Hidden Consciousness & The Living Patterns That Shape Reality | Michael Levin & Matthew Segall | Mind Meld 424

THIRD EYE DROPS

Michael Phillip, SpectreVision Radio

Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2025

⏱️ 121 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

🥰 Support TED and join the community on Patreon Dr. Michael Levin and Dr. Matthew Segall enter the mind meld! *Video Episode * Dr. Michael Levin is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University where he’s the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. His groundbreaking research on bioelectricity, morphogenesis, and cognition is reshaping our understanding of how living systems self-organize and regenerate. He explores how cells and tissues communicate through bioelectrical signals, guiding the formation of complex structures without relying solely on genetic instructions. Levin's work suggests that biological development is not purely mechanical but follows invisible organizational principles, akin to the Platonic Forms. By demonstrating how bioelectrical fields encode structural information beyond genetic determinism, Levin’s research hints at an underlying realm of conscious intelligible patterns, challenging reductionist views and opening the door to a Platonic interpretation of biology. Dr. Matthew Segall is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at California Institute of Integral Studies. He explores the intersections of metaphysics, science, and consciousness often through the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. Whitehead, highly influenced by Plato, rejected the static, mechanistic worldview of classical science, instead proposing that reality is composed of dynamic processes, where mind and matter are deeply intertwined. This aligns with the work of Levin, whose research suggests that living systems follow formative principles that transcend mere genetic code—an idea resonant with Whitehead’s notion of eternal objects (akin to Platonic Forms) as guiding forces in the becoming of things. 🥰 Support TED and join the community on Patreon 🎧 Sub and Review on Apple Podcasts 🎧 Sub and Review on Spotify 👁Watch and Subscribe on Youtube 🌀 Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What if it's not that there are physical beings that are looking for patterns they're trying to find?
0:04.7	What if we look at it from the perspective of the pattern?
0:07.1	Because my view of this platonic space is, or whatever space it is, that it has the things that we're used to, boring facts about triangles and prime numbers and things like that.
0:17.5	But it also has very, very much higher agency kind of patterns. Kinds of minds, I think are actually specific patterns in that. But it also has very, very much higher agency kind of patterns.
0:21.5	Kinds of minds, I think are actually specific patterns in that space. I think that these patterns
0:26.5	are trying in the way that a gas and a balloon is trying to get out into the physical space.
0:32.6	But the only way they can do that is through what Don Hoffman would call interfaces or what I call
0:36.7	pointers. So we build something.
0:38.6	That could be a physical triangle or it could be a xenobot or it could be a human embryo. And when we build these things,
0:44.4	exactly as you just said, you get more out than you put it. Because you're not actually creating any of these behavioral and anatomical features.
0:51.5	You are facilitating their appearance out of an ordered space.
0:57.3	Welcome back to the transmission, my friends.
0:59.3	What if there were whole systems in the body, whole realms of biology and science that we are
1:05.6	just beginning to understand?
1:07.3	Not only that, but that have direct massive philosophical implications about the nature
1:13.2	of reality and about consciousness. Well, for as far as we've come, that really does seem to be
1:19.7	the case. And if you're going to try to make sense of revelations of that gravity, you're going to
1:25.3	need a pretty deep philosophical well to draw from.
1:29.4	And that is where Dr. Matt Siegel comes in.
1:33.1	More on both Matt and Mike in just a second.
1:35.6	I must say, of all the brilliant folks who have been in the mind meld on this show,
1:41.6	there are some that stand out.
	...

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