Tagung: "From Life to Mind: The Return of Hylemorphism in Embodied Cognition"

From Life to Mind:
The Return of Hylemorphism in Embodied Cognition

2.9. – 3.9. 2026, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften

Organisation: Dr. Gustav Melichar (Heidelberg), Dr. Simon Schüz (RPTU)

Gefördert durch Mittel der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung und des ZGaPL Forschungsfonds der RPTU.

The workshop brings together researchers working at the intersection of philosophy of biology, Aristotelian metaphysics, and 4E/enactive cognitive science to investigate three interconnected claims: (i) that a philosophy of the embodied mind requires a prior account of life-processes and living form; (ii) that hylomorphism offers a distinctive route between reductive physicalism and dualism in the philosophy of mind; and (iii) that enactive and 4E approaches implicitly deploy a conception of form as organizational principle, inviting a substantive convergence with Aristotelian naturalism.

A central question running through all three sections is whether a metaphysics of form and powers can accommodate the distinctive normativity of rational capacities—universality, abstraction, truth-directedness—or whether the life-mind continuum, taken seriously, dissolves rather than preserves what is philosophically distinctive about reason.

Confirmed Speakers:

Workshop Sections:
I. Philosophy of Life: Teleology, Self-Organization, and the Living Form 
II. Metaphysics of the Living and Enactive Cognition: Matter, Form, and Powers 
III. Hylomorphic Philosophy of Mind: An Alternative to Reduction and Dualism

To register, please use the link below:

https://rptu-anmeldungen.procampus.de/de/registration-for-from-life-to-mind-the-return-of-hylemorphism-in-the-embodied-mind/