Andrea Gambarotto

This article examines the distribution of cognitive capacities across animal taxa and advances an organizational account of the evolution of conscious agency. It explores how vertebrate and invertebrate body plans have shaped brain evolution and embodiment. The central thesis is that while invertebrate body plans generally constrain brain development, the vertebrate body plan has facilitated brain complexification and bodily integration. A key focus is the exceptional case of coleoid cephalopods,the only invertebrates to evolve large brains. Despite their remarkable cognitive abilities, these animals remain a borderline case of conscious invertebrates. Although they probably exhibit a form of consciousness, their body plan limits both brain complexification and evolutionary diversification, preventing them from following the same trajectory as vertebrates. We examine the reasons why only the vertebrate body plan has enabled the sustained expansion of cognition, leading to greater complexity and diversification. Finally, the paper argues that the evolution of conscious agency in vertebrates results from a distinctive form of embodiment: a feedback loop in which bodily development supports brain growth, which in turn enhances bodily integration, fostering further brain complexity in a self-reinforcing process. The article concludes with reflections on the significance of conscious agency as a major evolutionary transition in animals.

This article examines the distribution of cognitive capacities across animal taxa and advances an organizational account of the evolution of conscious agency. It explores how vertebrate and invertebrate body plans have shaped brain evolution and embodiment. The central thesis is that while invertebrate body plans generally constrain brain development, the vertebrate body plan has facilitated brain complexification and bodily integration. A key focus is the exceptional case of coleoid cephalopods,the only invertebrates to evolve large brains. Despite their remarkable cognitive abilities, these animals remain a borderline case of conscious invertebrates. Although they probably exhibit a form of consciousness, their body plan limits both brain complexification and evolutionary diversification, preventing them from following the same trajectory as vertebrates. We examine the reasons why only the vertebrate body plan has enabled the sustained expansion of cognition, leading to greater complexity and diversification. Finally, the paper argues that the evolution of conscious agency in vertebrates results from a distinctive form of embodiment: a feedback loop in which bodily development supports brain growth, which in turn enhances bodily integration, fostering further brain complexity in a self-reinforcing process. The article concludes with reflections on the significance of conscious agency as a major evolutionary transition in animals.

Enactive perspectives on habit reject mechanistic models and call attention to the neglect of this concept in computational approaches to the mind. Recent work has brought enactive views on habit into dialogue with phenomenological and pragmatist perspectives, yet engagement with Hegel’s philosophy of habit has been scarce. We establish connections between Hegelian and enactive views on habit, showing their resonance in various registers, including the organic conception of habits and their transformative roles in sensorimotor and social agency. A closer engagement with Hegel echoes recent efforts to integrate dialectical thinking into the enactive framework. This includes elucidating the entangled relationship between biological regulation, sensorimotor agency, and social normativity, paving the way for the development of an enactive approach to social institutions. Looking at Hegel through an enactive lens, in turn, provides us with an operationalised, scientific interpretation of his organicist view of habit and challenges dichotomous distinctions between first and second nature. Even in this initial phase, this dialogue results in a naturalistic yet non-reductionist view of human minds, positioning habit as a key boundary concept for understanding the dialectical interplay between life, mind, and sociality.

This paper examines the relation between embodiment and sociality within the enactive approach, highlighting the continuity between biological autonomy and social normativity. The central claim is that, while enactivism offers the conceptual resources to address the complexity of social cognition, doing so requires the integration of dialectical tools into the theory of the embodied mind. For this, we turn to the Hegelian notions of recognition and expressivism, emphasizing the recursive relations between individual and social embodiment. From this perspective, social norms emerge as historically sedimented processes of collective co-regulation rooted in embodied sensorimotor interactions. Once established, such norms acquire an objective character, confronting individuals as ecological constraints, while remaining open to revision and transformation. Social norms thus preserve continuity with their embodied origins while instituting novel forms of collective co-regulation.

This paper aims to build a theoretical bridge between the Marxist and enactive traditions by focusing on the concept of labor. While labor represents a central component of human experience, it remains largely overlooked in cognitive science. We contend that the enactive approach provides a strong theoretical framework to account for labor as a key instance of ecologically and socially distributed cognition, where cognitive processes are shaped by material environments and embedded in evolving social practices. When not alienated by modes of production that appropriate its product, labor fosters skilled sensorimotor identities and sustains intersubjective norms within communities of practice. Connecting the Marxist and enactive traditions, we articulate labor as the driver of social metabolism—the mediator between society and nature—articulating the continuity and scaffolding of the various ways in which organisms bring forth a world.

