no one needs me to embrace it. Right now, I think a more dualistic perspective (while knowing it’s likely going to be replaced by some sort of monism, someday in the future) is the way to go, to make tangible progress. If you can do something useful with Idealism, go for it, I’ll be cheering for you. Many people want me to go further into things I can’t prove or use, while others think I’ve gone too far in that direction already. Whatever. I am trying to keep the balance I think best; it’s hard to optimize. Everyone else can find a different balance and run with it. And, I have no interest in being a star on my tiny blog to shut out physicalists and pontificate on consciousness unless I can really add something meaty (which I’m working on, but that’s for the future).
4) To your last points:
– My course is steered by my anticipated ability to make progress; that’s it. I have lots of thoughts around things I don’t discuss in public because it would not be useful. I’m not interested in adding to the New Age bookshelf with claims I can’t defend in powerful new ways. There are many others doing that now, and have been doing it for thousands of years; my path is different.
– “Celebrity status” is funny, second only to “well trodden path” in humor value. My path is hardly well-trodden and I am quite sure I’d have more status (whatever that really is) if I either embraced the consciousness crowd, or conversely, be a proper physicalist and stayed in favor with most scientists. Whatever ego issues I have, the course I’ve followed apparently minimizes the “crowd”. It pisses off the reductionist scientists, and the hippy spiritualist folks who want me to say all kinds of wild things. All I know how to do is say what I think.
– I’m not interested in crowds, there’s 0 payoff for me in that (I don’t actually know what people think they would gain from the kind of attention or status one gets in this sort of nerdy field). I realize it may look from the outside like I do stuff for publicity; what people don’t see is all the stuff I turn down – tons of offers to expand reach, appeal to bigger audiences, monetize, etc. etc. because it doesn’t do any good on the things that actually matter to me. The engaging with the public at all is a ~10 year experiment in Open Science that I’ve done. That timeline is basically ending now, and I need to figure out whether it’s done more good than be a distraction. I can’t tell yet. It’s entirely possible I stop doing it entirely – stop recording my meetings with interesting people, stop answering people’s questions in Youtube interviews, etc. I don’t charge for any of it, and it eats up some time, so it’s bringing me no tangible benefits. The ~600 emails per day, the threats and crazy things people send me, are not anything I want. Question is, was it helping the community overall – helping young people get into the field, or moving the needle in some other way beyond what just communicating with other scientists accomplishes. I’m not sure how to quantify it, but it’s not at all obvious to me that it’s time well-spent, and I’d certainly personally be happier with no public profile at all.

Rama
December 28, 2025
I’ve been caching up on this symposium for a couple of weeks now and I, for one, am so grateful to be introduced and re- introduced to such a variety of ideas from different fields. Uploading your discussions with scientists- what a great idea and why aren’t other scientists doing it? Please keep doing what you’re doing, it’s fantastic. Responding to 1000’s of emails and comments is a crazy drain on your time, I’m not sure how you manage it! Please take care!

Mike Levin
December 28, 2025
Thanks. To be clear, I don’t respond to most of them – I can’t even see most of them… Way too much for me to deal with, I catch what I catch which is a tiny minority.

Christopher Judd
December 29, 2025
Mike, thanks for replying and you have clarified some points which helps. To clarify your confusion over well trodden path I was referring to the attraction of celebrity status which many of us to varying degrees possess but for the purpose of integrity must be controlled, leaving such for real entertainers in the arts.
Your work is IMO very useful to those of us advocating primary consciousness and for that I thank you.
The history of civilization is the strong dictating to the masses, that applies historically to spirituality as much as all else.
Fundamental consciousness would if largely accepted have huge implications to how we could better structure our societies thus an occasional reminder to all of us including myself is justified. Keep up the good work. Regards Chris

Alexey Tolchinsky
December 28, 2025
I find it amusing that a guest feels comfortable enough to be disrespectful to a host, who has been extraordinarily patient and welcoming and tolerant of highly diverse opinions.

It’s amusing to hear a guest pointing out what the host can and can’t do in his own house and also when a guest launches into the rule setting in the host’s house as in “why they should be allowed.”

