From The Gaurdian: Slime mould used to create first robot run by living cells
Dr Zauner grew a star-shaped sample of the slime mould and attached it to a six-legged robot (with each point of the star attached to a leg) to control its movements.
Shining white light on to a section of the single cell organism made it vibrate, changing its thickness. These vibrations were fed into a computer, which then sent signals to move the leg in question. Pointing beams of light at different parts of the slime mould means that different legs move. Do it in an ordered way and the robot will walk.
Lets assume for this example that animal agency is different in kind from robotic or otherwise artificial agency, such that the slime mold’s behavior here is closer to genuine ‘original action’ than to mechanical ‘derivative action’. This is not to import any cognitive or otherwise mental phenomena to the slime mold. Its just a slime mold. The point is simply that its behavior is properly attributed to it, since there are no designers or other actors influencing the cyborg’s behavior.
But the mold also moves around a robot, with some sophisticated machinery backing it up. Here’s the problem: the slime mold is essentially just a photo cell for responding to light. We have plenty of those same sorts of cells, artifiically constructed, that can behave in a much more complex fashion with respect to incoming light. From an engineering perspective, the slime mold is rather superfluous, and this sort of example is more show than actual science.
But lets look at it from the perspective of our discussion on robotic agency. The robot moves because the slime mold reacts to the light. The cyborg (slime mold + robot) here could reasonably be described as “light avoiding” or some such cogntively neutral term. We could put the point counterfactually: the slime mold would move away if it had the means to move away. We have given it the means.
So what do we make of the resulting cyborg behavior? Is it properly attributed to the slime mold, or to the whole system, or neither? Is this even a sensible question?
So, I haven’t actually read the paper (though I did post the abstract with a link to the principal researcher’s CV last week), but on my understanding one of your claims here is false. The slime mold isn’t ‘essentially just a photo cell’ and human engineered alternatives can’t ‘behave in a much more complex fashion.’ Rather, the clear tenor of the researchers claims is that by using evolved organisms to control robotic apparatus engineers are able to create cyborgs which exhibit more complex behavior than would a fully mechanical alternative. As I said, though, I haven’t actually read the paper so that may be a description of what they hope to do in the future rather than what they’ve done with the slime mold bot.
On the substantive question, I’m inclined to say that it makes sense to attribute the walking behavior to the whole system. The slime mold itself is doing something (in a denuded sense) — it’s reacting to light in a standard slime-moldy fashion. It isn’t doing something (in a robust sense) — that is, it isn’t operating a robot. So if we attribute behaviors to the robot, and we certainly should, it would be a mistake to think that in doing so we are attributing the same behaviors to the slime mold. To put it another way, there’s a level of description at which we can talk about the behavior of the slime mold (it changes it’s thickness), and a level of description at which we can talk about the behavior of the bot (it skitters around the lab). And, obviously, there’s a level of description at which we can talk about the behavior of the researchers. Maybe we say that they’re operating a robot, maybe we say that they’re building and releasing robots.
What I wouldn’t say of the slime mold bot was that it’s behaviors are remotely on par with actions in our normative practice. Actions are behaviors, but not all behaviors are actions. In case you were wondering.
Soon, with the advance of this bio-machine techonology, you will forge and become one with a wireless Internet adaptor. You will then use the Internet to mind-meld with Google. As a result you will become ESTROOGLE: part man, part Google, all nerd. Sadly, you will only use your new-found powers to write posts about Google on your mind-blog, your “mblog” (which oddly enough in Tutsi means “Internet porn”). All hail the coming of ESTROOGLE!
This was all covered in ExistenZ right I mean it’s gonna get a whole lot Cronenbergian (sp?) before it gets better.