In 2016, Steve Gull has outlined has outlined a proof of Bell’s theorem using Fourier theory. Gull’s philosophy is that Bell’s theorem (or perhaps a key lemma in its proof) can be seen as a no-go theorem for a project in distributed computing with classical, not quantum, computers. We present his argument, correcting misprints and filling gaps. In his argument, there were two completely separated computers in the network. We need three in order to fill all the gaps in his proof: a third computer supplies a stream of random numbers to the two computers representing the two measurement stations in Bell’s work. One could also imagine that computer replaced by a cloned, virtual computer, generating the same pseudo-random numbers within each of Alice and Bob’s computers. Either way, we need an assumption of the presence of shared i.i.d. randomness in the form of a synchronised sequence of realisations of i.i.d. hidden variables underlying the otherwise deterministic physics of the sequence of trials. Gull’s proof then just needs a third step: rewriting an expectation as the expectation of a conditional expectation given the hidden variables. This paper is about a simple programming challenge—simple to state, that is. Can you set up two computers that will each separately receive a stream of angles and each output a stream of completely random plus or minus ones, such that the correlation between the outputs given the inputs is minus the cosine of the difference between the input angles? See . The ansThere are subtleties involved. What exactly is meant by “correlation”? Many experimenters proudly exhibited a negative cosine, but the amplitude of that curve is crucial. The question is: can classical computers generate a full amplitude negative cosine, where the “correlation” is the average of the product of the We give a complete probabilistic proof of this impossibility theorem using basic results from Fourier analysis. No knowledge of quantum mechanics is needed.Nature [The problem does come from a fundamental question in quantum physics, going back to the debates between Einstein and Bohr, the EPR paradox, and Bell’s 1964) theorem [964 theorNature . A surveNature .inequality as his “theorem”, though, from a purely mathematical point of view, it is an elementary application of Boole’s fundamental inequality from the 19th-century prehistory of probability theory. On the other hand, the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and local realism can be framed as a formal mathematical theorem. Then the Bell inequalities are just a useful lemma in proving an important result in the foundations of physics. Not a deep result either, but a result with many metaphysical ramifications. See also Gill (2021) [Gull 2016)  outlined  outlinel (2021) ,8.Citizendium.org article [relativistic local causality , counterfactual definiteness  and no-conspiracy (“freedom”) . By conventional quantum mechanics, we mean: quantum mechanics including the Born rule, but with a minimum of further interpretational baggage. Whether the physicist likes to think of probabilities in a Bayesian or in a frequentist sense is up to them. In Many Worlds interpretations (and some other approaches), the Born rule is argued to follow from the deterministic (unitary evolution) part of the theory. Nevertheless, everyone agrees that it is there.We would like to paraphrase what is now called Bell’s theorem as the metaphysical statement that quantum mechanics (QM) is incompatible with local realism (LR). More precisely, and following B. Tsirelson’s wonderful  article , Bell’s inequalities: first his  three correlations inequality [lemmas used in two alternative, conventional, proofs of the same theorem (the incompatibility of QM and LR). Actually, the original proof involves four correlations, too, since it also builds on perfect anti-correlation in the singlet correlations when equal settings are used. Moreover, reference [Bell himself sometimes used the phrase “my theorem” to refer to his is Bell, 964 threeequality . We woulis Bell, 964 threex, y, given pairs of binary settings a, b, in a Bell-CHSH-type experiment. No-signalling is the statement that Alice cannot see from her statistics what Bob is doing: with typical statisticians’ and physicists’ abuse of notation , b, and similarly, for Bob, a.The CHSH inequality is, indeed, a very simple result in elementary probability theory. It is a direct consequence of the Boole inequality stating that the probability of the disjunction  of several propositions is bounded by the sum of their individual probabilities. Something a whole lot stronger is Fine’s (1982) theorem , that thAn investigation of the laws of thought, on which are founded the mathematical theories of logic and probabilities”. See the end of Section 11 of Chapter XIX of [p, q and r of three events that must hold in order that a probability space exists on which those three events can be defined with precisely those three probabilities, given certain logical relations between those three events. In modern terminology let the events be X, Y and Z are three random variables. It is impossible that two of the events are true but the third is false. Boole derives the six linear inequalities involving p, q and r whose simultaneous validity is necessary and sufficient for such a probability space to exist. Boole’s proof uses the arithmetic of Boolean logic, taking expectations of elementary linear identities concerning indicator functions , just as Bell did.The following remarks form a digression into the prehistory of Bell inequalities. With quite some imagination, a version of Fine’s theorem can be recognised in Boole’s (1853) monumental work , namely r XIX of , where tA similar exploration of necessary and sufficient conditions for a probability space to exist, supporting a collection of probability assignments to various composite events, was given by Vorob’ev (1982) . Vorob’eHaving cleared up terminology and attribution, we continue towards the contribution of Gull to the story.N times. We will talk about a run of Ntrials. The settings are externally generated, perhaps by tossing coins or performing some other auxiliary experiment. The N trials of Alice and Bob are somehow synchronised; exactly how does not matter for the purposes of this paper, but in real experiments, the synchronisation is taken care of using clocks, and the spatial-temporal arrangement of the two labs is such that there is no way a signal carrying Alice’s nth setting, sent just before it is inserted into her device, could reach Bob’s lab before his device has generated its nth outcome, even if it were transmitted at the speed of light.In a Bell-CHSH type experiment, we have two locations or labs, in which two experimenters, Alice and Bob, can each input a binary setting to a device, which then generates a binary output. The setting corresponds to an intended choice of an angle, but only two angles are considered in each wing of the experiment. This is repeated, say directions (spin) or orientations (polarisation), usually in the plane but conceivably in three-dimensional space. Polarisation does not only have an orientation—horizontal or vertical with respect to any direction in the plane—but also a degree of ellipticity (anything from circular to linear), and it can be clockwise or anti-clockwise. Talking about spin: in the so-called singlet state of two maximally entangled spin-half quantum systems, one can conceivably measure each subsystem in any 3D direction whatsoever, and the resulting pair of In actual fact, these experiments involve measurements of the “spin” of “quantum spin-half particles” , or alternatively, measurements of the polarisation of photons in the plane opposite to their directions of travel. The two settings, both of Alice and Bob, correspond to what are intended to be two n (1935)  thought n (1935) .When translated to the polarization example, this joint probability distribution of two binary variables is often called Malus’ law. We will, however, stick to the spin-half example and call it “the singlet correlations”. Moreover, we will restrict attention to spin measured in directions in the plane. The archetypical example (though itself only a thought experiment) of such an experiment would involve two Stern–Gerlach devices and is a basic example in many quantum physics texts. Present day experiments use completely different physical systems. Nowadays, anyone can buy time on a quantum computer “in the cloud” and do the experiment themselves on an imperfect two-qubit quantum computer. One can perhaps also look forward to a future quantum internet, connecting two one-qubit quantum computers.a and b in the plane, such that each pair Gull’s theorem. We are interested here in a different way to prove it—very different from the usual proofs—based on the outline presented by Gull.Now, Bell was actually interested in what one nowadays calls (possibly “stochastic”) “local hidden variables theories” (LHV). According to such a theory, the statistics predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in experiments, are merely the reflection of a more classical underlying theory of an essentially deterministic and local nature. There might be local randomness, i.e., by definition, randomness inside the internal structure of individual particles, completely independent of the local randomness elsewhere. Think of “pseudo-random” processes going on inside particles. Think of modelling the whole of nature as a huge stochastic cellular automaton. Mathematically, one might characterise such theories as claiming the mathematical existence of a classical probability space on which are defined a large collection of random variables a and b from outside. Thus within the mathematical model for the outcome that Alice would theoretically see if she used the setting a, even if she actually used another, or even if the whole system was destroyed before the outcomes of the actually chosen settings were registered. There is no claim that these variables exist in reality, whatever that means. I am talking about the mathematical existence of a mathematical model with certain mathematical features. I am not entering a debate involving use of the concepts ontological and epistemological. This is not about the properties of the real physical world. It is about mathematical descriptions thereof; mathematical descriptions that could be adequate tools for predictions of statistics  and predictions of probabilities . If I write about the outcome that Alice would have observed, had, counter to actual fact, Bob’s measurement setting been different from what he actually chose, I use colourful, and hopefully helpful, language about mathematical variables in mathematical models or about variables in computer code in computer simulation programs.The underlying probability space is usually called nth trial, we see the outcomes corresponding to N outcomes of the hidden variable N constants defined in the preamble to the programs. More conveniently, if they were simulated by a pseudo random number generator (RNG), then we could write the constants used in the generator, and an initial seed, as just a few constants, and reproduce the RNG itself inside both programs. The programs are to be run on two computers thought of as belonging to Alice and Bob. The two programs are started. They both set up a dialogue (a loop). Initially, n is set to 1. Alice’s computer prints the message, “Alice, this is trial number In a sequence of trials, one would suppose that for each trial there is some kind of resetting of the apparatus so that at the nth trial, Alice submits the angle a, then the program on her computer evaluates and outputs n by one, and the dialogue is repeated. Alice’s computer doesn’t need Bob’s angle for this – this is where locality comes in! Bob’s does not need Alice’s.If, on her one computer program, then we could simulate the singlet correlations derived from one run of many trials on two completely separate computers, each running its own program, and each receiving its own stream of inputs (settings) and generating its own