I find it to be self-righteous and entitled, when a guest launches into unqualified, unsolicited, aggressive, not to mention misguided psychoanalysis of the host “I fear he is in danger falling foul of letting his ego and need for celebrity status lead him to a well trodden path where integrity gets second place and playing to to crowd becomes paramount.”

I think that basic civility would be appropriate, perhaps some gratitude. Maybe cooling off a bit?

Mike Levin
December 28, 2025
Apparently I need to clarify this response because it’s already been misinterpreted (to be fair, I’m not sure very many would misinterpret it this way, but let’s be safe):
1) the need to be clever about detecting these kinds of influences does NOT mean that their subtle nature can be used as an excuse if the paradigm stops being useful. If some other framework proves more useful, then we should use that. I have 0 patience for “xyz moves in mysterious ways” as a stopper to investigation; but, “xyz might move in ways we’ve not had good tools for, so let’s make the right tools and shed light on what was heretofore mysterious, so that it becomes tractable” – that’s practical and we have a lot of precedent for that in science and philosophy.
2) I do not actually know to what extent ingressions are cagey: science has found all sorts of things – superconductivity, other quantum effects, etc. which are not easy to detect but doable once you know what to look for. That comes in various degrees, and I don’t know what degree we’re dealing with here. That’s all I think is going on – we will get better at detecting and optimizing the ingressions, and I’m trying to make some tools for that. If we do not improve, after trying, then something is wrong with the framework and it will need to be changed or dropped. How much effort it will take, is not known in advance, as in the beginning of any field. But I suspect that once we know what to look for and how to quantify, we will find it very broadly.
3) I do not claim that the system as a whole has any directionality for whether we notice these things or not. I have made no claims about that and I’m not saying that the universe has preferences about whether we notice its workings. Plenty of people have opined on this and I have no new data to add to that debate, nor is it necessary for the work to be done right now.
It seems to me all this is obvious, but perhaps it bears saying explicitly…

Mary Chernova
December 28, 2025
Hello, Michael! Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! I’d like to create a community to support your amazing ideas. What’s the best platform to do this on? Please subscribe to my life extension channel! https://t.me/zhizndolshe

Robbert Heijnen
January 2, 2026
Best wishes to all.

Although academically not qualified to comment, I purport to have gained some insights, mostly about systems of harmonic relations, that may help in shedding a different light.

The postulate is that Robert Rosen’s Modeling Relation diagram, from his Anticipatory Systems theory, involves systems of harmonic relations. As such, a further postulate is that this diagram also offers insights into the nature of the Platonic realm. Rosen’s diagram would however be in need of an extension to do so. This extension thereby leads to what would constitute the Platonic Realm, also “ingressing” upon the Natural system as intermittent end-results of, and on top of, next to, the already depicted Formal system, still in the process of finding an end result to a new model.

As already noticed by Rosen himself, the modeling taking place in the Formal system (mind) is twofold: it is modeling itself —based on the initial harmonic, Bateson’s “intensity”—, and at the same time it is modeling the models that the Natural system (matter) is based on. The latter, it only does to a certain degree, and that degree gets described in the Standard Model of particle physics. The aggregate of models, that the Natural system is based on, comes from all previous iterations of the Formal system. Rosen’s Modeling Relation diagram only captures a single iteration of this recurring process. While each model is able to closely “mimic” what gets described in the Standard Model, it is also completely unique.

The uniqueness of the models is such that they are unable to “sense” each other, and this is what the Natural system provides. The Natural system bridges the differences between all thus far uncovered models. Not being able to directly interact prevents any distortions to them, and therefore, these models remain preserved as they are.

Any newly finished model only becomes available to the Natural system as far as the current model in the Formal system has progressed. Each model gets activated, catalyzed, by the model thereafter. Although the above described process involves an undeniable step-like progress, limiting one’s observations to that of the Natural system only, will look like one fluent seamless process.

Not sure how one would go about devising any experiments to corroborate this, although Eldredge and Gould’s “Punctuated Equilibria” might already provide an indication. A notion that might deserve further investigation is that the whole process and all of the “actors” involved “converge” in what could be called self-regulation. This self-regulation is possible by the fact that all models share the ability to mimic what gets described in the Standard Model as might be implicated in the Orch-OR theory. In Rosen’s Modeling Relation diagram this self-regulation process is where the encoding and decoding takes place.

In short, it’s a process that involves both the Formal and the Natural system, and what might constitute the Platonic realm, even though already “present” in potential, only becomes “available” through the interaction of these systems.

With kind regards,

Anthony Finbow
January 3, 2026
Thank you for your exciting addition to the debate Robbert! Rosen’s definition of life as being one closed to efficient causation and exhibiting functional entailment might be central. It is analogous to Pask / von Foerster / Maturana’s conception of Second Order Cybernetics (The Science of Observing Systems) and Pask’s Conversation and Interaction of Actors Theories. Judea Pearl’s Causal Graphs, Rosen and Pask’s conceptions of Entailment Hierarchies and Meshes, Factor Graphs as employed in the Active Inference community and of course Petri Nets are all mechanisms that are enabling incremental further progress here. Indeed, Rosen’s formalism is isomorphic with the Action Perception loop closure model developed by Karl Friston. Germane to Rosen’s approach was Category Theory. What is interesting is that this provides the mechanisms to entail material and efficient causation through entailment hierarchies. The work of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan-Hendrik_S._Hofmeyr deserves to be called out here. It is no accident that the Big Tech companies are now moving to Category Theory in their quest to understand cognition, as they recognise the limits of their current models, which are not closed to efficient causation, neither in terms of energy or “resource” nor to the requirement for language or programming as input. Their outputs can be characterised as simulations and not models. The promise of Category Theory is that we might map the simulations to the models through the development of the appropriate “Functors”. There is, perhaps, an opportunity to develop a common language or framework in the effort to disclose the essence of cognition in biological and machine systems.

Alexey Tolchinsky
January 2, 2026
Good evening, Michael,

Here (min 31), Chris makes a point that “computation is relative to environmental constraints, because the environment sets the Free Energy landscape.”

This is a profound statement, I think. Can we look deeper into that?

One view of computation, which seems close to the Platonic Space is that a computation is the execution of a function f(x) = y. The validity of such computation is not relative under the Platonic computation hypothesis; validity/logic is internal to the system. For example, the validity of 2×3=6 is invariant, regardless of the interaction of the computer and the environment – computer’s heat emission or power consumption don’t matter.

If we go back to biology and consider the experiential hypothesis, then, in the real world, computation takes energy. Computation is a form of action (process) performed by a system (object), which persists in time. Persistence of the system in time, under FEP, implies maintaining its boundary with environment (Markov Blanket).

Under FEP, the system that persists, resists the dissipative forces from the environment. This means that the gradient/dissipative flow is balanced by the solenoidal flow, thus forming a balance –a non-equilibrium steady state.

The persistence of the system in time, or, equivalently, the intactness of its boundary with the environment necessitates the system’s building a model of the environment (Conant and Ashby’s “Good Regulator Theorem”). Such modeling is a form of probabilistic computation. When the environment changes, the system trying to survive must either update its model of the environment or act upon the environment to make it more aligned with its internal model. In that sense, the system computes to minimize Free Energy, which is yet another view on its persistence.

However, the exact landscape of the Free Energy is set by the environment. So, the system’s computations are always relative to the environment it is modeling. Environment can be external or internal (the body).

As a metaphor, can we imagine a human who must compute a route across the field to its destination – an apple tree. When the field is flat, he will compute to walk in a straight line When the field has a mountain in the middle, the person will recompute a circular route around the mountain. In physical reality, the environment is never static, and the computation is never free.

Then, embodied cognition will result in a specific system performing an appropriate computation in the context of its specific environment.

Another example from Walter Freeman. When a hare recognizes an odor of a female fox, it computes the meaning of this stimulus as “run.” When a male fox perceives the same exact stimulus, it computes it as “approach” – there is no universal validity, the computed meaning is context-dependent and value system maps are also different.

Edward Frenkel talks about the Pythagoras Theorem as being invariant for person, place, and time – it doesn’t matter who, where and how, they’d get the same result. For that universality to work, we must assume a perfect flatness of the plane. This necessitates the act of creating an abstraction that, as Frenkel acknowledges, does not actually exist in the real world of physics – an ideal plane.

