Resumen

FROESE, Tom. Life is precious because it is precarious: Individuality, mortality, and the problem of meaning. Iztapalapa. Rev. cienc. soc. humanid. [online]. 2017, vol.38, n.82, pp.173-198. ISSN 2007-9176.  https://doi.org/10.28928/revistaiztapalapa/822017/aot2/froeset.

Computationalism aspires to provide a comprehensive theory of life and mind. It fails in this task because it lacks the conceptual tools to address the problem of meaning. I argue that a meaningful perspective is enacted by an individual with a potential that is intrinsic to biological existence: death. Life matters to such an individual because it must constantly create the conditions of its own existence. For that individual to actively adapt, rather than to passively disintegrate. I introduce two ancient foreign worldviews that assign a constitutive role to death. Then I trace the emergence of a similar conception of mortality from the cybernetics era to the ongoing development of enactive cognitive science. Finally, I analyze why orthodox computationalism has failed to grasp the role of mortality in this constitutive way.

Palabras llave : computational theory of mind; cognitive science; philosophy of mind; phenomenology; normativity; individuality.

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