Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share BI 150 Dan Nicholson: Machines, Organisms, Processes
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
BI 150 Dan Nicholson: Machines, Organisms, Processes
Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community.
Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience
Dan Nicholson is a philosopher at George Mason University. He incorporates the history of science and philosophy into modern analyses of our conceptions of processes related to life and organisms. He is also interested in re-orienting our conception of the universe as made fundamentally of things/substances, and replacing it with the idea the universe is made fundamentally of processes (process philosophy). In this episode, we both of those subjects, the why the "machine conception of the organism" is incorrect, how to apply these ideas to topics like neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and much more.
- Dan's website. Google Scholar.
- Twitter: @NicholsonHPBio
- Book
- Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology.
- Related papers
- Is the Cell Really a Machine?
- The Machine Conception of the Organism in Development and Evolution: A Critical Analysis.
- On Being the Right Size, Revisited: The Problem with Engineering Metaphors in Molecular Biology.
- Related episode: BI 118 Johannes Jäger: Beyond Networks.
0:00 - Intro
2:49 - Philosophy and science
16:37 - Role of history
23:28 - What Is Life? And interaction with James Watson
38:37 - Arguments against the machine conception of organisms
49:08 - Organisms as streams (processes)
57:52 - Process philosophy
1:08:59 - Alfred North Whitehead
1:12:45 - Process and consciousness
1:22:16 - Artificial intelligence and process
1:31:47 - Language and symbols and processes
View all episodes
By Paul Middlebrooks
4.8
134134 ratings
Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community.
Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience
Dan Nicholson is a philosopher at George Mason University. He incorporates the history of science and philosophy into modern analyses of our conceptions of processes related to life and organisms. He is also interested in re-orienting our conception of the universe as made fundamentally of things/substances, and replacing it with the idea the universe is made fundamentally of processes (process philosophy). In this episode, we both of those subjects, the why the "machine conception of the organism" is incorrect, how to apply these ideas to topics like neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and much more.
- Dan's website. Google Scholar.
- Twitter: @NicholsonHPBio
- Book
- Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology.
- Related papers
- Is the Cell Really a Machine?
- The Machine Conception of the Organism in Development and Evolution: A Critical Analysis.
- On Being the Right Size, Revisited: The Problem with Engineering Metaphors in Molecular Biology.
- Related episode: BI 118 Johannes Jäger: Beyond Networks.
0:00 - Intro
2:49 - Philosophy and science
16:37 - Role of history
23:28 - What Is Life? And interaction with James Watson
38:37 - Arguments against the machine conception of organisms
49:08 - Organisms as streams (processes)
57:52 - Process philosophy
1:08:59 - Alfred North Whitehead
1:12:45 - Process and consciousness
1:22:16 - Artificial intelligence and process
1:31:47 - Language and symbols and processes
More shows like Brain Inspired
View all
Very Bad Wizards
2,680 Listeners
Making Sense with Sam Harris
26,380 Listeners
Conversations with Tyler
2,461 Listeners
The Quanta Podcast
544 Listeners
Closer To Truth
246 Listeners
The Michael Shermer Show
941 Listeners
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
4,167 Listeners
The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss
506 Listeners
Google DeepMind: The Podcast
203 Listeners
Last Week in AI
313 Listeners
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
101 Listeners
Dwarkesh Podcast
551 Listeners
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
18 Listeners
Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
137 Listeners
Robinson's Podcast
270 Listeners