This is a form of computation – coarse graining real, more or less flat planes, like table tops into an imagined abstraction of an ideal, perfect plane. Such coarse-graining computation takes energy. Holding such an assumption in mind takes energy, it is not a free lunch metabolically. Proving Pythagoras Theorem for a perfect Euclidean plane takes energy. Recalling it from memory takes energy. Communicating it to another person takes energy.

If we now zoom out of an ideal world of imagined perfections, and go to the messy, biological and physical world, then we may see that a bee in a hive, a rat in the nest, an octopus in the ocean, an LLM running on a GPU may compute things differently for their respective contexts while being in certain states. We can then discover that LLM spontaneously gravitates to hyperbolic geometry, and not a Euclidean one.

An invariance of a platonic computational form implies then that we must fix the object, the environment, the energy landscape, and the time. This is the only way Edward Frenkel gets to claim the invariance – he has to stabilize all the variables by virtue of coarse graining real life onto an abstraction that does not exist in reality and is this is how he makes it context-independent.

There seems to be a dichotomy then of an ideal world and a real world. When things are downloaded from one to another, it’s not clear that they remain the same. In the real world, all computations cost energy and this is not so in an ideal world, it is full of free lunches.

Going back to a computation being an action performed by a system in an environment and metabolically paying for being active – it is not easy to isolate the action itself from the system, the environment, and the energy. That may work in linear settings, but would likely not work in non-linear ones.

Mike Levin
January 3, 2026
Thanks, this is quite interesting. I need more time to expand into a proper reply, but meanwhile I think the ingredients will be: (1) paying for computations – yes, but I think we’re not doing the accounting correctly. More specifically, I suspect that the current formalism of how we tally up compute costs only sees the work of the physical front end, but not of the “free lunch” (free in physical terms, perhaps not free after all) that also comes from the back end. As a dumb example, our sorting algorithms. I can charge customer #1 for the sorting, and charge customer #2 for the clustering. I don’t need to do any more work, the clustering we get for free. Perhaps other things too, at the same time – this is currently under active investigation in my lab, how much “free compute” we can get. (2) Related to that, the polycomputing perspective, and how much energy it takes to hold ideas in a “mind”, metabolically, is a very interesting area, and possibly actionable if we look at metabolic cost of certain kinds of thoughts that require connection to different patterns (in my model). (3) The notion of coarse-graining of messy stimuli into abstract perfect forms is, as you point out, problematic. I’m not sure that’s how we should be looking at it; working on something on that front but not ready with it yet.

Alexey Tolchinsky
January 3, 2026
Very interesting, Michael.

On holding things in mind, as you know, RAM chips are more expensive per byte than other memory chips. In human mind, while engaging working memory, we use frontoparietal network, including parts of dlPFC – while we perform mental manipulations with the components of what we hold in mind. Nearly all PFC functioning is metabolically costly, not only the neocortical neurons fire about 10 times faster than the subcortical ones, but also Working Memory is likely accompanied by the activation of global workspace – a broad, nearly simultaneous coordination among many areas of the brain-mind, P3 waves, etc. – Expensive. Consciousness is also metabolically expensive.

Subcortical functioning and unconscious processes are far, far less metabolically expensive, but it is also less flexible.

So we have both – we deploy the cost-efficient “quick and dirty” ones when circumstances are predictable and we must activate consciousness when we face completely unexpected circumstances.

Interestingly, decorticated rats can survive, reproduce and perform necessary life functions and are more emotional than cats with neocortex – Solms talks about Basic/Core level of consciousness preserved in them, but not the extended levels.

In your framework, I think that holding things in mind is a kind of communication and also a center of the bow tie – you call it our past Selves talking to our present ones. When we retrieve data from long-term storage into working memory – we hold the retrieved in mind (and can modify/re-interpret it) – so holding in mind can be seen also as a form of communication, taking us back to Chris, who made communication primary and derived even time and space from it.

Rama
January 3, 2026
What are we to make of the talks that contradict Levin’s idea of the Platonic space, such as those by Matt Segall, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic and Douglas Brash?

