Bich L. & Damiano L. (2007) Question 9: Theoretical and artificial construction of the living: Redefining the approach from an autopoietic point of view. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 37(4–5): 459–464. https://cepa.info/4560
In this article, we would like to discuss some aspects of a theoretical framework for Artificial Life, focusing on the problem of an explicit definition of living systems useful for an effective artificial construction of them. The limits of a descriptive approach will be critically discussed, and a constructive (synthetic) approach will be proposed on the basis of the autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela.
Bich L. & Damiano L. (2008) Order in the nothing: Autopoiesis and the Organizational Characterization of the Living. Electronic Journal of Theoretical Physics 4(1): 343–373. https://cepa.info/2318
An approach which has the purpose to catch what characterizes the specificity of a living system, pointing out what makes it different with respect to physical and artificial systems, needs to find a new point of view – new descriptive modalities. In particular it needs to be able to describe not only the single processes which can be observed in an organism, but what integrates them in a unitary system. In order to do so, it is necessary to consider a higher level of description which takes into consideration the relations between these processes, that is the organization rather than the structure of the system. Once on this level of analysis we can focus on an abstract relational order that does not belong to the individual components and does not show itself as a pattern, but is realized and maintained in the continuous flux of processes of transformation of the constituents. Using Tibor Ganti’s words we call it “Order in the Nothing”. In order to explain this approach we analyse the historical path that generated the distinction between organization and structure and produced its most mature theoretical expression in the autopoietic biology of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. We then briefly analyse Robert Rosen’s (M, R)-Systems, a formal model conceptually built with the aim to catch the organization of living beings, and which can be considered coherent with the autopoietic theory. In conclusion we will propose some remarks on these relational descriptions, pointing out their limits and their possible developments with respect to the structural thermodynamical description.
Bich L. & Damiano L. (2012) Life, Autonomy and Cognition: An Organizational Approach to the Definition of the Universal Properties of Life. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 42(5): 389–397. https://cepa.info/2316
This article addresses the issue of defining the universal properties of living systems through an organizational approach, according to which the distinctive properties of life lie in the functional organization which correlates its physicochemical components in living systems, and not in these components taken separately. Drawing on arguments grounded in this approach, this article identifies autonomy, with a set of related organizational properties, as universal properties of life, and includes cognition within this set.
Ceruti M. & Damiano L. (2018) Plural embodiment(s) of mind: Genealogy and guidelines for a radically embodied approach to mind and consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 2204. https://cepa.info/5611
This article focuses on a scientific approach to the study of cognition that Warren McCulloch introduced in the era of cybernetics as “experimental epistemology.” In line with recent attempts to highlight its contribution to cognitive science and AI, our article intends to draw attention to its unexplored influence on contemporary embodied approaches to the investigation of mind and consciousness. To this end, we will survey a series of models of cognitive systems genealogically related to the McCulloch-Pitts networks-based modeling approach, i.e., von Foerster’s model of the biological computer, the Maturana-Varela model of the autopoietic system, and Varela’s model of emergent selves. Based on examination of the relevant aspects of these models, we will argue that they offered the McCulloch-Pitts “cybernetic of networks” a coherent methodological and theoretical line of development, complementary to the well-known computationalist one. As we will show, this alternative evolutionary line empowered the biological orientation of McCulloch’s experimental epistemology, laying foundations for contemporary “radically embodied” approaches to mind and consciousness – in particular the Thompson-Varela approach. We will identify the heritage of this tradition of inquiry for future research in cognitive science and AI by proposing guidelines that synthetize how its methodological and theoretical insights suggest taking into account the role(s) played by the biological body in cognitive processes – consciousness included.
The focus of the book is one of the most neglected among Francisco Varela’s contributions to cognitive sciences: the model of “the conversational unit” (Varela, 1979). The author explores in detail the scientific genealogy of this model, reconstructs and analyses its structure, and presents possible applications in the current research on (the embodied and extended) mind and (social) cognition. She offers this model to contemporary cognitive sciences as a topical and viable double paradigm, able to support concretely the development of a “radical constructivism” approach, not only in their theoretical but also in their heuristic dimension – their way of practicing science.
