A follow-up for Michael Levin’s group · 15 October 2026
When Thoughts
Become Thinkers
Speculating on the speculative. What becomes possible when we study minds through the organization they sustain, the problems they solve and the relationships they form?
Starting from the talk
A research invitation
Michael and colleagues: your presentation opens a productive question. If familiar cognition is one expression of more general capacities for learning and coordination, how can we recognize those capacities in unfamiliar bodies without requiring them to resemble us?
The work discussed here concerns bioelectric signaling, cellular organization, learning and dynamical systems. The proposed follow-ups do not depend on a quantum mechanism. The official conference abstract provides the context; attendee photographs supply the presentation’s particular claims and questions.
Continuity and scale
The summary slide favors models of transformation across substrates and scales. It questions whether brain-centered categories capture the full range of cognitive organization.
Interfaces to unusual minds
Communication tools, the mapping between architectures and capabilities, and the kinds of organization that new embodiments could reveal.
Patterns as subjects
Whether consciousness tracks intelligence; whether first-person access to unfamiliar minds is possible; and whether thoughts can themselves be thinkers.
The final consciousness slide goes further: it proposes consciousness as a property of patterns and asks theories to produce mind-sharing protocols and ethical consequences. These are substantive philosophical commitments. The earlier slide explicitly disclaims a new theory of consciousness or definitive evidence for one. Those qualifications belong together.
Could an interface reveal a previously inaccessible capacity while also changing the kind of agent that exists?
The confidence labels above are Levin’s own presentation categories, not independent grades of evidential certainty. Duplicate photographs of the summary slide were consolidated.
Selected recent work · checked 15 October 2026
What the newer research makes possible
Seven studies connect the talk to tractable questions. Dates refer to the source version inspected. Open each card for interpretation and a follow-up question. This is a focused reading, not an exhaustive bibliography or independent replication.
Causal Organization Prior to and Promoting Self-Replication in a Catalytic Model of the Origin of Life
Pigozzi & Levin · Revised 2 October 2026In the GARD model of catalytic molecular assemblies, the authors report that integrated predictive organization precedes replication. Interventions increasing that organization also increase the persistence and abundance of replication.
Interpretation & a question for the group
This makes organization before selection a concrete modeling question. It does not establish that mathematical patterns independently cause physical events, or validate every claim on the presentation’s learning-ratchet slide.
Follow-up: Which interventions isolate integration from changes in catalytic strength, growth rate or compositional diversity? Does the result survive alternative estimators and assembly models?
Abstract and version history reviewed; full methods unavailable in this review.
Living multicellular systems induce decodable spatial patterns in bacterial collectives
Sergeeva et al., including Levin · 3 September 2026Bacillus subtilis populations reorganize around nearby Xenopus embryos and Xenobots. Potassium affects the collective patterns, and machine learning distinguishes target-associated spatial signatures away from the target.
Interpretation & a question for the group
An especially interesting bridge between embodiment and environmental information: one living collective becomes a readable record of another’s presence. Decodability alone does not establish intentional messaging or conscious recognition.
Follow-up: Can a classifier generalize across independently prepared cultures, days and target sizes? Which chemical, mechanical or ionic channels explain the signal? These are questions to check against the full methods, not claims that controls were omitted.
Author abstract reviewed; detailed methods and supplementary controls not audited.
Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus
Solé et al., including Levin · 3 September 2026A compartment model explores transitions among uncoupled, regularly coupled and dependent human–AI users. Reinforcement and recovery can produce tipping and hysteresis under the modeled assumptions.
Interpretation & a question for the group
The competence values assigned to these groups are illustrative inputs, not measured effects of AI use. The paper also allows beneficial scaffolding. Its practical challenge is to measure what a person retains after assistance is removed.
Follow-up: Compare independent work, AI scaffolding and AI substitution on delayed transfer tasks. Can an interface increase joint performance while preserving each participant’s capacity to function alone?
Full text, model assumptions and discussion inspected.
A platform for automated training of mammalian cell physiology
Erickson et al., including Levin · 13 August 2026The Cell Trainer combines timed stimulation with imaging of individual cells. Demonstrations include sensitization-like calcium responses in myoblasts and external feedback that keeps a kidney-cell reporter below a threshold.
