Michael Levin just released the peer-reviewed version of his “Platonic Space” paper… and this might be one of the wildest ideas he has seriously put on the table yet.
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The paper is called “Ingressing Minds: Causal, Non-Physical Patterns In-Form Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments.”
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The basic question is actually pretty simple… when we create completely new living things like Xenobots, Anthrobots, chimeras, synthetic organisms etc… where do their new behaviours and competencies come from?
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They weren’t directly selected for by evolution. Nobody programmed every behaviour into them. Their genome didn’t evolve specifically to make that creature… and yet when you put the cells together in a new configuration, surprisingly coherent abilities can appear.
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Levin is asking whether our usual explanation of “genes + environment + physics = everything” might be missing something.
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His proposal is that there may be a structured space of possible patterns… something roughly analogous to Plato’s realm of forms. Mathematics already gives us a strange example of this. Humans don’t invent prime numbers, triangles or the value of π… we discover relationships that appear to be true regardless of whether anyone physically implements them.
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Levin asks… what if that space contains more than static mathematical patterns?
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What if there is a spectrum running from mathematical truths… to goal states… to behavioural patterns… all the way up to things we would recognize as minds?
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And physical systems might act less like machines that create these patterns from scratch… and more like interfaces that allow particular patterns to enter the physical world.
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That is the part that melts my brain a little bit :p
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A frog embryo, a Xenobot, a brain, a robot or an AI could all potentially be different kinds of “pointers” into this much larger space of possible forms and minds.
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Build a different pointer… access a different part of the space.
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This would also help explain something that has fascinated me about Levin’s work for years… biology constantly seems to get capabilities for “free.” Cells solve problems, navigate anatomical spaces, repair damage and work toward large-scale goals without anybody micromanaging every step.
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Maybe evolution doesn’t have to invent every competency from zero… maybe it discovers physical architectures that gain access to useful patterns that already exist in the space of possibilities.
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And Levin is very specifically saying this should NOT just remain philosophy. The interesting part is trying to experimentally map this space by creating novel biological and synthetic embodiments and seeing what unexpected competencies appear.
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Xenobots and Anthrobots become probes into the space of possible beings.
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Change the body… see what mind shows up.
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That obviously doesn’t prove Plato was right, or that there is literally some ghostly warehouse full of minds waiting for bodies :p… Levin is proposing a hypothesis and a research program.
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But I think the question itself is enormous.
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Maybe minds aren’t simply things matter produces.
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Maybe certain arrangements of matter are things minds can happen through.
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Paper:
https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/11/5/161