stream of outputs.We have argued that if we could implement a local hidden variables theory in stochastic local hidden variables theory, is just a pair of functions a and b are directions in the plane, together with a probability distribution over the third variable given the programs, the nth output of either computer depends only on n and on the nth input setting angle on that computer, not on the earlier input angles. If one reruns either program with an identical input stream, the output stream will be the same, too. In order to obtain different outputs, one would have to change the constants defined in the program. As we mentioned before, but want to emphasise again, we envisage that an identical stream of instances of the hidden variable To summarise: for us, a local hidden variables theory for the EPR-B “Gedanken experiment”, including what is often called a The previous discussion was quite lengthy but is needed to clear up questions about Gull’s assumptions. Actually, quite a lot of careful thought lies behind them.Gull’s theorem.Gull  posed thWe will go through Gull’s outline proof but will run into difficulty at the last step. However, it can easily be fixed. In Gull’s argument, there are, after some preparations, two completely separated computers running completely deterministically. We need three networked computers: a third computer supplies a stream of random numbers to the two computers, which represent the two measurement stations in Bell’s theorem. At the end of the day, one can imagine that computer replaced by a cloned, virtual computer, generating the same pseudo-random numbers within each of Alice and Bob’s computers. Gull’s proof then just needs a third step: writing a grand expectation over all randomness as the expectation of a conditional expectation, given the hidden variables.stackexchange discussion [A recently posted scussion ) also atGull’s theorem  can also be proven using a Bell theorem proof variant due to the first author of the present paper, designed specifically for fighting Bell deniers by challenging them to implement their theory as a networked computer experiment. The trick is to use externally created streams of random binary setting choices and derive martingale properties of a suitable game score, treating the physics implemented inside the computers as completely deterministic. Randomness resides only in the streams of settings used, trial by trial, in the experiment.In a final section, we will show how Gull’s theorem is true. Its mathematical formulation is open to several interpretations, needing different proofs, of course. A version certainly can be proven using Fourier theory, and Gull’s Fourier theoretic proof of this version is very pretty and original indeed.The message of this paper is that We have referred to the question of computer simulation of Bell experiments, and to Gull’s proof of Bell’s theorem, in recent papers by Gill . It is good that any doubts as to the validity of Gull’s claim can be dispelled, though his claim does need more precise formulation since his outline proof has a gap. We hope he would approve of how we have bridged the gap.The reader needs to recall the standard theory of Fourier series, whereby one approximates a square-integrable complex-valued function on the circle by an infinite sum of complex Fourier coefficients times periodic exponential functions. A useful introductory resource (freely available on the internet) is the book by Schoenstadt (1992) . In partin each direction is called by Gull a Fourier transform, and by the theory of Pontryagin duality, this is reasonable terminology. The fact that a convolution of functions maps to a product of a Fourier series is very well known. Less well-known is that a similar result holds for the correlation between two functions.The transformation The analysis literature has numerous results giving stronger forms of convergence of the Fourier series to the approximated function than the We will not develop that approach in this short paper but do plan to explore it in the near future. We will just present Gull’s argument as it stands and see where the argument needs fixing.According to the singlet correlations, if Alice and Bob submit the same sequence of inputs, then their output streams are exactly opposite to one another. Recall that the outcomes are functions only of the trial number and the respective setting angles. Let us denote them by N trials in which Alice uses angles, picked uniformly at random from that interval, and Bob uses the same sequence of angles, shifted clockwise by the amount Next, consider a sequence of N converges to infinity.We want this “expected sample correlation function” Notice, we already took the expectation value with respect to the randomness of the sequence of setting pairs. We actually want convergence almost surely: in a single infinitely long experiment, we already want to see the negative cosine law. For this, we could use the strong law of large numbers in the case of non-identically distributed but bounded random variables. That would tell us that if n from his notation.Gull does not enter into any of these subtleties. Moreover, at some point, he drops the index Suppose n, k, and u of n and k of This requires some regularity of each function assuming , we can assuming , twice, kθ. From , becauseN tends to infinity of Now, we already saw the Fourier series for the negative cosine: it just has two non-zero coefficients, obviously; those for The problem is all those different functions same function is called at each iteration, whose inputs consist only of the nth angle and the nth random number. Denote a generic random number by N setting pairs, an angle The solution we propose is to introduce a third computer; one could consider it to represent the source. It supplies a stream of uniform random numbers to computers A and B, and now, inside the dialogue loop, the Equation  again inN independent, identically distributed random variables. We have taken the conditional expectation, given the hidden variables N; we have averaged only over the setting choices. The expectation value of this, thus averaging both over hidden variables and over setting pairs at a fixed distance Equation  now reprk, and u of Using , EquatioA(u)=∑k∈Zbstitute , twice, Now, the integral of ously to ,(9)ρ(θ)k except From (2), A similar project was independently embarked on by H. Razmi 2005, 2007) ,19. His 05, 2007 N trials of a quantity which, under local realism, and assuming the complete randomness of the setting choices only, has an expectation value of less than N), conditional on the past, are negative. Moreover the increments of the process are bounded, so powerful martingale inequalities give easy exponential inequalities on the probabilities of large deviations upwards.Quite a few years before the work of Gull, Razmi and Tumulka, and deliberately focussed on classical computer simulations of CHSH-style experiments. In 2003, Gill ,24 produNature [These inequalities were later improved and the martingale structure further exploited to obtain wonderfully sharp results. In our opinion, the nicest is that presented in the supplementary material of the paper Hensen et al. 2015) published in 015 publinth trial results in a success, if and only if the two outcomes are equal and the settings are not both the setting with label “2”, or the two outcomes are opposite and the settings are both the setting with label “2”. , and see also Bierhorst (2015)  and Elkobetween every trial and the next, does satisfy those assumptions. The theorem applies to a classical distributed computer simulation of the usual quantum optics lab experiment. Time trends and time jumps in the simulated physics, and correlations (dependency) due to the use of memory of past settings (even of the past settings in the other wing in the experiment) do not destroy the theorem. It is driven solely by the random choice anew, trial after trial, of one of the four pairs of settings, and such that each computer is only fed its own setting, not that given to the other computer.Above, we wrote, “under the assumption of local realism”. Those are physics concepts. The important point here is that a network of two classical PCs both performing a completely deterministic computation, and allowed to communicate over a classical wired connection Take for instance N tends to infinity, then (4) shows that those four limits will violate the CHSH inequality and, hence, cannot be the four points on the correlation function that the program is supposed to be able to reproduce, up to statistical variation in its Monte Carlo simulation results.Suppose we use the computer programs in this way just to compute the four correlations between the pairs of settings used in the CHSH inequality. This comes down to looking at the correlation curve in just four points. If the programs yield correlations that converge to some limits as Gull’s Fourier theory proof of Bell’s theorem as a no-go theorem in distributed computing can be made rigorous after notational ambiguity is resolved and an extra step is introduced. To follow his proof sketch, we must first of all introduce randomness into the setting choices. In the main part of the proof, we must think of picking, uniformly at random, pairs of settings a fixed distance apart on the circle. Secondly, we must see the streams of simulated hidden variables used in any long run by both computers as coordinatewise functions of the realisations of a single stream of i.i.d. variables simulated by a pseudo-random generator, thus with the same seed and the same parameters on each computer. The computers must contain an implementation of a classical local hidden variables model, with two measurement functions A proof via Fourier analysis requires regularity assumptions. This can certainly be avoided by using discrete settings  and discrete Fourier transforms. The restrictions that Gull implicitly makes can be avoided by using a proof based on the martingale ideas first used by Gill (2003) ,24, whick. This is, in fact, an example of the generalised Grothendieck inequality for dimension two. In higher dimensions , the Grothendieck constants are a matter of conjecture and of numerical bounds; see [Marek Żukowski has introduced a concept of “functional Bell inequalities”, see especially . Earliernds; see . A very nds; see  showed t


According to the current scientific paradigm, what we call ‘life’, ‘mind’, and ‘consciousness’ are considered epiphenomenal occurrences, or emergent properties or functions of matter and energy. Science does not associate these with an inherent and distinct existence beyond a materialistic/energetic conception. ‘Life’ is a word pointing at cellular and multicellular processes forming organisms capable of specific functions and skills. ‘Mind’ is a cognitive ability emerging from a matrix of complex interactions of neuronal processes, while ‘consciousness’ is an even more elusive concept, deemed a subjective epiphenomenon of brain activity. Historically, however, this has not always been the case, even in the scientific and academic context. Several prominent figures took vitalism seriously, while some schools of Western philosophical idealism and Eastern traditions promoted conceptions in which reality is reducible to mind or consciousness rather than matter. We will argue that current biological sciences did not falsify these alternative paradigms and that some forms of vitalism could be linked to some forms of idealism if we posit life and cognition as two distinct aspects of consciousness preeminent over matter. However, we will not argue in favor of vitalistic and idealistic conceptions. Rather, contrary to a physicalist doctrine, these were and remain coherent worldviews and cannot be ruled out by modern science. I.], and later mid-20th century empiricists Ernest Nagel [From the perspective of scientific materialism, it is generally believed that metaphysical vitalism  or physical vitalism  must both be relegated to a status as relics from the history of science . Especia3st Nagel , and Gusst Nagel , have reThis exclusion is because vitalist conceptions are generally at odds with a scientific reductionist and physicalist approach while being more congruent with Western theories of philosophical idealism or Eastern philosophies.Physicalism, also called ‘material monism’ or just ‘materialism’,On the other hand, philosophical idealism represents an alternative paradigm of reality. We will focus on a particular version of idealism, so-called ‘objective’ or ‘ontological’ idealism,Eastern philosophies offer a different approach. In particular, the non-dual Advaita Vedanta (with many similarities to Buddhism and other Indian doctrines) posits consciousness–that is, the non-dual and unconditioned and undifferentiated Brahman–as the fundamental primitive of all existence .d ContraThus, these metaphysical ontologies do not posit a priori life, mind, and consciousness as emergent properties reducible to material biological processes. They claim that a ‘life-principle’ and/or a ‘mind-principle’ exist that are inherent in organic matter, but distinct from it.The question this paper pursues is: How far was biology effectively able to dismiss vitalistic and idealistic ontologies? Have these been disproven without appeal, or do these remain a viable option? Though we will point at some findings suggestive of this eventuality, we will not argue in favor of it. Rather, we will argue that this multidimensional conception of life and matter that one finds throughout all cultures and all times, contrary to common belief, has not been dismissed conclusively. We highlight how these conjectures about the nature of life and the mind need a more careful review, especially in light of recent findings.In the first part, after a short review of the main historical conceptions of vitalism, we will discuss whether its core concepts have been falsified. In the same line of inquiry, in the second part, we will analyze if and how cognition, as well, might be a fundamental principle inherent but distinct from life. Conclusive remarks will follow.II.1.The history of vitalism, and the meaning attached to it, is long and variegated. We will not go into the details here . It mayth century.Metaphysical vitalism is thought of as a special vital essence, the ‘vis essentialis’ that supposedly infuses and animates all organisms and demarcates living from non-living matter and a ‘vis mediatrix’ responsible for the action and coordination of bodily parts. Already, Plato and Aristotle posited that there is a force immanent to the organisms which supposedly makes life fundamentally distinct from non-life. Aristotle hypothesized that the soul (the psyche) organizes the form and structure of an organism and its purposeful activity. Later, Galen (129–210) assumed that spirit (pneuma) was the essential principle of life, an idea that continued throughout the Middle Ages. It became a matter of scientific debate when French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), better known for his foundational contributions to evolutionary biology, postulated the existence of an ordering ‘life-power’ augmented by an inner ‘adaptive force’ with which each organism adapts to the environment. In this view, these powers supposedly stand behind evolution and are responsible for the increasing complexity of organisms. Part of this conceptual system was also Lamarck’s famous notion of soft-inheritance –that is, the notion that physical traits can be passed on to offspring even if the parent organism acquired them only in its lifetime through its interaction with the environment. The doctrine of essential life humors also found its way through medical practices. Therapeutic bloodletting (bleeding of patients) was thought of as an effective method to release the excess vital fluid considered the culprit behind every ailment and disease. This practice presumably killed more people than it helped and was finally dismissed as pseudo-science at the end of the 19th-century French faculty of medicine at the University of Montpellier, which did not show any signs of metaphysically laden ‘vital forces’ [Physical vitalism, instead, looked for life’s mechanism, action, and system dynamics. Its main representative was Montpellier vitalism, associated with the writings of the 18 forces’ . It exprPhysical vitalism accepts physico-chemical determinism, but differs from the physicalist’s viewpoint in that it does not embrace a reductionist approach cutting down everything to physical concepts. Its most notable supporter was French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813–1878), who argued for the irreducible uniqueness of life, claiming it is impossible to see the organism as the sum of its parts, as a reductionist conception would entail. Instead, it must be seen as an integrated and harmonious whole. Bernard posited homeostasis as the foundational principle of life. It might, therefore, not come as a surprise that Bernard contributed most to the eclipse of metaphysical vitalism.But the distinction between physical vitalism and the classic physical and mechanistic concept of life is, after all, very subtle, if it exists at all. Modern non-linear complex system dynamics theories in developmental biology (‘organicism’) which describe emergent properties of a system that cannot be explained in terms of the properties of its constituents  could beFor the remainder of the article, we will focus on metaphysical vitalism and call it just vitalism, if not meant otherwise.2)2), could be synthesized in vitro from two inorganic molecules (potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate), thus disproving Berzeliu’s conjecture.In 1810, Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius postulated that organic compounds could be distinguished from inorganic ones if they require living organisms that, through a mysterious vital force, can synthesize them. However, in 1928 German chemist Friedrich Wöhler showed that urea, an organic compound (CO(NHFrench chemist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) kept his speculations less molecular and proposed that a ‘vital action’ makes life inherently different and special compared to non-living matter. Pasteur was inspired by Francesco Redi’s famous experiment that disproved spontaneous generation , taking this as evidence that life must always originate from life. The thesis was that there cannot be, not even in principle, the spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter.In 1907, Henri Bergson  tried toA more advanced neo-vitalist version came from the German embryologist Hans Driesch (1867–1941), who theorized the presence of an ‘entelechy’, an intensive, rather than extensive, substance or entity, determining the organic processes and reminiscent of Aristotle’s entelechy–some sort of vital and self-organizing principle which aims to realize a specific design or purpose. Driesch articulated his theory with what he took to be a mindlike essence in all living things, observing the development of sea urchin embryos into whole organisms.However, despite all the vitalistic concepts that regularly arose throughout history, in the modern scientific context, any form of vitalism has been abandoned as an obsolete working hypothesis. Meanwhile, in contemporary culture, vitalism survives in traditional healing practices, energy therapies, chiropractic therapies, biofield therapies such as Reiki, or other healing methods based on the qi or prana ‘subtle energies’, as postulated in Eastern cultures. It is normally assumed that the former arises as the final winner from the history of science, while the latter are only a form of popular pseudo-science or medieval superstitious healing methods based on spooks, ghosts, and spirits and where a therapeutic effect, if any, can be explained away by placebo effects.2.The dismissal of vitalism is based mainly on three pillars.First, a non-material vitalism is metaphysical in the sense that it postulates the existence of a nonphysical ‘life-fluid’ that, per definition, is not detectable by physical means and, thereby, positions itself beyond the boundary of conventional scientific investigation. We defer further discussion of this point to Second, vitalism is ignored by the adoption of an acritical use of principles of parsimony–namely, Occam’s razor–according to which we should refrain from multiplying entities and posting any hypothesis that is not in line with the dominating paradigm. “Vitalism is an unnecessary hypothesis” is the instinctive objection. But, as we shall see, so far science has not been able to furnish any proof of the sufficiency of the opposite hypothesis either, namely, that life can be reduced to life-less mechanistic processes. While Occam’s razor can offer useful methodological guidance for simplifying our conceptual frameworks and diminishing an experimental workload, it is not a criterion that makes a theory ‘scientific’ or a more complex working hypothesis ‘false’.Third, the exclusion of any vitalistic hypothesis is based on hope. The hope is that sooner or later everything will be recast in the current paradigm. It is a hope upheld by the belief that it is only a matter of time, funds, and research before everything will be explained inside a naturalistic mechanistic framework. However, facts have shown that the findings of the last century made vitalism even more difficult to expunge. As we will show, the organization and function of life revealed themselves to be much more complex than expected, and the goal of eliminating any vitalistic and teleological temptation appears today to be even further away than it was a century ago. The explanatory gaps did not shrink; rather, they grew.In fact, the question is: Has vitalism been disproven?The answer depends on what we mean by vitalism. If we assume that it is a lack of vis essentialis leading to an imbalance of Hippocratic humors  as a cause of illness and that this imbalance must be reestablished by bloodletting therapies, or that flowing through the nerves is a vis mediatrix that allegedly explains muscle contraction, then, of course, these hypotheses are no longer tenable. Or, if we posit organic vs. non-organic compounds as a demarcation line between living and non-living matter, thereby embracing Berzelius’s criterion and definition for vitalism, then, obviously, with Wöhler’s experiment, the case could be considered closed.But did science answer the primary and original conjectures of Aristotle and Plato first and, later on, disprove Lamarck’s, Pasteur’s, Bergon’s, or Driesch’s speculations?Our inability to explain and define what is life is due to the fact that, in living matter, there is something fundamentally different from what is in non-living matter.The inner psychological force of an organism driven by intentionality, desire, the instinct of survival, striving, will, aim, purpose, and motivations cannot be reduced to mechanistic principles alone.The origin of life is not explicable by the current laws of physics and chemistry alone.The growth and development of biological form cannot be explained by mechanistic principles alone.The creative inventiveness of nature generating all the morphological diversity of species cannot be captured by mechanistic principles alone.Though there is no universally accepted definition, vitalism can be described in its original intent as an answer to the following intuitions.We will argue that, contrary to common belief, these fundamental statements have not been disproven; they were simply ignored. Plato’s and Aristotle’s doubts have not been dispelled. Developmental biology is still far from explaining the growth and development of an organism. The Darwinian paradigm alone, especially in its ‘modern synthesis’ version, turned out to be insufficient to explain the variety and morphological development of species. Vitalism does not deny Darwinian evolution based on principles of natural selection, genetic drifts, random mutations, environmental factors, adaptation, etc. Rather, it finds it unconvincing that these are self-sufficient and fully explanatory principles. That these metaphysical claims were disproven