deactionary

Aug 26 2020

Intrinsic Incompleteness: Deacon on ‘ententional’ processes

Yohan

This is the first in a planned series of posts on Terrence Deacon’s book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. I’m calling it the Deactionary, since Deacon is fond of coining new terms and redefining old ones. Deacon outlines an ambitious goal: understanding the emergence of...

science consciousness philosophy biology mind purpose intentionality emergence reductionism deactionary teleology representation

Aug 17 2020

The Deactionary: A glossary of terms from Terrence Deacon’s ‘Incomplete Nature’

Yohan

Terrence W. Deacon’s 2012 book Incomplete Nature is a bold attempt to conceptualize the emergence of life and mind using a consistent ‘physicalist’ framework. I put the term ‘physicalist’ in scare-quotes because one of the appealing quirks of the book — and perhaps one that isn’t given enough...

books consciousness metaphysics life ontology biology mind thermodynamics emergence self-organization deactionary teleology