Abstract
While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, and Leonardo Bich seek a more deflationary account of these normative phenomena. Critiques directed at both of these accounts of organismic normativity motivate the introduction of the precedential account of organismic normativity, which I nevertheless locate within the enactivist approach, broadly construed. After detailing empirical evidence that would seem to vindicate the precedential account, I explore some of its implications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
“Jonas’s position is that autopoiesis and sense-making bring forth value and subjectivity in the world” (Thompson, 2022, 240).
There is, in other words, “an absoluteness of self-interest emerging immediately as a kind of intrinsic or endogenous ontological teleology” (Weber & Varela, 2002, 120).
This is Thompson’s interpretation of Weber and Varela, who “apparently accept Jonas’s viewpoint that subjectivity in the form of animate striving and feeling is present in the simplest unicellular organisms. So it is but a short step to the thought that autopoietic sense-making suffices for sentience” (Thompson, 2022, 240).
In the previous section I claimed that there are both normative-instrumental and phenomenological dimensions to the Jonasian account of intrinsic normativity, and that Weber and Verela are most straightforwardly interpreted as embracing both of these aspects (see Thompson, 2022, 240). While it is clear that many enactivists embrace the normative dimension of the Jonasian account, the extent to which they also embrace the phenomenological dimension is often, and perhaps strategically, left underspecified. As this essay focuses on the normative aspect of Jonasian intrinsic normativity, attributions of “felt existential concern” to many enactivists should be understood as “(felt) existential concern.”
Other passages suggest more affinity between the views of these authors, who are also co-authors. Di Paolo describes the generation of new habits as the “authentic births of new lifeforms” (Di Paolo, 2010, 54) and maintains that “habits should be seen as … autonomous structures,” which implies that he endorses Barandiaran’s claim that both metabolic and sensorimotor processes are living, circular processes oriented to their own survival: “as self-sustaining structures, [habits] are never bad for themselves, but for some other identity” (Di Paolo, 2010, 54; see also Di Paolo et al., 2017, 143). See (Barrett, 2017, 440) for further discussion of this point.
In Section 9, I offer an enactivist rejoinder to this objection. However, the prima facie plausibility of the objection is sufficient to help motivate the organizational theorists’ deflationary account of organismic normativity.
See, however, footnote 32.
Consider, for example, Moreno and Mossio’s claim that “self-maintenance grounds normativity. The activity of a self-maintaining system has an intrinsic relevance for itself, to the extent that its very existence depends on the constraints exerted through its own activity” (Moreno & Mossio, 2015, 70). Mossio and Bich likewise claim, explicitly invoking Jonas, that “teleology is extrinsic for the case of artefacts, and intrinsic for the case of biological systems (Jonas, 1966)” (Mossio & Bich, 2017, 1090). These formulations strongly suggest to the reader that organismic normativity on the organizational account is “intrinsic” in the sense of not being an imaginative projection. After all, this is how Weber and Varela, citing Jonas, understand the term (2002, 110).
Of course, those who prefer desert landscapes (Quine in Strawson, 1955, 229), including bald naturalists, will not see deflation as something to be avoided.
Computer simulations suggest that “the most complex, most integrated, and most evolvable behavior might occur in this boundary region” between order and chaos (Kauffman, 1993, 219). Native variability, as opposed to the narrower class of variability sourced in genetic mutation, is nothing other than order at the edge of chaos and is arguably, on Kauffman’s view, a “universal law” of life itself (1995, 91): “life exists at the edge of chaos” (1995, 26).
This backwards-looking orientation marks a decisive point of differentiation between the precedential account of intrinsic normativity and the Jonasian account, which maintains that “if concern is [an organism’s] primary principle of inwardness,” then “the anticipation of imminent future in appetition is more fundamental than the retention of past in memory” (Jonas, 1966, 86).
