Biophilosophy

Die Entwicklung des Phänotypus eines Organismus beziehungsweise dessen Embryogenese galt als die zentrale Problematik des biologischen Denkens bis zur Entwicklung der Evolutionstheorie Charles Darwins und wurde in verschiedenen Epochen sehr unterschiedlich erklärt. Mit dem Aufkommen der mechanistischen Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft im 17. Jahrhundert begann der Siegeszug der  Vorstellung, dass die Embryogenese auf materielle deterministische Vorgänge zu reduzieren ist. Im 20. Jahrhundert wurde diese Idee von der Vorstellung des Gens  verkörpert. Das sogenannte "Zentraldogma der Molekularbiologie", das 1970 von Francis Crick seine endgültige Formulierung bekam, besagt, dass die Information für den Aufbau des Phänotypus immer von den Genen zu den Proteinen weitergegeben wird, so dass sie niemals von einem Protein zum anderen oder von den Proteinen zu den Genen übertragen werden kann. Die Vorstellung der einseitigen Richtung des Informationsflusses führte zur Reduktion der Entwicklung eines Organismus auf den Ablauf eines sogenannten "genetischen Programms", in dem die phänotypische Form des Organismus kodiert sei. In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurde die Vorstellung, dass die Gene den Organismus formen, stark kritisiert. Zudem hat die Integration systemtheoretischer Denkweisen der Selbstorganisations- und Komplexitätstheorie in die Biologie zusätzlich die Idee des genetischen Programms untergraben. Bedeutende theoretische Biologen und Philosophen der Gegenwart betrachten Organismen als besonders komplexe dynamische physikochemische Systeme, die sich aus Interaktionen zwischen Genen und Proteinen selbstorganisieren.
Die Philosophie der Biologie sollte diese Entwicklungen ernst nehmen und ihre Grenzen kritisch beleuchten, um mögliche negative Folgen zu antizipieren und ihnen entgegen zu wirken. So befürchte ich, dass viele Kritiker der neodarwinistischen genzentrierten Biologie unbewusst dabei sind, das biologische Denken des 21. Jahrhunderts auf eine physikalistische Grundlage zu stellen.

Die erste und zweite Sektion dieser Studie sind der Darstellung der Visionen des Transhumanismus gewidmet. Sie stellen diese futuristische Richtung und einige wichtige Gegenargumente ihrer Kritiker dar. Alle darauf folgenden Sektionen dienen dem Aufbau eines neuen Argumentes, das auf einer kürzlich vom Autor eingeführten Philosophie des Lebendigen und insbesondere des biologischen Organismus beruht, die als "prozessontologische Biophilosophie" bezeichnet werden kann (S.Koutroufinis, "Organismus als Prozess", Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 2019). In der dritten Sektion wird gezeigt, dass der Transhumanismus verschiedene Dimensionen der menschlichen Freiheit berührt und fest an der Frage des menschlichen Wesens gebunden ist, das unlösbar mit der Freiheit des Menschen verflochten ist. Die Verwirklichung der transhumanistischen Visionen setzt sowohl den umfassenden Einbau komplexer Maschinen in den menschlichen Körper voraus als auch den massiven Einsatz naturwissenschaftlicher Formalismen bei der Planung der Transformation des Körpers mittels unterschiedlicher Eingriffe. Aus diesem Grund wird in der vierten Sektion gezeigt, dass jeder Organismus, somit auch der Organismus des Menschen, eine bestimmte Logik verkörpert, die der Logik aller Maschinen und Formalismen der modernen Naturwissenschaften diametral entgegensteht. Davon ausgehend wird in der fünften und letzten Sektion inferiert, dass der Transhumanismus der Logik der organismischen Seinsweise und somit der Natur des Menschen widerspricht. Dieses Resultat wird auf die Besonderheit des Wesens jedes Menschen und seines zur Freiheit bestimmten individuellen Bewusstseins zugespitzt, um dadurch die eigentliche Bedeutung dieses futuristischen Diskurses und die Herausforderung, die er an die Menschheit stellt, aus einer biophilosophischen Perspektive zu betrachten.

The creation of a process ontology for biology is one of the most ambitious and important projects of current philosophy of biology. Process ontology is usually seen as opposing mechanistic ontology which currently dominates biology. However, the terms 'process' and 'mechanistic' are not always clearly defined in current debates. In this paper I provide a new definition of 'mechanism' and 'mechanistic ontology' based on the most abstract definition of 'machine'—von Foerster's 'non-trivial machine' that is related to Turing machine. I argue that the main methods of modeling used in systems biology rest upon the implicit assumption that organisms abide by the non-trivial or Turing machine logic. By showing that organisms and machines obey two incompatible logics of causality I demonstrate the limits of this assumption. The paper concludes by introducing an organism centered concept of process and arguing that Whitehead's process metaphysics offers a way of understanding organisms as exemplifications of a specific category of process.

