Thoughtforms Life

Conversation 2 with Lisa Barrett, Ben Lyons, and Karen Quigley

Thoughtforms Life

Show Notes

This is a second conversation with Lisa Barrett ( Karen Quigley ( and Benjamin Lyons ( about Relational Realism, allostasis, and questions of mind/body/behavior.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) Rethinking emotion universals

(09:34) Brain evolution and allostasis

(17:25) Predictive processing and signaling

(30:05) Objectivity and first-person science

(38:45) Flexible body-world boundaries

(45:46) Relational meaning in perception

(52:06) Embodiment, morphospace and realism

PRODUCED BY:

https://aipodcast.ing

SOCIAL LINKS:

Podcast Website: https://thoughtforms-life.aipodcast.ing

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3pVafx6EZqXVI2V_Efu2uw

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thoughtforms-life/id1805908099

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JCmtoeH53neYyZeOZ6ym5

Twitter: https://x.com/drmichaellevin

Blog: https://thoughtforms.life

The Levin Lab: https://drmichaellevin.org

More from Thoughtforms Life

Oct 17, 2026

This is a ~39 minute talk titled "New Bodies, Unconventional Minds: a perspective on a continuum of cognition (& consciousness)" for a consciousness conference about our laboratory model systems relevant to the study of minds, my Platonic Space model, and a few opinions on consciousness (at the end, since I don't have any strong claims about consciousness per se).

Oct 16, 2026

This is a ~35 minute talk titled "Thoughts as Thinkers: the biology & computer science of inspiration" I gave at a recent conference.

Oct 15, 2026

This #short is an excerpt from Michael Levin's talk "Biology, AI, and Diverse Intelligence" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or_3tlEOLj4

Oct 13, 2026

This #short is an excerpt from Michael Levin's talk "Biology, AI, and Diverse Intelligence" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or_3tlEOLj4

Oct 11, 2026

This is a ~1 hour and 4 minutes talk + Q&A that my student and collaborator Karina Kofman (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karina-Kofman-2) and I gave to the Society for Mind-Matter Research as a keynote talk in acceptance of the best paper for 2025 award (the paper is: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/mm/2025/00000023/00000001/art00003).

See all episodes →