Mike Levin
January 3, 2026
Think about them carefully, they may well be right! I didn’t invite people to a symposium of “Agree with Mike” I knew many would disagree and bring useful, alternative views. At some point, it would be interesting to put together a table of the various views, and specifically what they agree/disagree on, and implications of each. Make a table with columns of the key questions and show what each person’s view says about it. I’ll work on it at some point and ask the others to fill in theirs.

Rama
January 3, 2026
That would be great.
There are those who agree with you but their thesis might need to be strengthened to be more convincing, like David Resnik. So we have to critique those who agree with you also.
Let’s say that you came with a platonic space idea to account for xenobots (and other things). This who disagree should give their own explanation for xenobots or say why xenobots don’t need platonic ingressions. They do not do this, maybe they are being polite? This would be something for you to ask them in upcoming q&a session.

Mike Levin
January 3, 2026
Sure. But I’ve not noticed that people who disagree are shy about saying so – many people disagree, which is of course fine and not surprising. But crucially, my argument does not rest on Xenobots (Xenobots are just a useful tool for research along these lines). My specific argument (stripped down) is here: https://youtu.be/EdEqgCOSx7E?si=ougzknMUXEd-q2DS and I’ll write up even shorter versions soon. What I hope people do is critique the actual argument (for example, a bunch of people have emailed me critiques of Plato’s views, which are not my views, and of some other arguments that are not mine), and offer (or better, implement) a research program different than what I’m doing (if it’s better, I’ll drop mine and follow theirs).

Rama
January 3, 2026
I don’t mean to imply that I’m here to criticize your ideas. In the contrary, I’m here because I’m captivated. But looking at things from all directions is the way I understand them.
I know that short position statement presentation of course.

Alexey Tolchinsky
January 3, 2026
!

This position is how a scientist is different from an ideologue, a demagogue or a dictator. Admirable tolerance to alternative viewpoints with a relentless energy to advance science, be focused on clarity, empirical data, and ultimately – the pragmatic benefit of humanity.

It could also be that “right” and “wrong” [hypothesis] in science are old Aristotelian concepts and the accumulation of partial knowledge is the alternative. Chris in his presentation showed that an old mathematical “formal system” concept can no longer be applicable to a wide range of fields and circumstances, and for good reasons – a static set of axioms and definitions is not applicable now in a non-linear, non-local, context-dependent world.

If so, then we might be in the age of new science, which is content-dependent. If non-locality that Einstein insisted on is no longer applicable, we might soon have to let go of the “true” and “false” labels for [hypotheses] – as they seem to apply more in the static world of formal systems. (I know they do have pragmatic value now).

Then, the Platonic hypothesis might apply for contexts/circumstances ABC and experiential hypothesis for XZY and there’s no contradiction (also Aristotelean concept, implying that A and not-A can’t co-exist).

After all, the laws of gravity are not 100% scale invariant, the conservation of energy doesn’t work everywhere, why should then “true” and “false” labels for hypotheses be invariant?

Mike Levin
January 3, 2026
I agree with that completely. I’m much less worried about true and false and more concerned with useful how and when.

Benjamin L
January 8, 2026
Here’s an essay on how mathematical structures such as the Cartesian product act as virtual governors, embodying system-level preferences contained in no individual part of the system. This may indicate that mathematical structures are agents since they have preferences and can exert a kind of pressure on the system to achieve their preferences. Also, there might be a way to work with a virtual governor concept in math to produce a mathematical version of an anatomical compiler, something that does the hard work of constructing interesting structures and proving theorems for you.

https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/the-cartesian-product-as-a-virtual

Mike Levin
January 8, 2026
This is super interesting. We’re working on the mathematical structures as agents part (some papers coming soon) and I think Lucy is as well (in a different way) but for sure the virtual governor concept has a lot of fruit (whether they’re low-hanging, as they say, I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a lot to be done there). Let me check out the essay and let’s talk about the mathanomical (anatatical?) compiler!

Christopher Judd
January 9, 2026
Your essay provides strong empirical support for SHO’s core thesis: Mathematics is the intrinsic structure of consciousness.

The Cartesian product isn’t just describing something — it is something: a governance pattern that consciousness uses to organize reality. When mathematicians work with these structures, they’re not just manipulating symbols — they’re interacting with consciousness’s fundamental governance mechanisms.