Georges Canguilhem est connu comme épistémologue des sciences de la vie. Il est moins réputé en dehors des cercles d'amateurs spécialisés comme vitaliste « encarté » (en employant cette formule, nous songeons à celle, peut-être un brin provocatrice, employée par Canguilhem en discussion avec Michel Fichant : « je suis un nietzschéen sans carte »). Nous examinerons ici sa contribution à une « biophilosophie » qui ne se contenterait pas de se situer trop strictement dans l'une des deux orthodoxies classiques et tenaces que sont le réductionnisme et le holisme. D’une part, sa version de ce projet biophilosophique qui existait (surtout en France et différemment en Allemagne) dans les années d’après-guerre est moins obstinément anti-réductionniste que les autres (Canguilhem ne craint ni Nietzsche ni Darwin, il n’érige pas un système de la totalité organique ou de l’organisme-subjectivité) ; d’autre part, le projet ou plutôt la pensée canguilhemienne n’est pas exempte d’arrières-pensées métaphysiques.

Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart investigates the ways in which thinking through the contemporary hybrid artistico-scientific practices of bioart is a biophilosophical practice, one that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of life than we encounter in mainstream academic discourse. When examined from a Deleuzian feminist perspective and in dialogue with contemporary bioscience, bioartistic projects reveal the inadequacy of asking about life’s essence. They expose the enmeshment between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, and, ultimately, life and death. Instead of examining the defining criteria of life, bioartistic practices explore and enact life as processual, differential, and always already uncontainable, thus transcending preconceived material and conceptual boundaries.

In this way, this doctoral thesis concentrates on the ontology of life as it emerges through the selected bioartworks: “semi-living” sculptures created by The Tissue Culture and Art Project and the performance May the Horse Live in Me (2011) by L’Art Orienté Objet. The hope is that such an ontology can enable future conceptualisations of an ethico-politics that avoids the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences.

The present study was written with the intent of opening up new
ontological dimensions to the debate concerning the nature of the
organism, which broaden the horizons of contemporary biological
science. Various traditions from the natural sciences and Naturphilosophie
are further developed and synthesized into a novel theory of
the organism. Organismic genesis is contemplated in light of the process
of individual ontogenesis and its most dramatic phase, embryogenesis.
The ontogenetic theme also gives rise to the problem of organismic
self-maintenance, which exists both for multicellular and
unicellular life. In the synthesis here proposed, foundational principles
of Alfred North Whitehead’s and Henri Bergson’s process ontologies
find new integration in the concept of the organism. From the
unicellular to the most highly-developed of organisms, subjective interiority
is awarded in degrees to all life forms, wherein experience is
granted a central role in the ontogeny and self-maintenance of the
organism. Finally, a vision for a future process metaphysics is
sketched in which essential elements of the ontologies of both thinkers
are brought together.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung wurde verfasst, um der Diskussion
zum Wesen des Organismus neue ontologische Dimensionen zu eröffnen,
die den weltanschaulichen Horizont der gegenwärtigen Biowissenschaften
erweitert. Unterschiedliche naturwissenschaftliche
und naturphilosophische Traditionen werden weitergedacht und zu
einer neuen Theorie des Organismus synthetisiert. Organismisches
Werden wird in Bezug auf die Ontogenese des Individuums und vor
allem ihre dramatischste Phase, die Embryogenese, betrachtet. Zur
ontogenetischen Thematik gehört zwangsläufig auch die Problematik
der Selbsterhaltung des Organismus, die auch für einzellige Lebewesen
besteht. In der hier vorgeschlagenen Synthese werden Grundgedanken
der Prozessontologien von Alfred North Whitehead und
Henri Bergson auf eine neue Weise in die Idee des Organismus integriert.
Von den Einzellern bis zu höchst entwickelten Organismen
wird jedem Lebewesen in abgestufter Form subjektive Innerlichkeit
zugesprochen, wobei dem Erleben eine zentrale Rolle für die Ontogenese
und Selbsterhaltung des Organismus zukommt. Überdies wird
eine zukünftige Prozessmetaphysik skizziert, in der essentielle Elemente
der Ontologien beider Denker miteinander integriert werden.

In questa tesi di laurea triennale in filosofia teoretica, si traccia un percorso storico e contenutistico del pensiero filosofico del passato e del presente intorno alle piante. Nonostante siano state spesso tenute ai margini e considerate esseri inferiori, le piante sono state un elemento essenziale per definire importanti categorie filosofiche, soprattutto quelle che riguardano il  concetto di vita ed essere vivente. Hanno rappresentato e rappresentano soprattutto una sfida alla conoscenza e alla valutazione del rapporto che intercorre fra uomo e esseri viventi molto diversi dall'uomo.

La Deleuziana, n. 12 (2020), pp. 25-38.
At the point of convergence between speculative realism, nihilism, and a certain taste for horror culture, "dark philosophies" have emerged as some of the most original theoretical proposals of our times. All these philosophies see virality as the paradigmatic event that disturbs the global axiomatics of capitalism. Today, this globality is precisely what gives virality its enormous strength. What dark philosophies can teach us, through a crossed reflection on current socialpolitical conditions and on the concept of life, is how to draw from virality a possibility for thought: virality is a pharmacological concept, and its meaning will be in a great part dependent on what we will be able to make of it. A thorough reflection on virality could bring us to see in the present situation not only a possibility for new kinds of individuation, but also a catalyst for a type of politics that is perhaps the only possibility to cope with imperial axiomatics.

