Bridging the explanatory gaps: What can we learn from a biological agency perspective?

Sultan, Sonia E.; Moczek, Armin P.; Walsh, Denis M.

doi:10.1002/bies.202100185

Cited by 57 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 152 publications

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“…Agents of highly diverse implementation model their environments and themselves in accordance with an active inference framework, which drives the way they navigate information spaces. While dynamical systems theory describes how a system can go through a defined space, multi-scale agency models explain the shape of the space relative to specific observers and agents [ 247 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments

Fields

Levin

2022

Entropy

113

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One of the most salient features of life is its capacity to handle novelty and namely to thrive and adapt to new circumstances and changes in both the environment and internal components. An understanding of this capacity is central to several fields: the evolution of form and function, the design of effective strategies for biomedicine, and the creation of novel life forms via chimeric and bioengineering technologies. Here, we review instructive examples of living organisms solving diverse problems and propose competent navigation in arbitrary spaces as an invariant for thinking about the scaling of cognition during evolution. We argue that our innate capacity to recognize agency and intelligence in unfamiliar guises lags far behind our ability to detect it in familiar behavioral contexts. The multi-scale competency of life is essential to adaptive function, potentiating evolution and providing strategies for top-down control (not micromanagement) to address complex disease and injury. We propose an observer-focused viewpoint that is agnostic about scale and implementation, illustrating how evolution pivoted similar strategies to explore and exploit metabolic, transcriptional, morphological, and finally 3D motion spaces. By generalizing the concept of behavior, we gain novel perspectives on evolution, strategies for system-level biomedical interventions, and the construction of bioengineered intelligences. This framework is a first step toward relating to intelligence in highly unfamiliar embodiments, which will be essential for progress in artificial intelligence and regenerative medicine and for thriving in a world increasingly populated by synthetic, bio-robotic, and hybrid beings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments

Fields

Levin

2022

Entropy

113

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“…Research in developmental biology has revealed that GP relationships tend to be complex (e.g., non-linear, non-additive, discontinuous) [3,28,29] , which explains why statistical approaches often have low predictive power. [30,31] The complexity of GP relationships arises from the reciprocal interactions between genes, between cells, and between genes and cells, that occur throughout development. [32] Understanding how GP relationships evolve, and how they influence future evolution, requires attention to these networks of interactions.…”

Section: The Genotype-phenotype Mapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond genotype‐phenotype maps: Toward a phenotype‐centered perspective on evolution

2022

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Evolutionary biology is paying increasing attention to the mechanisms that enable phenotypic plasticity, evolvability, and extra-genetic inheritance. Yet, there is a concern that these phenomena remain insufficiently integrated within evolutionary theory.Understanding their evolutionary implications would require focusing on phenotypes and their variation, but this does not always fit well with the prevalent genetic representation of evolution that screens off developmental mechanisms. Here, we instead use development as a starting point, and represent it in a way that allows genetic, environmental and epigenetic sources of phenotypic variation to be independent. We show why this representation helps to understand the evolutionary consequences of both genetic and non-genetic phenotype determinants, and discuss how this approach can instigate future areas of empirical and theoretical research.

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“…331–333; our translation). In this perspective, development is “a highly constructive process, where a given aspect of phenotype formation builds upon a pre-existing phenotype created during previous stages of development” [ 26 ] (p. 7); see also [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. In other terms, development goes on, so far as each phase is compatible with the preceding one, whereas the adultocentric view of development requires that each phase is compatible with the following.…”

Section: Developmental Patterns Vs Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially and Temporally Distributed Complexity—A Refreshed Framework for the Study of GRN Evolution

Minelli

Valero‐Gracia

2022

Cells

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Irrespective of the heuristic value of interpretations of developmental processes in terms of gene regulatory networks (GRNs), larger-angle views often suffer from: (i) an inadequate understanding of the relationship between genotype and phenotype; (ii) a predominantly zoocentric vision; and (iii) overconfidence in a putatively hierarchical organization of animal body plans. Here, we constructively criticize these assumptions. First, developmental biology is pervaded by adultocentrism, but development is not necessarily egg to adult. Second, during development, many unicells undergo transcriptomic profile transitions that are comparable to those recorded in pluricellular organisms; thus, their study should not be neglected from the GRN perspective. Third, the putatively hierarchical nature of the animal body is mirrored in the GRN logic, but in relating genotype to phenotype, independent assessments of the dynamics of the regulatory machinery and the animal’s architecture are required, better served by a combinatorial than by a hierarchical approach. The trade-offs between spatial and temporal aspects of regulation, as well as their evolutionary consequences, are also discussed. Multicellularity may derive from a unicell’s sequential phenotypes turned into different but coexisting, spatially arranged cell types. In turn, polyphenism may have been a crucial mechanism involved in the origin of complex life cycles.

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Bridging the explanatory gaps: What can we learn from a biological agency perspective?

Cited by 57 publications

References 152 publications

Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments

Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments

Beyond genotype‐phenotype maps: Toward a phenotype‐centered perspective on evolution

Spatially and Temporally Distributed Complexity—A Refreshed Framework for the Study of GRN Evolution

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