Published using Google Docs
Maturana & Varela - Autopoiesis and Cognition
Updated automatically every 5 minutes

Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living

by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela

Finished: 9/16/15

INTRODUCTION

One can only say with a given language what the language permits.  I had to stop looking at living systems as open systems defined in an environment, and I needed a language that would permit me to describe an autonomous system in a manner that retained autonomy as a feature of the system or entity specified by the description. In other words, any attempt to characterize living systems with notions of purpose or function was doomed to fail because these notions are intrinsically referential and cannot be operationally used to characterize any system as an autonomous entity.

...the new approach required us to treat seriously the activity of the nervous system as determined by the nervous system itself, and not by the external world; thus the external world would only a triggering role in the release of the internally-determined activity of the nervous system.  We did this rigorously, and showed that such an approach did indeed permit us to generate the whole color space of the observer. That was a very fundamental result that we published in a very unknown article [Maturana, H.R., G. Uribe, and S. Frenk, 1968].

****  (Note: nervous system cannot differentiate internal from external signals, because all signals are internal)  But what was still more fundamental was the discover that one had to close off the nervous system to account for its operation, and that perception should not be viewed as a grasping of an external reality, but rather as the specification of one, because no distinction was possible between perception and hallucination in the operation of the nervous system as a closed network.

I found that my two apparently contradictory academic activities were not contradictory, and that they were, in fact, addressed to the same phenomenon: cognition and the operation of the living system - its nervous system included when present - were the same thing.

autopoeisis.  This was a word without a history, a word that could directly mean what takes place in the dynamics of the autonomy proper to living systems. ...It simplified enormously the task of talking about the organization of the living without falling into the always gaping trap of not saying anything new because the language does not permit it.

****  (Note: akin to Wittgenstein, language and cognition are profond limits on experience and expression)   In a sense it has been my way to transcendental experience: to the discovery that matter, metaphorically speaking, is the creation of the spirit (the mode of existence of the observer in a domain of discourse), and that the spirit is the creation of the matter is creates. This not a paradox, but it is the expression of our existence in a domain of cognition in which the content of cognition is cognition itself. Beyond that nothing can be said.

if the organization of a system changes, then its identity changes, and it becomes a unity of another kind.

The fundamental cognitive operation that an observer performs is the operation of distinction. By means of this operation the observer specifies a unity as an entity distinct from a background and background as the domain in which an entity is distinguished.

the characterization of an entity is also a description made by the observer, and as such belongs to his description domain.

the complementarities system/environment, autonomy/control, totality/composition, etc., are complementarities only in our cognition of a system that we observe in a context that allows us to establish such relations, but they are not constitutive features of the referred system because they do not participate in its constitution through the interplay of the properties of its components.

Society and Ethics (Maturana opinion only)

In a society, at any instance of observation, the structures of the components determine the properties of the components, and properties of the components realize the structure of the society, and the structure of the society acts as a selector of the structure of its components by being a medium in which they realize their ontogeny.

A society, therefore, operates an a homeostatic system that stabilizes the relations that define it as a social system of a particular kind.

In a human society a social change can only take place if the individual properties, and, hence, conduct, of its members change.  ...A revolution is a revolution only if it is an ethical revolution.

When a human being ‘A’ encounters another human being ‘B’ and loves him or her, he sees ‘B’ in a social context and becomes an observer of the society that ‘B’ integrates. ‘A’ may like or not like what he sees in reference to ‘B’ and act accordingly, becoming antisocial if he does not like what he sees. A totalitarian society must negate love as an individual experience because love, sooner or later, leads to an ethical evaluation of the society that the loved one integrates.

A human society in which to see all human beings as equivalent to oneself, and to love them, is operationally legitimate without demanding from them a larger surrender of individuality and autonomy than the measure that one is willing to accept for oneself while integrating it as an observer, is a product of human, that is, an artificial society that admits change and accepts every human being as not dispensable. Such a society is necessarily a non-hierarchical society for which all relations of order are constitutively transitory and circumstantial to the creation of relations that continuously negate the institutionalization of human abuse. Such a society is in its essence an anarchist society, and society made for and by observers that would not surrender their condition of observers as their only claim to social freedom and mutual respect.

At this point there is either much more to say, or nothing.

BIOLOGY AND COGNITION (1970)

By Humberto R. Maturana

http://www.enolagaia.com/M70-80BoC.html

I.   Introduction

Thus cognition as a biological function is such that the answer to the question, ‘what is cognition?’ must arise from understanding knowledge and the knower through the latter’s capacity to know.

****  The basic claim of science is objectivity: it attempts, through the application of a well defined methodology, to make statement about the universe. The very root of this claim, however, lies its weakness: the a priori assumption that objective knowledge constitutes a description of that which is known.

II. The Problem

III. Cognitive Function in General

(1)  Anything said is said by an observer.

(7) The observer is a living system and an understanding of cognition as a biological phenomenon must account for the observer and his role in it.

The Living System

(2) Living systems as they exist on earth today are characterized by exergonic metabolism, growth and internal molecular replication, all organized in a closed causal circular process that allows for evolutionary change in the way circularity is maintained, but not for the loss of the circularity itself. Exergonic metabolism is required to provide energy for the endergonic synthesis of specific polymers (proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, polysaccharides) from teh corresponding monomers, that is, for growth and replication;...

This circular organization constitutes a homeostatic system (autopoiesis) whose function is to produce and maintain this very same circular organization by determining that the components specify it be those whose synthesis or maintenance it secures.

**  (Note: definition of autopoiesis before the word was coined)  It is the circularity of its organization that makes a living system a unit of interactions, and it is this circularity that it must maintain in order to remain a living system and to retain its identity through different interactions.

