Causality Meaningful Complexity And Embodied Cognition

Causality, Meaningful Complexity and Embodied Cognition

Arturo Carsetti According to molecular Biology, true invariance (life) can exist only within the framework of ongoing autonomous morphogenesis and vice versa. With respect to this secret dialectics, life and cognition appear as indissolubly interlinked. In this sense, for instance, the inner articulation of conceptual spaces appears to be linked to an inner functional development based on a continuous activity of selection and “anchorage” realised on semantic grounds. It is the work of “invention” and g- eration (in invariance), linked with the “rooting” of meaning, which determines the evolution, the leaps and punctuated equilibria, the conditions related to the unfo- ing of new modalities of invariance, an invariance which is never simple repetition and which springs on each occasion through deep-level processes of renewal and recovery. The selection perpetrated by meaning reveals its autonomy aboveall in its underpinning, in an objective way, the ongoing choice of these new modalities. As such it is not, then, concerned only with the game of “possibles”, offering itself as a simple channel for pure chance, but with providing a channel for the articulation of the “ le” in the humus of a semantic (and embodied) net in order to prepare the necessary conditionsfor a continuousrenewal and recoveryof original creativity. In effect, it is this autonomy in inventing new possible modules of incompressibility whichdeterminestheactualemergenceofnew(andtrue)creativity,whichalsotakes place through the “narration” of the effected construction.

Causality, Meaningful Complexity and Embodied Cognition

Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind

Nietzsche’s thought has been of renewed interest to philosophers in both the Anglo- American and the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions. Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind presents 16 essays from analytic and continental perspectives. Appealing to both international communities of scholars, the volume seeks to deepen the appreciation of Nietzsche’s contribution to our understanding of consciousness and the mind. Over the past decades, a variety of disciplines have engaged with Nietzsche’s thought, including anthropology, biology, history, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology, to name just a few. His rich and perspicacious treatment of consciousness, mind, and body cannot be reduced to any single discipline, and has the potential to speak to many. And, as several contributors make clear, Nietzsche’s investigations into consciousness and the embodied mind are integral to his wider ethical concerns. This volume contains contributions by international experts such as Christa Davis Acampora (Emory University), Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick University), João Constâncio (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Frank Chouraqui (Leiden University), Manuel Dries (The Open University; Oxford University), Christian J. Emden (Rice University), Maria Cristina Fornari (University of Salento), Anthony K. Jensen (Providence College), Helmut Heit (Tongji University), Charlie Huenemann (Utah State University), Vanessa Lemm (Flinders University), Lawrence J. Hatab (Old Dominion University), Mattia Riccardi (University of Porto), Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen (New York University and EGS), and Benedetta Zavatta (CNRS).