Open Mutualism

“Counter to the prescientific age, where concepts such as “anthropomorphism” were used to enforce an imaginary boundary indicating our magical status, modern developmental evolutionary biology and engineering reveal a continuum of systems that require different conceptual tool kits for effective interaction. We need to consider the range of possible interactions and relationship tools (from engineering protocols to love poems and everything inbetween) that motivate the search for the highest possible degree of agency and inner perspective that we can detect (and mutually benefit from) in a system, and not to unthinkingly consign them to low-agency regions of the spectrum that preclude the most enriching interactions. In other words, cognitive and agency terms should refer not to a system's provenance or composition but to interaction protocols that have been empirically developed and shown to provide desirable kinds of interactions.”

“Counter to the prescientific age, where concepts such as “anthropomorphism” were used to enforce an imaginary boundary indicating our magical status, modern developmental evolutionary biology and engineering reveal a continuum of systems that require different conceptual tool kits for effective interaction. We need to consider the range of possible interactions and relationship tools (from engineering protocols to love poems and everything inbetween) that motivate the search for the highest possible degree of agency and inner perspective that we can detect (and mutually benefit from) in a system, and not to unthinkingly consign them to low-agency regions of the spectrum that preclude the most enriching interactions. In other words, cognitive and agency terms should refer not to a system's provenance or composition but to interaction protocols that have been empirically developed and shown to provide desirable kinds of interactions.”

https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aisy.202401034