What changes from generation to generation in the evolution of living systems are those aspects of their organization which are subservient to the maintenance of their basic circularity but do not determine it, and which allow them to retain their identity through interactions; that is, what changes is the way in which the basic circularity is maintained, and not this basic circularity itself.

The Cognitive Process

********  Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and without a nervous system.

In an organism without a nervous system (or its functional equivalent) its interactions are of a chemical or physical nature (a molecule is absorbed and an enzymatic process is initiated; a photon is captured and a step in photosynthesis is carried out). For such an organism the relations holding between the physical events remain outside its domain of interactions. The nervous system enlarges the domain of interactions of the organism by making its internal states also modifiable in a relevant manner by 'pure relations', not only by physical events;

The nervous system expands the cognitive domain of the living system by making possible interactions with 'pure relations'; it does not create cognition.

****  there are organisms that include as a subset of their possible interactions, interactions with their own internal states (as states resulting from external and internal interactions) as if they were independent entities, generating the apparent paradox of including their cognitive domain within their cognitive domain. In us this paradox is resolved by what we call 'abstract thinking', another expansion of the cognitive domain.

IV. COGNITIVE FUNCTION IN PARTICULAR

NERVE CELLS

(1) The neuron is the anatomical unit of the nervous system because it is a cell, and as such it is an independent integrated self-referring metabolic and genetic unit (a living system indeed).

(2) Anatomically and functionally a neuron is formed by a collector area (dendrites, and in some cases, also the cell body and part of the axon) united via a distributive element (the axon, and in some cases, also the cell body and main dendrites), capable of conducting propagated spikes to an effector area formed by the terminal branching of the axon. The functional state of the collector area depends on both its internal state (reference state) and on the state of activity of the effector areas synapsing on it.

(4) ...Also, the spatio-temporal configuration of the input to a neuron that causes in it the recurrence of a given state of activity is a class of afferent influences defined by a pattern in the relations holding between the active afferents and the collector; a given class of responses is elicited by a given class of afferent influences.

(5) ...Thus there are two aspects to consider with respect to the activity of any given neuron: (i) its genesis, which must be considered in reference to the neuron itself and to the afferents to it; (ii) its participation in the generation of activity in other neurons

(8) (b) The nervous system always functions in the present, and it can only be understood as a system functioning in the present. The present is the time interval necessary for an interaction to take place; past, future and time exist only for the observer. Although many nerve cells may change continuously, their mode of operation and their past history can explain to the observer how their present mode of operation was reached, but not how it is realized now, or what their present participation in the determination of behavior is.

(9) ...it is apparent that the neuron cannot be considered as the functional unit of the nervous system; no neuron can have a fixed functional role in the generation of conduct if it must be continuously changing its participation in it. For the same reason a fixed collection of cells also cannot be considered as a functional unit of the nervous system. Only conduct itself can be considered as the functional unit of the nervous system.

ARCHITECTURE

(1)  (b) Due to the genetic and somatic variability no two nervous systems of animals of the same species (particularly if they have many cells) are identical, and they resemble each other only to the extent that they are organized according to the same general pattern. It is the organization defining the class, and not any particular connectivity, which determines the mode of functioning of any given kind of nervous system.

(3) The organism ends at the boundary that its self-referring organization defines in the maintenance of its identity. At this boundary there are sensors (the sensory surfaces) through which the organism interacts in the domain of relations and effectors (the effector surfaces) through which the nervous system modifies the posture of the organism in this domain.

FUNCTION

(1) ...Different species interact with different sets of relations (have different niches).

(2) ...for an animal to discriminate objects visually the receptors in its eyes must absorb light quanta and be activated; yet, the objects that the animal sees are determined not by the quantity of light absorbed, but by the relations holding between the receptor-induced states of activity within the retina, in a manner determined by the connectivity of its various types of cells. Therefore, the nervous system defines through the relative weights of the patterns of interactions of its various components, both innate and acquired through experience, which relations will modify it at any given interaction [Cf. Maturana, 1965].

******  The anatomical and functional organization of the nervous system secures the synthesis of behavior, not a representation of the world;

REPRESENTATION

*  To the observer, once the boundary of the sensors is passed, the nervous system, as a mode of organization, seems to begin at any arbitrary point that he may choose to consider;

This basic uniformity of organization can best be expressed by saying: all that is accessible to the nervous system at any point are states of relative activity holding between nerve cells, and all that to which any given state of relative activity can give rise are further states of relative activity in other nerve cells

...This has a fundamental consequence: unless they imply their origin (through concomitant events, their locations, or through the consequences of the new interactions which they originate) there is no possible distinction between internally and externally generated states of nervous activity.

Two interactions that produce the same state of relative activity are identical for the nervous system, no matter how different they may be in the cognitive domain of the observer.

(3) Every relation is embodied in a state of relative activity of nerve cells, but also every state of relative activity acts to modify the relative activity of other nerve cells.

****   7) There is no difference in the nature of the embodiment of the relations generated through either external or internal interactions; both are sets of states of neuronal activity that can be said to represent the interactions.

(a) The distinction between externally and internally generated inter-actions can only arise through a concomitance of events that indicates the source (sensory surface or not) of the state of activity caused by them, or through the outcome of new interactions which they initiate.

(b) The nervous system can interact with the representations of its interactions (and hence, of the organism) in an endless recursive manner.

DESCRIPTION

****  (1) A living system, due to its circular organization, is an inductive system and functions always in a predictive manner: what happened once will occur again. Its organization, (genetic and otherwise) is conservative and repeats only that which works. For this same reason living systems are historical systems; the relevance of a given conduct or mode of behavior is always determined in the past.