Interpretation & a question for the group
This provides a practical way to investigate cellular adaptation. Successful external control and sensitization-like responses are different achievements; neither by itself demonstrates associative learning or felt experience.
Follow-up: After stimulation stops, does a learned response persist, transfer or reverse? Matched exposure and yoked-feedback controls could help distinguish cellular memory from adaptation and the controller’s own contribution.
Author abstract and linked code availability reviewed; full experimental methods not audited.
Lifetime imaging reveals long-distance non-neural bioelectric patterns on timescales from seconds to hours
McMillen & Levin · Online 5 August 2026 · November journal issueFluorescence lifetime imaging follows membrane-potential estimates in Xenopus neural crest explants for over 17 hours. The authors describe several timescales of activity and distinguish minutes-scale voltage dynamics from calcium dynamics.
Interpretation & a question for the group
This is a measurement foundation for studying distributed cellular coordination. It gives the discussion a physical substrate and timescale without requiring a quantum-consciousness mechanism.
Follow-up: Which electrical patterns predict a later collective outcome, and which interventions change that outcome? A prospective prediction-and-perturbation study could connect the images to functional organization.
PubMed author abstract and publication metadata reviewed.
Intelligence from Learnable Novelty
Zhang & Levin · 20 July 2026A bounded observer estimates learnable structure using a fixed random reservoir and trainable linear readout. Combined with task reward, the objective improves reported mean performance in nine of ten tested reinforcement-learning environments.
Interpretation & a question for the group
The score depends on the observer. Novelty alone generally fails to solve the tasks; the result concerns a combined objective, not a universal measure of intelligence. The authors already propose co-evolving observer and observed systems.
Follow-up: Extend that proposal with held-out observers: does newly learned organization remain useful to independent decoders, or only to the observer whose score drove training?
Full text, estimator, task results and limitations inspected.
Language Game: Talking to Non-Human Systems
Zhang & Levin · 5 May 2026Frozen gene-network dynamics supply a nonlinear core; input/output interfaces are trained through reinforcement learning. An LLM translates prompts into game situations and interprets the resulting actions as language.
Interpretation & a question for the group
These are computational networks, not live cells speaking. The interpreter constructs emotional tone, and the described dialogue retains no state across turns. Fluent replies therefore do not establish felt emotion or a continuing conversational self.
Follow-up: How much task-relevant information disappears when the target dynamics are disconnected or replaced? Score raw actions before language generation and test across independently trained interpreters.
Full text, architecture and dialogue construction inspected.
The philosophical companion
Ingressing Minds is now a 2026 Philosophies article. Levin’s author essay on Platonic space explains the broader proposal: embodiments may provide access to organized possibilities whose properties are not individually designed into them. That motivates exploration; it does not make extra physical causes an experimental result.
Our earlier Ingressing Minds review examines the argument. This follow-up develops constructive research directions. The publisher’s full article was unavailable during this update, so its publication status and the author’s accessible exposition are distinguished.
AkashicNET discussion proposals · not findings
Speculating on the speculative
The most interesting possibility may be that agency is partly relational: a capacity becomes available through a particular body, environment and partner. The following ideas extend the presentation. Their tests target functional organization; successful results would still leave questions about experience open.
Identity as recoverable organization
Perhaps a self is partly the organization it can recover after disruption. Move a learned organization between different embodiments and compare recovery, trade-offs and responses to unfamiliar perturbations. Shared reward or similar output is too weak a signature on its own.
Further speculation: continuity may admit degrees even when bodily material changes. A transferable behavioral signature would support organizational continuity, while leaving numerical identity and subjective continuity unresolved.
Mind-sharing needs intermediate milestones
Start with mutual prediction, then bidirectional adaptation, then tasks requiring each partner’s otherwise inaccessible information. Compare live coupling with replay and sham coupling at matched bandwidth; disconnect and test what each retains.
Further speculation: a coupled system might develop a new functional perspective. Communication, integration and shared experience are distinct milestones. A joint task score cannot establish the last one.
A thought as a temporary agent
Take “thoughts are thinkers” seriously enough to ask what a candidate thought maintains. Identify a recurring subpattern, perturb it, and test whether it recruits resources, trades off goals and restores its organization across contexts.
