Abstract
William James famously said that “thoughts are thinkers,” implying that it is not always individuals who produce thoughts but that, conversely, thoughts produce thinkers. Biologist Michael Levin builds on James’s assertion, proposing that memories are not passive imprints but semi-autonomous agents that actively shape a system’s future behavior rather than merely reflecting past experiences. Levin’s lab has shown that memories are not stored in any fixed physical space but emerge as patterns of bioelectrical signals, challenging the substantialist view that only material structures can be agents. I extend this perspective to political-cultural contexts, arguing that cultural-ideological patterns function as self-sustaining agents that operate through human bodies and behaviors. Politics, therefore, is not only an abstract set of externally imposed symbols but an embodied process reproduced through bioelectric networks. However, rather than being passively encoded, external symbols are differentially and dynamically internalized, shaped by context and prior experience. Moreover, ideological systems persist not merely through repetition but through the affective salience of memories, such as nationalist myths or traumatic historical events. Additionally, old memories do not simply fade—their strength is diminished by new repeated and/or affectively charged experiences. And crucially, thinkers are not reducible to thoughts; meta-cognition itself functions as another emergent and self-organizing agent capable of producing new memories and altering the topology of memory networks. By reconceptualizing ideology as bioelectrically mediated and affectively anchored, this framework illuminates how political transformation depends not just on counter-narratives but on interventions that restructure memory, perception, and behavior at the deepest neurophysiological levels.
Presenters
Jovana IsevskiStudent, PhD, University of California, Riverside, California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
BIOELECTRICAL EMERGENCE, EMBODIED POLITICS, NEUROSCIENCE OF MEMORIES
