Autopoietic theory, enactivism, and their incommensurable marks of the cognitive

Villalobos, Mario; Palacios, Simón Pedro Izcara

doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02376-6

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…It is still possible to hold that the teleology in human beings is a unique exception, without relevance to the understanding of the rest of nature. This kind of view is more or less explicit in Villalobos and Ward's equation of the positing of teleology in nonhuman organisms with anthropomorphism (Villalobos & Ward, 2016), 14 and is stated more directly by Villalobos and Palacios (2019) and Abramova and Villalobos (2015). The challenge that immediately arises here, however, is how to account for this alleged essential difference between human and nonhuman organisms.…”

Section: Performative Self-contradictionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Projection or encounter? Investigating Hans Jonas’ case for natural teleology

Hverven

Netland

2021

Phenom Cogn Sci

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This article discusses Hans Jonas’ argument for teleology in living organisms, in light of recently raised concerns over enactivism’s “Jonasian turn.” Drawing on textual resources rarely discussed in contemporary enactivist literature on Jonas’ philosophy, we reconstruct five core ideas of his thinking: 1) That natural science’s rejection of teleology is methodological rather than ontological, and thus not a proof of its non-existence; 2) that denial of the reality of teleology amounts to a performative self-contradiction; 3) that the fact of evolution makes it implausible that only humans actualize purpose; 4) that the concept of metabolism delimits and gestures towards beings performing purposive activity; and 5) that concrete encounters with living organisms are indispensable for the judgment that they are purposive. Lastly, we draw attention to how Jonas’ understanding of teleology and inwardness in nonhuman life in terms of degrees of identity with human life poses a problem for his view. In this way, we hope to clarify what Jonas, as an important source of inspiration for the enactivist project, is proposing.

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Section: Performative Self-contradictionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Projection or encounter? Investigating Hans Jonas’ case for natural teleology

Hverven

Netland

2021

Phenom Cogn Sci

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“…Purposelessness.” [ 41 ], p. 85–87). Since then, the rejection of teleology has been a constant in the theory [ 44 , 45 , 46 ] and has been reinforced in more recent works [ 43 , 47 , 48 ].…”

Section: The Autopoietic Approach To Evolution: a Third And Better Wa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis

Villalobos

Frick

Vicencio-Jimenez

2022

Entropy

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The New Evolutionary Synthesis (NES) groups a series of theories that, departing from the gene-centric approach of Modern Synthesis evolutionary theory (MS), place the organism as the central agent of evolution. Two versions of NES, each one with advantages and disadvantages, can be distinguished in this regard; the restrictive NES and the comprehensive NES. Comparatively, the comprehensive NES is a more robust theoretical construction than the restrictive one because it comes grounded on a general, thermodynamically informed theory of living beings (something that the restrictive NES lacks). However, due to its strong teleological commitments, the comprehensive NES has serious problems fitting with modern science’s methodological framework; a problem that the restrictive version, with no explicit commitment to teleology, does not face. In this paper, we propose the autopoietic approach to evolution as a way of integrating these two versions of NES, combining the theoretical robustness of the comprehensive view with the methodological appropriateness of the restrictive one. The autopoietic approach, we show, offers a non-teleological, organism-centered theory of evolution, namely the natural drift theory (NDT), and a grounding on a thermodynamic theory of living beings, namely the embodied autopoietic theory (EAT). We conclude that, from the programmatic point of view, an autopoietic (NDT plus EAT) approach to evolution offers a promising way to develop the NES project.

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“…Two recent, exemplary papers, one by Corcoran and colleagues (Corcoran et al 2020), and one in response by Sims and Kiverstein (2021) integrate this debate with the free-energy framework, each proposing a mark of the cognitive couched in freeenergy theoretic terms. In recent years, there have also been several papers considering the point of this debate-considering what is at stake between different characterizations of cognition, why we need a characterization of cognition at all, and what general features we might want a characterization of cognition to have (e.g., Akagi 2018;Allen 2017;Keijzer 2021;Ramsey 2017;Villalobos and Palacios 2021). It is worthwhile to consider the point of the debate not only in order to ensure that we are not wasting our time, but also and moreover because it is vital for enabling us to make well-informed and well-grounded choices between different proposals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive science meets the mark of the cognitive: putting the horse before the cart

Gough

2022

Biol Philos

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Among those living systems, which are cognizers? Among the behaviours of, and causes of behaviour in, living systems, which are cognitive? Such questions sit at the heart of a sophisticated, ongoing debate, of which the recent papers by Corcoran et al. (2020) and Sims and Kiverstein (2021) serve as excellent examples. I argue that despite their virtues, both papers suffer from flawed conceptions of the point of the debate. This leaves their proposals ill-motivated—good answers to the wrong question. Additionally, their proposals are unfit to serve the legitimate roles for characterizations of cognition.

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Autopoietic theory, enactivism, and their incommensurable marks of the cognitive

Cited by 8 publications

References 29 publications

Projection or encounter? Investigating Hans Jonas’ case for natural teleology

Projection or encounter? Investigating Hans Jonas’ case for natural teleology

Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis

Cognitive science meets the mark of the cognitive: putting the horse before the cart

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