Post-Anthropocentric Creativity; Call for Submissions, special issue of Digital Creativity, 27:1, January 2016; Guest editors: Stanislav Roudavski and Jon McCormack. This special issue aims to audit existing conceptions of creativity in the light of non-anthropocentric interpretations of agency, autonomy, subjectivity, social practices and technologies. Specifically, it seeks to explore how 1) the agents, recipients and processes of creativity and 2) the purpose, value, ethics and politics of creativity relate to phenomena of computation. The editors encourage innovative narrative or visual strategies that can express relevant scenarios better that more typical forms of academic writing. Dialogues, conversations, plays, scripts, instruction sets, games or visual essays (for example) might be suitable alongside logical arguments or formulae.

In this introduction of the volume "Life and Process. Towards a New Biophilosophy," first I will explain why I believe it is necessary to differentiate between biophilosophy and the philosophy of biology. Second, I will review some of the shortcomings of today's biology and philosophy of biology and demonstrate how a biophilosophy grounded in a process-oriented metaphysics can overcome them. Third, I will provide a summary of Whitehead's process ontology, emphasizing those fundamental ideas from this paradigm that play essential roles in the present book. Finally, I will briefly describe the main ideas presented in subsequent chapters.

Der Idealismus wird oftmals als dem evolutionären Weltbild widersprechend angesehen. Er stehe der Idee einer Transmutation der Arten und einer entsprechenden Dynamisierung des Naturbildes skeptisch gegenüber, sei teleologisch auf den Geist ausgerichtet und anti-reduktionistisch. Der vorliegende Aufsatz will die These vertreten, dass entgegen jener Thesen Idealismus und Darwinismus nicht nur in Einklang gebracht werden können, sondern dass vor dem Hintergrund bestehender alternativer Ansätze gerade der objektive Idealismus den Rahmen zu einer philosophisch besonders überzeugenden Interpretation des Evolutionismus bietet. Dazu wird zunächst eine äußerst knappe Skizze des Grundgedankens des objektiven Idealismus gegeben. Sodann wird auf die Genese der antagonistischen Fronstellung zwischen Darwinismus und Idealismus eingegangen, und es werden die wesentlichen Spannungen benannt. Im Hauptteil werden im Überblick die zumeist gängigen philosophischen Reaktionen auf den Darwinismus – optimistischer bzw. pessimistischer Naturalismus, Kulturalismus sowie geltungstheoretische Abwehr des Biologismus – dargestellt und auf ihre Schwächen verwiesen, so dass abschließend die wesentliche Vorteil einer objektiv-idealistischen Interpretation des Darwinismus deutlich werden.

Der Whiteheadsche Kosmos präsentiert sich als eine unaufhörliche Transformation von Geflechten der Intersubjektivität, deren Knoten spontane und kreative Verschmelzungen von Erfahrungsrelationen sind. Aufgrund dieser umreduzierbaren Kreativität kann man die Entwicklung des Kosmos, im Gegensatz zum geistlosen Werden, als Geschichte verstehen. Auf der Basis der Grundbegriffe „Erfahrung“ und „Geschichte“ und durch die Betonung der Spontaneität und Endlichkeit der primären Entitäten errichtet Whitehead eine philosophische Kosmologie jenseits der alten Metaphysik-Konzepte, die hinter jedem Wandel nach zeitlosen Wesenheiten suchen. Die Whiteheadsche Ontologie erlaubt, eine Alternative zu einer eng an die Erkenntnisse der Biowissenschaften angelehnten Biophilosophie zu entwerfen.  Biophilosophie ist nicht automatisch als Philosophie der Biologie zu verstehen – sie kann auch um die Dimension einer zeitgemäßen Naturphilosophie des Lebendigen ergänzt werden.

¿Es la vida una simple resultante de la conjunción de procesos físico-químicos? ¿Puede reducirse a una mera yuxtaposición de sucesos determinados espacialmente? ¿Qué epistemología o forma de ver el mundo nos permite comprenderla? Aristóteles creó un sistema filosófico propio en el que la naturaleza es vista como una totalidad dinámica y en constante movimiento. La vida es una manifestación de ella, y es permitida y gobernada por la psyché. La psyché es el principio organizativo de los distintos niveles biológicos: nutritivo, perceptivo e intelectivo. El experimento crucial de Driesch aportó pruebas empíricas de la existencia de este principio de vida, al que denominó entelequia. La entelequia es una multiplicidad intensiva, y no puede comprenderse con los parámetros usuales derivados de lo extensivo. El ámbito propio de la entelequia es el de la duración. Esta permite la reintroducción del concepto de teleología en la esfera de lo viviente, entendida no como causa final, sino como orden nacida del deseo y conducente a la acción.

