Life Perceives was a symposium in January 2023, bringing together scientists and artists for an open exploration of how “perception” can be understood as a phenomenon that does not only belong to humans, or even the so-called “higher organisms”, but exists across the entire spectrum of life in a myriad of forms.
The symposium invites leading practitioners from the arts and sciences to present unique insights through short talks, open discussions, and artistic interventions that bring us slightly closer to the life worlds of plants and fungi, microbial communities and immune systems, cuttlefish and crows.
The symposium website has been archived at the following url: www.roald-arboel.com/lifeperceives/
I can't get over how amazing this work IS and the huuuuuge implications It has. I however struggle to understand how the whole morphology of an eye IS iinstructed by something as simple as a potasium Channel. I mean, potasium channels are all over the place, so what defines whether It creates an eye or not? It must be much more complex than just introducing mRNA for the Channel.....right?
Thanks to this work our understanding of Life has just taken a direction which may allow us to rethink evolution in its entirety. We can now begin to think about Life in a qualitatively different way than before. What we are seeing here is no longer blind chance operating in a selective environment driving replication and survival: there is a playful intelligence at work here that comes up with creative solutions to problems we can't even formulate until we see the 'solution' (kinetic replication for example). I feel a sense of astonishment at what has been revealed here, followed quickly by awe for an Intelligence of untold quality that has 'recruited' us as participants in its personal adventure. Many of you will sense, I'm sure, where this leads...
It sounds like they only want to help each other by listening to the signal and what is need around them. Hey other skins cells, I'm cold and to exposed here, come and hug me.. Hey, we are soficaing in our own poo, let's find a way to move around together so we don't drink our pee. Hey there are other cells feeling lonely and want to coodle each other, let's help bring them together with our new acuired locomotor system. I'm joking, but maybe I'm not XD
When considering the ethics of creating new person-like conscious entities, we tend to only consider what this might do to us. But the realy question is what it will mean to them and whether or not it is ethically sound to create them to begin with. The way we commonly think is the way xenophobes think about immigrant.
Amazing work. I am by no means an expert in this domain but I can easily see that these guys have come a long way to know more about life. Thanks for sharing!
This is mind-bogglingly amazing! It’s trying to figure out the informational programming, memorizing and processing algorithms of biological systems! Maybe this will lead at some point to an answer to Schrödinger’s famous question: What is Life? Meanwhile, suspense! And is there anything yet like Bioinformation Theory, as an extension of one of the Information Theories currently in existence: Shannon’s, von Neumann’s, or some other? I can see University curricula being soon rewritten.
Is not life at its basic simplicity a living organism, I e., protoplasm. And, a higher life is humanity. Humans whom are conscious of being conscious, and conscious of other humans being conscious.
