This dissertation concerns the active role of the organism in evolutionary theory. In particular, it concerns how our conception of the relationship between organism and environment, and the nature of natural selection, influences the causal and explanatory role of organismic activity and behavior in evolutionary explanations. The overarching aim is to argue that the behaviors and activities of organisms can serve both as the explananda (that which is explained) and the explanantia (that which explains) in evolutionary explanations. I attempt (...) to achieve this aim by offering three central arguments. First, that the organism-environment relation is the ontologically basic unit of biology. A common way of conceiving the relationship between organism and environment is as a duality—as two causally independent systems that overlap through interaction. I think this is a mistake. There cannot be organisms without environments and vice versa. They are codependent and codetermined. Second, that natural selection is an ecological process. By this I mean that natural selection acts primarily on organism-environment interactions. It is only in virtue of organisms interacting with their environments that there can be fitness differences amongst individual organisms in a population. The ecological approach to natural selection also entails that the nature of the system(s) of inheritance involved in the reoccurrence of favorable organism-environment interactions is, in principle, immaterial to the process of selection. It only matters for selection that organism-environment interactions actually do reoccur in subsequent generations. Third, that niche construction theory—the most well-developed theoretical and conceptual framework for studying how the activities of organisms influences evolutionary dynamics—can be seen as fully a compatible and integrated part of evolutionary theory. Together, these three arguments constitute an overarching argument. Namely that we both can, and should, take organismic activity and behavior to be crucial explanatory elements in evolutionary theory. Throughout the dissertation I also show how these three arguments have consequences for other debates in the philosophy of evolutionary theory, such as the nature of evolutionary processes, the structure of selection-based explanations, the validity and utility of the proximate-ultimate distinction, and the nature of teleology in evolutionary systems. (shrink)

The concept of an ecological niche (econiche) has been used in a variety of ways, some of which are incompatible with a relational or functional interpretation of the term. This essay seeks to standardize usage by limiting the concept to functional relations between organisms and their surroundings, and to revise the concept to include epistemic relations. For most organisms, epistemics are a vital aspect of their functional relationships to their surroundings and, hence, a major determinant of their econiche. Rejecting the (...) traditional dualism of organism and environment, an econiche is defined as the reciprocal (dual) of a functionally specified class of organisms (FSTU). From this perspective, an econiche necessarily implies a certain type of organism, and a class of functionally similar organisms implies a special econiche.The econiche concept is also discussed in relation to other ecological terms that reflect the distributional patterns of organisms, such as habitat, and the concept of an empty niche is criticized. (shrink)

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accounts, the structure of the environment, (...) itself, is unspecified beyond that of contingent relations with the species-typical sensorimotor capacities of perceiving organisms. This lack of specification creates a considerable gap in theory regarding the organization of organisms as coupled with their environments. I argue that this gap can be filled by drawing from resources in developmental systems theory, namely, specifying the environmental state-space as a developmental niche that shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. Defining the environment as an organism’s developmental niche makes it clearer how and why certain contingencies have arisen, in turn, strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology as theories asserting complementarity between organisms and their environments. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning interest in new and more complex accounts of the organism-environment dyad by biologists and philosophers, little attention has been paid in the resulting discussions to the history of these ideas and to their deployment in disciplines outside biology—especially in the social sciences. Even in biology and philosophy, there is a lack of detailed conceptual models of the organism-environment relationship. This volume is designed to fill these lacunae by providing the first multidisciplinary discussion of the topic of (...) organism-environment interaction. It brings together scholars from history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, medicine, and biology to discuss the common focus of their work: entangled life, or the complex interaction of organisms and environments. (shrink)

This article focuses on Auguste Comte’s understanding of the organism–environment relationship. It makes three key claims therein: Comte’s metaphysical position privileged materiality and relativized the intellect along two dimensions: one related to the biological organism, one related to the social environment; this twofold materiality confounds attempts to reduce cognition to either nature or nurture, so Comte’s position has interesting parallels to the field of ‘epigenetics’, which sees the social environment as a causative factor in biology; and although Comte (...) ultimately diverged from the ‘postgenomic’ view in crucial ways, he remains a forerunner of the trend towards viewing the social and biological as entangled. Tending to these dimensions challenges the view that Comte is notable from a classical standpoint but ignorable from a contemporary one. It consequently invites renewed attention to his theoretical system. (shrink)

