TY - GEN ID - cogprints4109 UR - http://cogprints.org/4109/ A1 - G., Nagarjuna TI - Towards a Model of Life and Cognition Y1 - 2004/08// N2 - What should be the ontology of the world such that life and cognition are possible? In this essay, I undertake to outline an alternative ontological foundation which makes biological and cognitive phenomena possible. The foundation is built by defining a model, which is presented in the form of a description of a hypothetical but a logically possible world with a defined ontological base. Biology rests today on quite a few not so well connected foundations: molecular biology based on the genetic dogma; evolutionary biology based on neo-Darwinian model; ecology based on systems view; developmental biology by morphogenetic models; connectionist models for neurophysiology and cognitive biology; pervasive teleonomic explanations for the goal-directed behavior across the discipline; etc. Can there be an underlying connecting theme or a model which could make these seemingly disparate domains interconnected? I shall atempt to answer this question. By following the semantic view of scientific theories, I tend to believe that the models employed by the present physical sciences are not rich enough to capture biological (and some of the non-biological) systems. A richer theory that could capture biological reality could also capture physical and chemical phenomena as limiting cases, but not vice versa. AV - public KW - life KW - cognition KW - philosophy of biology KW - cognitive science KW - foundations of life KW - theoretical biology KW - invertibility KW - self-organization KW - biological roots of cognition KW - autopoisis KW - self-reproduction KW - metaphysics KW - ontology KW - evolution KW - adaptation KW - complexity KW - measure of complexity KW - autonomy KW - dialogical invertibility KW - knowledge KW - evolution of complex systems KW - Darwin KW - natural selection KW - logic of construction KW - perturbation ER -