Life is precious because it is precarious: Individuality, mortality, and the problem of meaning.

Authors

Keywords:

Teoría computacional de la mente, ciencia cognitiva, filosofía de la mente, fenomenología, individualidad

Abstract

Computationalism aspires to provide a comprehensive theory of life and mind. It fails in this task because it lacks the conceptual tools to address the problem of meaning. I argue that a meaningful perspective is enacted by an individual with a potential that is intrinsic to biological existence: death. Life matters to such an individual because it must constantly create the conditions of its own existence. For that individual to actively adapt, rather than to passively disintegrate. I introduce two ancient foreign worldviews that assign a constitutive role to death. Then I trace the emergence of a similar conception of mortality from the cybernetics era to the ongoing development of enactive cognitive science. Finally, I analyze why orthodox computationalism has failed to grasp the role of mortality in this constitutive way.

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Author Biography

Tom Froese, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Doctor en Ciencia Cognitiva por la Universidad de Sussex, R. U. Investigador del Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas (iimas) de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; miembro del Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3) de la misma universidad. Coordinador del “4E Cognition Group”. Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, nivel I. Ha publicado más de 30 artículos en reconocidas revistas científicas de las Américas, Europa, y Asia. Sus principales áreas de interés son las ciencias cognitivas y la inteligencia artificial

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Published

2016-12-16

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