was and remains an assumption unsubstantiated by scientific facts. Science does not know how to explain, in a naturalistic framework, the origin of our instincts, will-force, and cognition, let alone consciousness (the distinction between consciousness and mind or cognition will be clarified later), and is nowhere near able to generate life in a test tube.3.First, let us consider J. Huxley’s counterargument, as it is one of the most cited objections. Huxley misses Bergson’s point; the question is not so much what stands behind the physical motion force of organisms, which obviously can be explained away by mere physical and chemical reactions. A simple electrical impulse can lead to a muscle contraction even in a dead body, as the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, well known as the inventor of the electric battery, first observed by applying an electric current to the amputated legs of a frog. The question is: Where does the creative impulse of novelty and the urge to reach an ever-increasing complexity and variety of forms we observe in the evolution of life come from? Why does every living being act as if having agency, aim, and purpose if it is a bottom-up construct of aimless and purposeless molecules without agency? And what is and where does that will to survive, will to action, will to reproduce, will to grow, will to expand, will to know come from, making living matter so distinctive from non-living matter? Genetics, biophysics, chemistry, and biology explain the mechanical workings and energetic dynamics of the material substrate, but do not tell us anything about the volitional force, the coming into existence of a conscious subject, the will that determines and moves it. Vitalism does not pretend to explain the nature of the mechanical principles and forces that set an organism in motion. Rather, it posits the existence of an intentional principle, a ‘desire-force’ and a ‘will-force’ inherent to the dynamics of life. Meanwhile, there is no sign that the élan locomotif, namely, the steam’s heat transformed into mechanical energy, imparts to the railway engine any creative force or will to generate new engines or leads it to a novel behavior with agency and purpose other than endlessly spinning the flywheel.These misinterpretations come from the improper use and interpretations of phrases such as ‘vital force’ and ‘vital energy’. Here, one means, first and foremost, a psychological property or, eventually, a subtle trans-physical ‘substance’ inherent in living matter, but not, or not necessarily, something to relate to the strict notion of force and energy in physics. Whether these vital ‘forces’ or ‘energies’ must be intended literally as physical properties, namely, of the ability to impel a change in motion in time or to produce physical work on material objects, is a secondary matter. The question remains: What makes living matter different from non-living matter and why does a neural network produce life instincts and a psychological ‘will-force’? On the other hand, the misnomers of ‘force’ and ‘energy’, in the context of vitalism, are also not so misplaced either because, as everyone knows all too well, an ‘emotion’, whose etymology comes from the Latin ‘emovere’, meaning to stir or agitate, can be a quite powerful ‘force’ of life that can set us pretty much in motion.These are details and subtleties that, nonetheless, make a whole difference, all of which Huxley ignored, commenting only on the external material dynamics of a living being, but making little or no connection to its whole internal psychological dimension.4.Until recently, biology answered to Bergson’s hypothesis of a ‘creative morphogenesis’ and to Driesch’s ‘vital self-organizing principle’, more elegantly than Huxley, with a naturalistic counter-hypothesis: There is no life force because every morphological organization and its development can be explained in terms of genetic expressions, and their mutation in time is determined by their interaction with the environment.th century, required substantial revision. One of the main findings of the genome mapping and analysis of the past two decades was that the complexity of an organism does not scale with the number of genes in the genome . The DNA’s functionality is different than previously imagined and much more flexible than thought; it is no longer felt by many to be a control kernel of life. It serves mostly as a template for amino acids that make up polypeptide chains transcribed into RNA, then translated into proteins.  It is not the genotype that determines the phenotype–that is, the DNA does not specify how proteins will have to be assembled to create the anatomical architecture of a fully developed organism. DNA is not a blueprint and does not function like a ‘computer program’ that codes for the morphology of the body Meanwhile, the instructions to form an organism arise from an extremely complex network of interactions and relations between components, such as a myriad of cell signaling factors, enzymes, other proteins, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, etc. Genes are a passive database to build proteins, but they neither design nor control the shape, form, and structure of a living being. We now know that the DNA codes for the ingredients not for the recipe. From epigenetics, we now know that heritable phenotype changes are possible without altering the DNA sequence, involving instead the gene activity and expression which, among other things, may result from how the organism responds to external or environmental factors. There are complicated non-genetic factors that cause the organism’s genes to behave differently.Of course, physical traits like hair, skin, and eye color, facial features, and so on depend on the inherited gene pool. But none of these traits originates from a single gene; rather, they are the result of several streams of chemical synthesis, controlled by regulatory networks whose dynamics govern the genetic transcription. Even this results, in most cases, in a statistical outcome, not a certain and predetermined fact. More evolved functions depend upon even vaster regulatory networks and thousands of genes. Genes are only one of the players in an incredibly complex process inside the whole cell. Moreover, genetically identical individuals do not grow identically, even if subjected to the same environment, while large genetic variations can lead to the same phenotypical trait via multiple alternative pathways . Cells aAs genomic studies have shown, we humans share 98.9% of our DNA with chimpanzees . The remTherefore, the popularly conceived genomecentric notion of genes as a blueprint, encoded in the DNA as a program determining the organism’s structure, its development, its variations up to every physical trait, and even our psychological inclinations, does not exist. We are not nearly as determined by our genes as once thought.Another aspect that turned out to be hard to expunge is the  teleological dimension of life. An intriguing example of this comes from morphogenesis–that is, how, from a single fertilized cell, a highly complex self-assembling pattern emerges, developing the organism appropriate to its species. What are the mechanisms and underlying biophysical and chemical phenomena that preside over complex and apparently goal-driven pattern formations, like the self-assembly of structures such as an eye, a limb, and the entire ‘bodyplan’ during embryogenesis? How do organs regenerate after injury? How can large numbers of cells coordinate their individual activity to assemble themselves into organs and achieve geometric and functional goals that are defined at a macroscopic scale of the whole, but that cannot be found anywhere at the cellular level? Nowadays, we know that there are also correction mechanisms with adaptive decision-making capabilities within living tissues able to correct and adjust embryonic development despite forceful induced defects . An inheContrary to popular belief, we are far from having any coherent theory capable of explaining how all this works. What we know is that it looks like the self-monitoring and repair of complex multi-tissue organ systems and their pattern formation involves a bioelectric code driving and changing the cell’s transmembrane electric potentials. The large-scale anatomical pattern formation is regulated by very complicated networks of bioelectric signaling among cells which determine the differentiation and regulation of embryonic development and the regeneration of injured tissue and even avoid tumor formation .“has gone too far, putting biologists into a straitjacket that prevents them from exploring the most promising hypotheses” [Science is now trying to reduce these processes to ordinary electro-chemistry by speaking of hugely complex ‘long-range signals’, ‘planar polarity of proteins on cell surfaces’, ‘standing waves of gene expression’, ‘trans-membrane voltage potential and tensile forces’, and ‘chemical morphogen gradients carrying information about both the existing and the future pattern of the organism’ . Some spotheses” .Other researchers have placed biological development and morphogenesis in terms of an information architecture. The multicellular organism is considered beyond the material aggregation of material units: It is a whole complexity of a communicative assembly of cells seen as an integrated cellular information field. Individual cellular information fields aggregate into an architectural matrix that enables organism-wide information management . From thThus, while previously all hope was laid into a gene-centric approach, and that sooner or later would have abolished any vitalist temptation, now developmental biology resorts to bioelectric molecular signal functions at long range or information-theoretic approaches. To date, however, morphogenesis, despite a century of studies, is to a large degree still shrouded in mystery. The original Aristotelian vitalist claim that the creative generation of the form of living organisms needs a vital force and/or a goal-directed process, and that there must be a ‘mind-like essence’, an indwelling ‘idea-plan’ of assembly, without which life cannot develop, is far from having been expunged.This also raises the question of whether the generation of life by artificial means would dispel any form of vitalist conceptions. The recent developments in synthetic biology come to mind. Synthetic biology is a rapidly growing field of science that aims to redesign organisms for medical and agricultural applications, employing biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, and other methods of chemical, biological, or computer engineering. A 2007 Nature editorial declared synthetic biology as providing “a welcome antidote to chronic vitalism” . The claHowever, for the time being, this would be a purely speculative discussion. While, to a certain extent, synthetic biology made impressive progress, the creation of primitive cells does not go further than the design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome ,30, prot5.The other claim of the vitalist is that there is a fundamental difference between living and non-living matter. However, also, the attempt to abolish this distinction by reducing the former to the latter remains an elusive undertaking.Famous is Erwin Schrödinger’s question “What is Life?” , which pViruses have no metabolism and remain inactive without reproducing as long as they do not encounter a host cell. And yet, they are capable of Darwinian evolution. Whether or not a virus is to be considered a life form is a matter of debate.In a sense, cars ‘eat’, ‘metabolize’, and ‘excrete’, but no one would recognize them as resembling life. One might object that cars do not reproduce. But while reproduction is a common trait among all living beings, it cannot be the decisive aspect individuating life because the opposite does not hold: Living beings can also be infertile or sterile. Moreover, computer programs can simulate ‘artificial organisms’–digital cellular automatons–fitting the above definition, though only at a much lower level of complexity than that of a real living cell. Whether such ‘virtual lifeforms’ could be designated as ‘living organisms’ is highly doubtful.Thus, any definition of life based on such exclusively material functionalism always fails to capture something of what it is trying to define. For some reason, there is something undefinable, ineffable, and intangible in life, escaping a rigorous and universal scientific definition inside a purely reductionist and physicalist paradigm. The demarcation line between what is living and non-living remains unclear. Why is it so hard to define something whose existence is undeniable and whose distinctiveness so evident?