The next session of the IAS Seminar will take place this Friday, 27th of February at 1pm. Centro Carlos Santamaria, Room 4. The talk will be hybrid, to participate remotely contact: alberto.monterde@ehu.eus
Our speaker will be Vincenzo Politi (Universidad de Sevilla), who will present: Science, society, and the normativity of science governance
Abstract
Several contemporary philosophers challenge the traditional ‘social contract’ between science and society, arguing in favour of an ‘alignment’ between scientific research and socially desirable aims and values. Although they reach opposite conclusions, however, both the traditional social contract and the new alignment ideal share the same presupposition: namely, that the science/society relationship is indeed a two-player game, with both ‘science’ and ‘society’ threated as homogeneous and monolithic entities. In reality, science is embedded in a wide societal tangle, whose components interact with one another in complex ways. Among the elements of the societal tangle there are so-called ‘boundary organizations’, that operate in the space between the executive branches of a government and research conducting organizations. Such boundary organizations develop so-called science governance frameworks. Inasmuch as they dictate what scientific research ought to be about and how it ought to be carried (if it wants to receive public funding), science governance is normative. Philosophers of science customarily deal with normative claims about science; therefore, they may also be well equipped to analyse science governance frameworks. In this talk, I will focus on a specific case, namely a recent shift in the science governance strategy of the European Commission (EC). During the multi-year funding programme ‘Horizon2020’ (2014-2020), EC promoted a governance framework called Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). In the current funding programme, ‘HorizonEurope’ (2021–2027), references to responsible research have been omitted, with EC now primarily advocating Open Science (OS). As I will explain, RRI and OS rely on conflicting normative views about scientists’ responsibilities and roles. The philosophical analysis of the governance frameworks developed by boundary organizations may help uncover contradictory presuppositions and ideals shaping science policy, as in the case discussed in this talk. This, in turn, may help us reframe some of the current debates about the relationship between science and society.
On February 20th, 2026 1pm. Centro Carlos Santamaria, Room 4. The talk will be hybrid, to participate remotely contact: alberto.monterde@ehu.eus
Marius Werz will be presenting his recent publication “From functon to freedom: enactivism between being and becoming“, published in Phenom Cogn Sci.
Abstract
Enactivism is undergoing a metaphysical shift. In pursuit of a more open-ended account of organismic becoming, several theorists have turned to the “affirmationist” ontologies of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze. These frameworks conceive becoming as a non-teleological process in which identities emerge as contingent actualizations of pre-individual fields. In this paper, I argue that this turn is metaphysically incompatible with enactivism’s foundational commitments to self-organizing organismic totalities. As an alternative, I develop a metaphysical framework that preserves these commitments while dispensing with functionalist assumptions immenent to contemporary enactivism. I begin by establishing enactivism’s metaphysical alignment with Marxist dialectical materialism. This renders enactivism’s functionalist outlook more legible and clarifies its tensions with affirmationist metaphysics. From here, I turn to Hans Jonas’s account of life, which I reinterpret as resisting the reduction of purpose to organizational maintenance. For Jonas, life grounds meaning, affect, and activity in the dynamic structure of living form, rather than in its instrumental functions. This reorientation offers enactivism a renewed foundation for theorizing purposiveness, autonomy, and change.
On November 14th, 2025 1pm. Centro Carlos Santamaria, Room 5. The talk will be hybrid, to participate remotely contact: alberto.monterde@ehu.eus
Abstract
This presentation examines whether the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) – the theoretical proposal aiming to integrate diverse areas of biology within an evolutionary perspective – should be regarded as an extension of the Evolutionary Synthesis (ES) or as a fundamentally distinct theory. To address this question, we employ Imre Lakatos’ methodology of scientific research programmes and reconstruct both ES and EES in Lakatosian terms.
Our analysis focuses on identifying and comparing the ‘hard cores’ – i.e. the core theoretical commitments – of the two programmes in order to determine whether EES can be understood as part of the same programme as ES or as a divergent one. We argue that EES cannot be adequately described as a simple extension of ES. Rather, it constitutes a distinct research programme, structured around its own hard core and heuristic principles.
