Abstract
The autopoietic theory and the enactive approach are two theoretical streams that, in spite of their historical link and conceptual affinities, offer very different views on the nature of living beings. In this paper, we compare these views and evaluate, in an exploratory way, their respective degrees of internal coherence. Focusing the analyses on certain key notions such as autonomy and organizational closure, we argue that while the autopoietic theory manages to elaborate an internally consistent conception of living beings, the enactive approach presents an internal tension regarding its characterization of living beings as intentional systems directed at the environment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The label ‘enactivism’ has been applied to a wide variety of views. Some views have been dubbed enactivist only in virtue of their emphasis on the coupled dynamics of organism/environment interactions in their accounts of cognition (including Hurley 1998; Noë 2004; and Hutto and Myin 2013). Our discussion of enactivism here applies not to those views, but only to enactivist views that, in addition, accord central importance to the autopoietic organization of living systems. The most notable exponents of this kind of view are Francisco Varela (see, e.g. Varela 1991, Varela and Weber 2001), Evan Thompson (see, e.g. Thompson 1995, Thompson 2007) and Ezequiel di Paolo (see, e.g. di Paolo 2005). All subsequent references to enactivism should be understood as pertaining only to this latter autopoiesis-emphasising group of theories. Other enactivist treatments that fall under the scope of our critique here includes Moreno and Barandarian (2004), Froese and Ziemke (2009) and the papers collected in Stewart et al. (2010).
This point is also of central importance to Hurley’s work on perception, agency and consciousness (Hurley 1998). Importantly, Hurley does not combine this point with the ‘existentialist’ attitude we briefly sketched above (and will explore in more detail below), so her view does not suffer from the tension that we argue arises for the autopoietic enactivist.
Note that this does not involve the obviously false claim that structurally determined systems cannot undergo change as a result of perturbations from their environment—the claim is rather that such changes will always unfold according to the fixed structural dynamics of the system.
References
Di Paolo, E. (2005). Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429–452.
Di Paolo, E. A., Rohde, M., & De Jaegher, H. (2010). Horizons for the enactive mind: values, social interaction and play. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, & E. A. Di Paolo (Eds.), Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (pp. 33–87). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Froese, T., & Ziemke, T. (2009). Enactive artificial intelligence: investigating the systemic organization of life and mind. Artificial Intelligence, 173, 466–500.
Hurley, S. (1998). Consciousness in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hutto, D., & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing enactivism: basic minds without content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Maturana, H. (1975). The organization of the living: a theory of the living organization. International Journal of Man–machine, studies, 7, 313–332.
Maturana, H. (1981). Autopoiesis. In M. Zeleny (Ed.), Autopoiesis: a theory of living organization (pp. 21–33). New York; Oxford: North Holland
Maturana, H. (1987). Everything is said by an observer. In W. I. Thompson (Ed.), GAIA: A way of knowing (pp. 65–82). Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press.
Maturana, H. (2003). The biological foundations of self-consciousness and the physical domain of existence. In N. Luhmann, H. Maturana, M. Namiki, V. Redder, & F. Varela (Eds.), Beobachter: Convergenz der Erkenntnistheorien? (pp. 47–117). München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Maturana, H. (2013). Reflections on my collaboration with Francisco Varela. Constructivist Foundations, 7(3), 155–164.
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Moreno, A., & Barandarian, X. (2004). A naturalized account of the inside-outside dichotomy. Philosophica, 73, 11.26.
Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & di Paolo, E. A. (Eds.). (2010). Enaction: towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Thompson, E. (2005). Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4, 407–427.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: biology, phenomenology and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Varela, F. (1979). Principles of Biological Autonomy. New York: Elsevier North Holland.
Varela, F. (1991). Organism: a meshwork of selfless selves. In A. Tauber (Ed.), Organism and the origin of self (pp. 79–107). Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht.
Weber, A., & Varela, F. (2002). Life after Kant: natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, 97–125.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank three anonymous referees for their constructive comments and observations. Mario would like to thank Katja Abramova for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Villalobos, M., Ward, D. Living Systems: Autonomy, Autopoiesis and Enaction. Philos. Technol. 28, 225–239 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-014-0154-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-014-0154-y