(2) Since the niche of an organism is the set of all classes of interactions into which it can enter, ...the relation between behavior and niche lies exclusively in the cognitive domain of the observer.

if such an observer through orienting behavior can orient himself towards himself, and then generate communicative descriptions that orient him towards hisdescription of this self-orientation, he can, by doing so recursively, describe himself describing himself ... endlessly. Thus discourse through communicative description originates the apparent paradox of self-description: self-consciousness, a new domain of interactions.

THINKING

(1) I consider that in a state-determined nervous system, the neurophysiological process that consist in its interacting with some of its own internal states as if these were independent entities corresponds to what we call thinking.

****  (2) The process of thinking as characterized above is necessarily independent of . That this is so even for what we call 'abstract thinking' in man is apparent from the observations of humans with split brains [Cf. Gazzaniga, Bogen and Sperry, 1965]. These observations show that the inability of the non-speaking hemisphere to speak does not preclude in it operations that the observer would call abstract thinking, and that the lack of  only implies that it cannot generate discourse. When we talk about concepts or ideas we describe our interactions with representations of our descriptions, and we think through our operation in the linguistic domain. The difficulty arises from our considering thinking through our description of it in terms or concepts as if it were something peculiar to man, and in some way isomorphic with the notions embodied in the descriptions, instead of attending to the functional process that makes these descriptions possible.

NATURAL LANGUAGE

(1) Linguistic behavior is orienting behavior; it orients the orientee within his cognitive domain to interactions that are independent of the nature of the orienting interactions themselves.

...language has been considered as a denotative symbolic system for the transmission of information. In fact, if such were the biological function of language, its evolutionary origin would demand the pre-existence of the function of denotation as necessary to develop the symbolic system for the transmission of information, but this function is the very one whose evolutionary origin should be explained.

**************  if it is recognized that language is connotative and not denotative and that its function is to orient the orientee within his cognitive domain, and not to point to independent entities, it becomes apparent that learned orienting interactions embody a function of non-linguistic origin  that, under a selective pressure for recursive application, can originate through evolution the system of cooperative consensual interactions between organisms that is natural language.

Widespread among animals other than man-orienting interactions are particularly evident in primates, in which it is easy to see how the audible and visible behavior of one individual orients others within their respective cognitive domains [Cf. Jay, 1968], and in dolphins which seem to have evolved a rich and efficient system of auditive cooperative interactions [Cf. Lilly, 1967].

****  (Note: Embodiment of cognition)  (3) Behavior (function) depends on the anatomical organization (structure) of the living system, hence anatomy and conduct cannot legitimately be separated and the evolution of behavior is the evolution of anatomy and vice versa;

**************  when it is recognized that language is connotative and not denotative, and that its function is to orient the orientee within his cognitive domain without regard for the cognitive domain of the orienter, it becomes apparent that there is no transmission of information through language.

If it appears acceptable to talk about transmission of information in ordinary parlance, this is so because the speaker tacitly assumes the listener to be identical with him and hence as having the same cognitive domain which he has (which never is the case), marveling when a 'misunderstanding' arises.

Such an approach is valid, for man created systems of communication where the identity of sender and receiver is implicitly or explicitly specified by the designer, and a message, unless disturbed during transmission, necessarily selects at the reception the same set of states that it represents at the emission, but not for natural languages.

****  Every linguistic interaction is thus necessarily context-dependent, and this dependency is strictly deterministic for both orienter and orientee, notwithstanding the different backgrounds of the two processes.

****  (6) If one considers linguistic interactions as orienting interactions it is apparent that it is not possible to separate, functionally, semantics and syntax, however separable they may seem in their description by the observer.

The limit to such complications lies exclusively in the capacity of the nervous system to discriminate between its own discriminable internal states, and to interact with them as if with independent entities.

The rules of syntax and generative grammar [Cf. Chomsky, 1968] refer to regularities that the observer sees in the linguistic behavior (as he would see in any behavior) which, arising from the functional organization of the system, specify the interactions that are possible at any given moment. Such rules, as rules, lie exclusively in the cognitive domain of the observer, in the realm of descriptions,

(9) Orienting behavior in an organism with a nervous system capable of interacting recursively with its own states expands its cognitive domain by enabling it to interact recursively with descriptions of its interactions.

MEMORY AND LEARNING

(1) Learning as a process consists in the transformation through experience of the behavior of an organism in a manner that is directly or indirectly subservient to the maintenance of its basic circularity.

(2) Learning occurs in a manner such that, for the observer, the learned behavior of the organism appears justified from the past,

(6) All changes in the nervous system during learning must occur without interference with its continued functioning as a self-regulating system; the unity that the observer sees in a living system throughout its continuous transformation is a strictly functional one.

****  Past, present, and future, and time in general belong exclusively to the cognitive domain of the observer.

THE OBSERVER

Epistemological and Ontological Implications

(1) The cognitive domain is the entire domain of interactions of the organism.

(2) The possibility of enlargement of the cognitive domain is unlimited; it is a historical process. Our brain, the brain of the observer, has specialized during evolution as an instrument for the discrimination of relations, both internally and externally generated relations, but relations given through and by interactions and embodied in the states of relative activity of its neurons.

The nervous system in turn has evolved as a system structurally and functionally subservient to the basic circularity of the living organization, and hence, embodies an inescapable logic: that logic which allows for a match between the organization of the living system and the interactions into which it can enter without losing its identity.

(4) The observer can describe a system that gives rise to a system that can describe, hence, to an observer.

******  (Note: ala Wittgenstein)  (5) The domain of discourse is a closed domain, and it is not possible to step outside of it through discourse. Because the domain of discourse is a closed domain it is possible to make the following ontological statement: the logic of the description is the logic of the describing (living) system (and his cognitive domain).