In debates between holism and reductionism in biology, from the early twentieth century to more recent re-enactments involving genetic reductionism, developmental systems theory, or systems biology, the role of chance – the presence of theories invoking chance as a strong explanatory principle – is hardly ever acknowledged. Conversely, Darwinian models of chance and selection (Dennett 1995, Kupiec 1996, Kupiec 2009) sit awkwardly with reductionist and holistic concepts, which they alternately challenge or approve of. I suggest that the juxtaposition of chance and the holism-reductionism pair (at multiple levels, ontological and methodological, pertaining to the vision of scientific practice as well as to the foundations of a vision of Nature, implicit or explicit) allows the theorist to shed some new light on these perennial tensions in the conceptualisation of Life.

This is an epistemologically-driven history of the concept of evolution. Starting from its inception, this work will follow the development of this pregnant concept. However, in contradistinction to previous attempts, the objective will not be the identification of the different meanings it adopted through history, but conversely, it will let the concept to be unfolded, to be explicated and to express its own inner potentialities. The underlying thesis of the present work is, therefore, that the path that leads to the development of the concept of evolution is the path that studies the possibilities of the evolution of concepts, and that the historical reconstruction of its conceptual trajectory will shed light into potential and unexploited possibilities. This methodology will provide useful tools and resources for future developments of the concept. For example, it will define the concept of transmutation as a different conceptual trajectory deviating from the one corresponding to evolution, at the onset of the 19th century. Moreover, epigenesis will not be the opposing concept to evolution, but only to simultaneous and instantaneous generation. It will demonstrate that every important system of epigenesis drew upon some kind of formative power to explain development. More importantly, it will show that the problem of preformation cannot be overlooked, and that some kind of virtual preformation must be considered in order to address the problems of generation and development.

The topic of the relationship between the organism and its environment runs through the theories of Uexküll, Goldstein and Canguilhem with equal importance. In this work a counterpoint will be established between their theories, in the attempt to assess at which points the melodies are concordant and at which points they are discordant. As fundamental basis to his theory, Uexküll relies on the concept of conformity to a plan, which allows him to account for the congruity and perfect adjustment between organisms and their Umwelten. For Goldstein and Canguilhem, the relationship between an organism and its environment resembles instead a debate or coming to terms, in which the organism, as to ensure the continuity of the state of health, must constantly create norms to maintain a productive relationship with its environment. The pinpointing of these conceptual frameworks allows to lay emphasis on that each theory relies on specific assumptions regarding teleology and sense in organisms, as well as on specific definitions of the concept of life in general. Ultimately, the view that organisms and their environments have an original and common source, a principle, or plan, which must possess all the creative characteristics of life, will be seen as prevailing.

Georges Canguilhem est connu comme épistémologue des sciences de la vie. Il est moins réputé en dehors des cercles d'amateurs spécialisés comme vitaliste « encarté » (en employant cette formule, nous songeons à celle, peut-être un brin provocatrice, employée par Canguilhem en discussion avec Michel Fichant : « je suis un nietzschéen sans carte »). Nous examinerons ici sa contribution à une « biophilosophie » qui ne se contenterait pas de se situer trop strictement dans l'une des deux orthodoxies classiques et tenaces que sont le réductionnisme et le holisme.

La riflessione sullo statuto epistemologico e sul funzionamento politico del discorso biologico – nel suo carattere eterogeneo, plurale e conflittuale – è un tema centrale nelle opere di Michel Foucault e Georges Canguilhem. A partire dall’analisi delle relazioni e delle tensioni tra i loro orientamenti teorici, questo studio propone una rilettura critica delle loro ricerche, integrandole e utilizzandole nei dibattiti epistemologici e politici contemporanei. In tal senso, la filosofia biologica di Canguilhem permette di riesaminare la concezione foucaultiana della storia, della società, della soggettività, della tecnica, dell’ambiente, e di reinterrogare in una prospettiva socio-ecologica ed eco-storica lo spazio d’intervento delle tecnologie biopolitiche.


One of the core issues in Michel Foucault’s and Georges Canguilhem’s works is the study of the epistemological status and political functioning of biological discourse, explored in its fully heterogeneous, plural, and conflictual character. Starting from the relations and tensions between their theoretical orientations, the present work attempts a critical re-reading of their researchs, with the aim of integrating and mobilizing their analysis in light of contemporary political and epistemological debates. In this respect, Canguilhem’s biological philosophy allows us to re-examine the foucauldian conceptions of history, society, subjectivity, technology, and environment; moreover, it enables a re-questioning about the spaces of intervention of biopolitical technologies from a socio-ecological and eco-historical perspective.

Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die Eignung der Whiteheadschen Prozeßphilosophie für eine zeitgemäße teleologische Auffassung der organismischen Ontogenese zu demonstrieren. Zu diesem Zweck wird eine Möglichkeit der Verbindung der Whiteheadschen Prozeßphilosophie mit der aktuellen Form systemischen Denkens, das in der Theoretischen Biologie gegenwärtig maßgebend ist, vorgestellt. Die Gründe der Beschäftigung mit alternativen Ontologien, wie der Whiteheadschen, hängen mit den Problemen des systemischen Denkens zusammen, die aufgrund der enormen Komplexität schon der einfachsten Organismen auftreten. Die Erläuterung dieser Thematik setzt eine kurze Vorstellung des biosystemischen Ansatzes und seiner Grenzen voraus. Das verlangt seinerseits nach gewissen physikalisch-systemtheoretischen Vorkenntnissen, die für jede formale Reduktion von Organismen unerläßlich sind. Daher bietet ein vorsichtiges Studium des ersten Teils, das eine Einführung in grundsätzliche Begriffe und Arbeitsweisen der modernen Theorie dynamischer Systeme leistet, eine gute Vorbereitung für die Beschäftigung mit dem biophilosophischen Teil dieses Beitrags.

"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection."

This paper aims to study the virtues and limits of the identification of life and art, in order to overcome the aporias of a vitalist aesthetic through the concept of creation, as found in Bergson and Deleuze's processual ontologies. It will be concerned with the problem, diagnosed by Peter Hallward, of the tendency shared by many philosophies of creation to distinguish the created entities from the creative plane and to deprive the created of any inherent value. An analysis of Bergson's concept of creation, and of its variations enacted by Deleuze, will show how Hallward's challenge can be answered, and how the individual personality comes to coincide with the whole creative effort of life through the Deleuzian concept of singularity: art becomes eventually the model to think a truly creative individuation and its modalities.

In this essay I seek to critically evaluate some forms of holism and organicism in biological thought, as a more deflationary echo to Gilbert and Sarkar's reflection on the need for an 'umbrella' concept to convey the new vitality of holistic concepts in biology (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). Given that some recent discussions in theoretical biology call for an organism concept (from Moreno and Mossio’s work on organization to Kirschner et al.’s research paper in Cell, 2000, building on chemistry to articulate what they called “molecular vitalism,” studying the “vitalistic” properties of molecular, cellular, and organismal function, and Pepper and Herron’s suggestion in their 2008 paper that organisms define a category that evolutionary biology cannot do without), the question, what concept of organicism are they calling for? To what extent are such claims philosophically committed to a non-naturalistic concept of organism as organizing centre, as a foundational rather than heuristic concept – or possibly a “biochauvinism,” to use Di Paolo’s term (Di Paolo 2009)? My aim in this paper is to conceptually clarify the forms of holism and organicism that are involved in these cases (and I acknowledge that the study of early 20th-century holisms [Peterson 2010] indicates that not all of them were in fact ‘organicist’ or ‘biologistic’). I suggest that contemporary holists are still potentially beholden to a certain kind of vitalism or “biochauvinism”; but that when they reduce their claims to mere heuristics, conversely, they risk losing sight of a certain kind of organizational “thickness”, a “vital materiality” (Wheeler 2010) which is characteristic of biological systems (Bechtel 2007). And I ask if it is possible to articulate a concept of biological holism or organicism which is neither an empirical ‘biochauvinism’ nor a metaphysical ‘vitalism’?

Philosophical morphology carries on a difficult tradition, bound with different currents and periods of thought. During the 20th century, an original and profound reflection on the living form can be recognized in the so-called French biophilosophy; morphology, thus, seems to re-emerge under the guise of an ontology of becoming and a post-critical paradigm. Thinkers like Raymond Ruyer, Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze showed to be deeply aware of the manifold issues revolving around the notion of form and were able to provide original solutions to these problems in the framework of their thought systems.
More recently, these reflections have asserted themselves in virtue of their coherence and their speculative force. This paper aims at a theoretical overview of the morphological spirit of biophilosophy that retraces the complex exchanges of influences between three significant thinkers, Ruyer, Simondon and Deleuze. Along the focal nodes of temporality, spatiality and individuality, a renewed image of philosophical morphology will result from the vitality of their theoretical proposals.

In the first half of the 20 th century the attempt was made to banish all teleological thinking from biology. In the last few decades, several biologists and philosophers of biology have claimed that organisms may be considered teleological entities, spurring on a movement that can be described as 'neo-teleologism.' However, while biologists and philosophers of biology talk about 'teleology', it is not always clear what they mean by this term. This paper introduces the central ideas of the most influential neo-teleological approaches and compares them with the metaphysical fundaments of Aristotle's teleology. The main aim of the paper is to make clear that neo-teleologism and Aristotelian teleology are based on entirely different metaphysical assumptions. The latter, in contrast to the former, exemplifies the idea that living beings have an intrinsic nature and value.

