# Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere (TAME): an experimentally-grounded framework for understanding diverse bodies and minds

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10346 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10346/

## Key facts

- Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 24 Dec 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 25 of 25)

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- [Heuristically Adaptive Diffusion-Model Evolutionary Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13420/) (2024)
- [Classical Sorting Algorithms as a Model of Morphogenesis: self-sorting arrays reveal unexpected competencies in a minimal model of basal intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05375/) (2023)
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- [An AI Theory of Mind Will Enhance Our Collective Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09168/) (2024)
- [What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15849/) (2025)
- [Artificial Consciousness as Interface Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04383/) (2025)
- [Remapping and navigation of an embedding space via error minimization: a fundamental organizational principle of cognition in natural and artificial systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14096/) (2026)
- [Unplugging a Seemingly Sentient Machine Is the Rational Choice -- A Metaphysical Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21016/) (2026)
- [BraiNCA: brain-inspired neural cellular automata and applications to morphogenesis and motor control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01932/) (2026)
- [Machine Psychometrics: A Mathematical Psychology of Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23952/) (2026)
- [Ensoul: A framework for the creation of self organizing intelligent ultra low power systems (SOULS) through evolutionary enerstatic networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13863/) (2023)
- [Glamour muscles: why having a body is not what it means to be embodied](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08598/) (2023)
- [A Theory of Intelligences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12411/) (2023)
- [Exploring Cognition through Morphological Info-Computational Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00748/) (2024)
- [Topological constraints on self-organisation in locally interacting systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13188/) (2025)
- [Goals and the Structure of Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15013/) (2025)
- [Reinforcement Networks: novel framework for collaborative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22876/) (2025)
- [Gradual Cognitive Externalization: From Modeling Cognition to Constituting It](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04387/) (2026)
- [Language Game: Talking to Non-Human Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16321/) (2026)
- [Process-Constituted Intelligence: A Shared Criterion for Humans and Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16213/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Synthetic biology and bioengineering provide the opportunity to create novel embodied cognitive systems (otherwise known as minds) in a very wide variety of chimeric architectures combining evolved and designed material and software. These advances are disrupting familiar concepts in the philosophy of mind, and require new ways of thinking about and comparing truly diverse intelligences, whose composition and origin are not like any of the available natural model species. In this Perspective, I introduce TAME - Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere - a framework for understanding and manipulating cognition in unconventional substrates. TAME formalizes a non-binary (continuous), empirically-based approach to strongly embodied agency. When applied to regenerating/developmental systems, TAME suggests a perspective on morphogenesis as an example of basal cognition. The deep symmetry between problem-solving in anatomical, physiological, transcriptional, and 3D (traditional behavioral) spaces drives specific hypotheses by which cognitive capacities can scale during evolution. An important medium exploited by evolution for joining active subunits into greater agents is developmental bioelectricity, implemented by pre-neural use of ion channels and gap junctions to scale cell-level feedback loops into anatomical homeostasis. This architecture of multi-scale competency of biological systems has important implications for plasticity of bodies and minds, greatly potentiating evolvability. Considering classical and recent data from the perspectives of computational science, evolutionary biology, and basal cognition, reveals a rich research program with many implications for cognitive science, evolutionary biology, regenerative medicine, and artificial intelligence.