IAS-Research Talk by Daniele De Martino (Biofisika Institutua, EHU/UPV), “Searching for principles ruling cell metabolism”

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On May 31st, 2022, at 11:30
To participate, please contact perezverdugo.marta@gmail.com


ABSTRACT:
Are there basic principles ruling cell metabolism beyond known physical laws? Is it possible to test them quantitatively? In this talk I will consider two of them: (1) the fact that cell metabolism could work in a “critical” state and (2) the notion that cell metabolism maximizes growth and/or in general has “objective functions” that are optimized under constrained resources. I will criticize these putative principles on the basis of my own work on the inference and measurements of metabolic fluxes. While the first is in contradiction with plain thermodynamics, the other is a useful working hypothesis that shall be revised in the light of unavoidable phenotypic heterogeneity within which a trade-off is established. Heterogeneity in fact endows inter-cellular interactions and in turn, means to control the environment. I will provide the experimental example of lactate shuttles among human cells in this respect.


Bio: Daniele De Martino (Biofisika Institutua, Ikerbasque, EHU/UPV)

IAS-Research Talk by Igor Ahedo Gurrutxaga (EHU/UPV), “La naturaleza participativa: Biología y neurología para recuperar el curso de la re-evolución”

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On May 17th, 2022, at 11:30

To participate, please contact perezverdugo.marta@gmail.com

ABSTRACT:

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.

Bio: Igor Ahedo Gurrutxaga (EHU/UPV

IAS-Research Seminar by Unai Bayon Aranburu (EHU/UPV), “La contracción epistémica: una cara desconocida de la pobreza”

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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.

IAS-Research Seminar by Guglielmo Militello (EHU/UPV), “The Complexity of Tumor Heterogeneity: Limitations and Challenges of the Pharmacogenomics in Cancer Treatment”

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On March 15th, 2022, at 11:30
To participate, please contact perezverdugo.marta@gmail.com


ABSTRACT:


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.

Bio: Guglielmo Militello (EHU/UPV)

IAS-Research Seminar (online) by Ezequiel Di Paolo (EHU/UPV, Ikerbasque, University of Sussex), “Laying down a forking path: Tensions between enaction and the free energy principle”

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On Tuesday, Feb 1st, 2022, at 11:30.
To participate, please contact: perezverdugo.marta@gmail.com
ABSTRACT:

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.

Full text: https://philosophymindscience.org/index.php/phimisci/article/view/9187

IAS-Research Seminar by Laura Menatti (UPV/EHU), “The relationship between health and environment: from adaptation to adaptivity”

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On Dec 21st, 2021, at 13:00.


To participate, please contact: perezverdugo.marta@gmail.com


ABSTRACT:
In this talk I address the relationship between health and environment which is of particular relevance in the current pandemic scenario. To do so I discuss and question the definition of health as provided by WHO (1948) and I propose an account of health which considers the role of the environment, from micro to macro level. This account is based on the concepts of adaptation used in public health and adaptivity in philosophy of biology. According to this perspective, the environment is not understood as a threat to health, but it may be characterized as a source of opportunities that require the organism to modify its activities and adopt new courses of action. I discuss two examples of adaptive mechanisms in the environment: community-based medicine and microbiologically healthier buildings.

Bio: Laura Menatti (UPV/EHU)

IAS-Research Seminars by Manuel G. Bedía (Universidad de Zaragoza) “Investigando sobre la investigación: Política científica basada en la evidencia”

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Tuesday, Dec 14, 2021 at 13:00

To participate please contact alejandra.mtz.quintero@gmail.com

Resumen: La “Ciencia de la Ciencia” (SciSci en su acrónimo inglés) es
un campo en expansión que pretende entender de manera sistémica, y
apoyándose en analítica de datos, la compleja estructura de
interacciones y dinámicas de las comunidades científicas. Las
posibilidades que abre este campo nos ayuda a plantear cuestiones
novedosas en la gestión  de  la  investigación: ¿Qué  políticas
estimulan  la  ciencia  de  mayor impacto?, ¿cuál es el  tamaño
óptimo  de los equipos  que desarrollan  las ideas  más originales?,
¿Qué impacto real tienen los enfoques interdisciplinares? Estas
evidencias permiten explorar nuevas iniciativas de l+D -en materia de
financiación, evaluación o promoción- y reflexionar acerca de si los
indicadores con los que medimos el talento son los más adecuados o si
las formas de participación de los investigadores en el proceso
científico pueden ser diferentes a las actuales. En esta charla
mostraremos algunos de los resultados más relevantes en esta materia y
los conectaremos con nuevas perspectivas en la política científica.

