Papers by andrea gambarotto
Synthese , 2023
The paper proposes a dialectical approach to our understanding of the relation between teleology ... more The paper proposes a dialectical approach to our understanding of the relation between teleology and mechanism. This approach is dialectical both in form and content. In form, it proposes a contemporary interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysical account of teleology. This account is grounded in a dialectical methodology, which consists in scrutinizing the inherent limitations of a theoretical position that lead it to suppress itself and evolve into a better one. I apply the same methodology to the function debate. For Hegel, teleology can be understood in three main variants, which can be fruitfully mapped onto the three main positions in the function debate, the key conceptual distinction being whether teleological principles are understood as extrinsic or intrinsic. When it comes to autonomous systems, i.e. systems that embody the regime of Geist, extrinsic functionality must be grounded in intrinsic functionality. My approach is dialectical also in content, insofar as it concludes that intrinsic functional ascriptions rely on the relation of co-determination between the parts and the whole of a system, as well as between the system and its environment.
We outline an alternative to both scientific and liberal naturalism which attempts to reconcile S... more We outline an alternative to both scientific and liberal naturalism which attempts to reconcile Sellars' apparently conflicting commitments to the scientific accountability of human nature and the autonomy of the space of reasons. Scientific naturalism holds that agency and associated concepts are a mechanical product of the realm of laws, while liberal naturalism contends that the autonomy of the space of reason requires that we leave nature behind. The third way we present follows in the footsteps of German Idealism, which attempted to overcome the Kantian chasm between nature and agency, and is thus dubbed 'post-Kantian.' We point to an overlooked group of scholars in the naturalism debate who, along with recent work in biology and cognitive science, offer a path to overcome the reductive tendencies of empiricism while avoiding the dichotomy of logical spaces. We then bring together these different streams of research, by foregrounding and expanding on what they share: the idea of organisms as living agents and that of a continuity without identity between life and mind. We qualify this as a bottom-up transformative approach to rational agency, which grounds cognition in the intrinsically purposive nature of organisms, while emphasizing the distinction between biological agency and full-fledged mindedness.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2022
We characterize Hegel's stance on biological purposiveness as consisting in a twofold move, which... more We characterize Hegel's stance on biological purposiveness as consisting in a twofold move, which conceives organisms as intrinsically purposive natural systems and focuses on their behavioral and cognitive abilities. We submit that a Hegelian stance is at play in enactivism, the branch of the contemporary theory of biological autonomy devoted to the study of cognition and the mind. What is at stake in the Hegelian stance is the elaboration of a naturalized, although non-reductive, understanding of natural purposiveness.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 93, 47–56, 2022
This paper distinguishes two ways in which Kant's ideas concerning the relation between teleology... more This paper distinguishes two ways in which Kant's ideas concerning the relation between teleology and biological organization have been taken up in contemporary philosophy of biology and theoretical biology. The first sees his account as the first instance of the modern understanding of teleology as a heuristic tool aimed at producing mechanistic explanations of organismal form and function; the second sees in Kant's intrinsic purposiveness the seed of a radically new way of thinking about biological systems that should be developed by turning teleology into a legitimate concept of natural science. We name the two approaches heuristic and naturalistic, respectively. Our aim is to critically evaluate these approaches and suggest that the naturalistic option, which remains a minority position, deserves to be taken more seriously than it currently is in contemporary biological theory. While evolution by natural selection closes the case on intelligent design, it does not close the case on teleology in general. In fact, the current return of the organism and the recent calls for an agential perspective in evolutionary biology point out that we still have some thinking to do concerning this side of Kant's legacy.
This paper presents what we call 'Hegel's philosophy of biology' to a target audience of both Heg... more This paper presents what we call 'Hegel's philosophy of biology' to a target audience of both Hegel scholars and philosophers of biology. It also serves to introduce a special issue of the Hegel Bulletin entirely dedicated to a first mapping of this yet to be explored domain of Hegel studies. We submit that Hegel's philosophy of biology can be understood as a radicalization of the Kantian approach to organisms, and as prefiguring current philosophy of biology in important ways, especially with regard to the nature of biological organization, the role of teleology in biological explanation, and the relation between life and cognition. 2
The paper addresses Schelling's and Hegel's interpretation of Kant's Critique of the Power of Jud... more The paper addresses Schelling's and Hegel's interpretation of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), focusing especially on the so-called 'problem of teleology.' We reconstruct Schelling's and Hegel's reading of the second part of the Critique, dedicated to 'teleological judgement' and the question of natural purposiveness. We first propose a brief reconstruction of Kant's argument about the possibility of using teleological judgment with reference to nature; we then show why Hegel and Schelling were unsatisfied with Kant's argument; Finally, we argue that Schelling's and Hegel's dissatisfaction with the Kantian theory of teleological judgement led them to move beyond Kant, towards a different understanding of the relation between epistemology and ontology.
