SIG-MRG 2026-09-10

Session Recording Summary · 70m 47s · Full notes ↗

Reading: *The Embodied Mind* by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (originally published ~1991; Kei noted "'93"). The session focused on a chapter that pivots from cognitive science toward evolution, critiquing adaptationism/neo-Darwinism and proposing the theory of **natural drift** and **structural coupling** between organism and environment.

Kei introduced the reading as a continuation of the group's ongoing thread on evolution, memory, and technicity (following earlier sessions on Stiegler and Leroi-Gourhan). After a brief silent reading period, the discussion centered on the book's model of organism–environment co-constitution, whether "agents" or "environment" is the more fundamental concept, and how this framework relates to technology, memory externalization, and contemporary AI/LLM dynamics. The session was exploratory, with Kei noting he was reading the section for the first time alongside participants.

• **Framing the reading (Kei):** Earlier chapters critique cognitivism and dominant cognitive science; this chapter turns to evolution. Adaptationism/neo-Darwinism is flawed because genetic traits are interdependent—it is hard to trace a trait to a single gene, since genes can be emphasized, expressed, or repressed. The authors offer **natural drift** as an alternative, emphasizing structural coupling between organism and environment.
• **Connection to prior sessions (Kei):** Ties to Leroi-Gourhan's idea that cortical evolution "ended" as technological evolution began—evolution and intergenerational memory becoming technical. This reading offers a related but distinct view.
• **Opening question — habits learned from the environment but taught by no one:** Kei (checking the stove twice; writing left-handed like his mother despite his father teaching him); Lukáš (public speaking, though he framed it as social learning from observing other agents); Mark (a peculiar resting posture held since in utero); Matthew (idioms, colloquialisms, accents—learnable but not teachable, tacit rather than explicit); Sachin (his accent unconsciously drifting to something neither Indian nor American after nine years in the US).
• **Environment vs. agent (central tension):**
• **Mark on supernormal stimuli & bricolage:** Evolution as path-dependent tinkering finding what is *viable*, not *optimal*. Supernormal stimuli (e.g., artificial eggs animals over-respond to) show there is nothing optimal—just happenstance selection. Technology is analogous: we build language, monuments, knotted recording systems (referencing South American quipu-like records) as reflections of possibilities in the environment we are enfolded into—selecting parts of the environment while it selects us.
• **Kei's synthesis:** Natural drift is intuitive—we navigate by choosing from a selection of possible (not predetermined, not always optimal) actions, testing situations. Taken to an extreme (which the authors seem to imply but hesitate to state), the co-constitution means nothing is *just* an organism and nothing is *just* an environment. Using a concrete building across a canal as an example, changes "simply happen" out of a possible selection space without needing an internal agent. He found himself inclined toward "environments all the way down" because there is nothing static or invariant to be acted upon. He tied this to the book's **Buddhist epistemology** (nothing possessing fixed, independent existence).

Questions & Disagreements: - **Agents all the way down vs. environments all the way down:** The session's core unresolved tension. Lukáš (via extended evolutionary synthesis) leaned toward agents; Sachin and Kei leaned toward environments; Matthew reframed it as a question of perspective/abstraction level. Lukáš ultimately proposed a relational view (when is x an agent vs. an environment) rather than two fixed categories. -

Participants: Kei 🗝, André, Lukáš Likavčan, Mark Elder, Matthew Bright UTC-7, Sachin, Wip, AH, ayseayse__