“There is a more obvious conclusion to be drawn from our failure to define life: there is no such thing as life. Life is a term for poets, not scientists. There are only replicators with different degrees of complexity. PS: Many of you are closet vitalists” [Because of these philosophical issues, others, such as molecular biologist Andrew Ellington, declared: talists” . Indeed,However, one may submit another conclusion to be drawn from the failure to define life: Vitalism is always lurking behind the scenes because, contrary to the accepted common narrative, there has never been any serious refutation of it. In life, we see consciousness, will, desire, motivation, cognition, mind, and goal-driven behaviors. Naturalism’s aim to reduce these psychological traits to functional descriptions of material processes remains unsuccessful.6.The author would like to add a short personal conjecture: To the best of my knowledge, no one has connected vitalism to the function of sleep. Let me outline the rationale behind this.Science is not driven solely by a purely objective, third-person study of reality, but has always been conditioned by the way we perceive the world from a subjective first-person perspective. Consciousness studies are a paradigmatic example of this. From an exclusive third-person physicalist perspective, consciousness should be considered ‘non-existent’, as we do with vitalism. It is only because of our first-person subjective phenomenal experience that we admit something like consciousness, mind, emotions, feeling, and, more generally, sentience as being a subject worthy of scientific and empiric study. Otherwise, we would not allow these ineffable and undefinable quiddities to be part of scientific analysis.On the other hand, we do not perceive ‘vital energies’ as being part of our inner first-person experiential realm and, thereby, the analogy may not hold. The question, however, is: Do we really not perceive it? Are our inner emotional sensations, feelings, instincts, desires, and all those drives we would label as ‘vital’ of the same nature as the outer physical sensations of touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste? Does the fact that both manifest inside a bodily boundary prove them to be material?For example, does that feeling of ‘freshness’, that sensation of having ‘recharged the batteries’ we know from our personal experience after a good sleep, come only from the physical? Conversely, does that perception of a ‘lack of vitality’ we know from sleep deprivation indicate only an organic lack of energy? If so, why can that metabolic deficiency not be replaced by something metabolic, say, by nutritional means, and instead requires an apparently passive function such as sleep? When we do not sleep enough, we increasingly feel a sense of a lack of ‘vitality’, ‘energy-deprivation’, and ‘inertia’ that no substance, food, or metabolic process in a waking state can regenerate; only the sleep cycles can restore this balance.One of the unresolved issues in modern biology and psychology remains the nature and function of sleep and dreams. Findings suggest that dreams have the functional role of processing our emotional waking-life experiences to avoid an informational and experiential overload that we could otherwise barely handle. Scientists agree that sleep has the purpose of repairing and reorganizing neural pathways, consolidating memories acquired during the waking state, filtering out redundant information, restoring the body and mind, and serving other metabolic, physiological, and psychological functions. As is well known, sleep deprivation leads to severe psychophysiological disorders and, in extreme cases, leads to death. However, there is now a growing consensus that this cannot be the whole story and that the real function and purpose of sleep remain elusive .In fact, we do not know why all the functions of sleep mentioned above could not be performed in a waking state as well. Also puzzling is the evolutionary origin of sleep. From a naturalistic evolutionary perspective, sleep looks like an outsider. According to Neo-Darwinism, everything–including sleep–must have evolved from natural selection and random mutations to allow for the best survival and reproduction chances. But sleep is a risky habit in a prey-predator environment, especially for those that are at the bottom of the food chain. Yet, there is no living organism, from cyanobacteria all the way to humans, that is not subjected to a circadian clock that, in brains, expresses itself as what we call ‘sleep’.The assumption that identifies sleep uniquely as a cerebral cycle is questioned by findings that show how the waking-sleep activity is not something proper only to organisms with a brain; those without a brain also show waking-sleep cycles. A sleep-like state has been observed in the cnidarian Hydra vulgaris, a small freshwater polyp that has only a primitive nervous organization . It is nThe question remains, however: Why must this metabolic function occur with an altered mind, body, and consciousness state? The vitalistic hypothesis that sleep may serve as ‘recharging’ the ‘life-sheet’ or ‘vital body’ with its ‘vital energy’ is not falsified.III.1.Vitalism cannot be abstracted from the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ , and thaWe previously distinguished between life and mind, with the former being characterized by qualities such as desire, emotions, instinct, strife, or will, while the latter relates to cognition, reason, or intelligence. Let us complement this distinction with a few clarifying remarks on the terminological and qualitative distinction between consciousness and mind as well.In modern consciousness studies, consciousness is usually regarded as the ability to have any subjective experience, sentience, or perception–what the American philosopher Thomas Nagel called “something it is like to be” . If therof something: the fleeting thoughts, the impression of emotions, the sensory perceptions, the film of life, etc. In particular, it is conscious of mental events.But consciousness is also conscious At a higher level, mind is the rational intellect, the thinking reason, that organizes and structures into representations, ideas, concepts, and meanings, that analyzes, reflects, makes more or less abstract logical inferences by analytic and deductive thought processes, etc. Cognition is a process of mind. It is the mental act or process of knowing, understanding, and perceiving through thought, experience, and the senses. As we are going to see in the next section, at a lower level, one speaks of ‘basal cognition’, meaning rudimentary learning and decision-making processes, beginning from the dynamic problem-solving capacities of cellular and subcellular forms ,46.Therefore, mind must be kept distinct from consciousness insofar that mind is an instrumental entity of consciousness with the cognitive function of thinking and knowing. Consciousness is distinct in the sense that it apprehends (but is not) mental states such as concepts, ideas, images, imaginations, etc. The distinction is necessary not only for semantic clarity, but also because, in hindsight, it is a common first-person experience: While mental contents such as thoughts and ideas come and go, the conscious individual subject witnessing those impermanent thoughts and ideas does not change its identity. To put it metaphorically: Consciousness is the canvas, mental phenomenality is the painting.According to scientific materialism, mentality, in its low or high-level cognitive function, must be explained in the frame of a reductionist and physicalist formulation. All those cognitive tasks we characterize as ‘mental’ are considered epiphenomena and emergent properties, resulting from biophysical interactions of networked elementary units, such as molecules or neurons, for adaptation purposes of the organism. Meanwhile, the mind-body problem of the philosophy of mind remains, more than ever, an actual debate failing to find a commonly accepted resolution. Despite the enormous advances in neuroscience and consciousness studies within the last decades, consciousness and mind remain one of the most elusive aspects of reality.This led to the recent revival of metaphysical ontologies, such as panpsychism or idealistic and panentheistic conceptions of a universal mind. Most notably, panpsychism has been reconsidered in its different forms by modern leading philosophers in the field, like Thomas Nagel , Galen S2.There is now sufficient empiric evidence suggesting how at least forms of ‘basal cognition’ necessitate neither a brain nor a nervous system. Mounting evidence suggests how at least cognition might be a fundamental aspect of life, before the emergence of neural activity, while until recently it was taken for granted that any form of cognition could emerge solely from a brain or that it requires at least a neural substrate.However, biology is discovering that cells have some primitive ability to learn and associate, resembling conditioned behaviors or changing them by anticipatory skills. Within the turn of the millennium, a renewed interest in this field gained momentum, especially due to the new findings that are transforming our understanding of how mentality emerges in living organisms and even questions the very notion of ‘intelligence’ and ‘mind’ itself.–a fungal cytoplasm containing several nuclei, but enclosed in a single membrane – that can be considered a single giant cell. It changes its shape as it crawls in search of food, as a yellow network of tube-like structures that grow a few centimeters per hour, a movement that can be captured via time-lapse recordings. This slime mold has several skills and behavioral patterns that could be labeled ‘proto-intelligent’ and that one would hardly associate with such a primitive creature. For example, it can find the minimum length between two points in a labyrinth [The most notorious example of cellular intelligence is that of the ‘Physarum polycephalum’, a large amoeba-like slime mold ‘plasmodium’abyrinth . Furtherabyrinth .Conditioned behavior was shown as well. When it is exposed to life-threatening electric pulses at constant time intervals, it reduces its speed of growth or stops entirely for a while before starting to grow again. Once conditioned, it learns to anticipate the arrival of the shock if one administers a series of pulses and leaves out the last one . P. polyAnother quite surprising behavior was (re)discovered recently in another protozoan. Already in 1906 , the AmEmpiric evidence suggests that conditioned behavior in other unicellular organisms exists, such as in amoebae. A Spanish group analyzed the motility pattern of the ‘Amoeba proteus’ under the influence of stimuli, consistent with associative conditioned behavior .Similar abilities have been observed in bacteria. Bacteria are considered the most elementary form of life because they are prokaryotic cells. Nevertheless, it has been shown that they can sense the environment, actively move within it, target food, avoid toxic substances, and meaningfully change their swimming direction. Most interesting is their behavior when they come together and form a bacterial community, which shows surprising problem-solving abilities. Bacteria communicate with each other and coordinate gene expression, which determines the collective behavior of the entire community by a ‘quorum sensing’. They can