A further question concerns the relation between these two programmes and Darwin’s original theory. We suggest that there was no fully developed Darwinian research programme preceding the ES, although the ES formed around Darwin’s central contributions: the explanation of evolution by natural selection and the principle of descent with modification. However, the ES also abandoned several of Darwin’s proposals concerning heredity. By contrast, EES reopens some of these questions in light of advances in epigenetics, developmental biology, and ecology. In this sense, EES may be seen as recovering several Darwinian insights within a more flexible and pluralistic theoretical framework than the gene-centred and comparatively rigid structure of the ES.
We are happy to announce the Third Forgotten Female Bodies Workshop: Views from Enactivism and Evo-Devo. This international meeting will bring together scholars from different disciplines to explore how feminist perspectives intersect with philosophy of biology, cognitive science, and embodied approaches.
One-Day workshop
Donostia, 26 September 2025 Batzar Aretoa – Sala de Juntas (HEFA I)
Speakers:
Anna Ciaunica (Univ. Lisbon) Enara García (Univ. Southern Denmark) Laura Mojica (EHU) Laura Nuño de la Rosa (UCM) Mihaela Pavlicev (Univ. Vienna)
Organizers:
IAS Research Group for Life, Mind and Society Alejandra Martínez-Quintero, David Cortés-García & Arantza Etxeberria
Program:
10:30-10:45
Welcome coffee & Reception
10:45 – 11:00
Arantza Etxeberria & Alejandra Martínez-Quintero
Short welcoming address
11:00 – 11:45
Laura Nuño de la Rosa Chair: Arantza Etxeberria
Is Sex a character? Modularising sexual differences
11:45 – 12:30
Anna Ciaunica Chair: Ezequiel Di Paolo
The Forgotten Body: The Emergence of Conscious Experiences in Early Life
12:30 – 12:45
Short Break
12:45 – 13:30
Laura Mojica Chair: Ezequiel Di Paolo
Implicated Recognition and the Grounding of Normativity
The Path-Dependent Mind: Individuation, Vulnerability, and the Ontogenesis of Mental Conditions
16:30- 17:00
Final thoughts and open debate Chair: David Cortés-García
Abstracts
Laura Nuño de la Rosa: Is Sex a character? Modularising sexual differences
Debates about the concept of sex often stall because sex is treated as a property of individuals rather than of characters. I challenge such definitions and instead propose analyzing how sexual characters are individuated in evolutionary biology. Using pregnancy and female orgasm as case studies, I compare selectionist and evo-devo criteria, highlighting their strengths and limits. Viewing sex as an attribute of developmentally individuated characters explains why sexual traits are only loosely correlated, enables explanatory generalizations across species, accommodates continuous variation, and provides a coherent framework for intersex and hermaphroditic individuals.
Anna Ciaunica: The Forgotten Body: The Emergence of Conscious Experiences in Early Life
The search for the neural correlates of consciousness has been influential in the past decades. Yet, tackling the fascinating question of the emergence of early subjective experiences through an individualistic, adult-biased, and neuro-centric lens may be misleading. The key idea is that developmentally speaking, one must first examine how cells (and not just neurons) operate in tandem to sustain the self-organisation of the human organism as a whole. Here I argue that the hard problem of consciousness cannot be addressed without putting the forgotten body back into the picture. This includes the necessary presence of the other body (i.e. the pregnant person) too, without which the fascinating journey of conscious life wouldn’t be possible tout court.
Laura Mojica: Implicated Recognition and the Grounding of Normativity
A central challenge in explaining cognition is showing how normativity is grounded beyond individuals’ self-individuation and immediate interactions. A common strategy appeals to social practices, but it remains unclear how they ground normativity. Without such an account, references to practices risk circularity in grounding meaning, skill, and value. I argue that recognition provides the solution, not only as rational attribution or shared intelligibility, but also as an implicated, dialectical interaction in which self and other are sustained and transformed. Drawing on enactive epistemology, I situate recognition within a virtual field where even fleeting encounters presuppose the other’s potential for deeper, transformative interaction.
Mihaela Pavlicev: Integrity of eutherian feto-maternal interface
Eutherian pregnancy is an intriguing phenomenon, as its evolutionary origin required circumventing a number of biological “rules” otherwise considered necessary to maintain the integrity of an organism. These novel “circumventions” entail attachment and breaching of the epithelium with inflammation, yet without rejection by the innate immune system, maintaining an open wound over prolonged period of time, and overcoming of the allograft rejection. I will talk about a novel way to think about one of these novelties, namely the ability of maternal and fetal cells to organize into a common tissue unit.
