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Agency

Since the extrusion of teleological explanation from the physical sciences, biology has wrestled with developing an account of living systems that avoids vitalistic mysticism or explanatory obscurantism, while recognizing rather than dismissing the distinctive agentive properties of organisms that perform metabolic work to attain far from equilibrium conditions. Specifically, living organisms sustain structural and operational conditions entailing targeted disequilibrium that is robust and resilient in the face of perturbation. The purpose of this research track is to solicit projects for development of novel theoretical approaches and acquisition of data and that explore the origin, operation, interactions, and/or impacts of goal-directedness at one or more levels of scale. Potential Questions

Species of directional orientation

• Relatively robust, directionally oriented processes in biological organisms range from those that do not appear actively regulated but are constrained by biased possibility space (e.g., probabilities of protein-folding and genotype-phenotype map, Hendersonian notions of environmental fitness, energetics of allometric scaling and life history strategy); cybernetic, negative feedback systems that actively regulate toward target states; positive feedback, self-amplifying, or autocatalytic processes; directionally or homeostatically robust processes without discrete sensors and effectors that emerge relationally (e.g., thermal regulation in social insects). Is there a continuum of regulative agency or a helpful descriptive and explanatory taxonomy of different kinds of directional orientation? Are there sequential patterns in their evolutionary emergence? Are some of these processes emergent, or are there adequate mechanistic accounts at various levels of reductive causal explanation appropriate to different manifestations of target-oriented behavior?

Scale of purposive capacities

• Goal oriented processes vary with respect to (a) temporal scale (reflexes, embryological development, life-history trajectory, successional regularities), (b) spatial scale (cellular, whole-organism, symbiotic or mutualistic association, social group, possibly ecosystem) and (c) hierarchical scale (local autoregulation, integrated, multi-system, whole-organism processes). Are there generalizable differences and commonalities in operation and origin? Are there serial or nested accounts for their evolutionary emergence?

Niche construction and organismic agency

• Organisms are not merely passively sculpted by selection to fit the external environment, but their agentic capacities actively modify the selectional landscape. Niche construction, or heritable modifications of the environment like nest-building, can influence concomitant evolution of physiology; conversely, physiological adaptation, like endothermy, can influence selection on capacities for habitat modification. How do niche construction and internal modes of biotic agency influence evolution and interact with each other? Do various forms of niche construction influence evolution in different ways? Moreover, the goal-directed behaviors or metabolism of organisms impact the environment in ways that are not random, but the impacts themselves range from unregulated by-products like soil acidification to controlled manipulations like nest-building. Are there generalizable differences or commonalities in the extent, direction, or causal influence of different kinds of agency on evolution of the organism of those it influences?

Evolution, agency, and extra-genetic inheritance

• Organismic agency can influence epigenetic inheritance, generates “ecological inheritance” in niche construction, and facilitates inter-generational learning. In what ways do these processes influence the direction of evolution or the further elaboration of the capacities themselves? Moreover, there are differentials in “heritability” or inter-generational continuity in various organismic modifications of the environment and in other agentive, extra-genetic modes of inheritance. How do these modes of inheritance, and their differential heritability, contribute to the range of phenotypic options or the landscape of selection in ways that influence evolutionary directionality? Are they related to directional trends through lineages and/or convergent trends across lineages?

Major Evolutionary Transitions

• In what ways, if at all, can the major evolutionary transitions or evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETI’s) be viewed as stepwise transitions in the scale or efficacy of biotic agency? What is the relationship between the internal operation of agency and/or the impact of goal-directed processes on the environment at one level of transition, and consequent facilitation of serial transitions?

Agency and Major Evolutionary Trends

• To whatever extent there are large scale trends, active or passive, what is their relationship to organismic agency? Even if evolution represents passive diffusion into possibility space, organismic agency itself modifies both the relief and the boundaries that space and also the range of functional operations that are heritable. Several questions warrant further exploration. In what ways and to what extent might biotic agency influence major evolutionary trends? Is there an evolutionary trend in agentic capacity itself, in terms of either capacities for regulated control of internal or external environment, or hierarchical stratification of control mechanisms, or capacities for “exploratory” in addition to “regulatory” purposive behavior? Finally, to what extent and in what ways might answers to the first two questions interact: Is there a synergistic or ratchet effect?

Instructions

Compelling responses to this research track will prioritize clear, bold and actionable projects. While there is ongoing discussion about what constitutes goal-directedness, autonomy, agency, or “purpose,” this research track does not seek conceptual differentiation between existing, or proposals for new, definitive construals of these phenomena. The aim, given any plausible and clearly specified conception, is to explore novel and empirically assessible accounts of their operation, interaction, and/or evolutionary impact. Some potential respondents may believe that their previous work has already addressed one or more of the overlapping questions posed above. Such individuals are encouraged to apply, providing they propose what could be done to increase traction of existing work and/or what new steps of inquiry are promising extensions of their work. Successful outcomes will not only fuel increased insight, but garner sufficient attention to change the status quo of thinking on these frontiers.

