LIVING AND KNOWING: HOW NATURE MAKES KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE.
Traditional human-centred epistemologies have failed to adequately address the question, 'How are cognition and knowledge possible?' Naturalistic epistemologies, however, and in particular, evolutionary, biosemiotic, and autopoeitic approaches, have recognized that humans are not the only knowers, p...
| Publicado en: | Cosmos & History Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1 - 35 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Ashton & Rafferty
2013
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=101549017&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 101549017 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 18329101 78JL jtl: Cosmos & History issn: 18329101 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2013 vid: 9 iid: 1 pid: 47219 pub: Ashton & Rafferty artinfo: ui: 101549017 ppf: 1 ppct: 34 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 933KB tig: atl: LIVING AND KNOWING: HOW NATURE MAKES KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE. aug: au: Dix, Michael affil: Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry Swinburne University of Technology su: Theory of knowledge Cognition Biosemiotics Philosophy of nature Philosophy & the life sciences sug: subj: Theory of knowledge Cognition Biosemiotics Philosophy of nature Philosophy & the life sciences keyword: Bickhard biology biosemiosis causation cognition complexity Emmeche epistemology evolution hierarchy Hoffmeyer Knowledge Kull non-linearity Peirce semiosis Sharov signs Uexküll umwelt ab: Traditional human-centred epistemologies have failed to adequately address the question, 'How are cognition and knowledge possible?' Naturalistic epistemologies, however, and in particular, evolutionary, biosemiotic, and autopoeitic approaches, have recognized that humans are not the only knowers, perceivers, cognizers and rememberers in nature, and thus ask instead, 'How does nature make cognition and knowledge possible?' thereby reconceiving epistemology as study of the cognition and experience of living, embodied, interacting and intersignifying natural beings. Nonetheless, their insights into how nature makes knowledge (and other epistemological achievements) possible, while instructive, typically are incomplete - in most cases because key aspects of the peculiar physical/causal dynamics of cognitive processes and their causal/functional roles in the lives of organisms, are insufficiently considered. This paper seeks to redress this situation, to provide a clearer understanding of how nature makes knowledge (and other epistemological processes and achievements) possible. The argument draws upon insights of the approaches mentioned, and upon studies of biological hierarchy, natural emergence, complex causal dynamics and hierarchically structured causal processes, to show that nature's "inventions" of non-linear causation and cybernetic process-modulation led to the emergence of novel systems whose sensitivity to ultralow- energy signals (for example, just a few molecules of a chemical compound) radically enhances their viability by producing a non-linear hierarchically ordered cascade of adaptive activity peculiarly associated with the signal type. This is biosemiosis. It is argued that the unique causal character of biosemiotic processes is not only their physical "signature", but is essential to subsequently emergent cognitive processes and achievements and their functions, and indeed to the biological functions of the organic processes that make life possible. This is a further reason (if further reason were needed) for holding biosemiosis to be, ontologically, a natural kind. Indeed, an understanding of the distinctive causal/functional character of biosemiosis is the key to understanding how nature makes possible not only knowledge (and all other epistemological processes and achievements) but also, by those semiotic means, life itself. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Cosmos & History is the property of Ashton & Rafferty and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Cosmos & History holder: Ashton & Rafferty dt: @attributes: year: 2013 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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