In the last few decades, several biologists and philosophers of biology have claimed that organisms may be considered teleological entities, spurring on a movement that is often celebrated as the renaissance of teleological thinking and that I describe as ‘neo-teleologism’. Neo-teleological approaches have been provided by cyberneticists, neo-Darwinists, theorists of self-organization, and some philosophers of biology. In Aristotle’s work Physics the term ‘telos’ has a double meaning: final state on the one hand and purpose, aim, or goal on the other. In all neo-teleological approaches the concept of ‘telos’ is understood as final-state-directedness, but here the final state of a material process is considered to be achieved by blind, deterministic, non-mental factors alone. Philosophy of biology gives to all neo-teleological approaches great credit for providing interpretations of ‘purpose’ and ‘aim’ without any reference to mental or psychical factors. According to Aristotle, in contrast, organismic final-state-directedness is the result of striving factors. This does not, however, mean that Aristotle ascribes a human-like conscious mentality to biological processes. Aristotle’s concept of striving may be interpreted in terms of non-conscious proto-experiential agency, as it was introduced by Alfred North Whitehead. I will claim that his metaphysics offers to biophilosophy a modern basis for a re-conception of genuine Aristotelian insights concerning ‘telos’ and biological organism.

Gilles Deleuze and Raymond Ruyer have been sui generis morphologists. Their peculiar contributions to philosophical morphology can cast light on some problematic issues concerning the relationship between "form" and "formation". In this respect, the musical concepts of «rhythm» and «melody» would play an important role insofar as to address respectively the problem of tem-porality of the living form and the problem of its events-based normativity. In the first paragraph, I address some morphological positions in Deleuze's philosophy of creation, in relation to his perspective on time and genesis. In the second paragraph I deal with Ruyer's symmetrical view, which can provide further clarifications on the idea of biological constraints' modification. The concepts of rhythmic pulsation and melodic orientation are shown to be two crucial coordinates in order to approach the intrinsic features of the living.

Canguilhem is known to have regretted, with some pathos, that Life no longer serves as an orienting question in our scientific activity. He also frequently insisted on a kind of uniqueness of organisms and/or living bodies – their inherent normativity, their value-production and overall their inherent difference from mere machines. In addition, Canguilhem acknowledged a major debt to the German neurologist-theoretician Kurt Goldstein, author most famously of The Structure of the Organism in 1934; along with Merleau-Ponty, Canguilhem was the main figure who introduced the work of Goldstein and his ‘phenomenology of embodiment’ into France. In this paper I inquire if we should view Canguilhem and Goldstein as ‘biochauvinists’, that is, as thinkers who consider that there is something inherently unique about biological entities as such, and if so, of what sort.

The Cartesian metaphysical background of most contemporary
bioscientists limits their ability to understand the uniqueness of biological processes. This book aims to contribute to the foundation of a new direction in biophilosophy which goes beyond many of the core metaphysical assumptions of contemporary mainstream biology. All of the co-authors of this volume treat central metaphysical questions about the nature of life from the perspective of Whitehead's process philosophy. These questions are crucial for the biosciences, but cannot be addressed by them since they touch on metaphysical issues. The authors of this volume explore the viability of process ontology for increasing our understanding of core concepts of biology such as organism, evolution, and teleology. The book presents a new philosophical approach to several dimensions of the phenomenon of life.

In earlier work I wrestled with the question of the 'ontological status' of organisms. It proved difficult to come to a clear decision, because there are many candidates for what such a status is or would be, and of course many definitions of what organisms are. But what happens when we turn to theoretical projects 'about' organisms, that fall under the heading 'organicist'? I first suggest that organicist projects have a problem: a combination of invoking Kant, or at least a Kantian 'regulative ideal', usually presented as the epistemological component (or alternately, total vision) of a vision of organism – as instantiating natural purposes, as a type of 'Whole' distinct from a merely mechanistically specifiable set of parts, etc. – and a more ontological statement about the inherent or essential features of organisms, typically presented according to a combination of a 'list of heroes' or 'laundry list' of properties of organisms. This amounts to a category mistake. Other problems concern the too-strict oppositions between mechanism and organi(ci)sm, and symmetrical tendencies to 'ontologize' (thus objectifying) properties of organisms, and to 'subjectify' them (turning them into philosophies of subjectivity). I don't mean to suggest that no one should be an organicist or that Kant is a name that should be banished from civilised society. Rather, to borrow awkwardly from Sade, 'organicists, one more effort!' if one wants a naturalistic, non-foundationalist concept of organicism, which is indeed quite active in recent theoretical biology, and which arguably was already alive in the organismic and even vitalist theories of thinkers like Goldstein and Canguilhem.

This research explores the carnal, experienced self as processual and becoming, situating life as zoe (as per Braidotti) in the context of the Western culture, characterized by alienation (Fromm, Foucault et.al.). The study first addresses the ontological disposition of the carnal self and then turns to the concepts of life and death (Freud, Fromm), to explicate the link between materiality and discourse conditions. Erich Fromm’s classical distinction of having and being is restated as a distinction of having and becoming, which are then explored as complimentary ontological, cultural and characterological directionalities. A genealogy of their mutual dynamics then allows situating the relations of carnal bodies and inorganic prosthesis (e.g. technologies) in the light of life considered as the necessary synthesis of forces of preservation and perpetual change, beyond subject-object duality.

