The applicability of computational and dynamical systems models to organisms
is scrutinized, using examples from developmental biology and cognition.
Developmental morphogenesis is dependent on the inherent material properties of
developing tissues, a non-computational modality, but cell differentiation,
which utilizes chromatin-based revisable memory banks and program-like
function-calling, via the developmental gene co-expression system unique to
metazoans, has a quasi-computational basis. Multi-attractor dynamical models
are argued to be misapplied to global properties of development, and it is
suggested that along with computationalism, dynamicism is similarly unsuitable
to accounting for cognitive phenomena. Proposals are made for treating brains
and other nervous tissues as novel forms of excitable matter with inherent
properties which enable the intensification of cell-based basal cognition
capabilities present throughout the tree of life