Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
September 11, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
This paper reconstructs a conceptual shift from the original theory of autopoiesis to later enactive approaches to cognition and experience. The central claim is that the transition is not a straightforward deduction from autopoiesis. Maturana’s identification of life with cognition expands the concept of cognition from the outset. Later developments add embodied action, autonomy, adaptivity,...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
September 10, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
Functionalism is among the most influential positions in the philosophy of mind. Its central idea is that mental states are determined not by their material constitution but by their functional or causal role. This gives rise to the possibility of multiple realization: if the same functional organization can be realized in biological and artificial systems, then, in principle, the same mental...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 6, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
This essay develops an argument for the principled, not merely practical, impossibility of producing artificial life and artificial consciousness. The impossibility follows from the convergence of several lines of reasoning: from the nature of scientific abstraction, which always yields a map and never the landscape itself; from the size and branching structure of the evolutionary space of...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
July 12, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
Dieses Buch richtet sich an Philosophen des Geistes. Es beginnt nicht dort, wo die Philosophie des Geistes gewöhnlich beginnt. Es beginnt weder mit Qualia noch mit Zombies, weder mit dem Hard Problem noch mit der Frage, ob Bewusstsein auf Gehirnprozesse reduzierbar ist. Es beginnt mit der Frage, was Leben ist. Der Grund für diesen Anfang liegt in der Sache selbst. Wer mit Bewusstsein beginnt,...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 26, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
In earlier work, the phylogenetic sequence from autocatalytic autopoiesis through the causal core and electrification to defactorization was developed as a reconstructive derivation of the biological conditions of phenomenal consciousness. Non-factorizability appears there as the result of the fourth tipping point, criticality as its physical realization condition. The present article shows...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
The soul has an image problem. Anyone who mentions it today in a scientific conversation can expect, at best, an indulgent smile. The concept is considered obsolete, a relic of a pre-scientific era in which whatever could not be explained was given a name, and the name was then mistaken for an explanation. And yet the question behind the concept never disappeared. What is it that makes an...