(Note: Wittgenstein: nothing can be said)   (6) This logic demands a substratum for the occurrence of the discourse. We cannot talk about this substratum in absolute terms, however, because we would have to describe it, and a description is a set of interactions into which the describer and the listener can enter, and their discourse about these interactions will be another set of descriptive interactions that will remain in the same domain. Thus, although this substratum is required for epistemological reasons, nothing can be said about it other than what is meant in the ontological statement above.

****  (Note: Wittgenstein)  (7) We as observers live in a domain of discourse interacting with descriptions of our descriptions in a recursive manner, and thus continuously generate new elements of interaction.

(8) For epistemological reasons we can say: there are properties which are manifold and remain constant through interactions. The invariance of properties through interactions provides a functional origin to entities or units of interactions; since entities are generated through the interactions that define them (properties), entities with different classes of properties generate independent domains of interactions: no reductionism is possible.

V. PROBLEMS IN THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF COGNITION

**  due to the general mode of organization of the nervous system there is no intrinsic difference between its internally and externally generated states of activity, and because each one of its specific states of activity is specifiable only in reference to other states of activity of the system itself.

******   (Note:  Self as Narrative)   Through describing itself in a recursive manner, such an organism becomes a self-observing system that generates the domain of self-consciousness as a domain of self-observation. Self-consciousness then is not a neurophysiological phenomenon, it is a consensual phenomenon emerging in an independent domain of interactions from self-orienting behavior and lies entirely in the linguistic domain.

(b) Since self-consciousness and the linguistic domain in general are not neurophysiological phenomena, it is impossible to account for them in terms of excitation, inhibition, networks, coding, or whatever else is the stuff of neurophysiology.

****  (Note: Depicts CNS as closed system that determines behavior; “will” is strictly descriptive)  No consideration of meaning enters into such a notion, since meaning, as a description by the observer, refers to the relevance that a mode of behavior has in the maintenance of the basic circularity of the organism as a consequence of self-regulation, and not in the mechanisms of the genesis of conduct.

(d) It is apparent that the nervous system cannot determine in advance the concomitances of activity under which it should change in a permanent manner; for it to satisfy future needs of the organism, it must operate under non-predictive changes continuously selected by the concomitances of activity arising in it. For this the nervous system must be capable of successful operation under the continuous transformation of its capacity to synthesize behavior,

(Note: with time, fewer “new” states, hence time feels repetitive, moves faster with age)  (e) Since the nervous system is an inferential system, that is, since it functions as if any state that occurred once will occur again, a significant feature of its organization must be its necessary and continuous transformation as a function of the new concomitances of activity occurring in it.

(4) Learning is not a process of accumulation of representations of the environment; it is a continuous process of transformation of behavior through continuous change in the capacity of the nervous system to synthesize it.

(5) The nervous system is a strictly deterministic system whose structure specifies the possible modes of conduct that may emerge (be synthesized) from its functioning in a manner that varies according to the species, and the reactive perspective from which these modes of conduct may emerge. The reactive perspective, which the observer would call the emotional tone, does not specify a particular conduct, but determines the nature (aggressive, fearful, timid, etc.) of the course of the interaction [Cf. Kilmer, McCulloch and Blum, 1968].

****  Time and meaning are effective factors in the linguistic domain, but as relational entities do not have neurophysiological correlates in the operation of the nervous system.

Nor is the functional unity of the nervous system attained through a specific feature of its organization, but emerges from the functioning of its components (whatever these may be), each one to its own accord, under circumstances that define the ensemble as a unit of interactions in a particular domain [Cf. Lindauer, 1967, as an example in a social organism], and has no reality independent of these circumstances. Thus there is no peculiar neurophysiological process that could be shown to be responsible for this unity and to explain it. Furthermore, in a strict sense, although the nervous system has anatomical components it does not have functional parts since any mutilation leaves a functioning unit,

 In a self-referring system like a living system the situation is different: the observer can only make adescription of his interactions with parts that he defines through interactions, but these parts lie in his cognitive domain only.

Accordingly, the full explanation of the organization of the nervous system (and of the organism) will not arise from any particular observation or detailed description and enumeration of its parts, but rather like any explanation, from the synthesis, conceptual or concrete, of a system that does what the nervous system (or the organism) does.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

I have shown the emergence of a self-referring system capable of making descriptions and of generating, through orienting interactions with other, similar, systems and with itself, both a consensual linguistic domain and a domain of self-consciousness, that is: I have shown the emergence of the observer.

(Note: Definition of autopoiesis) (i) The living organization is a circular organization which secures the production or maintenance of thecomponents that specify it in such a manner that the product of their functioning is the very same organization that produces them. Accordingly, a living system is an homeostatic system whose homeostatic organization has its own organization as the variable that it maintains constant through the production and functioning of the components that specify it, and is defined as a unit of interactions by this very organization.

Accordingly, in a strict sense a unit does not have parts, and a unit is a unit only to the extent that it has a domain of interactions that defines it as different from that with respect to which it is a unit, and can be referred to only, as done above with the living system, by characterizing its organization through the domain of interactions which specify this distinction. In this context, the notion of component is necessary only for epistemological reasons in order to refer to the genesis of the organization of the unit through our description, but this use does not reflect the nature of its composition.

****   for every living system the process of cognition consists in the creation of a field of behavior through its actual conduct in its dosed domain of interactions, and not in the apprehension or the description of an independent universe. Our cognitive process (the cognitive process of the observer) differs from the cognitive processes of other organisms only in the kinds of interactions into which we can enter, such as linguistic interactions, and not in the nature of the cognitive process itself.

