Agency, Directionality, and Function: Foundations for a Science of Purpose

Although biologists often use descriptive language that imputes purposiveness to living systems, many have argued that these conceptions are at best heuristic, and at worst egregious errors. However, there is a growing recognition that biological phenomena which suggest agency, directionality, or goal-directedness demand new conceptual frameworks that can translate into rigorous theoretical models and discriminating empirical tests. This project addresses the demand through a novel, interdisciplinary, large-scale program that combines philosophers, theoreticians, and experimentalists to: (i) articulate more precise concepts related to function and purpose, (ii) develop innovative formal models of agency, (iii) operationalize notions of goal-directedness for accurate measurement

One of the most profound aspects of existence is the distinction between past and future, the so-called arrow of time. This self-evident time ‘asymmetry’ is a defining characteristic of life: we’re born, we grow older, and we die. Time never runs backwards for us (even if we sometime wish we could turn the clock back). However, time asymmetry is not evident down at the microscopic (atomic) level – rather, it is an ‘emergent’ property. This is the central issue we aim to tackle in this ambitious program of research; namely, how the time-symmetric micro-world transitions to the time asymmetric everyday…