In Pragmatism’s Evolution, Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey’s 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy—but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey’s claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers? Although the (...) various thinkers associated with pragmatism—from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond—were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910—from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy by Trevor PearceAlexander KleinTrevor Pearce. Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 384. Paperback, $35.00.Pragmatist pioneers were young lions in the days of Darwin. Evolutionary-biological thinking infused this philosophical movement from the start. And yet the last time a major monograph appeared on classic pragmatism and evolutionary biology—Philip Wiener's Evolution and (...) the Founders of Pragmatism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1949)—the author could personally thank Ralph Barton Perry, William James's junior colleague and eventual biographer. John Dewey himself wrote the foreword.Almost seventy-five years later, we have Trevor Pearce's painstakingly researched Pragmatism's Evolution. The author has graduate training in both biology and philosophy and is a former student of William Wimsatt and Robert Richards's (343). The book offers an intricate portrait of how debates about evolutionary biology informed the thinking of a loose-knit group of pragmatists between the years 1860 and 1910. While a remarkable variety of figures are discussed, ten pragmatists command the most attention: Chauncey Wright, C. S. Peirce, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, John Fiske, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, Jane Addams, G. H. Mead, and W. E. B. Du Bois (18). Call them "the American Ten."Without downplaying Darwin, an overarching theme is the special significance of Herbert Spencer. Despite many specific disagreements with him (see e.g. 74, 207–8, 253–54, 281), the American Ten all accepted something more fundamental from Spencer: an intellectual framework that explains mind and morality in terms of functional relationships between organism and environment.After an introduction outlining what Pearce identifies as four chronological "cohorts" of pragmatists (more on this concept below), he examines the 1860s and 1870s reception of Darwin (chapter 1) and Spencer (chapter 2), showing how senior pragmatists like Wright, Peirce, and James defended evolution during this period. In chapter 2, we meet the Metaphysical Club's arch Spencerian, John Fiske, and we get a reading of James's critique of Spencer's psychology and sociology. Chapter 3 gives a highly detailed, reference-work-like portrait of the second cohort's training in evolutionary biology during the 1880s—chiefly Royce, Dewey, Addams, Mead, and Du Bois. In chapter 4, we learn that in the 1880s and 1890s, idealists like Edward Caird, Samuel Alexander, David George Ritchie, and Josiah Royce all co-opted ideas from evolutionary biology, which they apparently thought compatible with Hegelian dialectics. Chapter 5 shows that central planks of Peirce's metaphysics and Dewey's ethics are responsive to an 1890s dispute over the causes of the biological variation upon which selection acts (the so-called "factors" debate). The final two chapters show how pragmatist ethics (chapter 6) and epistemology (chapter 7) were infused with substantive ideas about evolution and about scientific experiment more generally.The depth and use of historical scholarship on offer here are both remarkable. On depth, Pearce draws from nineteen special collections and archives housed at institutions from California to Manchester, UK. The reference list (published on Pearce's website) runs [End Page 160] to 118 pages and was apparently too long for inclusion in the book. Archival research and lengthy bibliographies are to be expected in today's history of philosophy. But the sheer range of sources Pearce draws from is, by any measure, impressive.The use to which he puts those sources is provocative. Close reading, and in particular argument reconstruction, is usually the stock in trade for historians of philosophy. Pearce takes a different approach (7), seeking interpretive insight through a kind of philosophical network analysis. The nodes are mainly philosophers, scientists, and social critics. Unlike digital network analyses, Pearce connects his nodes by hand, via a great multiplicity of social, educational, and intellectual relations. We learn who studied evolution where, with whom, and when; what specific texts were assigned in classes taken, in classes taught; who attacked whom, who sided with whom; and so on.The resulting networks are rich, though they can be difficult to track due to their complexity. At its best, the book uses networks to produce genuine insights that... (shrink)

The topic of the relationship between the organism and its environment runs through the theories of Uexküll, Goldstein and Canguilhem with equal importance. In this work a counterpoint will be established between their theories, in the attempt to assess at which points the melodies are concordant and at which points they are discordant. As fundamental basis to his theory, Uexküll relies on the concept of conformity to a plan, which allows him to account for the congruity and perfect adjustment (...) between organisms and their Umwelten. For Goldstein and Canguilhem, the relationship between an organism and its environment resembles instead a debate or coming to terms, in which the organism, as to ensure the continuity of the state of health, must constantly create norms to maintain a productive relationship with its environment. The pinpointing of these conceptual frameworks allows to lay emphasis on that each theory relies on specific assumptions regarding teleology and sense in organisms, as well as on specific definitions of the concept of life in general. Ultimately, the view that organisms and their environments have an original and common source, a principle, or plan, which must possess all the creative characteristics of life, will be seen as prevailing. (shrink)