A recording of an infant making the A-not-B error can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jW668F7HdA
Indeed, and in contrast with Piaget’s hypothesis, when the toy’s hiding spot is openly changed to the B location, the fact that infants tend to visually fixate on B even as they reach for A suggests that “infants are not apparently confused about the last location of a hidden object” (Thelen et al., 2001, 7–8). Yet, the force of precedent as engendered by the modest amount of motor training they already received (reaching for A) is sufficient to overcome whatever it is they may also “know” as indicated by these looking measures. Moreover, it has been noted that even a single training trial is sufficient to prompt the perseverative error (Smith et al., 1999, 245; Landers, 1971; Butterworth, 1975).
I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this point.
While Hursthouse thinks that intrinsically motivated actions, including what she calls “arational actions,” constitute a counterexample to Davidson’s account of action explanation, Mele thinks the account can be amended to accommodate them (2003, 73–76). However, I prefer to resist Mele’s accommodation in order to highlight the distinction between intrinsically motivated actions and those actions that are done for a “further reason” (Hursthouse, 1991, 62; Mele, 2003, 75)—a distinction that is endorsed by both Hursthouse and Mele.
Because “[m]odel-free learners do not recruit the representations of outcome contingencies and values that are necessary to inform goal-directed behavior” (Decker et al., 2016, 855), it is widely agreed that model-free learning is less cognitively demanding than model-based learning.
This said, there is a key respect in which at least some instances of precedentially motivated action fall outside the scope of model-free learning, strictly construed. Model-free and model-based learning are two modes of reinforcement learning (Sutton & Barto, 2018), and all modes of reinforcement learning proceed by tacitly introducing an incentive to motivate the initial action, thereby blurring the distinction between extrinsically and intrinsically motivated action. However, the simplified A-not-B trial discussed in Section 6 shows that an infant will perseverate even in the absence of Pavlovian reinforcement (no toy was introduced to motivate the initial reach); an arm reach in one direction biases further arm reaches in that direction, even when the initial action was unprompted, unrewarded, and unreinforced.
The feeling of familiarity is not the only feeling that can underlie intrinsically motivated action. The feeling of familiarity would not typically accompany the throwing of a phone.
Behavioral scripts, in addition to cognitive schemes, can be vehicles of assimilation and accommodation. Jack Block neatly summarizes the way in which assimilation and accommodation are normatively valenced for Piaget: “Assimilate if you can; accommodate if you must!” (Block, 1982, 286). Special thanks to Eric Schwitzgebel for drawing this connection.
By contrast, I also include, in addition to selective processes, von Bearian differentiation within the historical dimension. See the conclusion for some elaboration of this remark.
While Wallace makes this captivating claim in the narrower context of personal identity, since persons are living things, its force and application might turn out to extend well beyond its intended scope.
See (Roder et al., 2009), as discussed above.
Anne Collins and Jeffrey Cockburn document how a “[model-free] strategy can flexibly adapt in a [model-based]-like way when learners form compound representations using previously observed stimuli and outcomes in conjunction with current stimuli…” (2020, 579). Indeed, this possibility gives rise to significant epistemic difficulties for those researchers attempting to differentiate instances of either of these learning strategies (Akam et al., 2015).
Bennett and Ruben (1979) argue that endothermy is a useful side-effect of the capacity for increased activity or stamina that comes with greater aerobic capacity. Klaassen and Nolet (2008) argue that endothermy is an exploitable consequence of an herbivorous diet, which requires some means to burn off the excess carbon that comes with consuming enough vegetation to secure the required nitrogen.
To be clear, because Levin and Dennett ultimately source the competence norms of these organism-agents in self-persistence goals, they do not appear to accept anything like the precedential account of intrinsic normativity: “Agents, in this carefully limited perspective, need not be conscious, need not understand, need not have minds, but they do need to be structured to exploit physical regularities that enable them to use information (following the laws of computation) to perform tasks, beginning with the fundamental task of self-preservation…” (Levin & Dennett, 2020). I cite them only in endorsement of the possibility of what Mog Stapleton and Tom Froese call “multi-agent agency” (2015, 223–25). For an elaboration of the possibility of multi-agent agency see Jason Winning’s “internal perspectivism” (2020).
