CFP: Dialectics and the Embodied Mind Special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Confirmed contributors: Ezequiel Di Paolo, Shaun Gallagher, Laura Mojica, Kate Nave, Glenda Satne, Dave Ward. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/cfp-d...

CFP: Dialectics and the Embodied Mind (special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences) - Dialectical Systems

The enactive approach challenges the idea that the mind is confined to the individual, instead of emphasizing its emergence through dynamic interactions between self-constituting identities and their ...

dialecticalsystems.eu

⁉️😵‍💫🧐 > everyone [who] learns cognitive science in the Netherlands [...] actually learn[s] dynamical systems theory that is [one of the] nonrepresentationalist non-computationalist approaches to cognitive science and psychology which is very different from what we have for example, [...] in Portugal.

#1312 Kevin Mitchell: How to Understand Individual Differences in Psychological Traits

YouTube video by The Dissenter

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Would Hegel get along with AI "agents"? Would he use their agency to explain their abilities? He would for humans and brains, qua the enactivist approach. Andrea Gambarotto explains. @dialecticalsys.bsky.social braininspired.co/podcast/246/

A collaboration between Dialetical Systems and @braininspired.bsky.social Andrea Gambarotto speaks to Paul Middlebrooks on the relation between life and mind, and the role dialectics can play in making sense of that relation www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...

Cognition Requires Agency - Dialectical Systems

A collaboration between Dialetical Systems and Brain Inspired: Andrea Gambarotto speaks to Paul Middlebrooks on the relaton between life and mind, and the role dialectics can play in making sense of t...

dialecticalsystems.eu

🆕 New paper by William Bechtel & Leonardo Bich Physiological control is not a top-down hierarchy, but heterarchical architecture in which multiple control mechanisms act on the same production mechanisms www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New paper (2026): The last-step integrator thesis: Heterarchical control of themammalian gastrointestinal tract - Dialectical Systems

Abstract. To perform the work necessary to maintain themselves in diverse situations, organismsorchestrate the operations of a host of production mechanisms that individually performspecific physiolog...

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Off year ISH workshop: Synthesizing Autonomy and New Mechanism in the Philosophy of Biology www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/tradi...

Traditional Off-year ISHPSSB Workshop Proposal - Dialectical Systems

September 11th-13th 2026 University of Oslo (building and room number to be announced) A Novel “Third Way:” Synthesizing Autonomy and New Mechanism in the Philosophy of Biology 1) Workshop Coordinator...

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The dialectical underpinnings of multilevel selection Evolution isn’t flat: new levels arise through conflict and then reshape the very dynamics that brought them into being

The Dialectics of Multi-Level Selection in Evolutionary Biology - Dialectical Systems

Introduction Dialectical thinking in biology has famously been put forward by the eponymous book of Levins and Lewontin (1985). Much of the book was dedicated to the interpenetration between organisms...

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CFP: Dialectics and Life (Marxism & Sciences, Issue 10) Main topics: organism–environment coupling, critical 4E cognition, social metabolism, dialectical approaches to modeling. Abstracts due 1 June 2026 👉 www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/cfp-d...

CFP: Dialectics and Life — Marxism & Sciences, Issue 10 (Autumn 2026) - Dialectical Systems

The journal Marxism & Sciences has announced a special issue on Dialectics and Life, calling for abstracts that explore the crucial relation between dialectical thinking and the complex entanglement o...

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Extending the evolutionary synthesis isn’t enough Rasmus Haukedal's new book calls for a truly dialectical biology: from autopoiesis to sympoiesis, from efficient causes to enablement, and an innovative take on plasticity, canalisation & habit. dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Enaction meets dialectics! New paper out on how sensorimotor agency scales up to social normativity link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back - Topoi

This paper examines the relation between embodiment and sociality within the enactive approach, highlighting the continuity between biological autonomy and social normativity. The central claim is tha...

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Materiality isn’t a backdrop to cognition, but one of its central conditions The upcoming workshop “Habits, Tools, and Material Environments” examines how cognition is socially distributed, ecologically embedded, and enacted through material engagement dialecticalsystems.eu/events/works...

40 years after The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Lewontin’s legacy still challenges how we think about life A new report revisits his intertwining of philosophy, biology, and Marxism—and how organisms are subjects of their own evolution www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...