Enara García: The Path-Dependent Mind: Individuation, Vulnerability, and the Ontogenesis of Mental Conditions
The enactive approach to mental conditions offers an alternative to neurocentric, static models, adopting a processual and relational ontology of mind and its disorders. Proposed as a framework for individualized dynamic network models, it highlights tensions with network theories that emphasize synchronic explanations (causal, mechanistic, topological). Instead, enactivism advocates an ontogenetic explanation, viewing conditions as entwined with developmental individuation. This paper proposes integrating ontogenetic explanations into network models through propensity-based accounts. Incorporating developmental processes fosters dynamic, preventive, and vulnerability-based paradigms in psychiatry, aligning with the principles of neurodiversity and “forgotten minds”.
If you want to do a PhD with us within the Outagencies project, we have just opened a PhD studentship grant application for a 4-year scholarship. Here is some relevant information:
SUMMARY: Opportunity to join us at the IAS-Research Center for Life, Mind, and Society [https://ias-research.net] at the University of the Basque Country (San Sebastián) for a PhD studentship within the “Outagencies: Varieties of autonomous agency across living, humanimal, and technical systems” project [https://outonomy.net/project-description/]: an interdisciplinary exploration of agency across philosophy, biology, AI, and social sciences. We welcome passionate candidates from any background aligned with our research themes, who bring strong motivation, English proficiency, and a robust academic profile. Deadline: November 18th, 2024 Pre-submission here: https://forms.gle/AGAHu6osrSUJ4Bxd9 Official submission here: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/ikerketaren-kudeaketa/-/fpi-2024_upv_ehu Salary: €19,500-€25,000 annually during 4 years (salary increases every year) Duration: 4 years starting early 2025 More updated information: https://outonomy.net/?p=335
ABSTRACT: In this presentation it is assumed that the Earth system is autopoietically organized and that therefore the system is constituted as an autonomous system. That is assumed from chemical atmospheric and geological evidence and from how the organization of the Earth system as autopoietic satisfies relations of formal systems such as the (M,R)-system, chemical organization theory, and variational free energy minimization. This implies that the autonomy of the internal biological unities of the Gaian system, such as prokaryotes and unicellular or metacellular eukaryotes, although they are structurally coupled and therefore participate in planetary self-production, their autonomy and their ecology and evolution depend largely on the Gaian system biology of cognition and enaction with its outer solar space. This point of view, however, poses a fundamental problem. To what extent the biological unities internal to the Gaian system can or can’t affect its autonomy. This presentation will discuss this problem, but by no means will it come to a final conclusion.
Sergio is research fellow at the Earth and Life Institute of UC Louvain (Belgium), biologist by training he now works chiefly on Gaian systems from an organizational perspective inspired by biological autonomy and (M-R)-systems.
Enfrentarse al neoliberalismo como un arte de gobierno fundamentado en la traslación de las lógicas económicas a las de la vida, obliga a desmontar los marcos interpretativos que desde la biología sitúan falsamente al egoísmo, la agresividad y la competencia como fundamentos de lo humano. Las ciencias naturales están mostrando desde hace dos décadas que en la naturaleza no hay un destino cerrado, que la cooperación es la base de la evolución, y quenuestro cerebro se asienta en la capacidad de ponerse en el lugar del otro, la otra y lo otro. La epigénesis, la etología y la neurología pueden aportar una mirada que muestre que estrategias como la Investigación-Acción-Participación y su apuesta por la activación de la agencia ciudadana no solo no es una “herejía” científica, como postula el positivismo. Al contrario, las propias ciencias “duras” confirman la pertinencia de un acercamiento situado en la realidad, atravesado por la empatía y orientado a la vertebración y la articulación cooperativa.
Así, los procesos participativos, y más concretamente la Investigación Acción Participación pueden interpretarse y defenderse como herramientas que permitan revertir la lógica desevolutiva actual. Encontrar en la naturaleza la ausencia de destino (frente una interpretación errónea de la genética falsamente cimentada en la lógica de la inmutabilidad, que cuestiona laepigénesis) permite negar el mantra del “no hay alternativa”. Comprender la sociabilidad desde la fragilidad de nuestra especie ayuda a trabajar desde los dolores para reconstruir el yo fragmentado por el neoliberalismo, convirtiendo la politización en el primer paso para la reconstrucción de las redes comunitarias. En fin, entender nuestra capacidad empática permite reforzar la búsqueda de un pensamiento colectivo que conforme nosotr@s con agencia.