Note that if mitochondria are agents, then what was described as the “frozen vestiges of activities that were once under agentive control” in the first response to the objection, might be better described as a transfer of control from one level of agency to another.
Waddington understands the significance of his epigenetic landscape in von Baerian terms (Waddington 1956, 9).
Individuation is not irreversible, as the possibility of paedomorphosis illustrates (Gould, 1977).
Mossio and Bich appeal to the seemingly related notion of “self-determination” to mark the class of the living. However, their notion of “self-determination” differs from the present appeal to “self-binding” in two crucial respects. First, “self-determination” makes no essential reference to the possibility of von Baerian individuation. Because “[s]elf-determination implies therefore a circular relation between causes and effects” (2017, 1090), relentlessly cyclical phenomena can be self-determining. Second, while self-determination does imply a distinction between factors that are internal and “external to the circular dynamics” of the system, these internal factors need not, for Mossio and Bich, have an agentive dimension. For one elaboration of the difference between these two kind of internal factors, see Kant’s distinction between a (mere) source and mode of determination: “it does not matter whether the causality determined in accordance with a natural law is necessary through determining grounds lying within the subject or outside him” (Kant, 1788, 5:96; for an application of the distinction to organism-agents see Khurana, 2013, 171–73).
References
Akam, T., Costa, R., & Dayan, P. (2015). Simple Plans or Sophisticated Habits? State, Transition and Learning Interactions in the Two-Step Task. PLOS Computational Biology, 11(12), e1004648. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004648
Allan, D. M. (1952). Towards a Natural Teleology. The Journal of Philosophy, 49(13), 449–459. https://doi.org/10.2307/2020570
Ashby, W. Ross. 1961. An Introduction to Cybernetics. Chapman & Hall.
Baer, Karl Ernst von. 1828. Über Entwickelungsgeschichte Der Thiere. Beobachtung Und Reflexion .... Gebrüdern Bornträger. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.6303.
Barandiaran, Xabier. 2007. “Mental Life: Conceptual Models and Synthetic Methodologies for a Post-Cognitivist Psychology.” In: B. Wallace, A. Ross, J. Davies, and T. Anderson (Eds.), The World, the Mind and the Body: Psychology after Cognitivism (49–90). Imprint Academic. https://philarchive.org/rec/SEAML.
Barandiaran, Xabier. 2008. Mental Life: A Naturalized Approach to the Autonomy of Cognitive Agents. Ph.D., University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU).
Barandiaran, X. (2017). Autonomy and Enactivism: Towards a Theory of Sensorimotor Autonomous Agency. Topoi, 36(3), 409–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9365-4
Barandiaran, X., & Di Paolo, E. (2014). A Genealogical Map of the Concept of Habit. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 522. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00522
Barandiaran, X., & Moreno, A. (2008). Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior. Adaptive Behavior, 16(5), 325–344. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059712308093868
Barrett, N. F. (2017). The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications. Topoi, 36(3), 431–443. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-015-9355-y
Bennett, A. F., and J. A. Ruben. 1979. “Endothermy and Activity in Vertebrates.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 206(4419), 649–54. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.493968.
Block, J. (1982). Assimilation, Accommodation, and the Dynamics of Personality Development. Child Development, 53(2), 281–295. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128971
Briglia, J., Servajean, P., Michalland, A.-H., Brunel, L., & Brouillet, D. (2018). Modeling an Enactivist Multiple-Trace Memory. ATHENA: A Fractal Model of Human Memory. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 82(February), 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2017.12.002
Bueno, Sebastião Batista, Bittar, Telmo Oliveira, de Lima Vazquez, Fabiana, Meneghim, Marcelo Castro, and Pereira, Antonio Carlos. (2013). Association of Breastfeeding, Pacifier Use, Breathing Pattern and Malocclusions in Preschoolers. Dental Press Journal of Orthodontics, 18(1), 30.e1-6.https://doi.org/10.1590/s2176-94512013000100006.
