2015-02-05-12
Presentation of “Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter” written by Terrence Deacon
The theme of our seminars will be to review and discuss the core ideas of the book called “Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter” written by Terrence Deacon. The main argument of the book is to offer an explanation for the end-directed phenomena or final causality (that for the sake of which something happens). These are ubiquitous features of the mind and life and yet natural sciences tend to explain them away. Deacon offers a non-reductionist and non-dualistic explanation for these phenomena by offering a figure/background shift that focuses on the efficacious role for the absences and the constraints that play an important role for their emergence. His theory stems from three-levels of nested dynamics that connects the most basic asymmetric process of life, the second law of thermodynamics, with the synergistic dynamics of life and mind where the parts are both means and an end to each other.
Can Kabadayi
Can Kabadayi (PhD. student in Lund University Cognitive Zoology Group)
Bachelors: Biology (2005-2009, Ankara)
Masters: Behavioural ecology (2009-2011, Lund)
PhD: Cognitive Zoology (2013-) I conduct research on the future-oriented cognition in ravens and great apes to investigate the mechanisms of the independent evolution of complex cognition in different lineages.
Ivo Jacobs
Ivo Jacobs has a BSc in Biology at Utrecht University and a MSc in comparative and evolutionary psychology at the University of St Andrews. He is now doing a PhD in cognitive zoology, mostly working with ravens but also with apes. His main research question is to what extent ravens and apes understand physical causality. They are using these distantly related species to investigate how and why they evolved such complex cognitive abilities.