Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the latter. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic domain is provided: the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures is created and pre served during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modeling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”

Key words: minimal cognition, adaptive autonomy, neurodynamic organization, cognition-as-it-could-be, emotional embodiment

In this article, we propose some fundamental requirements for the appearance of adaptivity. We argue that a basic metabolic organization, taken in its minimal sense, may provide the conceptual framework for naturalizing the origin of teleology and normative functionality as it appears in living systems. However, adaptivity also requires the emergence of a regulatory subsystem, which implies a certain form of dynamic decoupling within a globally integrated, autonomous system. Thus, we analyze several forms of minimal adaptivity, including the special case of motility. We go on to explain how an open-ended complexity growth of motility-based adaptive agency, namely, behavior, requires the appearance of the nervous system. Finally, we discuss some implications of these ideas for embodied robotics.

Key words: naturalist approach to normativity, autonomous systems, adaptivity, minimal agency, decoupling of the nervous system, definition of adaptive behavior

Biological regulation is what allows an organism to handle the effects of a perturbation, modulating its own constitutive dynamics in response to particular changes in internal and external conditions. With the central focus of analysis on the case of minimal living systems, we argue that regulation consists in a specific form of second-order control, exerted over the core (constitutive) regime of production and maintenance of the components that actually put together the organism. The main argument is that regulation requires a distinctive architecture of functional relationships, and specifically the action of a dedicated subsystem whose activity is dynamically decoupled from that of the constitutive regime. We distinguish between two major ways in which control mechanisms contribute to the maintenance of a biological organisation in response to internal and external perturbations: dynamic stability and regulation. Based on this distinction an explicit definition and a set of organisational requirements for regulation are provided, and thoroughly illustrated through the examples of bacterial chemotaxis and the lac-operon. The analysis enables us to mark out the differences between regulation and closely related concepts such as feedback, robustness and homeostasis.

This paper reviews Pattee’s ideas about the symbolic domain as a phenomenon related to the self-simplifying processes of certain hierarchical systems, such as the living. We distinguish the concepts of constraint, record, and symbol to explain how the Semantic Closure Principle, that is to say, the view that symbols are self-interpreted by the cell, emerges. Related to this, the notion of complementarity is discussed both as an epistemological and as an ontological principle. In the final discussion we consider whether autonomous systems can exist in which constraints are not symbolically preserved, and if biological symbols can be considered to have a descriptive nature.

Key words: Constraint, record, semantic closure, symbol

In this paper we pose the problem of how to study basic cognitive processes in the frame of simulations of artificial worlds of the style of Artificial Life. The main difficulty of simulating biologically grounded cognitive processes lies in the search for forms of organisms suitable to establish functional relationships with their environments and coevolve with them. In order to attempt it, we study the properties of autonomous systems at different degrees of complexity and the origin of cognitive processes as a sophistication of primitive sensors-motor loops of living systems. The distinction between what we call ontogenetic adaptation to an environment and learning motivates a definition of two different degrees of complexity of that interaction. While the first one generates a variety of structures within individuals in an evolutionary scale, the second one produces a subsystem that is modulated during the life of each organism. We present some ideas to develop a model of an Artificial World where some our theoretical claims can be studied and suggest that an AL approach can arise an interesting discussion in Cognitive Science.

Key words: Artificial life, adaptation, cognition, adaptive sensors/effectors.

A discussion of various theories of emergence is given. It is argued that artificial life and the related theoretical constructs have to be rethought on the basis of new epistemological foundations. In particular, three earlier approaches, the theories of ‘anticipatory systems,’ ‘semantic closure’ and ‘component systems’ are examined from the point of view of representation of emergence. In addition, reductionism and the theory of autopoiesis are considered as possible alternatives. On the basis of these discussions, the possibility for a synthetic view of biological existence, based on the notion of emergence, is outlined.

Key words: theory, autopoiesis, reductionism, emergence, constraints, anticipatory systems, semantically adaptive devices, artificial life, component‐systems

After an impressive development throughout the last two decades, supported by a greatamount of research and innovation, science education seemed to be becoming a newscientific domain. This transformation of Science Education into a specific field of researchand knowledge is usually associated with the establishment of what has been called an‘emergent consensus’ about constructivist positions. However, some voices have begunto question these constructivist positions and therefore the idea of an advancementtowards a coherent body of knowledge in the field of science education. The goalof this work is to analyse some of the current criticisms of the so-called constructivistorientations and to study their implications for the development of science education asa coherent body of knowledge.

The aim of this paper is to characterize a type of causality relevant to study the closure of complex systems that we call formal causation. By this term we understand the existence of a new (not materially inherent) causal relation among constituents, generated through an autonomous process of closure. Once a certain level of organization is reached, material systems can generate internal constraints that, through recursive processes, construct their own identity. We study two different forms of closure: closure in dissipative systems and closure in template self-replication. Finally, these two forms merge and bring forth a new one: informational closure, We show how complex forms of organization are based on informational closure, which is an explicit, recorded type of formal causation allowing a functional articulation between individual organizations and larger, collective and historical (meta)organizations.

I present here an analysis of the core of biological organization from a genealogical perspective, trying to show which could be the driving forces or principles of organization leading from the physico-chemical world to the biological one. From this perspective the essential issue is to understand how new principles of generation and preservation of complexity could appear. At the beginning, the driving force towards complexity was nothing but the confluence of several principles of ordering, such as self-assembly, template replication, or self-organization, merged in the framework of what I have called a nontrivial self-maintaining organization. The key of this process is functional recursivity, namely, the fact that every novelty capable of contributing to a more efficient form of maintenance will be recruited. This leads us to the central concept of autonomy, defined as a form of self-constructing organization, which maintains its identity through its interactions with its environment. As such, autonomy grasps the idea of (minimal) metabolic organization, which, in turn, is at the basis of what we mean by (minimal) organism. Finally, from the concept of autonomy, I try to show how it has generated a new and more encompassing system in which evolution by natural selection takes over, generating in turn a new form of individual organization (genetically instructed metabolism) erasing the previous ones.