“My current research: The diverse set of psychoactive drugs collectively represents a rich set of tools for probing the chemical architecture of the human mind.”

Welcome to the researcher page for Tom Ray, Professor of Zoology and Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma. He created and developed the Tierra Project, a computer simulation of artificial life. His background in Ecology has led to a focus in the study of evolution and genomes, and what happens when you replicate those systems in digital computation. His most recent work focuses on the chemical architecture of the human brain and how that gives rise to personality, intelligence, and the evolution of the mind.

2002 Critique of Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines

Ray: “Kurzweil does not understand that it is the act of measurement that causes the collapse of the wave function, not conscious observation of the measurement.”

Kurzweil: “It is only through the collapse of the wave function that an event becomes determinate and thereby causes a reaction in the world, which constitutes a measurement. It is, therefore, the collapse of the wave function that causes measurement, which Ray tells us causes collapse of the wave function. So what Ray is saying is that the collapse of the wave function causes the collapse of the wave function. By removing the concept of observation from measurement, Ray’s explanation of quantum mechanics devolves into this tautology.”

2003 An Evolutionary Approach to Synthetic Biology: Zen in the Art of Creating Life.

2004-5 Evolution, Robustness and Adaptation of Sidewinding Locomotion of Simulated Snake-like Robot

2009 (Last* Artificial Life publication): Artificial Life Programs and Evolution. In: Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis editors, Companion to Evolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Pp. 429-433. Published Feb 12, 2009, Darwin's 200th birthday

First Mind research publication: Ray, T. S. 2010. Psychedelics and the Human Receptorome. PLoS ONE., February 2, 2010. “It should be possible to use this diverse set of drugs as probes into the roles played by the various receptor systems in the human mind.”

• The human mind is populated by mental organs
• These organs are populations of neurons
• These neurons bear specific neurotransmitter receptors on their surface

These mental organs:

• Provide consciousness and provide that consciousness with meaning, content, and salience.
• Support the facilities of language, logic and reason
• Evolve by duplication and divergence

and thus provide the mechanisms by which evolution sculpts the mind.

Tom Ray on Wikipedia

Tom's Homepage

Tierra Project Homepage