cooperatively self-organize into complex colonies through a communication-based intercellular interplay .This leads to a collaboration that allows the community to achieve a common goal. These communities elaborate functional structures to determine if other microorganisms nearby are threatening their survival and eventually secrete antibiotic compounds toxic to other species except their own, anchor in a place or stay motile, divide for the growth of the community, release spores, etc. This allows them to work together to survive in stressful environments. Analogous to P. polycephalum, bacteria’s collective intelligence becomes evident when they are confronted with relatively complex task-solving problems, such as route-finding in mazes and fractals . Cells wis self-organization, and in which every cell embodies an elemental cognition. From this perspective, one could conceive of a Cognition-Based-Evolution (CBE), complementing Darwinian natural selection processes, in which receptive intelligent cells measure the environment–that is, assess information–and consequently learn and react to uphold self-identity. In a sense, life could be seen as a ‘continuous measurement of information’. For a thought-provoking summary of the CBC theory, see also [Whether unicellular forms of life can be considered conscious in the sense of having some form of a sentient experience is something hard to establish given the inherently subjective nature of consciousness. Nevertheless, this evidence of cellular intelligence prompted hypotheses regarding the cellular origin of consciousness as well. Noteworthy is the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model, which challenges the assumption that subjective awareness emerged late in evolution . Consciosee also .What about multicellular organisms? In this regard, it might be worth noting how there is evidence that non-neuronal multicellular organisms also show forms of intelligence. At the turn of the millennium, terms like ‘plant neurobiology’To provide some examples, it was shown that garden pea seedlings (Pisum sativum) change their foraging behavior–their direction of growth–if trained to associate a running fan with a light source, shining an hour after the fan’s operation . AnotherThe overall picture that arises from these findings is that, among living beings without a brain, an intimation of collective intelligence arises when several units or ‘nodes’–unicellular organisms–connect and form an informational network. Once several of these nodes signal to each other in a complex connectome, a new order and level of functional skills arise that the single cell does not have. The single cell already seems to have some elementary cognition , but something new and qualitatively different emerges once these little entities connect in a complicated communication web.3.These recent discoveries on monocellular or multicellular behaviors raise questions. Is a tiny unicellular creature, which swims through a fluid, hunts for its prey, avoids obstacles, has a memory, and can even predict events in advance, just a piece of complex biophysical machinery? Or should we ascribe to it, at least, some form of ‘basal cognition’ and eventually even some elementary form of sentience? Is a climbing plant that nervously flutters its tendrils throughout space, analyzes the environment, grows toward a support it apparently ‘sees’, and begins to grab for it before even touching it only a machine driven by a chemical reaction, or something to which we could ascribe a form of conscious cognition?As with the notion of life, the unambiguous definition of what is commonly called ‘cognition’ remains a matter of considerable debate  BroA first standpoint, that of a physicalist approach, is that which does not consider the above described cellular behavioral phenomena as proof of what is commonly meant by ‘cognition’, ‘intelligence’, or even less a ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’. One might regard such a standpoint as an attempt to anthropomorphize non-human behavior and, instead, express cognitive functions in organisms without a brain in terms of system theory, reducing all complex systems dynamics to mere elementary processes: as an emergent property instantiated as an adaptive behavior of a complex nonlinear dynamical system, which rearranges its internal state in response to the stimuli of an external environment. For example, the system theory of autopoiesis, by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela , refers The second standpoint, that of a metaphysical approach, is the idea of matter having in itself, a priori, mental or experiential properties; this was considered only by some philosophers, like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Baruch Spinoza, Alfred North Whitehead, and William James, who expressed a panpsychist view, namely, that everything is fundamentally a form of consciousness or mind. But these speculations did not have, until recently, much influence on the overall established naturalistic paradigm. The science of biosemiotics, a branch of biology that interprets living processes as the production and interpretation of signs, codes, information, meanings, habit formation, and their communication in the biological realm , came s→ aggregation of microscopic fundamental interacting units into large-scale network processes.The (more or less implicit) premise of present science is the physicalist and reductionist view in which we must recast everything into a causational chain determined by a system of processes that lead to cognition as an emergent secondary epiphenomenon–that is, something that works by a unidirectional bottom-up process, such as: aggregation of microscopic fundamental interacting units into large-scale network processes → information/code/semantics → cognition. The plausibility of the hypothesis that goes the other way around is rarely addressed , namelyThe observational data that suggest cognitive properties in non-neuronal tissue allow us to posit that cognition might not be just an emergent behavior determined by a complex network of processing units, but, rather, that it is an inherent and basic feature of living matter itself. There might exist not only a life-principle, but also a mind-principle, both expressing a vital-mental polarity.IV.“And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow” [We presented some arguments and scientific evidence aimed at critically reviewing the widely held belief that vitalism is dead, with mentality and consciousness having no place in Nature other than being emergent epiphenomenon. This belief holds fast to the prophecy of Francis Crick: omorrow” .Upon closer inspection, however, one realizes that there is no end in sight for the search for a mechanistic explanation that reduces life to non-life and dismisses Bergson’s ‘creative evolution’ or Driesch’s entelechy as self-organizing principles, furnishing a naturalistic foundation of the volitional and cognitive behavior in living organisms. For the same reason, modern findings on the relatively complex cognitive behavior of simple life forms without a nervous system also shift us away from a naturalistic reduction of mental phenomena. Life, mind, and consciousness are far from having been naturalized, even from a philosophical perspective. Whatever the truth, as of the date of this writing, their naturalization cannot be considered a closed case. Metaphysical vitalism and idealism remain viable options. Nothing in science prevents us from seeing will, cognition, and sentience as powers of a subconscious Nature trying to express itself in different biological forms. A theoretical framework is possible that sees life and mind as the two aspects of a conscious universe and as two fundamental inherent properties that emerge in and through matter rather than by matter alone. Life and mind, as two distinct aspects of reality, both having consciousness as their origin and matter as their supporting basis.Moreover, the trouble with expunging teleological temptations might well be due to humans’ tendency to anthropomorphize Nature, as Ellington implied, but nothing prevents us from recognizing life with its impulsive dimension , mind with its cognitive dimension , and consciousness with its sentient dimension  as fundamental principles that are already inherent in Nature and that impel the organization and function of living matter itself, rather than being mechanistic emergent appearances alone. Denying these features of the natural world as being exclusive to humans could be seen as a form of anthropocentrism as well.The dismissal of these paradigms might have been too premature, and they may soon find their way back into our world-constructs, at least in matters of philosophical interest in biology, and, like idealism, panpsychism, and various conceptions of universal consciousness, are already doing in the philosophy of mind. The phenomenon of life emerging from non-living matter, and that of mind from non-mental stuff, is no less perplexing than that of consciousness emerging from non-conscious matter. There is not only a hard problem of consciousness, but also a hard problem of life, and a hard problem of mind.Seeing life, mind, and consciousness as appearance arising out of a mechanistic clash of material forces and particles, or, on the contrary, as fundamental properties already inherent in matter itself, is not just a philosophical musing, but something that may influence our way of seeing biology and determine the very practical aspects of science and its future progress or stagnation.


The new elements—referred to as foodset-derived items—are mental representations that result from creative thought (resulting in new information). In clinical psychology, a client’s distress may be due to, or exacerbated by, one or more beliefs that diminish self-esteem. Such beliefs may be formed and sustained through distorted thinking, and the tendency to interpret ambiguous events as confirmation of these beliefs. We view psychotherapy as a creative collaborative process between therapist and client, in which the output is not an artwork or invention but a more well-adapted worldview and approach to life on the part of the client. In this paper, we model a hypothetical albeit representative example of the formation and dissolution of such beliefs over the course of a therapist–client interaction using RAF networks. We show how the therapist is able to elicit this worldview from the client and create a conceptualization of the client’s concerns. We then formally demonstrate four distinct ways in which the therapist is able to facilitate change in the client’s worldview: (1) challenging the client’s negative interpretations of events, (2) providing direct evidence that runs contrary to and counteracts the client’s distressing beliefs, (3) using self-disclosure to provide examples of strategies one can use to diffuse a negative conclusion, and (4) reinforcing the client’s attempts to assimilate such strategies into their own ways of thinking. We then discuss the implications of such an approach to expanding our knowledge of the development of mental health concerns and the trajectory of the therapeutic change.Psychotherapy involves the modification of a client’s worldview to reduce distress and enhance well-being. We take a human dynamical systems approach to modeling this process, using Reflexively Autocatalytic foodset-derived (RAF) networks. RAFs have been used to model the self-organization of adaptive networks associated with the origin and early evolution of both biological life, as well as the evolution and development of the kind of cognitive structure necessary for cultural evolution. The RAF approach is applicable in these seemingly disparate cases because it provides a theoretical framework for formally describing under what conditions systems composed of elements that interact and ‘catalyze’ the formation of new elements collectively become integrated wholes. In our application, the elements are mental representations, and the whole is a conceptual network. The