Butterworth, G. (1975). Object Identity in Infancy: The Interaction of Spatial Location Codes in Determining Search Errors. Child Development, 46(4), 866–870. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128391
Cappuccio, M., & Froese, T. (Eds.). (2014). Enactive Cognition at the Edge of Sense-Making: Making Sense of Non-Sense (2014th ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Christensen, W. (2012). Natural Sources of Normativity. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43(1), 104–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.05.009
Christensen, W., & Bickhard, M. H. (2002). The Process Dynamics of Normative Function. The Monist, 85(1), 3–28.
Collins, A. G. E., & Cockburn, J. (2020). Beyond Dichotomies in Reinforcement Learning. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 21(10), 576–586. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0355-6
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species. Penguin Books. https://archive.org/details/originofspeciesc00darw.
Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, Reasons, and Causes. Journal of Philosophy LX, 23, 685–700.
Daw, N. D., Niv, Y., & Dayan, P. (2005). Uncertainty-Based Competition between Prefrontal and Dorsolateral Striatal Systems for Behavioral Control. Nature Neuroscience, 8(12), 1704–1711. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1560
Decker, J. H., Ross Otto, A., Daw, N. D., & Hartley, C. A. (2016). From Creatures of Habit to Goal-Directed Learners: Tracking the Developmental Emergence of Model-Based Reinforcement Learning. Psychological Science, 27(6), 848–858. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616639301
Denis, Brouillet, and Versace Rémy. (2019). The Nature of the Traces and the Dynamics of Memory. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, 8(6), 151. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.pbs.20190806.12.
Dennett, Daniel. (1984). Cognitive Wheels: The Frame Problem of Artificial Intelligence. In: Christopher Hookway (Ed.), Minds, Machines and Evolution (129-152). Cambridge University Press.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel. (2005). Autopoiesis, Adaptivity, Teleology, Agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429–52.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-005-9002-y.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel. (2008). Extended Life. Topoi, 28(1), 9.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-008-9042-3.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel. 2010. “Overcoming Autopoiesis: An Enactive Detour on the Way from Life to Society.” In: Rodrigo Magalhães and Ron Sanchez (Eds.), Advanced Series in Management (6:43–68). Advanced Series in Management. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1877-6361(2009)0000006004.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel. (2018). The Enactive Conception of Life. In: Albert Newen, Leon De Bruin, and Shaun Gallagher (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (4th edition, 71–94). Oxford University Press.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel A., Marieke Rohde, and Hanne De Jaegher. (2010a). Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play. In: John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo (Eds.) Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (Illustrated edition, 33–87). MIT Press.
Paolo, Di., Ezequiel, T. B., & Barandiaran, X. (2017). Sensorimotor Life: An Enactive Proposal (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel, Marieke Rohde, and Hanne Di Jaegher. 2010b. Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play. In: Jon Stewart, Oliver Gapenne, and Ezequiel Di Paolo (Eds.) Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. The MIT Press. https://mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014601.001.0001/upso-9780262014601-chapter-3.
Djedovic, Alex. (2020). From Life-Like to Mind-Like Explanation: Natural Agency and the Cognitive Sciences. University of Toronto. https://www.academia.edu/44677082/From_Life_Like_to_Mind_Like_Explanation_Natural_Agency_and_the_Cognitive_Sciences.
Dretske, Fred. (1988). Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes. MIT Press.
Eling, N., Morgan, M. D., & Marioni, J. C. (2019). Challenges in Measuring and Understanding Biological Noise. Nature Reviews Genetics, 20(9), 536–548. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-019-0130-6
Epstein, B. (2016). A Framework for Social Ontology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 46(2), 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393115613494
Ferguson, K. (2007). Biological Funciton and Normativity. Philo, 10(1), 17–26.
Figdor, C. (2018). Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates. Oxford University Press.