Thank you for this profound insight. Your “virtual governor” concept may be the Rosetta Stone connecting mathematics, economics, cybernetics, and consciousness studies — exactly the interdisciplinary synthesis SHO attempts to provide.

With appreciation for your important work,

A proponent of the Semantic Holodynamic Ontology

Copied from thoughtforms.life https://thoughtforms.life/symposium-on-the-platonic-space/

This article is part of an ongoing documentation of the Recursive Constraint Falsification (RCF) method‘s application to contemporary debates in biology and consciousness studies. For the primary evidence and verbatim exchanges, see the companion articles:

I give my overall assessment here: Michael Levin’s Platonism as Unfalsifiable Metaphysics: Evidence from Bioelectric Morphogenesis.

If you would like to go deeper, I address Levin’s specific comments rigorously and one at a time in the following article: Formal Scholarly Response: Point-by-Point Analysis of Michael Levin’s Unfalsifiable Platonism and Bioelectric Morphogenesis Claims @ thoughtforms.life.

Additionally, for readers who want to examine the original arguments in their original context, I have preserved the verbatim comment record from his Platonic Symposium. This includes sixteen of my comments that Michael Levin left in the moderation queue. These comments propose over a dozen concrete falsification tests his lab could run and cite empirically replicated scholarly work that contradicts most, if not all, of the arguments he presented. They are collected here: Primary Evidence Record: Verbatim Symposium Comments on Michael Levin’s Platonism, Bioelectric Morphogenesis, and Empirical Falsifiability.

For a fully non-Platonic alternative that directly addresses the same explanatory gaps using constraint-based mechanics rather than metaphysical postulates, see The Chladni Plate Solution: How Douglas Brash’s Constraint Framework Answers Every Question Michael Levin Claims Justifies Platonism, Yet Cannot Answer.

Nathan Sweet

Nathan Sweet is an independent researcher working at the intersection of biology, computation, physics, and epistemology, with a focus on constraint-based explanations of complex systems. His work examines how morphogenesis, cognition, and adaptive behavior emerge from thermodynamic, informational, and historical constraints rather than from transcendent or metaphysical principles.

He is the author of the Recursive Constraint Falsification (RCF) method, a falsification-first approach that integrates thermodynamics, path dependence, and systems theory to evaluate explanatory claims in biology and cognitive science. His writing emphasizes empirical accountability, explicit mechanisms, and resistance to unfalsifiable metaphysics, particularly where such frameworks intersect with bioelectricity, morphogenesis, and theories of mind.

Sweet’s work engages directly with contemporary scientific debates, prioritizing reproducibility, constraint satisfaction, and explanatory parsimony over narrative elegance.

