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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · 6h

How does life emerge from nonlife?

New special issue of the Royal Transactions brings together leading thinkers on the origins of life—where chemistry meets information, and evolution unfolds through the “adjacent possible.”

dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · 5d

📖 New Book Out

Alvaro Moreno & Juli Peretó explore the major transitions in biological agency—from origins of life to metazoans—showing how agency drives the evolution of biological complexity

www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · 12d

Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin

A hybrid conference bringing together voices old and new to revisit how The Dialectical Biologist still resonates, and reinvigorates, contemporary biology

www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/diale...

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · 23d

Dialectics meets the enactive approach!

Join us for Dialectics and the Embodied Mind

📍 Univ. of Luxembourg | Sept 22–23

dialecticalsystems.eu/events/inter...

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Nicolae Morar @nmorar.bsky.social · Jul 22

Inspiring work by Denis Walsh on organism/ environment dialectic, along side @jonothingeb.bsky.social and Stuart Newman ! #ISHPSSB2025 is such a treat !

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Jul 10

Since its beginnings, the enactive approach has shown how autonomy is scaffolded across biological, sensorimotor, and social dimensions.

This new video interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo tells the story in an accessible way:

youtube.com/watch?v=y4Dz...

Originals | Ezequiel Di Paolo: Linguistic Bodies and Sensorimotor Agency

YouTube video by Originals

youtube.com

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Jul 3

Integrating dialectical insights into cognitive science has driven advances in the enactive approach. This new paper opens a dialogue between enaction and Marxism, highlighting labor as a form of an ecological and distributed cognition

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An enactive account of labor - Mind & Society

This paper aims to build a theoretical bridge between the Marxist and enactive traditions by focusing on the concept of labor. While labor represents a central component of human experience, it remain...

link.springer.com

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Jun 17

Today we celebrate the new edition of Varela’s Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) from MIT Press, with a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo & Evan Thompson, reconnecting Varela's legacy in cognitive science to his theoretical biology

dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New edition of Principles of Biological Autonomy - Dialectical Systems

Today, we celebrate the new publication of Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) by MIT Press, now accompanied by a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson.Varela’s ideas cont...

dialecticalsystems.eu

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Jun 10

Embodied & enactive approaches aren’t just about individual cognition — they’re about society.

A new Mind & Society special issue brings enactivism into conversation with ethics, social theory & political philosophy.

www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · May 24

Really excited to read the reprint of Varela’s Biological Autonomy annotated by @evanthompson.bsky.social. I really want to offer a special topics course focusing on it in an upcoming semester.

Pictures of Varela’s Biological Autonomy book

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Apr 15

Collin Lucken & Elmo Feiten use the enactive concept of participatory sense-making to ground public science engagement, showing how core ideas from embodied cognition can scale beyond motor coordination to illuminate social cognition in practice

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Leveraging participatory sense-making and public engagement with science for AI democratization

Our paper explores new potentials for productive dialogue between public engagement with science (PEWS) and radical embodied cognitive science (RECS).…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Apr 10

Henry Potter and @wiringthebrain.bsky.social challenge reductive views in neuroscience by introducing richer, temporally extended notions of causality and arguing to re-center cognition and the organism as genuine causal agents in behavior

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience

The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Dialectical Systems

BRIGHTHINK @brighthink.bsky.social · Apr 8

The audio recording of our fantastic event with Kevin J. Mitchell and Anil Seth, FREE AGENTS: Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?, is now up on our website and Youtube Channel. Go take a listen now!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVr-...

@wiringthebrain.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · Apr 8

The media circus on the slightly modified wolf mixed with the nonsensical hype of de-extinction only highlights the need to greatly shift how we talk about genes and genetic "information" in popular discourse. Oyama's groundbreaking book and Lewontin's prescient forward should be a starting point.

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hanne de jaegher @participha.bsky.social · Apr 7

Information and data will never deliver creativity
— Life, information, and the search for meaning

New piece over at @iai.tv

In which I quote Colwyn Trevarthen and David Bowie.

iai.tv/articles/inf...

Information and data will never deliver creativity | Hanne De Jaegher

iai.tv

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PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · Apr 6

𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺: 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲
Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon: Join our discussion with @wiringthebrain.bsky.social
Apr 11 at noon EST USA time.
Here's the paper to get the discussion going:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Everyone welcome but register ->

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience

The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Mar 27

Adaptivity is central to life, yet conceptually homeless. While adaptation is tied to selection, adaptivity is an ongoing organismal process—rooted in metabolism, not just evolutionary causation

www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...

The Philosophy of Adaptivity - Dialectical Systems

At the core of life is adaptivity, the organismal process of adjusting to ever-changing conditions. But despite its centrality, adaptivity is a surprisingly lonely concept. Its most immediate lexical ...

www.dialecticalsystems.eu

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Reposted by Dialectical Systems

Anna Ciaunica @annaciaunica.bsky.social · Mar 25

Happy to share that our SI in Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B was accepted 😎

Hybrid Agencies - Crossing Borders between Biological and Artificial Worlds

Co-Edited with Shaun Gallagher and Takashi Ikegami

We have a fantastic line up of contributions coming up soon !

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Mar 21

Can natural selection shape the ability to evolve?

New study shows bacteria evolving mutations that speed up adaptation—suggesting mutations are not purely random but can be biased toward adaptive outcomes

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Mar 14

CFP: Towards Comparative Philosophy of Science (Journal for General Philosophy of Science)

Call for papers on comparative philosophy of science is out,, ed;: Simon Lohse and Karim Bschir. Submissions until 31 March 2025.

philevents.org/event/show/1...

Towards Comparative Philosophy of Science (Special Issue of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Towards Comparative Philosophy of Science (Special Issue of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science) Guest editors: Simon Lohse (Nijmegen) & Karim Bschir (St....

philevents.org

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Mar 11

Is teleology really obsolete? This special issue explores how goal-directedness remains crucial in biology, mind, and society—despite its exile from analytic philosophy.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#Philosophy #Teleology

Teleology for the twenty-first century: editorial introduction - Synthese

Synthese -

link.springer.com

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Mar 4

A new study delves into Heidegger’s early critique of Hegel, analysing their divergent views on time and ontology. By examining their distinct conceptions of temporality, the work clarifies the essential differences between their philosophical systems.

www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New book: Hegel and Heidegger on Time - Dialectical Systems

By Ioannis Trisokkas. Published open-access by Cambridge University Press. Summary: This Element discusses Heidegger’s early (1924–1931) reading and critique of Hegel, which revolve around the topic o...

www.dialecticalsystems.eu

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Feb 4

This new paper examines the concept of closure of constraints as a modeling tool. This interpretation clarifies the scope and applicability of biological autonomy, addressing common criticisms regarding the over-liberality of the framework

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · Jan 30

New OA paper by Charbel El-Hani et al. explores how living beings are individuated as causal systems via biological autonomy, with closure of constraints as a distinctively biological causal regime that defines system boundaries.

🔗 taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-...

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · Jan 27

Free Will in an Indeterministic Universe ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/e... - really looking forward to visiting University of Leeds on Friday to give this talk! If you're in the area, come along! 😊

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