Fox Keller, Evelyn. (2005). Ecosystems, Organisms, and Machines. BioScience, 55(12), 1069–74.https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[1069:EOAM]2.0.CO;2.
Fox Keller, Evelyn. (2007). The Disappearance of Function from ‘Self-Organizing Systems. In: Fred Boogerd, Frank J. Bruggeman, Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr, and H. V. Westerhoff (Eds.) Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations (303–17). Elsevier.
Gallagher, S. (2019). Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (Reprint). Oxford University Press.
Gould, S. J. (1977). Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Harvard University Press.
Hanna, Robert, and Michelle Maiese. (2009). Embodied Minds in Action. 1st edition. Oxford University Press.
Hursthouse, R. (1991). Arational Actions. Journal of Philosophy, 88(2), 57–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/2026906
Hutto, D. D., & Myin, E. (2012). Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content (1st ed.). The MIT Press.
James, William. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. Holt.
Jonas, H. (1966). The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. Northwestern University Press.
Jonas, H. (1992). Philosophische Untersuchungen und metaphysische Vermutungen. Insel.
Kant, Immanuel. (1788). Critique of Practical Reason. Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. (1790). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer. 1st edition. Cambridge University Press.
Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, Stuart A. (1995). At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. Oxford University Press.
Keijzer, F. (2013). The Sphex Story: How the Cognitive Sciences Kept Repeating an Old and Questionable Anecdote. Philosophical Psychology, 26(4), 502–519. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2012.690177
Kendig, Catherine. (2008). Biology and Ontology: An Organsims-Centered View. Dissertation, University of Exeter.
Khurana, Thomas. (2013). Life and AUtonomy: Forms of Self-Determination in Kant and Hegel. In: Thomas Khurana (Ed.) Freedom of Life: Hegelian Perspectives (155–93). August Verlag.
Kirschner, M., & Gerhart, J. (2006). The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma. Cincias Biol-Gicas (e). Yale University Press.
Klaassen, M., & Nolet, B. A. (2008). Stoichiometry of Endothermy: Shifting the Quest from Nitrogen to Carbon. Ecology Letters, 11(8), 785–792. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01180.x
Landers, W. F. (1971). Effects of Differential Experience on Infants’ Performance in a Piagetian Stage IV Object-Concept Task. Developmental Psychology, 5(1), 48–54. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0031064
Lane, N. (2010). Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution (Reprint). W. W. Norton & Company.
Levin, Michael, Dennett, Daniel C. (2020). Cognition All the Way Down. Aeon, October. https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-understand-cells-tissues-and-organisms-as-agents-with-agendas.
Longo, Giuseppe, Montévil, Maël. (2013). Perspectives on Organisms: Biological Time, Symmetries and Singularities. Springer Science & Business Media.
Malabou, C. (2005). The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic. Psychology Press.
Manning, R. N. (1997). Biological Function, Selection, and Reduction. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 48(1), 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/48.1.69
Marcovitch, S., & Zelazo, P. D. (1999). The A-Not-B Error: Results from a Logistic Meta-Analysis. Child Development, 70(6), 1297–1313.
Matthen, M., & Ariew, A. (2002). Two Ways of Thinking About Fitness and Natural Selection. The Journal of Philosophy, 99(2), 55–83. https://doi.org/10.2307/3655552
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1973). De Máquinas y Seres Vivos: Una Teoría Sobre La Organización Biológica. Editorial Universitaria.
Maturana, Humbert R., Varela, Francisco J. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. 1st edition. D. Reidel Publishing Company.
McDowell, J. (1996). Mind and World: With a New Introduction by the Author (2nd ed.). Harvard University Press.
McGeer, V., & Schwitzgebel, E. (2006). Disorder in the Representational Warehouse. Child Development, 77(6), 1557–1562. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00958.x
Meincke, A. S. (2018). Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma. In D. Nicholson & J. Dupre (Eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (pp. 357–378). Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. R. (2003). Motivation and Agency. Oxford University Press.