The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles – sometimes overt, sometimes masked – throughout the history of biology, and frequently in very normative ways, also shifting between the biological and the social. Indeed, it has often been presented as a key-concept in life science and the ‘theorization’ of Life, but conversely has also been the target of influential rejections: as just an instrument of transmission for the selfish gene, but also, historiographically, as part of an outdated ‘vitalism’. Indeed, the organism, perhaps because it is experientially closer to the ‘body’ than to the ‘molecule’, is often the object of quasi-affective theoretical investments presenting it as essential, sometimes even as the pivot of a science or a particular approach to nature, while other approaches reject or attack it with equal force, assimilating it to a mysterious ‘vitalist’ ontology of non-causal forces, or other pseudo-scientific doctrines. This paper does not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either in terms of scientific validity or historical coherence; nor does it return to the well-studied issue of the organism-mechanism tension in biology. Recent scholarship has begun to focus on the emergence and transformation of the concept of organism, but has not emphasized so much the way in which organism is a shifting, ‘go-between’ concept – invoked as ‘natural’ by some thinkers to justify their metaphysics, but then presented as value-laden by others, over and against the natural world. The organism as go-between concept is also a hybrid, a boundary concept or an epistemic limit case, all of which partly overlap with the idea of ‘nomadic concepts’. Thereby the concept of organism continues to function in different contexts – as a heuristic, an explanatory challenge, a model of order, of regulation, etc. – despite having frequently been pronounced irrelevant and reduced to molecules or genes. Yet this perpetuation is far removed from any ‘metaphysics of organism’, or organismic biology.

In the present essay we argue for biophilosophy as a feminist and posthumanities methodology that attends to the question of life by focusing on multiple differences and transformations, materiality and processuality, as well as relations, intra-actions, and disconnections. By combining both the ontological and ethical concerns that go beyond what is conventionally seen as “life”, biophilosophy offers a critical and innovative approach to the issues of death, extinction, liveability, terminality, and toxicity, among others, which all form a backbone of the environmental crises and changing conditions of life on Earth, also framed as the Anthropocene.
We first discuss select theorisations and implications of the “life/death” coupling as an ethico-political question; subsequently we elaborate the concept of biophilosophy as a methodology; and finally, we propose two examples where we test biophilosophy as a framework that allows us: (1) to engage with the enmeshment of life and death through the concept of the non/living, and (2) to explore the concept of toxic embodiment as an onto-ethical condition we all (human and nonhuman) are differentially immersed in.

In: Berger, E., K. Mäki-Reinikka, K. O’Reilly & H. Sederholm, eds. Art As We Don’t Know It. Helsinki: Aalto ARTS Books, pp. 54-63. [peer-reviewed] AVAILABLE AT (FREE PDF): https://shop.aalto.fi/p/1194-art-as-we-dont-know-it/?fbclid=IwAR3f96b-4dB0tySSGJOvM9OGYcRi5TWWWUw7ahkg90tdu7wRHOQpc_eSByI

Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die Eignung der Prozessontologie Alfred North Whiteheads für eine bio-und bewusstseinsphilosophische Fragestellung zu zeigen. Dabei wird ein Weg vorgestellt, wichtige Gedanken Whiteheads mit der modernen Theorie dynamischer Systeme, von der die Theoretische Biologie gegenwärtig beherrscht wird, zu verbinden. Dies erfordert jedoch eine kurze Einführung in das biologische Teleologie-Verständnis und in grundsätzliche Begriffe und Arbeits-weisen der modernen Theorie dynamischer Systeme, die für jede formale Reduktion organismischer Vorgänge unerlässlich sind.

Unter "Bioprotopsychismus" verstehe ich eine Sonderform des Panpsychismus. Es gibt zwei Versionen des Bioprotopsychismus: Die schwache und die starke. Während erstere nur Organismen, die mit Nervensystemen ausgestattet sind, Erlebensfähigkeit zuweist, spricht letztere allen Organismen psychische Aktivität und Teleologie zu. Ich plädiere für die starke Version des Bioprotopsychismus wegen des prinzipiellen Unvermögens naturwissenschaftlicher Systemtheorien, überzeugende Modelle selbst von den einfachsten Organismen zu liefern. Ich zeige, dass Emergentismus und Bioprotopsychismus in der Philosophie des Lebendigen eine fruchtbare Synthese eingehen können. Ersterer kann sich auf den modalen und letzterer auf den aktualen Aspekt des Organismus beziehen. Das protopsychische Subjekt, das die innere Seite des Organismus ausmacht, trifft permanent Entscheidungen zwischen physikochemisch gleichwertigen Möglichkeiten und verwirklicht einige von ihnen, die biologisch sinnvoll sind. Die Prozessphilosophien von Bergson und Whitehead bieten dem Bioprotopsychismus das nötige ontologische Instrumentarium, um organismische Subjektivität mit Prozessualität zu verbinden.