This chapter is devoted to thorough analysis of the work of Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (1776–1837), including his monumental six-volume Biologie, oder Philosophie lebenden für Natur und der Naturforscher und Ärtzte (1802–1822) and the two-volume Erscheinungen und Gesetze der organischen Leben (1831–1833). I argue that Treviranus’ work constitutes a compelling synthesis of the framework elaborated by the Göttingen naturalists and later developed by Naturphilosophie. I stress that Schelling’s organicist views played a relevant role in this shift and inform several key passages of the Biologie. At the same time, through emphasis on the geographical distribution of organisms and their transformation over time, Treviranus moved beyond Naturphilosophie to establish the foundation of biology as a historical science.

This chapter is concerned with the problem of generation in the mid- to late-eighteenth century and reconstructs the debate on the notion of formative force with reference to Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734–1794), Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813). This debate interrogated the origin of form and addressed the epistemological status of the Bildungskraft as the fundamental principle behind organization. My analysis focuses especially on the different interpretations of the notion of “teleology” defended by the authors, with the objective of providing a sort of general typology of the different forms of vitalism characterizing the German debate of this period.

This chapter provides a reconstruction of the physiology of vital forces as it was elaborated in the mid- to late-eighteenth century by the physicians and naturalists gathered under the category of the “Göttingen School,” namely Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765–1844), and Heinrich Friedrich Link (1767–1851). I argue that the theoretical framework of the Göttingen School implied two fundamental tenets: first, an interpretation of teleology as internal purposiveness (argued by Blumenbach), and second, a proposal to reform natural history in terms of comparative physiology, i.e. as a taxonomy of vital functions and an analysis of their distribution in the animal and plant kingdoms (articulated by Kielmeyer and Link).

This chapter reconstructs the reform of natural history that Naturphilosophie advocated in opposition to Kant and Blumenbach, with references to Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Lorenz Oken (1779–1851). This chapter is organized as a counterargument to Peter Hanns Reill’s stark distinction between “Enlightenment Vitalism” and “Romantic Naturphilosophie.” I will demonstrate that, although a difference can be identified between the approach to animal classification upheld by Kant and Blumembach, on the one hand, and the reform of natural history promoted by Goethe, Schelling, and Oken, on the other, this division is much less significant than Reill assumes it to be.

This chapter concludes the book with some considerations of Hegel’s position on Romantic Naturphilosophie. Unlike Kant and Schelling, Hegel did not play an active role in the scientific debate culminating in the emergence of biology as a unified field. However, as an external observer, he was well-positioned to grasp its fundamental philosophical stakes. In particular, he criticized Kant for interpreting teleology solely in terms of intention and the naturphilosophisch movement for its speculative excesses. These critiques, however, establish that Hegel did not consider Naturphilosophie something to be thoroughly rejected, but corrected and integrated. His attempt to facilitate this integration resulted in a theory of biological individuality in which teleology is understood as internal purposiveness, i.e. autonomous self-organization.

This chapter takes up Jonas’ philosophical legacy as a site for developing a scientifically viable theory of the organism as a ‘natural purpose.’ It follows a suggestion by the late Francisco Varela that we need to move beyond the unstable position set out by Kant in the Critique of Judgement in order to provide a novel understanding of biological individuality. The chapter explores the theoretical potential of this claim by investigating the role the philosophy of Hans Jonas could play in helping us develop a naturalistic philosophy of biology that rejects both reductive physicalism and the metaphysical idea of teleology as intelligent design but still takes teleology seriously as a natural phenomenon.

The paper proposes a dialectical approach to our understanding of the relation between teleology and mechanism. This approach is dialectical both in form and content. In _form_, it proposes a contemporary interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysical account of teleology. This account is grounded in a dialectical methodology, which consists in scrutinizing the inherent limitations of a theoretical position that lead it to suppress itself and evolve into a better one. I apply the same methodology to the function debate. For Hegel, teleology can be understood in three main variants, which can be fruitfully mapped onto the three main positions in the function debate, the key conceptual distinction being whether teleological principles are understood as extrinsic or intrinsic. When it comes to autonomous systems, i.e. systems that embody the regime of _Geist_, extrinsic functionality must be grounded in intrinsic functionality. My approach is dialectical also in _content_, insofar as it concludes that intrinsic functional ascriptions rely on the relation of co-determination between the parts and the whole of a system, as well as between the system and its environment.

The paper focuses on the reception of Kant’s philosophy of biology in the context of the so-called ‘Göttingen School’. Timothy Lenoir has tried to rehabilitate the framework elaborated at Göttingen by stressing its difference from Naturphilosophie. Focusing on the work of Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer this paper argues that Lenoir’s position is based on a historiographical bias. I take into account Kielmeyer’s stance on physiology, embryology and natural history. This analysis reveals the existence of a clear shift from a regulative to a constitutive understanding of teleology. I agree with Zammito that the ‘Lenoir thesis’ should be overcome in favor of a more accurate narrative of the emergence of biology in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century.