Following the revival in the last decades of the concept of “organism”, scholarly literature in philosophy of science has shown growing historical interest in the theory of Immanuel Kant, one of the “fathers” of the concept of self-organisation. Yet some recent theoretical developments suggest that self-organisation alone cannot fully account for the all-important dimension of autonomy of the living. Autonomy appears to also have a genuine “interactive” dimension, which concerns the organism’s functional interactions with the environment and does not simply (...) derive from its internal organisation. Against this background, we focus on a family of natural philosophical approaches that historically have already strongly taken in account this aspect of autonomy, notably going beyond Kant’s perspective on self-organisation. We thus review Hegel, Plessner, and Jonas’ different perspectives on living beings, focussing in particular on four points: the distinction between organic and inorganic, the theory of biological organisation, the processuality of the living, and the “boundary” between inside and outside, through which the organism establishes its relationship to the environment. We, then, compare the three perspectives on these four points, and finally address the question of what advantages their contribution present—especially compared to Kant’s theory—with respect to the topic of organism’s autonomy. This could help—we hope—to better understand what is at the stake still today. (shrink)

Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...) needs to delineate a semiotic threshold, which is a problem not encountered by evolutionary epistemologists. Instead, the latter recognizes that all organisms are knowers that evolve knowledge, which they recognize to extend toward phenomena produced by organisms such as behavior, cognition, language, culture, science, and technology. Secondly, biosemiotics attempts at continuing adaptationist notions on how organisms relate to their environment, while especially Applied Evolutionary Epistemology comes to redefine the nature of the organism–environment relationship in such a way that it recognizes the spatiotemporal boundedness of existence, which in turn makes adaptationist accounts obsolete. (shrink)

Research in evolutionary biology and philosophy of biology and cognition strongly suggests that human organisms modify their environment through active processes of niche construction. Recently, proponents of the free-energy principle and variational active inference have argued that their approach can deepen our understanding of the reciprocal causal relationship between organisms and their niche on various scales. This paper examines the feasibility and scope of variational formalisations and conceptualisations of the organism-niche nexus with a particular focus on the extended active (...) inference account. I will draw a conceptual distinction between selective niche construction, developmental niche construction, and organism-niche coordination dynamics and argue that these notions capture different causal patterns, each of which with a distinct scope. Against this background, I will analyse and discuss the extended active inference account and its strategy to integrate variational active inference with work on extended cognition. The proponents of extended active inference assume that their account can provide an explanation of selective niche construction, developmental niche construction, and organism-niche coordination dynamics. However, my key claim will be that this account has the potential to elucidate the workings of organism-niche coordination dynamics, but does not adequately capture the causal patterns of selective niche construction and developmental niche construction. (shrink)

Social media marketing has become one of the most significant growth paths for many businesses in today’s world. However, many companies are still unclear about using social media marketing to get their advantages, particularly in an e-commerce environment. In this background, this study is proposed to examine the effects of social media marketing activities on relationship quality, such as commitment, trust, and satisfaction in order to predict consumers’ online repurchase intentions in China’s e-commerce environment. This study proposed a theoretical (...) model by using the stimulus-organism-response theory. Using a structured questionnaire and purposive sampling, this study examined the responses of 403 consumers through partial least square-structural equation modeling. The findings discovered that SMMAs significantly strengthen the relationship quality factors, such as commitment, trust, and satisfaction, which in turn positively increase consumer online repurchase intentions in China’s e-commerce industry. This is novel research that contributes to the S-O-R theory and provides several managerial guidelines that assist managers in improving their business performance in the e-commerce industry. This research also highlighted some limitations. (shrink)

Organic appearances are largely neglected by contemporary biology; partly because they are regarded as superficial effects of causes concealed beneath the surface. The persuasion that everything what does exist is existent for some immediately non-apparent reasons belongs to a general belief of modern science. All organisms are of the same evolutionary origin and of the same world wherein appearance coincides with existence. In this study, living beings are approached as appearing centers of experience that reflects their evolutionary history. From biohermeneutic (...) point of view the evolution of organisms, interactions between organisms, and their relationships to environment is understood as “evolution of interpretations”. I use simple conceptual framework of perception, semiotic co-option, and modification to explain the evolution of semantic organs, i.e. organs that operate through the meaning that was given to them by an animal interpreter. (shrink)

The popularity of social media, such as WeChat and Weibo in China, has provided an opportunity to develop social commerce. Although shopping through social commerce platforms is widely favored by consumers, the factors affecting consumers’ decision-making behavior in the social commerce environment remain unclear. Therefore, from the perspective of the stimulus–organism–response theory, we construct a consumer repurchase decision model in the social commerce environment and analyze the influencing mechanism of social commerce features on perceived value and consumers’ repurchase intention. The (...) empirical results found that social commerce features are positively related to the generation of perceived value, which in turn drives consumers to form repurchase intentions. We also found some mediating effects of perceived value. The study’s conclusions clarify the intrinsic influence mechanism of social commerce features on consumers’ perceived value and repurchase intentions. In addition, it can provide some theoretical guidance for future research and business. (shrink)

