Blinded by biology: Bio-inspired tech-ontologies in cognitive brain sciences

Abstract

In his pioneering paper on neuromorphic systems, Carver Mead conveyed that: "Biological information-processing systems operate on completely different principles from those with which most engineers are familiar" (Mead 1990: 1629). This paper challenges his assertion. While honoring Mead's exceptional contributions, specific purposes, and correct conclusions, I will use a different line of argumentation. I will make use of a debate on the classification and ordering of natural phenomena to illustrate how background notions of causality permeate particular theories in science, as in the case of cognitive brain sciences. This debate shows that failures in accounting for concrete scientific phenomena more often than not arise from (1) characterizations of the architecture of nature, (2) singular conceptions of causality, or (3) particular scientific theories - and not rather from (4) technology limitations per se. I aim to track the basic bio-inspiration and show how it spreads bottom-up throughout (1) to (4), in order to identify where bioinspiration started going wrong, as well as to point out where to intervene for improving technological implementations based on those bio-inspired assumptions.