Substrate Independence and the Whiteheadian Understanding of Mind: Learning from MIchael Levin

Suggestion: Mind is not restricted to neurons and brains. There is mind in tissues, bioelectric fields, coordinated cellular networks, and engineered systems, insofar as these systems exhibit genuine integration and purposive regulation. There is mind in microphysics, for example in the quantum events in the depths of atoms. And there is mind in the cosmos as a whole: namely and in the encompassing Mind in whom the universe unfolds. Inanimate objects are not inert. They are materializations of network like busts of mind-like energy. Rocks are self-expressions of these burst of energy. Mind is everywhere. The point is not that the universe emerges out of a preexisting mind that is more real than it. The point is that the universe consists of countless forms of mind that form its very essence. The universe consists of minds minding, all unique and all connected.

Substrate Independence and the Whiteheadian Understanding of Mind

1. Substrate Independence and Contemporary Biology

One of the most provocative contributions of contemporary biology to the philosophy of mind comes from Michael Levin’s claim that mind is substrate-independent. He is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University, an associate faculty member at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, and the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts.

Substrate independence does not mean that mind exists without embodiment, but rather that no single kind of material substrate—such as neurons or brains—is necessary for mind-like activity to occur. What matters instead are certain kinds of organization and dynamics: goal-directed behavior, flexible problem-solving, and the capacity to correct deviations from preferred states across changing conditions.

Levin’s work challenges the widespread assumption that cognition must be tied exclusively to nervous systems. Neural tissue is one possible substrate for mind, but so too may be bioelectric networks, cellular collectives, tissues, and—at least in principle--engineered systems, provided they exhibit the relevant regulatory and adaptive dynamics. Mind, on this view, is therefore multiply realizable, not substrate-free.

2. Resonances with Whiteheadian Process Philosophy

This idea resonates in important ways with the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, even though Whitehead employs a different conceptual vocabulary. Whiteheadian philosophers often describe themselves as pan-experientialists, meaning that all genuine actualities—at whatever scale—are occasions of experience. Such occasions are not passive bits of matter but concrescing subjects: they feel their worlds (prehensions), respond with qualitative tone (subjective forms), pursue aims, and make decisions by actualizing some possibilities while excluding others. Subjectivity and subjective immediacy, in this sense, are present wherever there is genuine actuality.

Crucially, this means that concrescing subjects possess at least rudimentary forms of cognition. In Whitehead’s terms, all actual occasions include conceptual prehensions—prehensions of possibilities or alternative ways of being definite—even when these are not conscious or reflective. To prehend possibilities is already to exhibit a minimal cognitive function: an openness to alternatives and a selective orientation among them. Cognition, at this most basic level, is not deliberation or representation, but the felt appraisal of what might be, in contrast to what is.

For Whiteheadians, this does not mean that all occasions of experience are conscious. Consciousness is a special and highly developed mode of experience, but it is not the only form. In Whitehead’s terms, conscious experience is marked by a distinctive clarity, contrast, and distinctness in subjective form—as when objects of visual perception are sharply discriminated or when intellectual objects (such as mathematical entities) are explicitly entertained. Much experience, even in human and other animal life, lacks this level of clarity, yet it still possesses subjective immediacy: a felt unity of experience from a particular perspective.

Nevertheless, aven where there is no conscious perception or reflection, there remains a concrescing subject that integrates physical and conceptual prehensions and chooses among alternative possibilities. In this act of selection—actualizing one possibility while excluding others—the subject exercises a genuine, if limited, form of self-creativity. Subjectivity, for Whiteheadians, is thus inherently cognitive, decisional, and creative, even when it is not conscious.

3. Concrescing Subjectivity in Quantum Events and God

In some ways, what Levin is proposing is something many Whiteheadian philosophers already accept. Whiteheadian philosophers already affirm—following Whitehead himself—that quantum events within the depths of atoms are concrescing subjects. Some hold that atoms and molecules are concrescing subjects; others that living cells are. Many locate especially rich forms of subjectivity in animal psyches, particularly in creatures with central nervous systems and brains, which function as their biological substrates.

At the cosmic level, many process philosophers also affirm that God is a concrescing subject, albeit one whose “substrate,” if that term applies at all, is non-biological and ultimately the universe itself. God’s concrescence is not episodic or neuron-based but cosmically encompassing, integrating the many experiences of the world into a unified, ever-developing divine life.

What Levin’s work contributes here is not a rejection of this Whiteheadian openness, but an invitation to think in still wider and more expansive terms.

4. Network-Based Cognition and Societies of Occasions

By demonstrating that mind-like properties can arise in distributed, non-neural, and collective systems, Levin encourages Whiteheadians to reconsider how broadly concrescing subjectivity—and cognition more generally—might be instantiated. His research suggests that subject-like organization may occur not only at familiar microphysical and biological levels, but also within tissues, bioelectric fields, coordinated cellular networks, and possibly engineered systems, insofar as these systems exhibit genuine integration and purposive regulation.

This raises an important question within Whitehead’s own framework: if networks can have mind-like properties, might what Whitehead calls societies or nexuses also exhibit cognition of some kind? Here it is helpful to speak of network-based cognition.

In a weaker sense, network-based cognition consists in the coordinated activity of many occasions—distributed, additive, and largely reducible to the interactions among its parts. In a stronger sense, network-based cognition arises when a network functions more like a living whole: receiving influences, integrating them, and initiating responses as a unit. In such cases, the network exhibits the semblance of a distinctive concrescing subject in its own right.