The theory of the organism-environment system starts with the proposition that in any functional sense organism and environment are inseparable and form only one unitary system. The organism cannot exist without the environment and the environment has descriptive properties only if it is connected to the organism. Although for practical purposes we do separate organism and environment, this common-sense starting point leads in psychological theory to problems which cannot be solved. Therefore, separation of organism and environment cannot be the basis (...) of any scientific explanation of human behavior. The theory leads to a reinterpretation of basic problems in many fields of inquiry and makes possible the definition of mental phenomena without their reduction either to neural or biological activity or to separate mental functions. According to the theory, mental activity is activity of the whole organism-environment system, and the traditional psychological concepts describe only different aspects of organisation of this system. Therefore, mental activity cannot be separated from the nervous system, but the nervous system is only one part of the organism­environment system. This problem will be dealt with in detail in the second part of the article. (shrink)

We consider, from a physical perspective, the case where the interface between an organism and its environment becomes large enough that it acts as a buffer regulating their matter and energy exchanges. We illustrate the physiological and evolutionary role of buffers through the example of lungfish estivation. Then we ponder the relevance of buffers of this kind to the quest for a general definition of concepts like niche construction, the extended phenotype, and related ones, whose meaning is conveyed at present (...) mostly through particular examples. Finally, we comment on the potential significance of buffers to organism—environment codetermination in the sense originally suggested by Lewontin. (shrink)

Fitness is a central but notoriously vexing concept in evolutionary biology. The propensity interpretation of fitness is often regarded as the least problematic account for fitness. It ties an individual's fitness to a probabilistic capacity to produce offspring. Fitness has a clear causal role in evolutionary dynamics under this account. Nevertheless, the propensity interpretation faces its share of problems. We discuss three of these. We first show that a single scalar value is an incomplete summary of a propensity. Second, we (...) argue that the widespread method of “abstracting away” environmental idiosyncrasies by averaging over reproductive output in different environments is not a valid approach when environmental changes are irreversible. Third, we point out that expanding the range of applicability for fitness measures by averaging over more environments or longer time scales (so as to ensure environmental reversibility) reduces one's ability to distinguish selectively relevant differences among individuals because of mutation and eco‐evolutionary feedbacks. This series of problems leads us to conclude that a general value of fitness that is both explanatory and predictive cannot be attained. We advocate for the use of propensity‐compatible methods, such as adaptive dynamics, which can accommodate these difficulties. (shrink)

The relationship of genes, genomes, the organism and the environment where development takes place can be explained in two dramatically different ways. The two views are characterized as ,,program theory' and ,,systemic theory' of DNA. The first assumes that genetic information is encoded in DNA and preexists development. Environmental influences are treated as conditions for adequate gene expression, sometimes as selective conditions for different developmental pathways. The second assumes that genetic information that makes a difference in development is generated (...) in the developmental contexts themselves. Environment, according to this account, matters per se, as a distinct kind of causes in developmental systems. The laboratory, a place where person-independent reproducibility of observations is enacted, may act as a selective epistemological factor that makes the program approach more viable than the systemic. Other reasons for the inclination of 20th Century's genetics towards the program view however are rooted in an a priori metaphysical tradition that placed DNA in the role of the essential causa formalis for ontogeny. German Die Beziehung zwischen Genen, Genomen, Organismen und der Umwelt, in der die Entwicklung stattfindet, kann auf zwei dramatisch verschiedene Weisen erklärt werden. Diese beiden Ansichten werden charakterisiert als ,,ProgrammTheorie und als ,,systemische Theorie der DNA. Die erstere nimmt an, dass genetische Information in der DNA codiert ist und vor der Entwicklung schon existiert. Umwelteinfl-üsse werden als Bedingungen für eine adequate Gen expression behandelt, manche als selektive Bedingungen für die Auswahl zwischen verschiedenen Entwicklungswegen. Die zweite Ansicht nimmt an, dass genetische Information, die in der Entwicklung einen Unterschied macht, in den Kontexten der Entwicklung erst erzeugt wird. Die Umwelt ist gemäss diesem Ansatz per se wichtig, als eine eigene Art von Ursachen in sich entwickelnden Systemen. Das Laboratorium, ein Ort, in dem die personenunabhängige Reproduzierbarkeit von Beobachtungen inszeniert wird, kann als ein selek tiver epistemologischer Faktor angesehen werden, der die Programm-Sicht des Genoms favorisiert. Andere Gründe für die Neigung der Genetik des 20. Jahrhunderts zur Programm-Theorie liegen aber in einer metaphysischen Tradi tion, die der DNA die Rolle der essentiellen causa formalis für die Ontogenese verliehen hat. (shrink)