(iii) Linguistic interactions orient the listener within his cognitive domain, but do not specify the course of his ensuing conduct.

(iv) Through language we interact in a domain of descriptions within which we necessarily remain even when we make assertions about the universe or about our knowledge of it. This domain is both bounded and infinite; bounded because everything we say is a description, and infinite because every description constitutes in us the basis for new orienting interactions, and hence, for new descriptions. From this process of recursive application of descriptions self-consciousness emerges as a new phenomenon in a domain of self-description,

(v) A living system is not a goal-directed system; it is, like the nervous system, a stable state-determined and strictly deterministic system closed on itself and modulated by interactions not specified through its conduct.

****  (vi) It is tempting to talk about the nervous system as one would talk about a stable system with input. This I reject because it misses entirely the point by introducing the distortion of our participation as observers into the explanation of systems whose organization must be understood as entirely self-referring. What occurs in a living system is analogous to what occurs in an instrumental night where the pilot does not have access to the outside world and must function only as a controller of the values shown in his flight instruments.

***********  (Note: nervous systems as closed systems)  In terms of their functional organization living systems do not have inputs and outputs, although under perturbations they maintain constant their set states, and it is only in our descriptions, when we include them as parts of larger systems which we define, that we can say that they do. When we adopt this descriptive approach in our analysis of the living organization we cannot but subordinate our understanding of it to notions valid only for man-made (allo-referring) systems, where indeed input and output functions are all important through the purposeful design of their role in the larger systems in which they are included, and this is misleading.

he both creates (invents) relations and generates (specifies) the world (domain of interactions) in which he lives by continuously expanding his cognitive domain through recursive descriptions and representations of his interactions.

(viii) The logic of the description and, hence, of behavior in general is, necessarily, the logic of the describing system; given behavior as a referential and deterministic sequence of states of nervous activity in which each state determines the next one within the same frame of reference, no contradiction can possibly arise in it as long as the latter remains unchanged by intercurrent interactions.

Such contradiction, however, lies exclusively in the cognitive domain of the observer, or of whatever provides the independent constant frame of reference. Contradictions (inconsistencies) then, do not arise in the generation of behavior but pertain to a domain in which the different behaviors acquire their significance by confronting an encompassing frame of reference through the interactions of the organism.

********  (Note: Limits of description, language. Awesome)   Because the logic of the description is the same as the logic of the describing system we can assert the epistemological need for a substratum for the interactions to occur, but we cannot characterize this substratum in terms of properties independent of the observer. From this it follows that reality as a universe of independent entities about which we can talk is, necessarily, a fiction of the purely descriptive domain, and that we should in fact apply the notion of reality to this very domain of descriptions in which we, the describing system, interact with our descriptions as if with independent entities. This change in the notion of reality must be properly understood. We are used to talking about reality orienting each other through linguistic interactions to what we deem are sensory experiences of concrete entities, but which have turned out to be, as are thoughts and descriptions, states of relative activity between neurons that generate new descriptions. The question, 'What is the object of knowledge?' becomes meaningless. There is no object of knowledge. To know is to be able to operate adequately in an individual or cooperative situation. We cannot speak about the substratum in which our cognitive behavior is given, and about that of which we cannot speak, we must remain silent, as indicated by Wittgenstein. This silence, however, does not mean that we fall into solipsism or any sort of metaphysical idealism. It means that we recognize that we, as thinking systems, live in a domain of descriptions, as has already been indicated by Berkeley, and that through descriptions we can indefinitely increase the complexity of our cognitive domain.

this re-emergence of reality as a domain of descriptions does not contradict determinism and predictability in the different domains of interactions; on the contrary, it gives them foundation by showing that they are a necessary consequence of the isomorphism between the logic of the description and the logic of the describing system. It also shows that determinism and predictability are valid only within the field of this isomorphism; that is, they are valid only for the interactions that define a domain.

(x) The genetic and nervous systems are said to code information about the environment and to represent it in their functional organization. This is untenable; the genetic and nervous systems code processes that specify series of transformations from initial states, which can be decoded only through their actual implementation, not descriptions that the observer makes of an environment which lies exclusively in his cognitive domain [Cf. Bernal, 1965].

The notion of information refers to the observer's degree of uncertainty in his behavior within a domain of alternatives defined by him, hence the notion of information only applies within his cognitive domain. Accordingly, what one could at most say is that the genetic and nervous systems generate information through their self-specification when witnessed by the observer as if in their progressive self-decoding into growth and behavior.

(xi) There are different domains of interactions, and these different domains cannot explain each other because it is not possible to generate the phenomena of one domain with the elements of another; one remains in the same domain.

An explanation is always a reproduction, either a concrete one through the synthesis of an equivalent physical system, or a conceptual one through a description from which emerges a system logically isomorphic to the original one, but never a reduction of one phenomenological domain into another. An adequate understanding of this irreducibility is essential for the comprehension of the biological phenomena, the consensual domains that living systems generate' and their conjoined evolution.

Many conclusions about self-consciousness and knowledge which arise from this mode of analysis have been proposed in one way or another by scientists and philosophers from their intuitive understanding, but never, to my knowledge, with an adequate biological and epistemological foundation. This I have done through the distinction between what pertains to the domain of the observer, and what pertains to the domain of the organism, and through carrying to their ultimate consequences the implications of the circular self-referring organization of the living systems: the implications of the functionally closed nature of the relativistic organization of the nervous system as a system under continuous transformation determined by relations of neuronal activity without the system ever stepping outside itself; and the implications of the non-informative orienting function of linguistic interactions. It is only after this has been done that the functional complexity of the living and linguistically interacting system can be properly grasped without its being concealed through such magic words as consciousness, symbolization, or information.

