Article ID: CBB936868866

Biopsychism: Life between computation and cognition (2020)

unapi

The computational metaphor of organisms as phenotypic automata controlled by a genetic programme has been replaced by the cognitive metaphor of organisms as intelligent agents making decisions about how to use their genomic and environmental resources. This metaphor facilitates novel ways of thinking about organisms that defy the assumptions of the old machine metaphor. But like all metaphors, the cognitive metaphor discloses important similarities at the expense of eclipsing significant dissimilarities. I argue that although cognitivism carries with it the crucial insight that living organisms are agents rather than mere automata, this metaphor distorts the nature of biological agency by over-intellectualizing, which risks eliminating the distinction between life and mind. I trace the Cartesian root of these metaphors and argue that it generates a dilemma between mechanism and intellectualism. To capture the middle path that most organisms occupy between these two extremes, I propose an ecological account of natural agency.

...More
Included in

Article Willard McCarty (2020) Editorial, Making Sense of Metaphor: Evelyn Fox Keller and Commentators on Language and Science. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (pp. 233-233). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB936868866/

Similar Citations

Article Etienne S. Benson; (2016)
Trackable life: Data, sequence, and organism in movement ecology (/isis/citation/CBB905219115/)

Book Husbands, Phil; Holland, Owen; Wheeler, Michael; (2008)
The Mechanical Mind in History (/isis/citation/CBB000774489/)

Chapter Asaro, Peter M.; (2008)
From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby (/isis/citation/CBB000760385/)

Book Riskin, Jessica; (2007)
Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life (/isis/citation/CBB000741792/)

Article Ruse, Michael; (2005)
Darwinism and Mechanism: Metaphor in Science (/isis/citation/CBB000770691/)

Article Timo Kaitaro; (2016)
Eighteenth-Century French Materialism Clockwise and Anticlockwise (/isis/citation/CBB884514321/)

Chapter Andrault, Raphaële; (2011)
The Machine Analogy in Medicine: A Comparative Approach to Leibniz and His Contemporaries (/isis/citation/CBB001500214/)

Thesis Tombs, George; (2003)
Man the Machine: A History of a Metaphor from Leonardo da Vinci to H. G. Wells (/isis/citation/CBB001562093/)

Article Airaksinen, Timo; (2011)
Rhetoric and Corpuscularism in Berkeley's Siris (/isis/citation/CBB001210461/)

Article Brandstetter, Thomas; (2007)
Herzpumpen. Wasserhebemaschinen um 1700 als Metaphern, Bilder und Strukturmodelle (/isis/citation/CBB001023524/)

Article Dana Matthiessen; (2019)
The rise of cryptographic metaphors in Boyle and their use for the mechanical philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB765223874/)

Book Kathleen M. Brown; (2023)
Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race, and Rights in the Age of Abolition (/isis/citation/CBB065925879/)

Article Christopher Moore; (2021)
Promêtheia as Rational Agency in Plato (/isis/citation/CBB382821836/)

Authors & Contributors
Kaitaro, Timo
Dana Matthiessen
Stovall, Preston
Dunham, Jeremy
Wheeler, Michael
Welsh, Caroline
Concepts
Mechanism; mechanical philosophy
Metaphors; analogies
Philosophy
Agency (philosophy)
Machines
Reductionism
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
France
Great Britain
Americas
North America
Greece
Germany
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment