In several recent articles, Michael Levin explains that an emergent collective system develops a form of agency when it is capable of making collective decisions to minimize the stress or disturbances it experiences. This means that the system, although composed of simple individual units, manifests the ability to choose between different actions to optimize its survival or functioning. This agency emerges thanks to two key mechanisms: phase synchronization and internal alignment.

The mechanisms of phase synchronization and internal alignment are therefore essential for this emergence, transforming simple local interactions into complex and adaptive global behaviors. This explains how biological systems transition to higher levels of agency, manifesting a capacity to choose optimal actions for their survival and collective well-being.

Thus, Levin's reasoning remains fundamentally causal, even if it has a constructive dimension. It is from the procedure of synchronization and alignment that this new level of agency emerges.

However, one could easily reverse the argument and say that the search for a coordinated response and an alignment of objectives supposes a primary intention of the biological system to adapt, of which these mechanisms are just the means or functions. If we compare with artificial intelligence and deep learning, we see that there is no primary intention, but there are automatisms like "backpropagation," linked to the designer's intention!

It seems to me that the concept of adaptability is not simply the emergent result of this construction. Moreover, we should specify what sense he gives to the concept of emergence. It appears to be a constructive sense: the functional structure of these systems is also the result of their operations. In any case, it seems to me to be the blind spot, the point of ignorance. What makes a biological system tend to adapt, how can we naturalize this property?