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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
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