The paper focuses on the work of Lorenz Oken (1779–1851) in an attempt to make sense of the role ... more The paper focuses on the work of Lorenz Oken (1779–1851) in an attempt to make sense of the role played by Romantic Naturphilosophie in the development of natural history in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century. It first focuses on the role played by Schelling and his Würzburg circle in the development of Oken's early views on natural history, then reconstructs Oken's mature programme for a reform of animal classification.
In un recente articolo, John Zammito ha finalmente chiamato per nome la tesi che per più di trent... more In un recente articolo, John Zammito ha finalmente chiamato per nome la tesi che per più di trent'anni ha segnato gli studi sulla biologia tedesca di inizio Ottocento -quella di Timothy Lenoir -, sottolineando la necessità di una sua revisione 1 . La tesi Lenoir è ben nota tra gli addetti ai lavori: preso atto che la storia della biologia tedesca di inizio Ottocento è stata liquidata come un'era dominata unicamente dalla speculazione, si tratterebbe invece di mettere in luce come in quegli anni un gruppo ben connesso di biologi avesse elaborato un programma di ricerca saldamente radicato su basi empiriche, e incentrato sul problema della causalità in biologia. Tale programma avrebbe ricevuto una prima formulazione nel 1790, all'interno della Kritik der Urteilskraft di Kant, sulla base dell'idea che se da un lato la teleologia costituisce un elemento concettuale particolarmente importante per comprendere alcuni aspetti fondamentali del vivente -quali le funzioni fisiologiche o il processo di embriogenesi -, essa possa essere utilizzata unicamente come principio euristico al fine di elaborare spiegazioni meccaniche. In questa cornice, Blumenbach figura come il primo naturalista a discutere e accettare le tesi kantiane sull'uso di principi teleologici in biologia, passandone gli estremi, ormai articolati in un programma di ricerca strutturato, ai suoi più illustri allievi della scuola medica di Gottinga, tra cui Kielmeyer e Treviranus. Tale programma sarebbe poi stato accolto come sfondo epistemologico delle ricerche di figure quali Meckel, von Baer e Müller 2 . 1 J. Zammito, The Lenoir thesis revisited: Blumenbach and Kant, «Studies in history of biological and biomedical sciences
In his seminal monograph on teleology and mechanics in nineteenth German biology Timothy Lenoir c... more In his seminal monograph on teleology and mechanics in nineteenth German biology Timothy Lenoir considers his study of the " Kantian " teleomechanistic tradition as an answer to those who wrongly believe that early nineteenth-century German biology was dominated by Schelling's Natur-philosophie. My goal is to argue that this is an arbitrary assumption based on a historiographical bias and that Schelling's organicism played a pivotal role in the formulation of a conceptual framework aimed at accounting for biological organization. The formalization of biology as an autonomous science at the beginning of the nineteenth century implied in fact the shift from a regula-tive to a constitutive understanding of teleology, a shift most strongly endorsed in Schelling's Naturphilosophie. I first take into account two aspects that Treviranus draws directly from Schelling: the relationship between mechanism and teleology and the continuity between nature and spirit. I then show how Treviranus reinterprets the Schellingian framework with a peculiar emphasis on ecology, stressing the important interaction between organisms and environment. On this basis, I suggest that he was the first naturalist in the German speaking world to sketch the outline of a theory concerned with the historical transformation of living forms.
