Symposium on the Platonic Space (2025)

“Platonic Space” refers to a structured, non-physical space of patterns — the properties of mathematical objects, and perhaps higher-agency patterns we detect as anatomy, physiology, and behavior across the biosphere. The contents of this space may in-form events in our physical world: constraining physics and enabling biology. The first interdisciplinary symposium on the topic uses Plato and Pythagoras as a springboard — not a doctrine — to go beyond “emergence” and ask how the latent space of possibilities gets explored.

Organized by Michael Levin & Hananel Hazan as an asynchronous interdisciplinary event across Fall 2025 — spanning philosophy, biology, physics, computer science, and mathematics.

Seminar summaries

Michael Levin — Platonic Space and Biology: understanding evolved, engineered, and hybrid embodied minds

Michael Levin (Tufts University) on “Platonic Space and Biology: understanding evolved, engineered, and hybrid embodied minds” — a flagship talk in the Symposium on the Platonic Space. Themes: Bioelectricity as a navigation system toward target morphologies; Evolved, engineered, and hybrid minds on one continuum; A latent space of anatomical forms as an attractor landscape.

Concepts covered: Latent Platonic Space, Cognitive Light Cone, Attractor / Attractor Landscape, Multiscale Competency Architecture (MCA), TAME (Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere).

Karl Friston — On the (Platonic) Nature of Things

Karl Friston (University College London) on “On the (Platonic) Nature of Things” — a flagship talk in the Symposium on the Platonic Space. Themes: Active inference and the free energy principle; The Markov blanket as the boundary that defines an agent; Generative-model priors as formal, attracting patterns.

Concepts covered: Active Inference, Boundary / Markov Blanket, Latent Platonic Space, Virtual Governor.

Denis Noble — Mathematics justifies the Metaphysics in Biology

Denis Noble (Oxford University) on “Mathematics justifies the Metaphysics in Biology” — a flagship talk in the Symposium on the Platonic Space. Themes: Biological relativity — no privileged level of causation; Downward causation and multi-level systems; Mathematics as a source of metaphysical commitments.

Concepts covered: Biological Relativity, Formal Causality, Multiscale Competency Architecture (MCA).

Iain McGilchrist — Spherical Causation

Iain McGilchrist (All Souls College, Oxford) on “Spherical Causation” — a flagship talk in the Symposium on the Platonic Space. Themes: Causation as radiating in all directions, not linear chains; Wholes and contexts constraining their parts; Hemispheric modes of attention shaping what we can see.

Concepts covered: Spherical Causation, Formal Causality.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas — Computational Symbiogenesis

Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Google Research) on “Computational Symbiogenesis” — a flagship talk in the Symposium on the Platonic Space. Themes: Functions a learner converges on as substrate-independent forms; Representational convergence across different AI systems; The arc from computation to agency and life.

Concepts covered: Latent Platonic Space, Platonic Representation Hypothesis, Computation, Polycomputation.