initial components—referred to as  Statistit works ,4, but tit works . This paworldview. What makes network approaches to cognition particularly promising is that this web of knowledge and experience can be described as a network consisting of loosely connected clusters  that can be characterized using tools from network science [We view psychotherapy as a creative collaborative process between therapist and client, in which the output is not an artwork or invention, but an outlook and approach to life on the part of the client. A client’s outlook and behavior flows from the web of knowledge and experience that collectively constitute a way of seeing the world and being in the world, i.e., a  science ,10,11,12 science . Psychot science ,14,15. W science ,17,18. SWe note that it is not simply the case that positive interpretations  are adaptive while negative interpretations  are maladaptive. It is often necessary that negative situations be acknowledged as such to spur action and find solutions; however, one worldview may predispose the individual to overcoming challenges and finding opportunities, while another leads to unnecessary distress and feelings of helplessness. Thus, the therapist strives to help the client to ‘unravel’ their worldview just enough to ‘reweave’ it into one that is, for that client, adaptive.One’s society and culture provides stories, narratives, scripts, and schemas, as well as larger conceptual frameworks (such as science or religion) that offer prescriptions for integrating them into a worldview; however, since no one else is privy to an individual’s entire repertoire of personal experiences and intimate observations, the worldview one weaves is ultimately unique. Much as, for any given set of dots there are multiple ways of connecting them, for any given set of experiences or mental representations, there may be many ways of integrating them into a worldview. However, this sentence is not to be interpreted as implying that mental representations are, indeed, anything like ‘dots’; they clearly have a context-dependent inner structure. A worldview may selectively include, or exclude, certain experiences and positively (or negatively) valenced items, (or weight them more strongly). Some worldviews may be more adaptive than others, i.e., more conducive to thriving, personal growth, and the well-being of the individual and their social and environmental milieu.reflexively is used in its mathematical sense, meaning that each part is related to the whole. The term autocatalytic will be defined more precisely shortly, but for now it refers to the fact that the whole can be reconstituted through interactions amongst its parts. The term foodset refers to the elements that are initially present, as opposed to those that are the products of interactions amongst them. As in other network science approaches, the nodes of the network represent units of information such as words, concepts, memories, or mental representations of concrete or abstract knowledge, and connections between nodes  are represented as edges .1We model the psychotherapeutic process using a certain kind of network referred to as a Reflexively Autocatalytic foodset-derived (RAF) network. Though the term ‘autocatalytic networks’ reflects their initial application to the origin of life ,20, RAFsWhat differentiates RAFs from other approaches in network science is that the nodes are not just passive transmitters of activation; they actively galvanize, or ‘catalyze’ the synthesis of novel (‘foodset-derived’) nodes from existing ones (the ‘foodset’). The generalized RAF setting is conducive to the development of efficient , algorithms for questions that are computationally intractable . These cognitive network, we refer to an individual’s web of concepts, language terms, and their associations, as well as knowledge and memories, and how they are structured. The self-sustaining nature of a cognitive network is evident in the tendency to reduce cognitive dissonance, resolve inconsistencies, and preserve existing schemas in the face of new information. Although the contents of a cognitive network change over time, it maintains integrity as a relatively coherent whole. Its spontaneously self-organizing nature is evident in the capacity to combine remote associates [When autocatalytic models are applied in a cognitive context as they are here, they model not just network structure, but how the network reconfigures itself on the fly in response to changing needs and experiences. The observation that, similar to living organisms, cognitive networks are self-sustaining, self-organizing, and self-reproducing ,44,45,46sociates   in a cognitive network. It may involve representational redescription (RR): the re-coding of information in working memory by modifying, restructuring, elaborating, and/or performing mental operations upon it, or possibly in the absence of an external cue [In chemistry, and in applications of RAFs to the origin of life, the term ‘reaction’ refers to an interaction between molecules. For consistency, in cognitive applications of RAFs, the term rnal cue . RR can rnal cue .Reaction edges are similar to the edges in conventional network science approaches. (They can be thought of as the ‘anatomy’ of the network). Catalysis edges are more dynamic. (They can be thought of as the ‘physiology’ of the network). MRs are catalytic because they not only participate in certain reactions, but also facilitate—or catalyze—other reactions.RAFs also have two kinds of edges: reaction edges and catalysis edges. reaction sequence. In cognitive models, this reaction sequence is a stream of thought, which may ultimately have arisen from a problem, question, or cognitive dissonance. For example, the ultimate source of the cognitive reaction sequence culminating in the creation of a superhero character may be the desire never to feel powerless.As in chemistry, the cognitive equivalent of a ‘catalyzed reaction’ may trigger another reaction, and so forth, resulting in a reactivity.The rationale for treating mental representations (MRs) as catalysts comes, in part, from the literature on concepts, which provides extensive evidence that when concepts act as contexts for each other, their meanings change ,67. For In sum, the RAF approach incorporates not just cognitive change due to adjustments in association strengths, but also cognitive change due to the prompting or ‘catalysis’ of new nodes. The resulting network is dynamic both in terms of structure , and information flow .foodset items, which came into existence outside the network in question, and foodset-derived items, which come about through ‘catalyzed reactions’ within the network in question. An individual’s ‘mental foodset’, or simply, foodset includes memories of direct experiences, i.e., that came about by way of the senses, including any knowledge that has come about through individual learning (of pre-existing information) by way of direct experience in the world, or through social learning processes such as imitation or classroom learning. The foodset may also include innate responses, such as the fear of heights and corresponding inclination to back away from a precipice. Together, these innate responses, direct experiences, and socially transmitted knowledge constitute the raw materials from which the individual’s cognitive network is built. Thus, the worldview is “grounded in perception” because it grows out from this foodset.Another key feature of RAF models is the distinction between foodset-derived items consists of mental contents that were generated by that individual from scratch (and constitute new information) using foodset elements, or perhaps other foodset-derived elements, as ingredients. The generation of foodset-derived items occurs by way of mental operations such as problem solving, insight, deduction, induction, and abduction. Since the elements of the worldview described by foodset-derived items are not grounded in perception, they can be viewed as ‘useful fictions’. Thus, if the therapist responds to powerlessness in a certain way, and the client learns and (later) copies that response, that way of responding is an item in the client’s foodset; however, if the therapist acts as a midwife for the client’s expression of emotions associated with powerlessness during a therapy session, the artwork is a foodset-derived itemMuch as bricks and bags of mortar do not constitute a house, the foodset does not constitute a mental model of the world, a worldview. The set of In cognitive networks, the distinction between foodset and foodset-derived provides a natural means of grounding abstract concepts in direct experiences; foodset-derived elements emerge through ‘reactions,’ that can be traced back to foodset items. This enables us to identify the necessary precursor ideas ideas for the emergence of new understandings, and the mental operations a given individual carried out to generate a particular idea. This capacity to model the reconfiguration of a cognitive network makes RAFs ideal for the study of change that occurs in psychotherapy.Because of the distinction between foodset and foodset-derived MRs it is possible to tag new insights with their point of origin , and track cumulative change step by step within and across individuals. We posit that a mind can be described in terms of nested and overlapping RAFs, and these RAFs are what evolve through culture. Thus, each human lifetime constitutes a small segment of our collective cultural evolutionary lineage see ,38,39). ,39. 38,3In this initial application of RAF networks to the therapeutic process, the examples used are fairly simple; however, a significant strength of the approach is that RAFs can scale up. The RAF approach can be used to analyze and detect phase transitions in extremely complex networks  more precisely [reflexive is used in its mathematical sense to mean that each component is related (directly or indirectly) to the whole. As mentioned in autocatalytic refers to the fact that the whole can be reconstituted through interactions amongst its components. A network qualifies as A RAF network if it meets the following two criteria:(1)reflexively autocatalytic: each reaction F. This is sometimes referred to as closure.It is (2)F-generated: all reactants in F by using a series of reactions only from It is Let us now define the term recisely ,32,35,74Thus, an RAF is a non-empty subset catalytic reaction system refers to a network consisting of components that can catalyze the generation of other components, and a catalytic reaction system can consist of one or more RAFs. The largest RAF, which subsumes all other RAFs, is referred to as the maxRAF. All other RAFs are referred to as subRAFs. A RAF that cannot be broken down into smaller RAFs is referred to as an irreducible RAFs, or irrRAF. It is not necessarily the case that a catalytic reaction system contains a RAF, but if it does contain one or more RAFs, it has a unique maxRAF. To put this more formally, if the network contains a RAF, then the collection of all its RAFs forms a partially ordered set  under set inclusion, with the maxRAF as its unique maximal element. RAFs can evolve, as demonstrated both mathematically and in simulation studies, through selective proliferation and drift acting on possible subRAFs of the maxRAF [The term e maxRAF ,75.X of types, a set C indicating which molecule types catalyze which reactions, and a subset F of X referred to as the foodset. A subset collectively autocatalytic , and self-sustaining (because of the F-generated criterion).The catalytic reaction system is a tuple co-RAF is any nonempty set of reactions that is not A RAF but, when combined with RAFs can enlarge and combine. The union of any two (or more) subRAFs forms a RAF . These two subRAFs may be disjoint, or they may have some reactions in common. A subRAF RAFs emerge in a system of interacting components when their complexity passes a critical threshold ,33. In aemotionally dysfunctional, and result in mental health concerns.During childhood, the individual assimilates experiences, stories, narratives, scripts, and