To participate please contact: perezverdugo.marta@gmail.com
On April 5th, 2022, at 11:30
Abstract:
Numerosos estudios señalan que entornos pobres obstruyen el desarrollo de capacidades epistémicas (entre otras). La urgencia de análisis de dicho fenómeno se deriva del hecho de que en las tendencias macroeconómicas actuales en Occidente hacen que las capacidades afectadas sean cada vez más importantes económica y socialmente. Ello implica que esa obstrucción en el desarrollo de capacidades (la contracción epistémica) puede jugar un rol cada vez más importante en la reproducción de la pobreza.
En esta presentación voy a mostrar el camino y los cimientos que ha conducido a la propuesta de este proyecto, el cual está todavía definiéndose. Para ello recorreremos las injusticias epistémicas de Miranda Fricker, parte de la ontología social de Sally Haslanger, y literatura filosófica sobre la pobreza como el Capability Approach de Amartya Sen y Martha Nussbaum. Todo ello con el objetivo de terminar apuntando, por una parte, al fenómeno de la contracción epistémica, sus características más distintivas y su relevancia en el contexto socioeconómico actual, y por otra, al futuro de este proyecto.
Bio: Unai Bayon Aranburu (Donostia, 1996). Investigador predoctoral en el programa de Filosofía, Ciencia y Valores en la UPV/EHU, misma universidad donde cursó el grado de Filosofía y el máster de investigación de Filosofía, Ciencia y Valores. Su proyecto trata de investigar cómo afecta la pobreza en el desarrollo de capacidades cognitivas y qué repercusiones tiene en el contexto socioeconómico actual. Para ello, en su investigación convergen diferentes tradiciones filosóficas: las injusticias epistémicas, el enfoque de las capacidades, el florecimiento humano, ontología social y teorías de capitalismo cognitivo y aceleración social. Los directores de su tesis son Ekai Txapartegi Zumeta y Jon Umerez Urrezola.
One of the most important current applications of personalized medicine is the study of the correlations between genetic variations and the emergence of tumor phenotypes in specific human groups in order to provide more personalized treatments. In particular, pharmacogenomics aims at studying the relationship between drug response and individual genomic variations. In cancer treatment, however, the overall effectiveness of this gene-based approach is impaired by the genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity of tumor cells, thus making the pharmacogenomics in cancer treatment problematic. The purpose of this talk is threefold: first, to analyze the levels of organization of tumor heterogeneity; secondly, to explore the complexity of tumor heterogeneity; finally, to estimate the epistemological and practical consequences of such a complexity for the pharmacogenomics in the personalized cancer treatment.
Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle (FEP) and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and identify a series of misreadings and misinterpretations of key enactive concepts. In particular, we notice a tendency to disregard the operational definition of autopoiesis and the distinction between a system’s structure and its organization. Other misreadings concern the conflation of processes of self-distinction in operationally closed systems and Markov blankets. Deeper theoretical tensions underlie some of these misinterpretations. FEP assumes systems that reach a non-equilibrium steady state and are enveloped by a Markov blanket. We argue that these assumptions contradict the historicity of sense-making that is explicit in the enactive approach. Enactive concepts such as adaptivity and agency are defined in terms of the modulation of parameters and constraints of the agent-environment coupling, which entail the possibility of changes in variable and parameter sets, constraints, and in the dynamical laws affecting the system. This allows enaction to address the path-dependent diversity of human bodies and minds. We argue that these ideas are incompatible with the time invariance of non-equilibrium steady states assumed by the FEP. In addition, the enactive perspective foregrounds the enabling and constitutive roles played by the world in sense-making, agency, development. We argue that this view of transactional and constitutive relations between organisms and environments is a challenge to the FEP. Once we move beyond superficial similarities, identify misreadings, and examine the theoretical commitments of the two approaches, we reach the conclusion that far from being easily integrated, the FEP, as it stands formulated today, is in tension with the theories of autopoiesis and enaction.
