Michael Levin talk for the Mind, Technology, and Society (MTS) talk series at UC Merced on January 23, 2023. Abstract: Each of us makes the remarkable journey from the physics and chemistry of a quiescent
unfertilized egg to that of a complex human being. How can we understand the continuous
processes that scale up minds from the tiny physiological competencies of single cells to the large-scale
metacognitive capacities of large brains? Here, I will describe a framework known as TAME -
Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere - which enables identifying, understanding, and
relating to unconventional cognitive agents. I will use the example of the collective intelligence of
cells during morphogenesis to illustrate how we can begin to widen the lessons of multiscale
neuroscience well beyond neurons. This will be essential as we head into a future that will be
populated by a wide range of evolved, designed, and hybrid beings with novel bodies and novel
minds. I will conclude with a case study of our new synthetic biorobot (Xenobots) and a discussion
of the implications of these ideas for evolution, biomedicine, and ethics.