This essay employs Charles Peirce’s triadic semiotics in order to develop a biosemiotic theory of life that is capable of illuminating the function of information in living systems. Specifically, I argue that the relationship between biological information structures , selecting environments, and the adapted bodily processes of living organisms is aptly modelled by the irreducibly triadic relationship between Peirce’s sign, object, and interpretant, respectively. In each instance of information-based semiosis, the information structure is a complex informational sign that (...) represents the informational object ; and the bodily, behavioral, mental, or intellectual processes that are organized by the informational sign to more or less accurately interpret the present environment constitute a complex informational interpretant—a living, interpreting organism. The essay begins by discussing the precise sense in which this biosemiotic theory is based upon Charles Peirce’s semiotic theory. Next, the theory is developed at length in relation to genetic information structures. Finally, I present a brief outline of how the theory applies to neural and linguistic information structures. The essay concludes with a reflection upon the anti-reductionist implications of the theory. (shrink)

Life history theory aims to explain the relationship between life events, recognizing that the fertility and growth schedules of organisms are dependent on environmental conditions and an organism’s ability to extract resources from its environment. Using models from life history theory, we predict life expectancy to be positively correlated with educational investments and negatively correlated with adolescent reproduction and total fertility rates. Analyses of UN data from 193 countries support these predictions and demonstrate that, although variation is evident across (...) world regions, strong interactions exist among life expectancy, reproductive investments, and educational attainment, and these relationships occur independently of economic pressures and disease burdens. The interactions are strongest, however, in countries with a life expectancy of ≥60 years as these countries tend to have stable economies and a limited HIV/AIDS burden. These findings suggest that policies aimed at influencing education and reproductive decisions should consider environmental characteristics that drive people’s expectations about their longevity. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to bring together the development of mental activity and consciousness in the framework of the organism-environment theory (Jarvilehto, 1998a, 1998b, 1999); the main question is how the development of mental activity and consciousness can be formulated if the starting point is not the separation of man and environment as in traditional cognitive psychology, but a unitary organism-environment system. According to the present formulation, mental activity is conceived as activity of the whole organism-environment system and (...) connected to the general development of life as a specific form of an organism-environment system comprising neurons. The advent of consciousness is regarded as a result of co-operation of such organism-environment systems. Consciousness is based on co-operation for the achievement of common results, and shared by the co-operating individuals (general consciousness), although each individual also makes it concrete from the perspective of his/her own body in the act of participation in common results (personal consciousness). Language is the means of formation of the co-operative system in the achievement of common results, and it is suggested that the use of language is related more to the type of co-operative system and intended common results than to any symbolic representation of the world. It is claimed that on this basis it is possible to develop psychology which takes seriously the concepts of mental activity and consciousness in the description of human action, but does not reduce these concepts either to biological or social factors. The present formulation should be regarded more as a conceptual outline than as a full-blown theory. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to give - in the frame of the theory of the organism - environment system - a new interpretation to the role of efferent influences on receptor activity and to the functions of senses in the formation of knowledge. It is argued, on the basis of experimental evidence and theoretical considerations, that the senses are not transmitters of environmental information, but they create a direct connection between the organism and the environment, which makes the (...) development of a dynamic living system, the organism - environment system, possible. In this connection process the efferent influences on receptor activity are of particular significance, because with their help the receptors may be adjusted in relation to the parts of the environment which are most important in the achievement of behavioral results. Perception is the process of joining of new parts of the environment to the organism - environment system ; thus, the formation of knowledge by perception is based on reorganization of the organism - environment system, and not on transmission of information from the environment. With the help of the efferent influences on receptors each organism creates its own peculiar world which is simultaneously subjective and objective. The present considerations have far reaching influences as well on experimental work in neurophysiology and psychology of perception as on philosophical considerations of knowledge formation. (shrink)

The standard picture of evolution, is externalist: a causal arrow runs from environment to organism, and that arrow explains why organisms are as they are (Godfrey-Smith 1996). Natural selection allows a lineage to accommodate itself to the specifics of its environment. As the interior of Australia became hotter and drier, phenotypes changed in many lineages of plants and animals, so that those organisms came to suit the new conditions under which they lived. Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman, building on the work (...) of Richard Lewontin, have shown that while sometimes appropriate, this is an inadequate conception of the relationship between organisms and the environments in which they live. Over time organisms alter their environment as well as being altered by their environments (Lewontin 1982; Lewontin 1983; Lewontin 1985). For example, animals modulate the effects of their physical and biological environment by building shelters: the beaver’s dam and lodge system, and termite mounds are two famous cases of animal structures, but they are few of many. There are many thousands of animals which make nests, burrows and other shelters. Likewise, animals make tools that give them access to resources from which they would otherwise be excluded: thus the Galapagos woodpecker finch uses a cactus needle to extract insects from crevasses in bark — insects that they would otherwise be unable to catch (Tebbich, Taborsky et al. 2001). Tool making is not as common as shelter-making, but it is common. For example many animals make traps: there are many species of pit-making antlions. Thus in part organisms make the world in which they live. They partially construct their own niches. Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman argue that this has five major and under-appreciated consequences for biological theory. (shrink)

Modern ethical perspectives toward the environment often emphasize the connection of humans to a broader biotic community. The full intimacy of this connectedness, however, is only now being revealed as scientific findings in developmental biology and genetics provide new insights into the importance of environmental interaction for the development of organisms. These insights are reshaping our understanding of how organism-environment interaction contributes to both consistency and variation in organism development, and leading to a new perspective whereby an “organism” is not (...) solely viewed as the adaptive product of evolutionary selection to an external environment over generations, but as continuously being constructed through systems of interactions that link an organism’s characteristics developmentally to the physical and social influences it experiences during life. This newfound emphasis on “interaction” leads to an interdependency whereby any change to an “environment” impacts the interacting “organism,” and an alteration to the “organism” eventually affects its “environment.” The causal reciprocity embedded within this organism-environment interdependency holds implications for our moral obligations to environments, given their compulsory role in shaping all organisms including ourselves. (shrink)

Developmental systems theory is an attempt to sum up the ideas of a research tradition in developmental psychobiology that goes back at least to Daniel Lehrman’s work in the 1950s. It yields a representation of evolution that is quite capable of accommodating the traditional themes of natural selection and also the new results that are emerging from evolutionary developmental biology. But it adds something else - a framework for thinking about development and evolution without the distorting dichotomization of biological processes (...) into gene and non-gene and the vestiges of the ‘black-boxing’ of developmental processes in the modern synthesis, such as the asymmetric use of the concept of information. Phenomena that are marginalized in current gene-centric conceptions, such as extra-genetic inheritance, niche construction and phenotypic plasticity are placed center stage. (shrink)

The relation between mental processes and brain activity is studied from the point of view of the theory of the organism-environment system. It is argued that the systemic point of view leads to a new kind of definition of the primary tasks of neurophysiology and to a new understanding of the traditional neurophysiological concepts. Neurophysiology is restored to its place as a part of biology: its task is the study of neurons as living units, not as computer chips. Neurons are (...) living units which are organised as metabolic systems in connection with other neurons; they are not units which would carry out some psychological functions or maintain states which are typical only of the whole organism-environment system. Psychological processes, on the other hand, are processes always comprising the whole organism-environment system. (shrink)

The idea of organism-environment interaction, at least in its modern form, dates only to the mid-nineteenth century. After sketching the origins of the organism-environment dichotomy in the work of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, I will chart its metaphysical and methodological influence on later scientists and philosophers such as Conwy Lloyd Morgan and John Dewey. In biology and psychology, the environment was seen as a causal agent, highlighting questions of organismic variation and plasticity. In philosophy, organism-environment interaction provided a new (...) foundation for ethics, politics, and scientific inquiry. Thinking about organism-environment interaction became indispensable, for it had restructured our view of the biological and social world. (shrink)

The evolutionary implications of environmental change due to organismic action remain a controversial issue, after a decades—long debate on the subject. Much of this debate has been conducted in qualitative fashion, despite the availability of mathematical models for organism–environment interactions, and for gene frequencies when allele fitness can be related to exploitation of a particular environmental resource. In this article we focus on representative models dealing with niche construction, ecosystem engineering, the Gaia Hypothesis and community interactions of Lotka–Volterra type, (...) and show that their quantitative character helps bring into sharper focus the similarities and differences among their respective theoretical contexts. (shrink)

It’s recently been argued that biological fitness can’t change over the course of an organism’s life as a result of organisms’ behaviors. However, some characterizations of biological function and biological altruism tacitly or explicitly assume that an effect of a trait can change an organism’s fitness. In the first part of the paper, I explain that the core idea of changing fitness can be understood in terms of conditional probabilities defined over sequences of events in an organism’s life. The result (...) is a notion of “conditional fitness” which is static but which captures intuitions about apparent behavioral effects on fitness. The second part of the paper investigates the possibility of providing a systematic foundation for conditional fitness in terms of spaces of sequences of states of an organism and its environment. I argue that the resulting “organism–environment history conception” helps unify diverse biological perspectives, and may provide part of a metaphysics of natural selection. (shrink)

Most psychology begins with a distinction between organism and environment, where the two are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) conceptualized as flipsides of a skin-severed space. This paper examines that conceptualization. Dewey and Bentley's (1949) account of firm naming is used to show that psychologists have, in general, (1) employed the skin as a morphological criterion for distinguishing organisms from backgrounds, and (2) equated background with environment. This two-step procedure, which in this article is named the morphological conception of organism, is (...) shown to inform the writings of the well-known psychologist B. F. Skinner. A review of difficulties with the morphological conception is followed with a review and preliminary integration of four attempts at an alternative conception of organism, and thus environment. Together, these four attempts converge on an analysis of living systems as transdermal (through and across skin) processes only within which organism and environment are distinguishable as complementary phases. The notion of a biological total process, or bioprocess, is employed to clarify this alternative analysis, in which an organism is an ongoing organization rather than a skin-bound body. (shrink)

This review essay provides an analysis of the context and content of Trevor Pearce’s Pragmatism’s Evolution. The work highlights the bond between organisms and their environments.

Based on Kolchinsky and Wolpert’s work on the semantics of autonomous agents, I propose an application of Mathematical Logic and Probability to model cognitive processes. In this work, I will follow Bateson’s insights on the hierarchy of learning in complex organisms and formalize his idea of applying Russell’s Type Theory. Following Weaver’s three levels for the communication problem, I link the Kolchinsky–Wolpert model to Bateson’s insights, and I reach a semantic and conceptual hierarchy in living systems as an explicative model (...) of some adaptive constraints. Due to the generality of Kolchinsky and Wolpert’s hypotheses, I highlight some fundamental gaps between the results in current Artificial Intelligence and the semantic structures in human beings. In light of the consequences of my model, I conclude the paper by proposing a general definition of knowledge in probabilistic terms, overturning de Finetti’s Subjectivist Definition of Probability. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are complementary approaches whose engagement will help us explain the organism-environment interaction at the cognitive level. The Extended Synthesis, through niche construction theory, can explain the organism-environment interaction at an evolutionary level because niche construction is a process guided by information. We believe that the best account that defines information at this level is the one offered by biosemiotics and, within all kinds of biosemiotic information available, we believe that (...) ecological information is the best candidate for making sense of the organism-environment relation at the cognitive level. This entanglement of biosemiotics, ecological information and the Extended Synthesis is promising for understanding the multidimensional character of the organism-environment reciprocity as well as the relation between evolution, cognition, and meaning. (shrink)

The word ‘environment’ has a history. Before the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of a singular, abstract entity—the organism—interacting with another singular, abstract entity—the environment—was virtually unknown. In this paper I trace how the idea of a plurality of external conditions or circumstances was replaced by the idea of a singular environment. The central figure behind this shift, at least in Anglo-American intellectual life, was the philosopher Herbert Spencer. I examine Spencer’s work from 1840 to 1855, demonstrating that he was exposed (...) to a variety of discussions of the ‘force of circumstances’ in this period, and was decisively influenced by the ideas of Auguste Comte in the years preceding the publication of Principles of psychology (1855). It is this latter work that popularized the word ‘environment’ and the corresponding idea of organism–environment interaction—an idea with important metaphysical and methodological implications. Spencer introduced into the English-speaking world one of our most enduring dichotomies: organism and environment. (shrink)

This review essay provides an analysis of the context and content of Trevor Pearce’s Pragmatism’s Evolution. The work highlights the bond between organisms and their environments.

The theoretical approach described in a series of articles (Jarvilehto, 1998a,b,c, 1999, 2000) is developed further in relation to the problems of emotion, consciousness, and brain activity. The approach starts with the claim that many conceptual confusions in psychology are due to the postulate that the organism and the environment are two interacting systems (”Two systems theory”). The gist of the approach is the idea that the organism and environment form a unitary system which is the basis of subjective experience. (...) This starting point leads to the conception of emotions as reorganization of the organism-environment system, and entails that emotion and knowledge are only different aspects of the same process. In the first part of the article the general outline of the approach is sketched, and in a subsequent second part (Jarvilehto, 2001) the relations between emotions, consciousness, and brain activity will be discussed in detail. (shrink)

Darwin's phrase “place in natural economy”, andSpencer's term “correspondence” can be regarded as first attempts to express the organism-environment relationships. The same concept has more recently been approached from the point of view of life-form, external activities, and habitat. Though all these points are interlocking, they have been stressed differently in the writings of American and European ecologists. It is proposed that the term “niche” would be most useful and rational if applied to the total of relationships between a living (...) organism and its complete environment, both biotic and abiotic. (shrink)

