title: Animated Machines, Organic Souls:  Maturana and Aristotle on the Nature of Life
creator: Álvarez-Vázquez, Javier Y.
subject: 000
subject: 000 Generalities, Science
subject: 100
subject: 100 Philosophy
subject: 150
subject: 150 Psychology
subject: 300
subject: 300 Social sciences
subject: 570
subject: 570 Life sciences
subject: 590
subject: 590 Zoological sciences
description: The emergence of mind is a central issue in cognitive philosophy. The main working assumption of the present paper is that several important insights in answering this question might be provided by the nature of life itself. It is in this line of thinking that this paper compares two major philosophical conceptualizations of the living in the history of theoretical biology, namely those of Maturana and Aristotle. The present paper shows how both thinkers describe the most fundamental properties of the living as autonomous sustenance. The paper also shows how these theoretical insights might have a consequence upon our understanding of a specific constructiveness of human cognition, here referred to as enarrativity, if this can be considered in a structural as well as evolutionary connection with the structure of life as such. The paper finally suggests that the structural connection made here can be traced from the fundamental organization of self-preservation to survival behaviors to constructive orientation and action.
publisher: Novelty Journals
date: 2016-02
type: Article
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/article
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/20421/1/Animated%20Machines.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00020421
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-204215
identifier:   Álvarez-Vázquez, Javier Y.  (2016) Animated Machines, Organic Souls: Maturana and Aristotle on the Nature of Life.  International Journal of Novel Research in Humanity and Social Sciences, 3 (1).  pp. 67-78.  ISSN 2394-9694     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/20421/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng