creators_name: G., Nagarjuna creators_id: Nagarjuna G. type: preprint datestamp: 2005-02-26 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:51 metadata_visibility: show title: Towards a Model of Life and Cognition subjects: bio-ani-cog subjects: phil-mind subjects: phil-sci subjects: bio-theory subjects: phil-metaphys full_text_status: public keywords: life, cognition, philosophy of biology, cognitive science, foundations of life, theoretical biology, invertibility, self-organization, biological roots of cognition, autopoisis, self-reproduction, metaphysics, ontology, evolution, adaptation, complexity, measure of complexity, autonomy, dialogical invertibility, knowledge, evolution of complex systems, Darwin, natural selection, logic of construction, perturbation abstract: What should be the ontology of the world such that life and cognition are possible? In this essay, I undertake to outline an alternative ontological foundation which makes biological and cognitive phenomena possible. The foundation is built by defining a model, which is presented in the form of a description of a hypothetical but a logically possible world with a defined ontological base. Biology rests today on quite a few not so well connected foundations: molecular biology based on the genetic dogma; evolutionary biology based on neo-Darwinian model; ecology based on systems view; developmental biology by morphogenetic models; connectionist models for neurophysiology and cognitive biology; pervasive teleonomic explanations for the goal-directed behavior across the discipline; etc. Can there be an underlying connecting theme or a model which could make these seemingly disparate domains interconnected? I shall atempt to answer this question. By following the semantic view of scientific theories, I tend to believe that the models employed by the present physical sciences are not rich enough to capture biological (and some of the non-biological) systems. A richer theory that could capture biological reality could also capture physical and chemical phenomena as limiting cases, but not vice versa. date: 2004-08 date_type: published refereed: FALSE referencetext: References [1] Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, and James D. Watson. 1994, Molecular Biology of the Cell. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 3 edition. [2] Marcello Barbieri. 2003, The Organic codes: An Introduction to Semantic Biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. [3] Fritjof Capra. 2002, The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. HarperCollinsPublishers, London. [4] Fritjof Capra. 2002, The Web of Life. HarperCollinsPublishers, London. [5] Donald Davidson. 1980, Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford University Press. [6] Hans-Peter Durr, Fritz-Albert Popp, and Wolfram Schommers. 2002, What is Life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions, volume 4 of Foundations of Natural Science and Technology. 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North Holland. citation: G., Nagarjuna (2004) Towards a Model of Life and Cognition. [Preprint] document_url: http://cogprints.org/4109/1/Life-Cognition.pdf