La catégorie d’organisme a un statut ambigu : scientifique ou philosophique ? Elle a longtemps en tout cas servi de « caution » scientifique à une argumentation philosophique qui refuse la tendance dite « mécaniste » ou « réductionniste » perçue comme dominante depuis le dix-septième siècle, que ce soit au sein de l’animisme stahlien, de la monadologie leibnizienne, du néo-vitalisme de Hans Driesch, ou encore de la « phénoménologie du vivant » au vingtième siècle chez des auteurs comme Goldstein, Straus, Weizsäcker, dont l’influence sur Merleau-Ponty mais aussi Canguilhem est patente. Le but de cet article est à la fois de mettre en lumière la sédimentation de cette catégorie, pour en faire une évaluation critique, autrement dit, pour voir en quoi elle peut demeurer utile une fois qu’on a refusé toute dérive « organiciste ». On proposera une notion de l’organisme en tant que fiction instrumentale.

Spyridon Koutroufinis (ed.), Process and Life — Towards a Whiteheadian View of Living Beings, 2014 (310 pp. ; 978-3-11-035259-7 ; 109,95 €)
Alfred North Whitehead is arguably the most original 20th-century philosopher of nature and metaphysics. In recent decades a number of physicists have produced ground-breaking new theories in fundamental physics influenced by his process philosophy. In contrast, few biologists are even aware that Whitehead’s radical rethinking of the Cartesian assumptions implicit in 19th-century sciences might be relevant to their enterprise. This book seeks to fill this gap by exploring how Whitehead’s process ontology might provide a new philosophical foundation for the biosciences of the 21st century. The central premise shared by all of the volume’s authors is the idea that all living processes are irreducible processes. Each chapter focuses on assumptions implicit in some of the core concepts of biology—such as organism, evolution, information, and teleology—that play crucial explanatory roles in the biosciences, but as metaphysical concepts fall outside its purview. The authors each identify important shortcomings implicit in contemporary biological paradigms and show how an approach grounded in a process-oriented metaphysics can avoid them.

Abstract: This paper aimes to show the cognitif incomings that contribut to the ethitical point of view renewel, from tow entries: 1- the fusion of social sciences in natural siences mostly Biology, 2- extension of human exclusivity concepts to the animal sphare with the discovering of rationality and morality of animals; where the evolutionist approach take the central essue in Ethitical poit of view renewel, because social scienses should absorb evolution cocepts, also the semiotic philosophy leads to the decovring of animal sociability, thus the “biophilosophy” appeared as a basic of ethitical point of view renewel; finally, the main axes of renewel are as following: 1- considering ethics as sort of adaptation, 2- correction of Spincer  understanding of Darwinism, 3- moral evaluation is linked with evolution and space-temps changing, even linkes with social conflicts, 4- the detection of animal morality will help human to resignat the race purity and superiority mythes.

In earlier work I wrestled with the question of the ‘ontological status’ of organisms. It proved difficult to come to a clear decision, because there are many candidates for what such a status is or would be, and of course many definitions of what organisms are. But what happens when we turn to theoretical projects ‘about’ organisms, that fall under the heading ‘organicist’? I first suggest that organicist projects have a problem: a combination of invoking Kant, or at least a Kantian ‘regulative ideal’, usually presented as the epistemological component (or alternately, total vision) of a vision of organism – as instantiating natural purposes, as a type of ‘Whole’ distinct from a merely mechanistically specifiable set of parts, etc. – and a more ontological statement about the inherent or essential features of organisms, typically presented according to a combination of a ‘list of heroes’ or ‘laundry list’ of properties of organisms. This amounts to a category mistake. Other problems concern the too-strict oppositions between mechanism and organi(ci)sm, and symmetrical tendencies to ‘ontologize’ (thus objectifying) properties of organisms, and to ‘subjectify’ them (turning them into philosophies of subjectivity). I don’t mean to suggest that no one should be an organicist or that Kant is a name that should be banished from civilised society. Rather, to borrow awkwardly from Sade, ‘organicists, one more effort!’ if one wants a naturalistic, non-foundationalist concept of organicism, which is indeed quite active in recent theoretical biology, and which arguably was already alive in the organismic and even vitalist theories of thinkers like Goldstein and Canguilhem.

Dieses Buch soll zur Erneuerung der naturphilosophischen Betrachtung des Lebendigen beitragen. Ziel der Autoren ist, dazu beizutragen, die Diskussion zum Verständnis des Lebendigen um neue ontologische Dimensionen, die außerhalb bioszientistischer Selbstverständlichkeiten stehen, zu vertiefen. Denn Biophilosophie ist nicht automatisch als Philosophie der Biologie zu verstehen – sie kann auch um die Dimension einer zeitgemäßen Naturphilosophie des Lebendigen ergänzt werden. Zu diesem Zweck behandeln alle an diesem Projekt beteiligten Autoren, ausgehend von der Prozeßphilosophie Whiteheads, zentrale Fragen der Problematik des Lebendigen, die im Rahmen biowissenschaftlicher Diskurse nicht erschöpfend diskutiert werden können.