The historical literature on German life science at the end of the 18th century has tried to reha... more The historical literature on German life science at the end of the 18th century has tried to rehabilitate eighteenth century vitalism by stressing its difference from Naturphilosophie. Focusing on the work of Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer this paper argues that these positions are based on a historiographical bias and that the clear-cut boundary between German vitalism and Naturphilosophie is historically unattested. On the contrary, they both belong to the process of conceptual genealogy that contributed to the project of a general biology. The latter emerged as the science concerned with the laws that regulate the organization of living nature as a whole. The focus on organization was, at least partially, the result of the debate surrounding the notion of " vital force " , which originated in the mid-eighteenth century and caused a shift from a regulative to a constitutive understanding of teleology.
The paper deals with the question concerning the crisis of European sciences as it was understood... more The paper deals with the question concerning the crisis of European sciences as it was understood by Husserl and Heidegger in relation to their assessment of modernity. I thereby argue that these two perspec- tives on the issue at hand can be interpreted as opposed “paradigms”. Husserl saw modernity as unaccomplished project and strove toward its rehabilitation, Heidegger considered the crisis as the final result of modern metaphysical “subjectivism” and strove toward its overcoming.
The aim of this paper is to clarify the meaning of the concept of subjectivity in Hegel's 'Scienc... more The aim of this paper is to clarify the meaning of the concept of subjectivity in Hegel's 'Science of Logic'. I put forward the theory that Hegel's idea of subjectivity differs in a significant way from modern subjectivism and from transcendental philosophy, and has rather to be seen as a logical relationship marked by self-reflection, which for Hegel is also the conceptual structure of freedom. The analysis moves from Hegel's critique of the Reflexionsphilosophien in Jena and focuses on different forms of reflection both in the 'Objective Logic' and in the 'Subjective Logic', to show that this particular relationship is found not only in the sections which expressively deal with subjectivity, but in the 'Science of Logic' as a whole.
Book chapters by andrea gambarotto
The paper proposes a novel reading of Schelling's speculative physics in light of debates concern... more The paper proposes a novel reading of Schelling's speculative physics in light of debates concerning the notion of emergence in philosophy of science. We begin by highlighting Schelling's disruptive potential with regard to the contemporary philosophical landscape, currently polarized over a false dichotomy between reductionist Humeanism and liberal Kantianism. We then argue that a broadly Schellingian approach to nature is unwittingly being revived by a group of scholars promoting a non-mainstream process account of emergence based on the notion of constraint and grounded in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. Such an account, we argue, represents an effective theoretical platform to re-read Schelling's philosophy of nature today. This reading provides a picture of life and mind as emerging out of self-organizing processes that take place through the self-inhibition of nature's inherent tendency to disorder.
Kielmeyer and the Organic World, 2020
Natural Born Monads On the Metaphysics of Organisms and Human Individuals, 2020
This chapter takes up Jonas' philosophical legacy as a site for developing a scientifically viabl... more This chapter takes up Jonas' philosophical legacy as a site for developing a scientifically viable theory of the organism as a 'natural purpose.' It follows a suggestion by the late Francisco Varela that we need to move beyond the unstable position set out by Kant in the Critique of Judgement in order to provide a novel understanding of biological individuality. The chapter explores the theoretical potential of this claim by investigating the role the philosophy of Hans Jonas could play in helping us develop a naturalistic philosophy of biology that rejects both reductive physicalism and the metaphysical idea of teleology as intelligent design but still takes teleology seriously as a natural phenomenon. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you and I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water […] Standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid the painful experience. To my mind, the lobster's behavior in the kettle appears to be the expression of a preference; and it may be well be that an ability to form preferences is the decisive criterion for real suffering. David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster 1 Consider the bacterium This chapter takes up Jonas' philosophical legacy as grounds for developing a scientifically viable theory of the organism as a 'natural purpose,' following a suggestion of the late Francisco Varela. In his very last paper, published posthumously in collaboration with Andreas Weber, Varela argued for the "great need to bring to the fore the remarkable and recent convergence between the re-awakening of the philosophical discussion concerning natural purposes (with Jonas as the central figure), and an independent but convergent stream of thought concerning biological individuality and the organism (with the autopoiesis school as the central figure)." The conceptual proximity of these developments led Weber and Varela to conclude that, "after two centuries, we can move beyond the unstable position set out by Kant in the Critique of Judgement, and therefore provide a fresh re-understanding of natural purpose and living individuality" (Weber and Varela 2002, pp. 97-98).
Edited volumes by andrea gambarotto
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Papers by andrea gambarotto
Book chapters by andrea gambarotto
Edited volumes by andrea gambarotto