Radical Emergence in Brain and Behavior

14 April 2023

Radical Emergence in Brain and Behavior

In my book, The Entangled Brain, I proposed that it is productive to view the brain and a complex, entangled system, one in which the parts dynamically assemble into coalitions that support complex cognitive–emotional behaviors (Pessoa, 2022a). An entangled system is a deeply context-dependent one in which the function of parts (such as a brain […]

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Dialectical thinking in the science of heredity: yesterday, today and tomorrow

8 March 2023

Dialectical thinking in the science of heredity: yesterday, today and tomorrow

Dialectical thinking has been pervasive in philosophy of developmental biology. After the paradigm of the “genetic program” (Jacob, 1970) according to which an organism is the expression of an authoritative program engraved in heredity, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have emphasized that biological systems result from a dialectical process taking place between genes […]

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From Philosophy to Neuroscience and Back Again. An Interview with Terrence Deacon. Part II

1 February 2023

From Philosophy to Neuroscience and Back Again. An Interview with Terrence Deacon. Part II

From the Symbolic Species to Incomplete Nature Auguste Nahas  So it’s only in your first book, The Symbolic Species, that you came back to Peirce.  Terrence Deacon Yes. I was thinking about the evolutionary origins of human language. It was very clear to me that you just couldn’t talk about ‘pre-language’. Animals aren’t speaking in […]

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From Philosophy to Neuroscience and Back Again. An Interview with Terrence Deacon. Part I

17 January 2023

From Philosophy to Neuroscience and Back Again. An Interview with Terrence Deacon. Part I

Undergraduate & Graduate Days: Peirce, Cybernetics, Neuroscience Terrence Deacon is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches the co-evolution of language and the human brain. His recent work has touched on diverse questions at the intersection of philosophy and biology, such as the nature of complexity and the place […]

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Autonomy beyond the proto-cell: towards a ‘dialectical turn’ in origins-of-life research

14 December 2022

Autonomy beyond the proto-cell: towards a ‘dialectical turn’ in origins-of-life research

     Life’s complexity – even if we just stick to its basic core, the prokaryotic world – is overwhelming. This is not only due to the diversity of biomolecules and their amazing structural properties, or to the multiple and sophisticated transformations they undergo, but also to their dynamic organization and functional integration into cells. Let […]

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On hemianopsia, vision and adaptive reactions in organism’s pathological states

29 November 2022

On hemianopsia, vision and adaptive reactions in organism’s pathological states

In an unpublished manuscript datable to 1956-1957, La vision comme modèle de la connaissance[1] (Vision as a model of knowledge), the philosopher of medicine and biology Georges Canguilhem referred to specific biological-adaptive mechanisms compensating for some human vision anomalies, particularly hemianopic anomalies. In individuals in whom it tends to occur, hemianopsia (or hemianopia) involves the loss of one half of a […]

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What do we want from Jakob von Uexküll? Two Reading Recommendations on Open and Closed Umwelten

15 November 2022

What do we want from Jakob von Uexküll? Two Reading Recommendations on Open and Closed Umwelten

An opinionated, partial review of: Köchy, Kristian and Francesca Michelini (eds.) (2019), Jakob von Uexküll and Philosophy: Life, Environments, Anthropology, New York: Routledge. Schnödl, Gottfried, and Florian Sprenger (2021), Uexküll’s Surroundings: Umwelt Theory and Right-Wing Thought, Lüneburg: meson press eG. Reading Uexküll in the 2020s The work of Jakob von Uexküll’s has seen a remarkable […]

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