Commonalities

The body of a pregnant mother mammal changes in ways that promote successful birthing, including preparation of the placenta, an increase in the elasticity of ligaments, increased blood volume, weight gain, milk production, and more. This suite of changes can be thought of as directed toward the goal of a healthy birth. That is, the system is goal directed in a causal, dynamical sense, tending to converge on a particular outcome despite perturbations and variations in initial conditions. This property of convergence was central in 20th century philosophical discussions of goal directedness.

Such goal-directed convergence occurs in least seven categories of system:

• Embryological: e.g., development of cells, tissues, whole organisms
• Physiological: internal regulation in organisms, e.g., homeostasis
• Behavioral: tropisms and taxes, e.g., bacteria swimming up gradients, photosynthetic algae moving toward light
• Evolutionary: lineages moving toward adaptive peaks driven by natural selection
• Motivated psychological states, e.g., wanting, preferring, seeking, intending in humans and other animals
• Technological: goal-directed machines, e.g., thermostats, homing torpedoes, certain artificial intelligence systems
• Physical (non-biological): various attractor-driven, far-from-equilibrium systems, e.g., hurricanes and certain chemical systems

Convergent behavior can look quite magical. A goal-directed system seems drawn toward a state that does not yet exist – the magic of future causation. This research track asks if there is a shared structure, dynamic, or set of principles that operates in many or all of these systems. What is going on behind the magician’s curtain? How is the trick done? Potential Questions

Commonalities among systems

• What are the commonalities among the seven? Do subsets – pairs such as embryological and psychological goal directedness or triplets such as behavioral, technological, and evolutionary goal directedness – share a common structure or dynamics? Can they be explained by some single model or shared theoretical framework? More boldly, does a common structure or dynamics underlie all seven? Is a general theory of goal directedness possible? Or, can it be shown that no unity or no general theory is possible? What sort of data might be needed to answer these questions?

Commonalities across temporal, spatial, and hierarchical scales

• Goal-directed processes occur at a variety of temporal scales, in living systems ranging from reflexes to embryological development, to life-history trajectories and ecological succession. Goal directedness also occurs at various spatial and hierarchical scales, ranging from molecules to single cells, to whole multicellular organisms, to mutualistic associations, social groups, and perhaps populations and ecosystems. For example, in development, gene and protein networks exhibit attractors that enable them to pursue goals, returning to their original patterns of interaction following perturbations. And at a larger scale, in regulative development and regeneration, cells and tissues move, proliferate, differentiate, and remodel to achieve a consistent target morphology despite injury and environmental changes. Certain artifacts and evolutionary processes may also be goal-directed at more than one scale. Does goal directedness work differently at different scales? Are there explainable regularities in the way the processes governing goal directedness change across scales? Is a general theory possible?

A “Turing test” for goal directedness, applicable to multiple systems

• Some systems respond reflexively, automatically, robotically, stereotypically. Consider the knee-jerk reflex. Goal-directed systems respond more flexibly. A homing torpedo responds to changes in the position of the target ship. Is there some way to empirically distinguish purely reflexive behavior from goal-directed behavior in some or all of the seven categories of system? Or if goal-directedness is a matter of degree, varying continuously, is there a way to measure the degree of goal-directedness in a system?And then, more narrowly, within goal-directed systems, is there some way to distinguish behaviors that are guided by a fixed program from those that are motivated? A moth circling toward a light adjusts to changes in the location of the light, but appears to do so by following a fixed set of rules, a rigid program. In contrast, a cat stalking a mouse is motivated. The cat must choose her tactics, because the motivation specifies the goal – catching the mouse – but not the precise motor activity. Is there some way to empirically distinguish rigidly programmed goal-directed behavior from goal-directed behavior that is driven by wants, preferences, or intentions? Or is there some way to measure the degree to which goal-directed behavior is driven by wants, preferences, or intentions?

Exploratory versus controlled dynamics

• Goal directedness occurs in two modes. In the “controlled” mode, a single entity pursues an end state and then calms when it reaches that state. A dog shifts in her sleep to stay in the warmth of a ray of sun. A circulatory system compensates for a drop in blood pressure. In the “exploratory” mode, a population of entities explores alternatives. Immune systems and natural selection are goal directed in this way. In exploratory systems, individual entities constantly fail, but they succeed as an ensemble when surviving entities nearer the system’s goal thrive or multiply. In which mode do systems in each of the seven categories generally work? For what sorts of goals does each of the two modes of goal directedness work best? Do some systems use both? Do the two always work together, or do they sometimes work against each other?

Instructions

Applicants should be sure to explain how they understand the term goal directed, ideally in a way that makes it operational, or nearly so. Likewise for any other critical technical terms. This research track does not seek contributions to ongoing debates about how to define goal directedness. That is, the concern is not with finding necessary and sufficient conditions. Nor is it concerned with how goal-directed systems arise, about their origins, whether by natural selection or human design. Rather, it seeks projects for research addressing how goal directedness works in certain systems, how it works causally or mechanically. In the header for their submissions, applicants should be sure to identify which of the four topics they are addressing and which of the seven categories of system their project would unify.