Melville, Herman. (2017). Moby-Dick. Edited by Hershel Parker. Third edition. W. W. Norton & Company.
Millikan, R. G. (1989). In Defense of Proper Functions. Philosophy of Science, 56(2), 288–302. https://doi.org/10.1086/289488
Moreno, Alvaro, Mossio, Matteo. (2015). Biological Autonomy: A Philosophical and Theoretical Enquiry. Springer.
Mossio, M., & Bich, L. (2017). What Makes Biological Organisation Teleological? Synthese, 194(4), 1089–1114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0594-z
Mossio, M., Saborido, C., & Moreno, A. (2009). An Organizational Account of Biological Functions. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 60(4), 813–841. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axp036
Neander, K. (1991). Functions as Selected Effects: The Conceptual Analyst’s Defense. Philosophy of Science, 58(2), 168–184. https://doi.org/10.1086/289610
Newman, S. (1995). Carnal Boundaries: The Commingling of Flesh in Theory and Practice. In L. Birke & R. Hubbard (Eds.), Reinventing Biology: Respect for Life and the Creation of Knowledge (pp. 191–227). Indiana University Press.
Newman, Stuart. (2020). The Origins and Evolution of Animal Identity. In: Anne Sophie Meincke and John Dupré (Eds.) Biological Identity: Perspectives from Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Biology (128–48). Routledge.
Nicholson, L. B. (2016). The Immune System. Essays in Biochemistry, 60(3), 275–301. https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20160017
Novick, A., & Weiner, M. (1957). Enzyme Induction as an All-or Nothing Phenomenon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 43(7), 553–566.
Okasha, S. (2018). Agents and Goals in Evolution. Oxford University Press.
Pattee, Howard Hunt. (1972). Laws and Constraints, Symbols and Languages. In: Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi (Ed.) Laws, Language and Life (81–90). Biosemiotics. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5161-3.
Piaget, Jean. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. The Construction of Reality in the Child. Basic Books. https://doi.org/10.1037/11168-000.
Piaget, J. (1967). Biologie et connaissance: Essai sur les relations entre les régulations organiques et les processus cognitifs. Gallimard.
Ramírez-Vizcaya, S., & Froese, T. (2019). The Enactive Approach to Habits: New Concepts for the Cognitive Science of Bad Habits and Addiction. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 301. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00301
Roder, Beverly J., Bushnell, Emily W., Sasseville, Anne Marie. (2009). Infants’ Preferences for Familiarity and Novelty During the Course of Visual Processing. Infancy, November. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327078IN0104_9.
Rödl, S. (2007). Self-Consciousness. Harvard University Press.
Rust, J. (2021). Von Baer the intensification of uniqueness and historical explanation. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 43(4), 122. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00473-9
Schrödinger, Erwin. (1945). What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. The Macmillan Company.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2020). Is There Something It?S Like to Be a Garden Snail. Philosophical Topics, 48(1), 39–63. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics20204813
Searle, J. R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. The Free Press.
Simmons, A. (2009). Do Animals Have an Interest in Continued Life?. In Defense of a Desire-Based Approach. Environmental Ethics, 31(4), 375–392. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics200931442
Smith, L. B., Thelen, E., Titzer, R., & McLin, D. (1999). Knowing in the Context of Acting: The Task Dynamics of the A-Not-B Error. Psychological Review, 106(2), 235–260. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.106.2.235
Stalnaker, R. (1989). On What’s In the Head. Philosophical Perspectives, 3, 287–316. https://doi.org/10.2307/2214271
Stapleton, Mog, Froese, Tom. (2015). Is Collective Agency a Coherent Idea? Considerations from the Enactive Theory of Agency. In: Catrin Misselhorn (Ed) Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems: Explanation, Implementation and Simulation (219–36). Philosophical Studies Series. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15515-9_12.
Strawson, P. F. (1955). A Logician‘s Landscape. Philosophy, 30(114), 229–237. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100034720
Sutton, Richard S., Barto, Andrew G. (2018). Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning Series. A Bradford Book.