This book offers a comprehensive account of vitalism and the Romantic philosophy of nature. The author explores the rise of biology as a unified science in Germany by reconstructing the history of the notion of “vital force,” starting from the mid-eighteenth through the early nineteenth century. Further, he argues that Romantic Naturphilosophie played a crucial role in the rise of biology in Germany, especially thanks to its treatment of teleology. In fact, both post-Kantian philosophers and naturalists were guided by teleological principles in defining the object of biological research. The book begins by considering the problem of generation, focusing on the debate over the notion of “formative force.” Readers are invited to engage with the epistemological status of this formative force, i.e. the question of the principle behind organization. The second chapter provides a reconstruction of the physiology of vital forces as it was elaborated in the mid- to late-eighteenth century by the group of physicians and naturalists known as the “Göttingen School.” Readers are shown how these authors developed an understanding of the animal kingdom as a graded series of organisms with increasing functional complexity. Chapter three tracks the development of such framework in Romantic Naturphilosophie. The author introduces the reader to the problem of classification, showing how Romantic philosophers of nature regarded classification as articulated by a unified plan that connects all living forms with one another, relying on the idea of living nature as a universal organism. In the closing chapter, this analysis shows how the three instances of pre-biological discourse on living beings – theory of generation, physiology and natural history – converged to form the consolidated disciplinary matrix of a general biology. The book offers an insightful read for all scholars interested in classical German philosophy, especially those researching the philosophy of nature, as well as the history and philosophy of biology.

The paper proposes a novel reading of Schelling’s speculative physics in light of debates concerning the notion of emergence in philosophy of science. We begin by highlighting Schelling’s disruptive potential with regard to the contemporary philosophical landscape, currently polarized over a false dichotomy between reductionist Humeanism and liberal Kantianism. We then argue that a broadly Schellingian approach to nature is unwittingly being revived by a group of scholars promoting a non-mainstream process account of emergence based on the notion of constraint and grounded in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. Such an account, we argue, represents an effective theoretical platform to re-read Schelling’s philosophy of nature today. This reading provides a picture of life and mind as emerging out of self-organizing processes that take place through the self-inhibition of nature’s inherent tendency to disorder.

We outline an alternative to both scientific and liberal naturalism which attempts to reconcile Sellars’ apparently conflicting commitments to the scientific accountability of human nature and the autonomy of the space of reasons. Scientific naturalism holds that agency and associated concepts are a mechanical product of the realm of laws, while liberal naturalism contends that the autonomy of the space of reason requires that we leave nature behind. The third way we present follows in the footsteps of German Idealism, which attempted to overcome the Kantian chasm between nature and agency, and is thus dubbed ‘post-Kantian.’ We point to an overlooked group of scholars in the naturalism debate who, along with recent work in biology and cognitive science, offer a path to overcome the reductive tendencies of empiricism while avoiding the dichotomy of logical spaces. We then bring together these different streams of research, by foregrounding and expanding on what they share: the idea of organisms as living agents and that of a continuity without identity between life and mind. We qualify this as a bottom-up transformative approach to rational agency, which grounds cognition in the intrinsically purposive nature of organisms, while emphasizing the distinction between biological agency and full-fledged mindedness.

The paper addresses Schelling’s and Hegel’s interpretation of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), focusing especially on the so-called ‘problem of teleology.’ We reconstruct Schelling’s and Hegel’s reading of the second part of the Critique, dedicated to ‘teleological judgement’ and the question of natural purposiveness. We first propose a brief reconstruction of Kant’s argument about the possibility of using teleological judgment with reference to nature; we then show why Hegel and Schelling were unsatisfied with Kant’s argument; Finally, we argue that Schelling’s and Hegel’s dissatisfaction with the Kantian theory of teleological judgement led them to move beyond Kant, towards a different understanding of the relation between epistemology and ontology.

This paper presents what we call ‘Hegel's philosophy of biology’ to a target audience of both Hegel scholars and philosophers of biology. It also serves to introduce a special issue of theHegel Bulletinentirely dedicated to a first mapping of this yet to be explored domain of Hegel studies. We submit that Hegel's philosophy of biology can be understood as a radicalization of the Kantian approach to organisms, and as prefiguring current philosophy of biology in important ways, especially with regard to the nature of biological organization, the role of teleology in biological explanation, and the relation between life and cognition.

We characterize Hegel’s stance on biological purposiveness as consisting in a twofold move, which conceives organisms as intrinsically purposive natural systems and focuses on their behavioral and cognitive abilities. We submit that a Hegelian stance is at play in enactivism, the branch of the contemporary theory of biological autonomy devoted to the study of cognition and the mind. What is at stake in the Hegelian stance is the elaboration of a naturalized, although non-reductive, understanding of natural purposiveness.