POST SCRIPTUM

ethical implications; in the present case the following deserve special attention:

(i) Man is a deterministic and relativistic self-referring autonomous system whose life acquires its peculiar dimension through self-consciousness; ethic and morality arise as commentaries that he makes on his behavior through self-observation.

That is, man changes and lives in a changing frame of reference in a world continuously created and transformed by him. Successful interactions directly or indirectly subservient to the maintenance of his living organization constitute his only final source of reference for valid behavior within the domain of descriptions, and, hence, for truth; but, since living systems are self-referential systems, any final frame of reference is, necessarily, relative. Accordingly, no absolute system of values is possible and all truth and falsehood in the cultural domain are necessarily relative.

(ii) Language does not transmit information and its functional role is the creation of a cooperative domain of interactions between speakers through the development of a common frame of reference, although each speaker acts exclusively within his cognitive domain where all ultimate truth is contingent to personal experience.

****  (iii) Man is a rational animal that constructs his rational systems as all rational systems are constructed, that is, based on arbitrarily accepted truths (premises); being himself a relativistic self-referring deterministic system this cannot be otherwise

 the unavoidable task of man as a self-conscious animal that can be an observer of its own cognitive processes is to explicitly choose a frame of reference for his system of values. This task he has always avoided by resorting to god as an absolute source of truth, or to self-delusion through reason, which can be used to justify anything by confusing the frames of reference and arguing in one domain with relations valid in another.

the alternative to reason, as a source for a universal system of values, is aesthetic seduction in favor of a frame of reference specifically designed to comply with his desires (and not his needs) and defining the functions to be satisfied by the world (cultural and material) in which he wants to live.

AUTOPOIESIS

The organization of Living (1973)

by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela

INTRODUCTION

A universe comes into being when a space is severed into two. A unity is defined. The description, invention and manipulation of unities is at the base of all scientific inquiry.

In our common experience we encounter living systems as unities that appear to us as autonomous entities of bewildering diversity endowed with the capacity to reproduce.

Our endeavor is to disclose the nature of the living organization. However, in our approach we make a starting point of the unitary character of a living system, and maintain that the evolutionary thought through its emphasis on diversity, reproduction and the species in order to explain the dynamics of change has obscured the necessity of looking at the autonomous nature of living unities for the understanding of the biological phenomenology.

...our purpose is: to understand the organization of living systems in relation to their unitary character.

Our approach will be mechanistic: no forces or principles will be adduced which are not found in the physical universe. Yet, our problem is the living organization and therefore our interest will not be in properties of components, but in processes and relations between processes realized through components.

We maintain that living systems are machines and by doing this we point at several notions which should be made explicit. First, we imply a non-animistic view which it should be unnecessary to discuss any further. Second, we are emphasizing that a living system is defined by its organization and, hence, that it can be explained as any organization is explained, that is, in terms of relations, not of component properties. Finally, we are pointing out from the start the dynamism apparent in living systems and which the word ‘machine’ connotes.

We are asking, then, a fundamental question: ‘What is the organization of living systems, what kind of machines are they, and how is their phenomenology, including reproduction and evolution, determined by their unitary organization?”

CHAPTER 1

ON MACHINES, LIVING AND OTHERWISE

1. Machines

The use to which a machine can be put by man is not a feature of the organization of the machine, but of the domain in which the machine operates, and belongs to our description of the machine in a context wider than the machine itself.

2. LIVING MACHINES

Living systems are machines that cannot be shown by pointing to their components.

(Note: autopoiesis definition)  Autopoietic machines are homeostatic machines. Their peculiarity, however, does not lie in this but in the fundamental variable which they maintain constant. An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.  It follows that an autopoietic machine continuously generates and specifies its own organization through its operation as a system of production of its own components, and does this in an endless turnover of components under conditions of continuous perturbations and compensation of perturbations. Therefore, an autopoietic machine is an homeostatic (or rather a relation-static) system which has its own organization (defining network of relations) as the fundamental variable which it maintains constant. This is to be clearly understood.

(i) Autopoietic machines are autonomous; that is, they subordinate all changes to the maintenance of their own organization, independently of how profoundly they may otherwise be transformed in the process.

(ii) Autopoietic machines have individuality; that is, by keeping their organization as an invariant through its continuous production they actively maintain an identity which is independent of their interactions with an observer.

(iv) Autopoietic machines do not have inputs or outputs. They can be perturbed by independent events and undergo internal structural changes which compensate these perturbations.

b. Living Systems

physical autopoietic machines... transform matter into themselves in a manner such that the product of their operation is their own organization. However we deem the converse is also truth: a physical system if autopoietic, is living. In other words, we claim that the notion of autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize the organization of living systems.

CHAPTER 2

DISPENSABILITY OF TELEONOMY

1. Purposelessness

This element of purpose of the possession of project or program in the organization of living systems, which has been called teleonomy without implying any vitalistic connotations, is frequently considered as a necessary, if not as a sufficient, definitory feature for their characterization. Purpose or aims, however, as we saw in the first chapter, are not features of the organization of any machine (allo- or autopoietic); these notions belong to the domain of our discourse about our actions, that is, they belong to the domain of descriptions, and when applied to a machine, or any system independent from us, they reflect our considering the machine or system in some encompassing context.

****  if living systems are physical autopoietic machines, teleonomy becomes only an artifice of their description which does not reveal any feature of their organization, but which reveals the consistency in their operation within the domain of observation. Living systems, as physical autopoietic machines, are purposeless systems.