Damiano L. (2016) Autopoiesis: Three research directions for future developments. In: Luisi P. L. (ed.) The emergence of life. Second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 135–139. https://cepa.info/7847
Excerpt: My current research work on autopoietic biology relies on one of its most discussed and, in my view, promising operations: leading the two central questions of cognitive biology – i.e., “What is life?” and “What is cognition?” – to converge in one theoretical solution. Maturana and Varela conceptualized life and cognition as expressions of the distinctive form of autonomy characterizing biological systems. They defined this property as autopoiesis, and identified it as the capability of these systems to exercise on themselves an activity of self-production through an internal process of permanent (re-)constitution of their elemental components. In line with the emergentist approach developed by the early studies on biological autonomy, the two researchers referred this property not to single components, but to the organization of living systems, that is, to the functional correlation integrating the components in the dynamic units that these systems constitute. This approach defined the main theoretical issue addressed by autopoietic biology: characterizing the organization of biological systems, that is, hypothesizing a form of organization able to generate and maintain their autopoiesis – their self-production. Maturana and Varela offered a rigorous solution to this issue at the level of the minimal living system, providing the description of an organizational mechanism supporting the self-productive dynamics of the cell – its topological self-distinction included. This theoretical result, expressed in the notion of autopoietic organization, conveys the Santiago School’s most innovative contributions to the disciplinary areas related to cognitive biology – results on which my research work draws.
Damiano L. & Cañamero L. (2010) Constructing emotions: Epistemological groundings and application in robotics of a synthetic approach to emotions. In: Chappell J., Thorpe S., Hawes N. & Sloman A. (eds.) Proceedings of the international symposium on AI inspired Biology. The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour, London: 20–28. https://cepa.info/2690
Can the sciences of the artificial positively contribute to the scientific exploration of life and cognition? Can they actually improve the scientific knowledge of natural living and cognitive processes, from biological metabolism to reproduction, from conceptual mapping of the environment to logic reasoning, language, or even emotional expression? To these kinds of questions our article aims to answer in the affirmative. Its main object is the scientific emergent methodology often called the “synthetic approach,” which promotes the programmatic production of embodied and situated models of living and cognitive systems in order to explore aspects of life and cognition not accessible in natural systems and scenarios. The first part of this article presents and discusses the synthetic approach, and proposes an epistemological framework which promises to warrant genuine transmission of knowledge from the sciences of the artificial to the sciences of the natural. The second part of this article looks at the research applying the synthetic approach to the psychological study of emotional development. It shows how robotics, through the synthetic methodology, can develop a particular perspective on emotions, coherent with current psychological theories of emotional development and fitting well with the recent “cognitive extension” approach proposed by cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.
Damiano L. & Cañamero L. (2012) The frontier of synthetic knowledge: Toward a constructivist science. World Futures 68(3): 171–177.
This article focuses on the frontier between the technological domain of production of artefacts and the naturalistic domain of the sciences of life and cognition. It shows that, since the 1940s, this frontier has become the place of production of an innovative kind of scientific knowledge – “synthetic knowledge.” The article describes the methodology and the main characteristics of synthetic knowledge, and formulates a hypothesis on its epistemological genealogy. Accordingly, it characterizes synthetic knowledge as one of the most advanced expressions of a heterodox tradition of research which, since the 1930s, has been promoting the development of a “non-representationalist” – “constructivist” – science.
Damiano L. & Luisi P. L. (2010) Towards an autopoietic redefinition of life. Origin of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 40(2): 145–149. https://cepa.info/2689
In this paper we develop the autopoietic approach to the definition of the living developed by Maturana and Varela in the Seventies. Starting from very simple observations concerning the phenomenology of life, we propose a reformulation of the autopoietic original definition of life which integrates some of the contemporary criticism to it. Our definitional proposal, aiming to stimulate the further development of the autopoietic approach, expresses what remains implicit in the definition of the living originally given by Maturana and Varela: life, as self-production, is a process of cognitive coupling with the environment.
Damiano L. & Stano P. (2018) Synthetic biology and artificial intelligence: Grounding a cross-disciplinary approach to the synthetic exploration of (embodied) cognition. Complex Systems 27: 199–228. https://cepa.info/7614
Recent scientific developments – the emergence in the 1990s of a “body- centered” artificial intelligence (AI) and the birth in the 2000s of synthetic biology (SB) – allow and require the constitution of a new cross-disciplinary synergy, that elsewhere we called “SB-AI.” In this paper, we define the motivation, possibilities, limits and methodologies of this line of research. Based on the insufficiencies of embodied AI, we draw on frontier developments in synthetic cells SB to introduce a promising research program in SB-AI, which we define as Chemical Autopoietic AI. As we emphasize, the promise of this approach is twofold: building organizationally relevant wetware models of minimal biological-like systems, and contributing to the exploration of (embodied) cognition and to the full realization of the “embodiment turn” in contemporary AI.