Keyword: dialectics

Abstract. This paper examines the relation between embodiment and sociality within the enactive approach, highlighting the continuity between biological autonomy and social normativity. The central claim is that, while enactivism offers the conceptual resources to address the complexity of social cognition, doing so requires the integration of dialectical tools into the theory of the embodied […]

From October 10–12, at the University of Toronto, a workshop marked 40 years since the publication of The Dialectical Biologist (1985) by Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin. The book, a collection of their earlier papers, aimed to present a coherent vision of how Marxian dialectics can inform biological theory. It stands alongside other critical works, […]

Description from the event page: Hybrid Event – To obtain the Zoom information, click on the “Register” button above or use the link at the bottom of the page Forty years have passed since Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin published The Dialectical Biologist in 1985. At the time the publication was generally met with puzzlement […]

The enactive approach challenges the idea that the mind is confined to the individual, instead emphasizing its emergence through dynamic interactions between self-constituting identities and their shared environments, spanning ecological and social dimensions. Enactive research has identified three key dimensions of embodiment: organismic regulation, sensorimotor coupling, and intersubjective interaction. Each of these operates as a […]

The attempt to integrate dialectical insights into cognitive science has shaped recent developments within the enactive approach, most notably in Di Paolo et al.’s Linguistic Bodies (2018). Following this emerging line of inquiry, this new paper seeks to establish a dialogue between the enactive perspective and the Marxist tradition. The central point of contact is […]

Published open access in Frontiers in Phychology Abstract: The way organismic agents come to know the world, and the way algorithms solve problems, are fundamentally different. The most sensible course of action for an organism does not simply follow from logical rules of inference. Before it can even use such rules, the organism must tackle […]

In 1892, Ernst Haeckel introduced the term biopsychism to express the view that all and only living beings are sentient. For Haeckel, this position was to be distinguished both from zoopsychism, the belief that all and only animals are sentient, and his preferred panpsychism, the belief that all and only matter is sentient (Haeckel 1892: […]

We are pleased to announce the call for abstract for this Conference, on the relation between the Marxian tradition and the left-Sellarsian Pittsburgh School, to be held at University College London. Thee conference aims to build a dialogical space between Marxism and the Pittsburgh School in this conference and thus extend this call for papers. […]

Introduction The last century saw two prevailing trends between dialectics and science. On one side, Western Marxism, which was defined by Lukács rejection of Engels’ philosophy of nature; on the other, those who embraced the dialectics of nature, the dialectical materialists (Foster 2020). While the former tended to conflate science with positivism and therefore ignored […]

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 […]