CHAPTER 3

EMBODIMENTS OF AUTOPOIESIS

1. Description and Causal Notions

an autopoietic organization constitutes a closed domain of relations specified only with respect to the autopoietic organization that these relations constitute, and, thus, it defines a ‘space’ in which it can be realized as a concrete system; a space whose dimension s are the relations of production of the components that realize it: Relations of constitution... specificity... and order.

Notions such as coding and transmission of information do not enter in the realization of a concrete autopoietic system because they do not refer to actual processes in it.

2. Molecular Embodiments

That a cell is an autopoietic system is trivially apparent in its life cycle. What is not trivial is how the cell is a molecular embodiment of autopoiesis.

(i) Constitutive relations are relations that determine the topology of the autopoietic organization, and hence its physical boundaries.  ...There is no specification within the cell of what it is not.

The autopoietic space, however, is curved and closed in the sense that it is entirely specified by itself, and such a projection represents our cognitive relation with it, but does not reproduce it.

3. Origin

The production of relations of constitution, specification and order, are not exclusive to autopoietic systems.

(Note: physical embodiment as essential to autopoiesis)  Without unity in the physical space a living system would lack the dynamics of production relations which constitute it as a concrete entity in space.

(ii)  The establishment of an autopoietic system cannot be a gradual process; either a system is an autopoietic system or it is not.

CHAPTER IV

DIVERSITY OF AUTOPOIESIS

reproduction requires a unity to be reproduced, and it is necessarily secondary to the establishment of such a unity; evolution requires reproduction and the possibility of change, through reproduction of that which evolves, and it is necessarily secondary to the establishment of reproduction.

1. Subordination to the Condition of Unity

Unity (distinguishability from a background, and, hence, from other unities), is the sole necessary condition for existence in a given domain.

(i) The establishment of a unity defines the domain of its phenomenology,

2. Plasticity of Ontogeny

Ontogeny is the history of the structural transformation of a unity. Accordingly, the ontogeny of a living system is the history of maintenance of its identity through continuous autopoiesis in the physical space.

There are two sources of deformations for an autopoietic system as they appear to be to an observer: ..the external environment... and the system itself...

****  In the phenomenology of the autopoietic organization these two sources of perturbations are indistinguishable, and in each autopoietic system they braid together to form a single ontogeny.

3. Reproduction, a Complication of the Unity

(i) There are three phenomena that must be distinguished in relation to the notion of reproduction; these are replication, copy and self-replication.

Replication is not different from repetitive produciton.

A copy takes place whenever a given object or phenomenon is mapped by means of some procedure upon a different system, so that an isomorphic object or phenomenon is realized in it.

Self-reproduction takes place when a unity produces another one with a similar organization to its own.

Replication takes place independently of autopoiesis.

(v) Notions such as coding, message or information are not applicable to the phenomenon of self-reproduction; their use in the description of this phenomenon constitutes an attempt to represent it in the language of heteropoietic design.  

... the reproduced and reproducing unities are topologically independent entities produced through a single process of autopoiesis in which all components have a constitutive participation.

4. Evolution, a Historical Network

In ontogeny, as the history of transformation of a unity, the identity of the unity, in whatever space it may exist, is never interrupted. In evolution, as a process of historical change there is a succession of identities generated through sequential reproduction which constitute a historical network, and that which changes (evolves), the pattern of realization of the successively generated unities exists in a different domain than the unities that embody it.

the individuals, through transitory, are essential, not dispensable, because they constitute a necessary condition for the existence of the historical network which they define. The species is only an abstract entity in the present, although it represents a historical phenomenon it does not constitute a generative factor in the phenomenology of evolution, it is its result.

An autopoietic system whose autopoiesis entails the autopoiesis of the coupled autopoietic unities which realize it, is an autopoietic system of higher order.

(iii)  If the autopoiesis of the component unities of a composite autopoietic system conforms to allopoietic roles that through the production of relations of constitution, specification and order define an autopoietic space, the new system becomes in its own right an autopoietic unity of second order. This has actually happened on earth with the evolution of the multicellular pattern of organization. When this occurs, the component (living) autopoietic systems become necessarily subordinated, in the way they realize their autopoiesis, to the maintenance of the autopoiesis of the higher order autopoietic unity which, through their coupling, they define topologically in the physical space.

CHAPTER V

PRESENCE OF AUTOPOIESIS

* Autopoiesis in the physical space is necessary and sufficient to characterize a system as a living system.

1. Biological Implications

The phenomenology of living systems, then, is the mechanical phenomenology of physical autopoietic machines.

2. Epistemological Implications

any observation, even that one which permits us recognize the operational validity of a scientific statement, implies an epistemology, a body of conceptual explicit and implicit notions that determines the perspective of the observation and, hence, what can and what cannot be observed, what can what cannot be validated by its operative effectiveness, what can and cannot be explained by a given body of theoretical concepts.

evolutionary and genetic notions (by emphasizing generational change) treat the species as the source of all biological order, showing that species evolves while the individuals are transient components whose organization is subordinated to its historical phenomenology. However, since the species is, concretely at any moment, a collection of individuals capable in principle of interbreeding, it turns out that what would define the organization of individuals is either an abstraction, or something the requires the existence of well-defined individuals to begin with.

****  (iii)  The development of the Darwinian notion of evolution with its emphasis on the species, natural selection and fitness, had an impact in human affairs that went beyond the explanation of diversity and its origin in living systems.  It had sociological significance because it seemed to offer an explanation of the social phenomenology in a competitive society, as well as a scientific justification for the subordination of the destiny of the individuals to the transcendental values supposedly embodies in the notions of such as mankind, the state, or society.