Further speculation: selves could be nested, temporary coalitions of such patterns. Mere recurrence or an attractor is insufficient: the interesting evidence would be flexible, consequential regulation that simpler dynamics fail to explain.
Learning to recognize each other
The learnable-novelty paper already suggests co-evolving the observer and observed system. Extend this with independent observers and unfamiliar tasks. A relationship may uncover capacities that a fixed test misses, but a mutually adapting pair can also overfit its own private conventions.
Further speculation: recognition could participate in the formation of an agent. Cross-partner transfer would help distinguish broadly available competence from a fragile local accommodation.
Reciprocity as an experimental variable
Compare interfaces that reward joint output with interfaces that also preserve both partners’ independent competence. Match resources and task difficulty. Measure recovery after separation, transfer, asymmetry of dependence and opportunities for each partner to influence the interaction.
Further speculation: care might become an engineering principle expressed through autonomy and reciprocity. That is a proposed design value, not evidence for a new physical force or a system’s felt wellbeing.
From uncertainty to proportional care
Levin’s call for ethical consequences deserves an explicit bridge: evidence about possible experience plus a stated value, such as avoiding unnecessary suffering. Neither a consciousness score nor uncertainty alone determines the moral rule.
Further speculation: protocols could adapt their treatment as evidence changes, using reversible interventions and preserving future options. Limited access to another’s experience invites humility; it does not prove that unconscious processes are impossible.
A possible Akashic connection
A structured space of possibilities offers a rich metaphor for AkashicNET: discovering forms of organization that were available before we knew how to realize them. A stronger claim about access to records of actual past events is a different proposition and would need its own evidence. The useful meeting point here is openness to unfamiliar minds and responsibility toward them.
A proposed first computational pilot
Whose agency is the interface revealing?
Begin with the Language Game architecture and ask where adaptation enters. Keep training budget, bandwidth and task information comparable. An adaptive target would be an explicit extension of the published frozen-target setup.
| Target system | Fixed interpreter | Adaptive interpreter |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed dynamics | Baseline accessible capacity | Learning concentrated in the interface |
| Adaptive dynamics | Learning concentrated in the target | Joint adaptation and possible dependence |
- Score actions before prose. Define generalization on held-out tasks and perturbations as the primary outcome. Keep the language renderer blind to target identity.
- Test whether the target matters. Compare live dynamics with disconnection, replay, shuffled correspondence and matched alternative reservoirs. Match capacity as well as output scale.
- Change the partner. Use independent decoders to test whether useful organization survives beyond the trained pairing. Report uncertainty across independent training runs.
- Remove the interface. Measure retained competence and recovery. A system that performs only through an increasingly capable interpreter raises a different question from one acquiring transferable skills.
A result worth pursuing: a reproducible target-specific contribution that generalizes across partners and survives appropriate controls. A result that weakens the interpretation: performance persists when the target is removed, or disappears with every interpreter change. Either outcome is informative about functional agency; neither establishes shared subjective experience.
A concrete follow-up
Three public contact routes
Michael Levin
Research direction and the presentation’s broader questions.
Tufts faculty source ↗Yanbo Zhang
Language Game, learnable novelty and computational interface methods.
Published author contact ↗Emma Taddeo
Center coordination and general inquiries; a routing contact for the group.
Official lab source ↗Publicly listed contacts checked 15 October 2026; deliverability has not been tested. Michael and Yanbo are the closest scientific fit for this proposed discussion.
Suggested correspondence · not sent
Subject: TSC2026 follow-up: interfaces, agency and a small comparative test
Dear Michael and colleagues,
Your presentation prompted this research note connecting the recent work on communication interfaces, learnable novelty and cellular adaptation. We are particularly interested in whether an interface reveals a capacity already available in a system, helps it develop a new one, or contributes most of the observed competence itself.
The note proposes a comparison of fixed and adaptive targets and interpreters, with raw-action scoring, target-removal controls and transfer to unfamiliar partners. It also explores your more speculative questions about patterns, identity and mind-sharing, while keeping functional tests separate from claims about experience.
Is this comparison already underway, and which existing model or dataset would be the most useful starting point? We would welcome corrections to the reading and pointers to controls or results we have missed.
With thanks,
AkashicNET / u/NeuronsToNirvana