IAS-Research Seminars by Juli Peretó (University of Valencia) “Transmetabolism: Pushing the Limits of Biological Autonomy”

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On Thursday, Dec 2nd, 2021 at 11:30

To participate, please contact: alejandra.mtz.quintero@gmail.com

Abstract: 

Living beings are the result of a cocktail made with unknown doses of chance and necessity. Consider a thought experiment, in which we could rewind the ‘tape of life’ starting from the same initial conditions, what biochemical traits and cellular features would finally be the same as those we observe today? It is clear that what is real in biology is a subset of what is possible, and this issue has been discussed at different scales. Thus, structural and dynamic developmental constraints limit the space of solutions for animal bodies (Alberch, 1989), whereas physicochemical restrictions and historical contingencies shape the possible at the molecular level (Jacob, 1981). Meteorite analysis and many organic syntheses performed under prebiotic conditions indicate that the primitive Earth was home of a moderately complicated chemodiversity, including the most common biological building blocks – sugars, fatty acids, amino acids, nucleobases, etc. (Lazcano, 2018). In this period of chemical evolution, physicochemical constraints (i.e. thermodynamics and kinetics in a given environment) determined the origin and maintenance of the abiotic chemical landscape. The chemically possible was the scenario for the organization of the most simple and primitive biochemical systems: autocatalytic cycles for self-maintenance of a set of building blocks, self-reproduction of lipid vesicles, and self-replication of genetic templates (Peretó, 2012). Presumably, all these cycles kicked off in the absence of catalysts or with the involvement of very simple and unspecific facilitators (e.g. mineral surfaces). The emergence of optimizable catalysts through natural selection (e.g. ribozymes) was a phase transition to a period of a more efficient and creative functional screening of the possible (de Duve, 2005). Diverse lines of evidence indicate that metabolic surveys of alternative sources of matter and energy were rapid and explosive, performed by the first microbial communities. Biogeochemical closing of the recycling of bioelements was a vital step for a sustainable and long-term continuity of terrestrial life (Falkowski et al., 2008). Thus, the boundaries of the metabolically possible were expanding in parallel to the coevolution of life and the planet. For instance, after the emergence in some cyanobacterial ancestors of the enzymatic machinery able to extract electrons from water to feed the photoelectronic chain, molecular oxygen accumulated in oceans and afterwards in the atmosphere. Those microorganisms able to cope with this new-to-life compound took advantage of its reactivity and dramatically expanded the world of the metabolically possible: many new metabolites, including steroids, and processes (e.g. oxygen respiration) became available to life. Thus, recurrent patterns in actual cell metabolisms are the result of a long evolutionary exploration within the chemically constrained space of the possible solutions under specific yet changing conditions (de Lorenzo et al., 2014).

Full text: https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1751-7915.13691

IAS-Research Talk by Manuel Heras-Escribano (University of Granada) “Social normativity, fields of promoted action, and affordances: An integrative view”

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On Nov 23rd, 2021, at 11:30.

To participate, please contact: alejandra.mtz.quintero@gmail.com

Abstract:

In this talk, I will show how social normativity, the field of promoted action, and canonical affordances are related. The field of promoted action is a concept proposed by Reed (1996), which is based on the idea that there are affordances emphasized by other people (Reed 1996: 130). Although proposed for the field of developmental psychology and experimentation, I think it is a rich concept to be applied to other fields (like philosophy of mind) to make sense of our everyday experience. But how could we articulate this idea? I propose that my ideas on social normativity (Heras-Escribano 2019) could serve as a framework for showing how the field of promoted action is constituted and present in everyone’s cognitive life. Also, I think the combination of the ideas of social normativity and the field of promoted action can help articulating the origins and nature of canonical affordances from a social perspective.

Bio: Manuel Heras-Escribano (University of Granada)

IAS-Research Seminar by Marta Pérez Verdugo (EHU/UPV), “Situating transparency: an extended cognition approach”

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On Nov 9th, 2021, at 11:30.

To participate, please contact: alejandra.mtz.quintero@gmail.com

ABSTRACT:

From the starting point of the Hypothesis of the Extended Mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998), the last two decades of research in situated cognition have seen efforts to further characterize how cognition extends to our environment, and particularly to tools and artifacts. In this vein, proposals have been made to describe different dimensions of integration of artifacts in systems of extended cognition (Heersmink, 2015). Amongst these dimensions -and arguably as the main phenomenological marker of integration- appears the controversial concept of transparency, understood as the automaticity and lack of effort and conscious reflection with which we deploy an artifact (Heersmink, 2015). This notion, which we will call transparency-as-automaticity, seems however incomplete upon closer examination: it is not always the best characterization of extended experience (Andrada, 2020) and it can sometimes be insufficient, particularly when looking at examples of algorithm-based technologies where another kind of transparency (reflexive transparency) -more focused on access to regulative mechanisms- might be needed (Clowes, 2020).

With the aim of providing a better characterization of the ambivalent concept of transparency in the context of extended cognition, we will explore the theories of action control that are behind the notion of transparency-as-automaticity. We will review automatic views of skilled action, such as those defended by Hubert L. Dreyfus (2005, 2007), that focus on the “mindless” flow of expert performance and explore their limitations. We will then turn to hybrid theories that claim that both automaticity and control are needed for skilled performance (Christensen et al., 2016), which from our point of view provide a more detailed and situated picture of action, and use them to propose a revised concept of transparency: situated transparency. This hybrid notion of transparency allows to accommodate the experience of flow in our use of artifacts with the need for flexible control and situational awareness of a dynamic and ever changing environment in which (extended) cognition takes place. 

Bio: Marta Pérez Verdugo (University of Basque Country, UPV/EHU)