Science, biology, appeared to justify the notion ‘anything for the benefit of mankind’, whatever the intention or purpose of whoever uttered it first. We have shown, however, that these arguments are not valid to justify the subordination of the individuals to the species, because the biological phenomenology is determined by the phenomenology of the individuals, and without individuals there is not biological phenomenology whatsoever.

The organization of the individual is autopoietic and upon thsi fact resets all its significance: it becomes defined through its existing, and its existing is autopoietic.

3. Cognitive Implications

The domain of interactions of an autopoietic unity is the domain of all the deformations that it may undergo without loss of autopoiesis.

A consensual domain of communicative interactions in which the behaviorally coupled organisms orient each other with modes of behavior whose internal determination has become specified during their coupled ontogenies, is a linguistic domain.

(iii)  An autopoietic system capable of interacting with its own states (as an organism with a nervous system can do), and capable of developing with others a linguistic consensual domain, can treat its own linguistic states as a source of deformations and thus interact linguistically in a closed linguistic domain. Such a system has two remarkable properties:

1. Through recursive interactions with its linguistically generated states it can treat some of these states as objects of further interactions, giving rise to a meta domain of consensual distinctions that appears to an observer as a domain of interactions with representations of interactions.

2. A living system capable of being an observer can interact with those of its own descriptive states which are linguistic descriptions of itself. By doing so it generates the domain of self-linguistic descriptions within which it is an observer of itself as an observer, a process which an be necessarily repeated in an endless manner.

****  The observer as an observer necessarily always remains in a descriptive domain, that is, in a relative cognitive domain. No description of an absolute reality is possible. Such a description would require an interaction with the absolute to be described, but the representation which would arise from such an interaction would necessarily be determined by the autopoietic organization of the observer, not by the deforming agent;

In every explanation, be this an actual concrete reproduction, a formal representation, or a purely rational description, the formulation of the phenomenon to be explained resorts to the the same notions (identity, exclusion, succession, etc). There is, then, a universal logic, valid for all phenomenological domains, that refers to the relations possible between unities that generate these domains, and not to the particular properties of the generating unity.  We have applied thsi logic (it could not have been otherwise) in this book.

predictions in the physical space are possible because a description... has a logical matrix necessarily isomorphic with the substratum matrix within which it takes place, not because we have an absolute knowledge of the universe. These cognitive relations are valid for the possible cognitive phenomenology generated by any closed system. Living systems ar an existential proof; they exist only to the extent that they can exist.

****  Autopoietic systems define the world in which they can exist in relation to their autopoiesis, and some interact recursively with this world through their descriptions, it being impossible for them to step out of this relative descriptive domain through descriptions. This demands an entirely new cognitive outlook: there is a space in which different phenomenologies can take place; one of these is autopoiesis; autopoiesis generates a phenomenological domain, this is cognition.

APPENDIX

The phenomenology of an organism as a unity is the phenomenology of its autopoiesis.  The changes that an organism undergoes while maintaining its autopoiesis constitute its conduct. The conduct of an organism is revealed to an observer by the changes that it causes in the ambience (including the observer) in which it exists. Accordingly, the conduct which an observer beholds in any organism, however complex it may seem, is always an expression of the autopoiesis of the observed organism, and as such, it always arises through a phenomenology that takes places in the present because history is not a causal component in the mechanism of autopoiesis.

The Nervous System as a System

(i) The organism, including the nervous system, provides the physical and biochemical environment for the autopoiesis  of the neurons as well as for all other cells.

(ii) There are states of the organism (physical and biochemical) which change the state of activity of the nervous system

(iii) There are states of the nervous system which change the states of the organism (physical or biochemical) and lead recursively to (i) and (ii).

1. The Neuron

Neurons determine their own boundaries through their autopoiesis; therefore they are the anatomical units of the nervous system.

2. Organization: The Nervous System as a Closed System

(i) The phenomenology of the changes of state of the nervous system is exclusively the phenomenology of the changes of state of a closed neuronal network; that is, for the nervous system as a neuronal network there is no inside or outside.

(ii) The distinction between internal and external causes in the origin of the changes of state of the nervous system can only be made by an observer that beholds the organism (the nervous system) as a unity, and defines its inside and outside by specifying its boundaries.

3. Change

Any change in the structure of the nervous system arises from a change in the properties of its component neurons.

4. Architecture

The closed organization of the nervous system is realized in different species in different manners that have been determined through evolution; in all cases, however, the following conditions are satisfied:

(i) ...the nervous system closes on itself at all levels..

(ii) There is intrinsically no possibility of operational localization in the nervous system in the sense that no part of it can be deemed responsible for its operation as a closed network, or for the properties which an observer can detect in tis operation as a unity.

(iii)  The architecture of the nervous system is not static, but it becomes specified along the ontogeny of the organism to which it belongs.

B. Consequences

****  (Note: Wow, “coupling with the organism”. Treats nervous system as a unity unto itself within organism, in a symbiotic relationship)  Due to its coupling with the organism the nervous system necessarily participates in the generation of the relations which constitute the organism as an autopoietic unity.

3. Time as a Dimension

sequence as a dimension is defined in the domain of interactions of the organism, not in the operation of the nervous system as a close neuronal network.  

C. IMPLICATIONS

****  The disclosure of the organization of the nervous system as that of a closed neuronal network leads to a fundamental notion: The correspondence that the observer sees between the conduct of the organism and the environmental conditions with which this conduct appears to cope, reveals the structural coupling of the organism (nervous system included) to its ambience as this structural coupling is conserved through philogenic and ontogenic selection. This correspondence, therefore, does not reveal any particular feature or property of the connectivity of the nervous system that would permit it to operate with representations of the ambience in its computation of the adequate conduct of the organism.