Liquid brains and mapping the cognitive space
Brains are costly, so why did brains develop? Is intelligence a universal property of living matter? Is human intelligence singular? Can we evolve other kinds of minds using artificial life models?
We live on a planet filled with life, where very diverse intelligences have emerged, from cells and ants to octopi and humans. With such diversity comes a wide range of brains and minds that living systems use to explore and sense their worlds. Moreover, cognition takes place in nature in two major classes of architecture, which we can roughly classify as "solid" (the standard, synaptic connectivity picture) versus those that are performed by "liquid" networks, such as the immune system or ant colonies. Why is that? This talk explores what constitutes a “brain”, how complex brains evolved, what differences and commonalities span living brains, and how we might build a space for possible new minds, from synthetic biology to artificial intelligence.
This event is an initiative by the Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena (DIEP) with the support of the University of Amsterdam. Science & Cocktails Amsterdam is presented in cooperation with Paradiso Amsterdam.
Talk by
Ricard Solé
Ricard Solé is a research professor at ICREA (the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies), currently working at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra as Head of the Complex Systems Lab. Sole completed degrees in both Physics and Biology at the University of Barcelona and received his PhD in Physics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Sole is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (USA). Ricard Sole has been awarded amongst others by the James McDonnell Foundation and received Advanced ERC grants.His research focuses on understanding complex systems' evolutionary origins using mathematical models and experimental approaches based on synthetic biology. He has proposed the concept of Synthetic Major Transitions as a unifying framework to explore the origins of innovation in evolution using a parallel approach, namely our potential for building or simulating synthetic systems that can recreate past evolutionary events. This includes a complex systems view of the origin of protocells, multicellular systems, cognition, and language. Sole proposed a novel field of research ("liquid brains") to undergo a search in the space of the possible cognitive networks, from standard brains to "liquid" ones (like ant colonies, slime molds, or the immune system), including plants and artificial swarms. Finally, Sole is also pushing forward a research initiative of terraformation of endangered ecosystems as a potential scenario for preventing tipping points in a future warming planet.