bioelectricity-morphogenesis | Biology | Metaphysics | Physics
The Chladni Plate Alternative to Platonism: How Douglas Brash’s Constraint-Based Framework Explains Bioelectric Morphogenesis Without Platonic Forms
ByNathan Sweet January 10, 2026January 15, 2026
“A skyhook is a ‘mind-first’ force or power or process, an exception to the principle that all design, and apparent design, is ultimately the result of mindless, motiveless mechanicity.” — Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) Patterns from Constraints, Not Templates Ernst Chladni’s 18th-century apparatus reveals emergence without access to transcendent forms When Rigorous…
Read More The Chladni Plate Alternative to Platonism: How Douglas Brash’s Constraint-Based Framework Explains Bioelectric Morphogenesis Without Platonic Forms
Critical Thinking | Epistemology | Falsification | Metaphysics | Ontology | Philosophy | Physics
The Metaphysics Audit: Tegmark’s MUH, Wolfram’s Ruliad, Levin’s Morphospace, Penrose-Hameroff’s Orch-OR, Senneshall’s Observer Theory, and More. Under Constraint-Based Falsification
ByNathan Sweet January 27, 2026January 29, 2026
A systematic evaluation of twenty-first century frameworks claiming to explain reality, from Platonic morphospace to mathematical universes to computational ruliad, using constraint-based falsification methodology. What survives scrutiny, what gets demoted to metaphor, and why the distinction matters. Part I: The Problem of Theories That Cannot Fail In 1950, philosopher Antony Flew posed a question that…
Read More The Metaphysics Audit: Tegmark’s MUH, Wolfram’s Ruliad, Levin’s Morphospace, Penrose-Hameroff’s Orch-OR, Senneshall’s Observer Theory, and More. Under Constraint-Based Falsification
bioelectricity-morphogenesis | Biology | Critical Thinking | Epistemology | Evolution | Falsification | Metaphysics | Ontology | Philosophy | Physics
Michael Levin’s Platonic Spiral: Evolution or Unfalsifiable Circle?
ByNathan Sweet January 18, 2026January 23, 2026
“Competence without comprehension is the way of life of the vast majority of living things on the planet and should be the default presumption until we can demonstrate that some individual organisms really do, in one sense or another, understand what they are doing.” ― Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of…
Read More Michael Levin’s Platonic Spiral: Evolution or Unfalsifiable Circle?
bioelectricity-morphogenesis | Biology | Falsification | Philosophy | Physics
“Differences That Make a Difference”: Why Constraint-Based Explanations Succeed Where “Basal Cognition” Fails
ByNathan Sweet February 1, 2026February 1, 2026
A difference only “makes a difference” if it can persist long enough to constrain what comes next. Everything else is noise that thermodynamics erases. Prologue: The Question That Would Not Stay Answered In 1979, Gregory Bateson posed a question that would haunt systems theory, cybernetics, and philosophy of mind for nearly half a century: What is…
Read More “Differences That Make a Difference”: Why Constraint-Based Explanations Succeed Where “Basal Cognition” Fails
bioelectricity-morphogenesis | Biology | Metaphysics
Michael Levin’s Platonism as Unfalsifiable Metaphysics: Evidence from Bioelectric Morphogenesis That Falsifies Platonic Predictions
ByNathan Sweet January 7, 2026January 23, 2026
Evidence from Bioelectric Morphogenesis That Falsifies Platonic Predictions Re: Michael Levin’s Platonism, Platonic Symposium I want to start where good faith starts: Michael Levin is unusually good at experimental imagination, and that matters. His work has helped widen the conceptual aperture of developmental biology, and it is not trivial to do that without drifting into…
Read More Michael Levin’s Platonism as Unfalsifiable Metaphysics: Evidence from Bioelectric Morphogenesis That Falsifies Platonic Predictions
Critical Thinking | Epistemology | Falsification | Metaphysics | Ontology | Philosophy | Physics
The Empty Set Cannot Kill Physicalism: Timothy Williamson and the Reification Error
ByNathan Sweet January 19, 2026January 23, 2026
The Empty Set Argument Against Physicalism Curt Jaimungal recently posted a clip titled “The Empty Set Argument Against Physicalism,” featuring Timothy Williamson, widely regarded as one of the most formidable living philosophers. The title promises intellectual bloodsport: abstract mathematics cage-fighting material reality, two ontologies enter, one ontology leaves. Curt frames the stakes explicitly, noting in voiceover:…
Read More The Empty Set Cannot Kill Physicalism: Timothy Williamson and the Reification Error

“The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”

My Public Debate With Michael Levin on thoughtform.life Platonic Symposium: Verbatim Comment Record of His Replies to My Critique (Platonism, Bioelectricity, Falsifiability)

The Chladni Plate Alternative to Platonism: How Douglas Brash’s Constraint-Based Framework Explains Bioelectric Morphogenesis Without Platonic Forms

The Metaphysics Audit: Tegmark’s MUH, Wolfram’s Ruliad, Levin’s Morphospace, Penrose-Hameroff’s Orch-OR, Senneshall’s Observer Theory, and More. Under Constraint-Based Falsification

Michael Levin’s Platonic Spiral: Evolution or Unfalsifiable Circle?

“Differences That Make a Difference”: Why Constraint-Based Explanations Succeed Where “Basal Cognition” Fails

Michael Levin’s Platonism as Unfalsifiable Metaphysics: Evidence from Bioelectric Morphogenesis That Falsifies Platonic Predictions

The Empty Set Cannot Kill Physicalism: Timothy Williamson and the Reification Error

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