Whitehead’s notion of a dominant occasion of experience provides a way of articulating this stronger possibility. A dominant occasion does not replace or negate the subjectivity of its constituent occasions; rather, it coordinates them into a higher-order unity of response. From this perspective, network-based cognition ranges along a spectrum—from loosely coordinated multiplicities to integrated wholes capable of purposive action.

5. Five Contributions of Levin’s Approach to Process Philosophy

Taken together, Levin’s work makes five significant contributions to process philosophy in the Whiteheadian tradition.

Expanded Substrates of Mind
Mind is no longer restricted to nervous systems, neurons, or brains, but may be realized across a wide range of substrates, including bioelectric networks, cellular collectives, tissues, and potentially engineered systems.
Cognition Intrinsic to Subjectivity
Cognition is not limited to conscious thought or high-level intelligence; it is intrinsic to subjectivity itself. Wherever there are conceptual prehensions—that is, an awareness of alternative possibilities—there is a rudimentary form of cognition, even in non-conscious experience.
Network-Based Cognition
Networks of actual occasions may exhibit network-based cognition, ranging from distributed, additive forms of coordination to more integrated forms in which the network functions as a living whole, potentially coordinated by a dominant occasion of experience.
Reframing Artificial Intelligence
Levin’s approach opens Whiteheadians to the possibility that AI systems may display simulated or objective expressions of network-based cognition, without presuming consciousness, self-awareness, or moral personhood.
Degrees, Kinds, and Hierarchies of Mind
Minds differ not only in substrate and organization but also in degree, kind, and value-realization. From a Whiteheadian perspective, there may be a hierarchy of minds grounded in aesthetic achievement—intensity, harmony, and richness of experience—and in each mind’s contribution to the larger becoming of the world. Many in the Whitehead community already believe that God is the most completely alive form of subjectivity in the universe: a harmony of harmonies. It is possible that non-human forms of subjectivity, in addition to God, are likewise more alive than human beings.

6. Conclusion: An Expanded and Value-Laden Horizon of Mind

Seen in this light, Levin’s account of substrate-independent mind enriches a Whiteheadian understanding of mind, offering contemporary scientific insight into how mind-like activity and subject-like organization may emerge across multiple levels of reality. The universe may be populated by many kinds of minds and many kinds of subjects, arranged in overlapping hierarchies of value, realized through many kinds of material and organizational forms. Levin’s work can be seen as a contemporary bridge—linking biological research, philosophy of mind, and Whiteheadian process thought—and inviting us to imagine a world far richer in forms of cognition, degrees of mind, and modes of value-realization than modern habits of thought have typically allowed. Mind really is everywhere, and the challenge is to open our eyes so that we can see it.

Beyond Mechanism and Organicism:
The Spectrum of Diverse Intelligence

Michael Levin

Prof. Michael Levin Tufts University, USA

Michael Levin is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University, an associate faculty at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, and the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed publications across developmental biology, computer science, and philosophy of mind. His group works to understand information processing and problem-solving across scales, in a range of naturally evolved, synthetically engineered, and hybrid living systems. Dr. Levin’s work spans from fundamental conceptual frameworks to applications in birth defects, regeneration, and cancer.

"Beyond Mechanism and Organicism: The Spectrum of Diverse Intelligence"

I will use the lens of the field of diverse intelligence to sketch a vision of a spectrum of agency that encompasses the systems referred to as “machines” and “life”. I argue that organicists do not push far enough, giving in to reductive computationalism in accepting the existence of dead matter or machines that only do what their materials and algorithms dictate. Even minimal systems are not well encompassed by their algorithms any more than minds are fully encompassed by the domain of biochemistry. Both evolved and engineered systems serve as interfaces to rich, agential patterns of a Platonic space.

Mind Everywhere

An interview with Michael Levin

Preferences, decisions, goals. When you hear these words, you probably think of humans. Or, if not humans then maybe charismatic animals—you know, great apes, certain species of birds, maybe dogs. In any case, I bet you think of creatures that are more or less cognitively sophisticated. I know I do. But, according to some researchers, this is an outmoded and over-narrow way of thinking. They propose that decisions and goals—not to mention other fancy-seeming constructs like memory, problem-solving, and intelligence—can usefully be ascribed to an astonishingly large array of agents. Not just humans, not just animals, not even just organisms.

My guest on today’s episode is Dr. Michael Levin. He’s the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University; he directs the Allen Discovery Center and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. In recent years, Mike’s been developing a radical reconsideration of the nature of mind and intelligence. He argues that it’s not just humans and other smart creatures that traffic in all this classically cognitive stuff. It’s also cells, tissues, organs, colonial organisms, and much more. He sometimes summarizes his view as “cognition all the way down.”

Here we talk about how Mike came to this perspective. We discuss his empirical studies of bioelectricity, including some pretty astonishing experiments on planaria. We dig deep into two of the conceptual models he uses in talking about his “mind everywhere” framework: the “axis of persuadability” and the notion of the “cognitive light-cone”. And we talk about why Mike rejects the criticism that this is all mere anthropomorphism. In fact, he makes a compelling case that it’s time we retired that term altogether.

In the intro to Many Minds way back when, we talked about how the terrain of mind is vast. But as I’ve learned about the work of Mike and others, I’ve become convinced that the terrain of mind is actually vaster than I imagined then—maybe vastly vaster. I think you’ll like this one, folks. And even if you’re not convinced, there’s little doubt you’ll be provoked. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.