Very nice upcoming workshop at the Center for Philosophical Psychology (University of Antwerp) on how radical embodiment unfolds in complex, “wild” real-world environments. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/works...

Marx as a philosophical biologist? Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

➡️New article out⬅️ @leonardobich.bsky.social and @lauramenatti.bsky.social argue that health is not about balance or stability, but about adapting and transforming in response to changing circumstances — the capacity for adaptive change. link.springer.com/journal/13752

How did regulation and agency arise before genes? Shirt-Ediss et al. model evolving protocell ecologies with the Araudia platform—showing how simple metabolic systems can “learn” to adapt to changing environments dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New Paper (2025): Modelling the prebiotic origins of regulation and agency in evolving protocell ecologies - Dialectical Systems

How could the first living systems learn to regulate themselves before the emergence of genes? In their new paper, Ben Shirt-Ediss, Arián Ferrero-Fernández, Daniele De Martino, Leonardo Bich, Álvaro M...

dialecticalsystems.eu

How does life emerge from nonlife? New special issue of the Royal Transactions brings together leading thinkers on the origins of life—where chemistry meets information, and evolution unfolds through the “adjacent possible.” dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

📖 New Book Out Alvaro Moreno & Juli Peretó explore the major transitions in biological agency—from origins of life to metazoans—showing how agency drives the evolution of biological complexity www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin A hybrid conference bringing together voices old and new to revisit how The Dialectical Biologist still resonates, and reinvigorates, contemporary biology www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/diale...

Dialectics meets the enactive approach! Join us for Dialectics and the Embodied Mind 📍 Univ. of Luxembourg | Sept 22–23 dialecticalsystems.eu/events/inter...

Inspiring work by Denis Walsh on organism/ environment dialectic, along side @jonothingeb.bsky.social and Stuart Newman ! #ISHPSSB2025 is such a treat !

Since its beginnings, the enactive approach has shown how autonomy is scaffolded across biological, sensorimotor, and social dimensions. This new video interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo tells the story in an accessible way: youtube.com/watch?v=y4Dz...

Originals | Ezequiel Di Paolo: Linguistic Bodies and Sensorimotor Agency

YouTube video by Originals

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Integrating dialectical insights into cognitive science has driven advances in the enactive approach. This new paper opens a dialogue between enaction and Marxism, highlighting labor as a form of an ecological and distributed cognition link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An enactive account of labor - Mind & Society

This paper aims to build a theoretical bridge between the Marxist and enactive traditions by focusing on the concept of labor. While labor represents a central component of human experience, it remain...

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Today we celebrate the new edition of Varela’s Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) from MIT Press, with a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo & Evan Thompson, reconnecting Varela's legacy in cognitive science to his theoretical biology dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New edition of Principles of Biological Autonomy - Dialectical Systems

Today, we celebrate the new publication of Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) by MIT Press, now accompanied by a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson.Varela’s ideas cont...

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Embodied & enactive approaches aren’t just about individual cognition — they’re about society. A new Mind & Society special issue brings enactivism into conversation with ethics, social theory & political philosophy. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Really excited to read the reprint of Varela’s Biological Autonomy annotated by @evanthompson.bsky.social. I really want to offer a special topics course focusing on it in an upcoming semester.

Collin Lucken & Elmo Feiten use the enactive concept of participatory sense-making to ground public science engagement, showing how core ideas from embodied cognition can scale beyond motor coordination to illuminate social cognition in practice www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Leveraging participatory sense-making and public engagement with science for AI democratization

Our paper explores new potentials for productive dialogue between public engagement with science (PEWS) and radical embodied cognitive science (RECS).…

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Henry Potter and @wiringthebrain.bsky.social challenge reductive views in neuroscience by introducing richer, temporally extended notions of causality and arguing to re-center cognition and the organism as genuine causal agents in behavior onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience

The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The audio recording of our fantastic event with Kevin J. Mitchell and Anil Seth, FREE AGENTS: Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?, is now up on our website and Youtube Channel. Go take a listen now! www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVr-... @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social

The media circus on the slightly modified wolf mixed with the nonsensical hype of de-extinction only highlights the need to greatly shift how we talk about genes and genetic "information" in popular discourse. Oyama's groundbreaking book and Lewontin's prescient forward should be a starting point.