Thelen, Esther, Schöner, Gregor, Scheier, Christian, Smith, Linda B. (2001). The Dynamics of Embodiment: A Field Theory of Infant Perseverative Reaching. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 1–34; discussion 34–86. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x01003910.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life. Harvard University Press.
Thompson, Evan. (2022). Could All Life Be Sentient? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29(3–4), 229–265. https://doi.org/10.53765/20512201.29.3.229
Toepfer, G. (2012). Teleology and Its Constitutive Role for Biology as the Science of Organized Systems in Nature. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part c: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Data-Driven Research in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43(1), 113–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.05.010
von Uexküll, J. (1957). A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds. In C. H. Schiller (Ed.), Instinctive Behavior : The Development of a Modern Concept (pp. 5–80). International Universities Press.
Varela, F. J. (1979). Principles of Biological Autonomy. North Holland.
Varela, Francisco J. (1987). Laying down a Path in Walking. In: William Irwin Thompson (Ed) Gaia: A Way of Knowing. Political Implications of the New Biology (48–64). Lindisfarne Press.
Varela, F. J. (1992). Organisms: A Meshwork of Selfless Selves. In A. I. Tauber (Ed.), Organism and the Origins of Self (pp. 79–107). Princeton University Press.
Varela, Francisco J., Thompson, Evan T., Rosch, Eleanor. (1992). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Revised ed. edition. The MIT Press.
Villalobos, M., & Ward, D. (2015). Living Systems: Autonomy, Autopoiesis and Enaction. Philosophy & Technology, 28(2), 225–239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-014-0154-y
Waddington, C. H. (1942). Canalization of Development and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters. Nature, 150(3811), 563–565. https://doi.org/10.1038/150563a0
Waddington, C. H. (1956). Principles of Embryology. MacMillan.
Waddington, C. H. (1957). The Strategy of the Genes. George Allen and Unwin.
Wallace, Kathleen. (2019). The Network Self: Relation, Process, and Personal Identity. 1st Edition. Routledge.
Walsh, D. (2015). Organisms, Agency, and Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
Walsh, D. (2018). Objectcy and Agency: Towards a Methodolgoical Vitalism. In D. Nicholson & J. Dupre (Eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (pp. 167–185). Oxford University Press.
Weber, A. (2001). Cognition as Expression: On the Autopoietic Foundations of an Aesthetic Theory of Nature. Sign Systems Studies, 29(1), 153–167.
Weber, A. (2011). The Book of Desire: Toward a Biological Poetics. Biosemiotics, 4, 149–170. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-010-9100-2
Weber, Andreas. (2016). Biopoetics: Towards an Existential Ecology. Springer.
Weber, A., & Varela, F. J. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1(2), 97–125. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020368120174
Wimsatt, William C. (1999). Generativity, Entrenchment, Evolution,and Innateness: Philosophy, Evolutionary Biology, and Conceptual Foundations of Science. In: Valerie Gray Hardcastle (Ed.) Where Biology Meets Psychology: Philosophical Essays (139–80). MIT Press.
Wimsatt, William C. (2007). Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings. Harvard University Press.
Winning, J. (2020). Internal Perspectivalism: The Solution to Generality Problems about Proper Function and Natural Norms. Biology & Philosophy, 35, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09749-z
Wooldridge, Dean E. (1963). Machinery of the Brain. Mcgraw-hill Inc.
Wright, L. (1976). Teleological Explanations: An Etiological Analysis of Goals and Functions. University of California Press.
Zimmer, C. (2008). Microcosm: E. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Acknowledgements
André Ariew, Denis Walsh, Jason Winning, Fermin Fulda de la Garza, Åsa Burman, Jake Simmons, Eric Schwitzgebel, two anonymous reviewers
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Rust, J. Precedent as a path laid down in walking: Grounding intrinsic normativity in a history of response. Phenom Cogn Sci 23, 435–466 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09865-z
Accepted:
Published:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09865-z