From his earliest work in The Structure of Behavior, Maurice Merleau-Ponty abrogates accounts of organic form that posit the organism as either passively ordered by the environment which precedes it, or as actively constituting its environment. I argue that Merleau-Ponty first develops what I term a genetic concept of form, in which the organism-environment relationship unfolds developmentally. This account of genetic form, however, requires a further concept of generative form to overcome the conceptual distinction between constituting activity and constituted (...) passivity. I contend that rather than pre-existing its own development ideally, in a genetic or developmental blueprint, or environmentally, in given causes, that instead form emerges expressively and dynamically. To develop the concept of generative form I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s lecture courses Institution and Nature, while drawing from examples in animal motorperceptual development and inter-bodily communication. In doing so, I contend that this idea of generativity requires for us to think of organisms as passive, though not as passively constituted by a nature in-itself, but rather as passively instituted by a natural sense that orients the possibilities of organic development without itself existing asan already realized form of life. I argue that the notion of generative form offers an approach to thinking of species differences not as essential differences in kind, but as elaborations of a natural generativity that precedes and grounds individual animate forms. (shrink)

This paper investigates the reception and discussion of Jakob von Uexküll’s biological theory by two German thinkers of his time, Helmuth Plessner and Kurt Goldstein. It demonstrates how their bio-philosophical perspectives are on the one hand indebted to Uexküll’s theory and, on the other, critical of its tendency to excessively harmonize the relationship between living beings and their environment. This original critical reading of the _Umweltlehre_ is rooted in ambiguities within Uexküll’s own thought - between a dynamic conception of (...) the organism-environment relationship and the idea of "conformity to a plan" -,, which is here examined in the second section. In the third and fourth sections we will then focus on Plessner and Goldstein respectively, demonstrating how for these two authors the harmony between organism and environment is not an original state, but only reveals itself against the background of a tension; as such, it can only be partial, unstable and always changing. The two thinkers avoid the rigid alternative between Darwin’s concept of adaptation (_Anpassung_) and Uexküll’s “fitting into” (_Einpassung_) by theorizing the ideal state of the relationship between organism and environment in terms of “adequacy” (_Adäquatheit_) and “adaptability” (_Adaptiertheit_). Between organism and environment there is neither absolute separation nor perfect harmony, but rather a gap which can never be definitively fixed. (shrink)

Upshot: Gibsonian and enactivist thinkers appear to diverge primarily with respect to the emphasis placed on the contributions of the organism to perception-action. Enactivists claim that a fundamental asymmetry in the organism-environment relationship should be credited for the existence of meaning in the world. Gibsonians counter that theory must reckon with both the asymmetry and symmetry between organism and environment as well as with the role of specificational information in underwriting their coordination.

Panksepp (2001) has kindly provided an unexpected and critical commentary on my article “Feeling as knowing” (published in two parts in Consciousness & Emotion; Jarvilehto, 2000b, and 2001), in which I try to clarify some conceptual problems in emotion research on the basis of the theory of the organism-environment system (Järvilehto, 1998a, b, 1999, 2000a). While I am always grateful for any criticism of my ideas, because it is the only way to develop them further, the commentary does not contain (...) much substantial criticism of my theoretical considerations, but it is rather related to science politics (“Jarvilehto’s holistic approach would … discourage investigators…”; Panksepp, 2001, p. ), and to the problem what kind of theory could be useful in guiding neuroscientific experimental work. The commentary seems to contain also some misunderstanding of my basic ideas, indicating that I didn’t formulate them well enough in the two articles. Therefore, I try to elucidate in this reply somewhat more the background of my approach, and to move the discussion to a more substantial theoretical level. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: I concur with Dengsø and Kirchhoff that if we are to ground cognition more deeply in contemporary biology, we need to focus on the organism-environment relationship as the unit of biological explanation most relevant to cognitive science. This entails questioning the individualistic bias that has pervaded 4E cognitive science. However, can we overcome that bias while retaining (...) a commitment to the importance of phenomenological descriptions for 4E cognitive science? Perhaps we can, but probably not if we continue to rely on classical Western phenomenology. Certain strands of Buddhist thought might be more compatible with sympoiesis. (shrink)

In this paper concerns the adequacy of competing models of the people in the sociological, socio-economic and socio-biological theory tradition for the explanation of complex social phenomena. It is proposed that in the mainstream sociological theory tradition preferred model to modify the socialized man by embedding in an evolutionary theoretical concept which receives the objections of the economic tradition with regard to individual decisions on actions and objections from the biological tradition with regard to genetic influences, without the independent importance (...) of culture to eliminate social science explanations. In an evolutionary sketch is shown that an application of Darwin's theory on socio-cultural phenomena of man is possible to cooperate in the genetic, situational and cultural factors as causal factors unrelated. Culture is seen in it as an adaptive process in which the genetically inherited organism-environment relationships in emergent forms of social systems and cultural environments are expanded. With regard to causal explanations through evolutionary mechanisms, the proportion of human individuals for the dynamic aspects of socio-cultural phenomena is emphasized. (shrink)