Development is (embodied) intelligence - Biological information, agency, and contextuality

Abstract We argue that development is not the outcome of genetic instructions or dynamics, but of biological agency embedded in a multi-scale coordination architecture characteristic of living systems. We outline the lack of a plausible mechanism by which semantic content about the phenotype could be encoded in, or retrieved from, the genotype or its patterns of expression per se, requiring the existence of some other process to govern development. Ample empirical evidence points to emergent bio-electrical morphogenetic fields as the locus of biological information shaping development. Indeed, they appear capable of defining architectural plans, computing an adequate developmental trajectory to realize those plans, and signalling appropriate actions to subsystems. We further suggest that such multi-scale coordination architectures display the physical property of contextuality, i.e. genuine emergence of observables (here, biological information) as a causal driver of system dynamics. This in turn explains the self-constructive aspect of biological intelligence, physically grounding it into a specific model of biological agency and information. This view reframes the relation between mind and body in developmental processes, suggesting that development is a fundamental expression of (embodied) intelligence.