schemas, and gradually weaves them into a network of understandings, and this process has been analyzed using the RAF framework . EventuaAn individual’s worldviews could be said to be self-contained in that there exists a maxRAF—meta-RAF of sorts—that encompasses the majority of the individual’s subRAFs. We have modeled not just how this maxRAF forms over the course of child development , but howi are denoted foodset MRs, or foodset-derived MRs. The foodset of individual i, denoted i’s memory. It includes:-j, denoted MRs obtained through social learning from the communication of an MR -MRs obtained through individual learning, denoted innate knowledge with which individual i is born, denoted Any Whern RAFs are used to model cognition, all MRs in a given individual someone else who acquired this knowledge as a result of their own creative or analytical thought processes. , so long as this information retains the form in which it was originally perceived (and does not undergo redescription or restructuring through abstract thought). The crucial distinction between foodset and non-foodset items is not whether another person was involved, nor whether the MR was originally obtained through abstract thought (by someone), but whether the abstract thought process originated in the mind of the individual i in question.not part of i’s memory. Its contents come about through mental operations by the individual in question on the foodset; in other words, foodset-derived items are the direct product of RR. Thus, was the result of one’s own thought processes. Foodset-derived elements are denoted i is referred to as a reaction, and denoted x in individual i is denoted undergoing or resulting from r is denoted A or B, respectively, and a member of the set of MRs undergoing or resulting from reaction r is denoted A, and the resulting concept FATHER-CLOUD is a product in B. This conceptual shift, treated as a ‘reaction’, is ‘catalyzed’ by the client’s desire to process the death of her father. It is in this way that the RAF approach tags novelty  with its point of origin .A single instance of RR in individual all possible reactions in individual i is denoted i, including both the food set and the food set-derived items, is denoted The set of We now apply RAF theory to the modification of a client’s worldview in psychotherapy. To make this more concrete, we explain our model using a hypothetical interaction between a fictional yet representative therapist named Thera, and a client, named Clive. We show how the therapist elicits adaptive change in a dysfunctional belief in the client’s worldview.Thera learns from an intake form that Clive is a young man with no strong friendships, who has experienced debilitating social anxiety for years. His decision to start therapy was prompted by a recent incident in which his wife called him a ‘moron’ during an intense disagreement. This, in conjunction with several other earlier incidents, have forced him to conclude that he is ‘stupid’.A portion of Thera’s mental model of her client after reading this report is shown in the first panel (panel (a)) of As psychotherapy proceeds, Thera starts to unearth information about Clive’s worldview using therapeutic techniques such as reflections, clarifications, and open-ended questions. Clive shares other significant life experiences that affected his self-esteem, such as getting a D- in a high school math class, and not getting a job after working hard to prepare for the interview. By asking questions such as, “Why do you think you received a poor grade?”, and “How did that make you feel?”, Thera is able to gather information regarding Clive’s interpretations of these events. From this, using her preexisting knowledge about social anxiety and mental health, she extrapolates Clive’s concerns, and builds a mental model of him in her mind.While Clive’s belief that he is unintelligent is based in real-life adverse experiences—modeled here as ‘foodset items’—it involves extrapolation, and possibly distortion. It appears that the triggering incident in which his wife called him a moron served as a ‘catalyzing incident’ that initiated a tendency toward confirmation bias, such that he reinterprets other past and present events as confirmation of the belief, ‘I am stupid’. This, in turn, is damaging his self-esteem. The confirmation bias has thus exacerbated his preexisting concerns; his anxiety in social situations is now more severe due to his belief that he is ‘stupid’, and he has become isolated and lonely.We can view what is happening here from the perspective of Clive’s worldview as a whole. The self-organizing, self-mending nature of a worldview can create a system of internal feedback combined with external influences that can sustain and amplify an existing  narrative . Clive hC, the poor grade is denoted To model this using the RAF approach and thereby understand it in more precise terms, the client, Clive, is denoted Step 1a in Panel (a) of Step 1b in Panel (a) of The catalysis of Equation  after thNote that this little cognitive network now satisfies the conditions for A RAF; (1) all reactions . ThiT to refer to Thera. Her foodset, denoted We now show how Thera extrapolates from what Clive says to build a mental model of him in her mind. Thera interprets Clive’s statement as implying something more general about how he views the world and his place in the world: specifically, that his self-concept is increasingly dominated by the belief that he is (as his wife put it), “a moron”. We use the subscript This equation tells us that her foodset now ‘maps to’ a foodset that includes knowledge of Clive, and the part after the comma tells us that knowledge of Clive was socially transmitted from Clive himself.As Thera’s understanding of Clive’s concerns increases, she feels more emotionally connected to him, which in turn impacts the quality of her responses to him. Clive feels increasingly heard, and begins trusting her. Her reflections, statements, and questions may more readily facilitate adaptive change in Clive that may not have occurred otherwise. Thera’s interactions create perturbations in Clive’ s cognitive network that disrupt the ‘I am stupid’ attractor state described above.Elaborating on the ‘Clive and Thera’ example, we now show how the RAF model brings to light four distinct ways in which a therapist such as Thera facilitates therapeutic changes in the worldview of a client such as Clive.During the session, Thera’s chair malfunctions. Clive is able to fix the problem by adjusting the various knobs and gears on the chair. Thera says, “You’re a brilliant problem solver—you fixed my chair!” This provides counter-evidence to the belief that he is unintelligent. Her observation, which lifts his mood, temporarily decreases his distress, and enhances his self-concept, is socially transmitted to him, resulting in the new MR: ‘Someone thinks I’m brilliant’. Transmission of the information that he is brilliant, denoted Equation , as follinhibitory role on that RAF; it weakens the strength of that reaction, thereby diminishing the proclivity to interpret ambiguous events as confirmation of the belief, “I am stupid”. This is depicted in Panel (b) of Step 2 refers to the social transmission of words of praise from Thera to Clive, and Step 3 refers to its inhibitory role on the existing RAF.Thera’s observation becomes part of Clive’s ‘mental foodset’ because it did not come into existence within Clive’s mind; it was ‘born’ in Thera’s mind, and socially transmitted from Thera to Clive. His self-concept now contains both the constellation of experiences and negative beliefs about his intelligence, described as A RAF, consisting of multiple mutually consistent memories that support his belief that he is ‘stupid’, as well as a new experience that is inconsistent with this RAF. This experience of being described as ‘brilliant’ by Thera therefore has an Step 4 in Panel (c) of Thera models how to consciously resist the tendency to interpret ambiguous evidence in a negative manner through the use of self-disclosure regarding how she manages self-critical thoughts in her own life. She also spontaneously models adaptive responses in her interactions with him. She bumps her elbow on the desk, and then laughs at her clumsiness. The laughter enables her to re-frame the thought ‘I am clumsy’ into something innocuous. Thera’s social transmission of this to him is The possibility of responding to one’s inadequacies with laughter and/or self- deprecating humor is a new and striking concept for Clive. As such, this experience forms a foodset element in Clive’s mind. His decision to use this strategy himself  depends on a number of variables, such as the degree to which he trusts and respects the therapist, his motivation to change, and so forth. (Elaboration of these variables is beyond the scope of this discussion).existing knowledge that Clive can import, wholesale, into his worldview, she also prompts the independent formation of new information, specifically tailored to his personality, that are conducive to adaptive perspectives and behaviors, and help him resolve or come to terms with the issues he faces. This could take the form of asking Clive questions that prompt him to reconsider existing beliefs, or by challenging Clive’s beliefs directly. For example, Thera might as him, “Might there be other reasons that you didn’t do so well on that math test?” This question gently challenges Clive’s forgone interpretation of the event. It prompts him to explore reasons other than that he is unintelligent. This is depicted in panel (c) of Step 5.Thera not only transmits new interpretation. This is depicted in Panel d of Step 6a shows the catalyzing event , and Step 6b shows the product of this ‘reaction’, Clive’s joke.Clive responds, laughing, “Well yeah, I spent a lot of time playing video games”. This alternative interpretation does not play into the notion that Clive is unintelligent, and it shows that he has assimilated her proclivity to diffuse a negative conclusion with humor. It generates a We describe this in terms of RAFs as follows. Clive’s memory of getting a bad grade on the test, denoted This conceptual shift transforms one or more element(s) of the foodset When Clive dilutes the potency of this once-distressing memory with humor, Thera laughs. This laughter, denoted as Step 7a refers to the catalyzing event, i.e., Thera’s laughter, and Step 7b refers to the resulting formation of the new belief, ‘I am funny’.This is depicted in Panel (e) of Using these four distinct methods, Thera simultaneously reduces the strength of a distressing belief that was damaging his self-concept, and facilitate the creation of a new belief that enhances Clive’s self-concept, as illustrated by the relative thickness of the RAFs in We note there are now hierarchical levels of RAF structure, composed of interacting RAFs that collectively form a maxRAF (panel (e) of We presented a RAF model of how a therapist fosters self-esteem and well-being in the client. The model illustrated four distinct ways by which a therapist accomplishes this: (1) providing direct examples/evidence contrary to a client’s distressing belief about themselves, (2) challenging the client’s existing interpretations of events, (3) using self-disclosure, provide examples of strategies for diffusing the potency of a negative belief, (4) reinforcing the client’s attempts to assimilate such strategies in their own ways of thinking.As discussed in Traditional methods for studying psychotherapeutic change have limitations  that theThe RAF approach offers an established mathematical framework for integrating research on creative cognition, semantic networks, and the kinds of structures that exhibit cumulative, adaptive, open-ended change, i.e., that evolve, with a similarly dynamic process of psychotherapy. Though still in its infancy, it has the potential to provide a new way of understanding how the therapeutic alliance works, one that embeds psychotherapy research in the formal study of self-organizing structures and their role in evolutionary processes.