title: The teleological transitions in evolution: A Gántian view.
abstract: We discuss Gánti's approach to the study of minimal living organization, and suggest that his methodology can be applied to the study of the two other major teleological systems described by Aristotle: minimal consciousness (sentience, experiencing) and rationality. We start by outlining Gánti's strategy for the case of life: listing the basic characteristics that any living system capable of open-ended evolution must satisfy, developing a dynamic model that instantiates these characteristics (the chemoton), and identifying a capacity of the system (unlimited heredity) that allows the system to dynamically persist over evolutionary time and to be used as a marker of the evolutionary transition to life. We apply Gánti's explanatory strategy to the evolutionary transition to minimal consciousness, suggest a transition marker (unlimited associative learning) and discuss the wider evolutionary and philosophical implications of this approach.
authors.affiliation: Natural Science Department, The Open University of Israel, Raanana 43107, Israel. Electronic address: simona@openu.ac.il.
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ginsburg
authors.affiliation: The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: jablonka@post.tau.ac.il.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Jablonka
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology; D028663:Ethical Theory; D008954:Models, Biological; D000069497:Origin of Life
keywords: Chemoton; Consciousness; Origin of life; Transition marker