Villalobos and Razeto-Barry argue that all living beings possess discrete bodies and that, as a consequence, embodied living beings are merely embedded in the environment surrounding them. The upshot of their analysis is that an extended conception of life is misguided. I fundamentally agree with their argument. The authors make their case by clarifying the conceptual scaffolding of the theory of autopoiesis that supposedly engenders the extended approach. I think the critical argument can be supported in a more straightforward way by showing that the biological fact of entrenchment (West-Eberhard 2003, pp. 500–503) does not imply an extension of the physical boundaries of the organism.

Key words: entrenchment, organism, environment

While the phenomena of reaching a goal is generally represented in the framework of optimization, the phenomena of becoming of a goal is more similar to a “self-organization and emergent” rather than an “optimization and preexisting” process. In this article we provide a modeling framework for the former alternative by representing goals as emergent autopoietic structures. In order to conceptually situate our approach, we first review some of the most remarkable attempts to formally define emergence, and identify that in most cases such definitions rely on a preexisting system to be observed prior and post emergence, being thus inadequate for a formalization of emergent goals corresponding to the becoming of a systems as such (e.g. emergence of life). Next, we review how an implementation of the reaction networks framework, known as Chemical Organization Theory (COT), can be applied to formalize autopoietic structures, providing a basis to operationalize goals as an emergent process. We next revisit the definitions of emergence under the light of our approach, and demonstrate that recent taxonomies developed to classify different forms of emergence can be naturally deduced from recent work aimed to explain the kinds of changes of the organizational structure of a reaction network.

Key words: chemical organization theory, emergence, goals, autopoiesis, process modelling.

Open peer commentary on the article “Homeostats for the 21st Century? Simulating Ashby Simulating the Brain” by Stefano Franchi. Upshot: The association of heteronomy with Ashby’s work in the target article follows from a direct interpretation of the second edition of Ashby’s book Design for a Brain. However, the first edition allows for an alternative – opposite – interpretation that is compatible with autonomy and autopoiesis. Furthermore, a more balanced perspective is suggested to avoid unintentionally giving the casual reader a misleading impression that the homeostat is Ashby’s ultimate position on homeostasis and that it is an adequate model of the brain.

Autopoiesis is a very powerful way of looking at and dealing with autonomous systems. It also has some major implications for the philosophy of science. Unfortunately, it is not clear in what philosophical context one should go about using autopoiesis. In this paper, we look at these issues, touching upon the inadequacies of conventional (positivistic) ontologies and philosophies of science, and we briefly describe an alternative relativistic ontology. We argue that self-organization is a necessary condition for autonomous systems and we highlight the difficulties that this raises for conventional representational approaches to autonomous systems. We discuss a methodology for discourse in relativistic ontology (Systematics) and, based on this, we argue in favour of a spectrum of autonomy. In a sister as a particular instance of autonomy in this spectrum. We proceed to describe the progress which has been made towards the development of a computational simulation of autopoietic organization, beginning with a formulation in terms of the calculus of indications (incorporating Varela’s extensions to include autonomous forms), and incorporating the Systematic formulation.

In a sister paper, we have looked at the philosophical aspects of the development of autonomous systems, touching upon the inadequacies of conventional (positivistic) ontologies and philosophies of science, and we have described an alternative relativistic ontology. We argued that self-organization is a necessary condition for autonomous systems and we highlighted the difficulties that this raises for conventional representational approaches to autonomous systems. We discussed a methodology for discourse in relativistic ontology (Systematics) and, based on this, we argued in favour of a spectrum of autonomy. In this paper, we try to show how autopoiesis can be interpreted as a particular instance of autonomy in this spectrum. We now proceed to describe the progress which has been made towards the development of a computational simulation of autopoietic organization, beginning with a formulation in terms of the Calculus of Indications (incorporating Varela’s extensions to include autonomous forms), and incorporating the Systematic formulation.

In this essay, we propose to present and discuss the epistemology of the Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana, by means of the concepts of perception, autopoiesis and cognition and, accepting this explanatory path, comment on its implications for our understanding of three relational phenomena in the context of living: the domain of molecular interactions, in the scope of immunology, the domain of interspecific interactions, in the scope of domestication, and the domain of human relations, in the scope of education. While visiting these three relational domains, we reflect how the phenomenon of learning will inevitably arise, generated in the very dynamics of living, without the need to resort to the notion of instructive interactions, which we sometimes connote, at least in the context of human relations, as teaching.

Key words: humberto maturana. learning. immunology. domestication. education.

In recent years, scholars from post-structuralist social philosophy have debated aspects related to self-referential possibilities of communication and language. Nowadays, there are several theoretical viewpoints converging at a constructivist, systemic and ecological self-definition. The idea of communicative autopoiesis is proposed in this article as a possible alternative to the autopoietic limitations in observing organizations.

Key words: self-referential systems theory. post-structuralism. organizational studies. communicative autopoiesis.

This paper critically evaluates interdisciplinary research in tax law. The strategy I follow runs at two levels of abstraction. \\First, I examine a concrete example of interdisciplinary research in taxation. More precisely, I examine Hikaka and Prebble’s (2010) recent paper where, applying Luhmannian autopoietic theory to tax law, they make a series of claims about the productivity of their research strategy as well as the consistency and coherence of Luhmann’s interdisciplinary framework. Whereas my analytical and conceptual critique of Hikaka and Prebble’s paper stands on its own, it should also be read as revealing the obstacles that lurk behind interdisciplinary research in using such a complex and idiosyncratic theory as Luhmann’s autopoietic account of law and society. Accordingly, my analysis shows how autopoietic theory can indeed prove useful for tax and accounting reform as well as to connect tax theory and notions of public interest. \\Second, I extrapolate from the analysis of Hikaka and Prebble’s paper some general problems that current interdisciplinary tax research needs to give further consideration: (i) how to identify productive research questions and uses of interdisciplinary resources; (ii) the dubious added value of interdisciplinary research, given its tendency to adopt complex theoretical apparatuses in a cursory way with little comparison being made to existing research achievements; and (iii) the risk of using interdisciplinary research as an exercise of confirmatory investigation and/or an exercise of mere translation of one discipline’s problems into another discipline’s language. ||

Key words: critical, public sector, autopoiesis, tax.

The strong version of the life-mind continuity thesis claims that mind can be understood as an enriched version of _the same_ functional and organizational properties of life. Contrary to this view, in this paper I argue that mental phenomena offer distinctive properties, such as intentionality or representational content, that have no counterpart in the phenomenon of life, and that must be explained by appealing to a different level of functional and organizational principles. As a strategy, and following Maturana’s autopoietic theory of cognition, I introduce a conceptual distinction between mind and cognition. I argue that cognition corresponds to the natural behaviour that every living being exhibits in the realization of its existence, and that, viewed in that way, cognition is a dynamic process of structural coupling that, unlike mental phenomena, involves no representational contents. On the basis of this distinction, I try to show that while life suffices for cognition, it does not suffice for mind. That is, that the strong continuity is not between life and mind but between life and cognition.

Key words: Life-mind continuity thesis, autopoiesis, mind, cognition

In the target article, it was claimed that the enactive extended interpretation of the autopoietic theory (AT) of living beings is incorrect, and an embodied reformulation of AT (EAT) was put forward to remedy and prevent such an interpretation. In this general reply, I want to clarify the motivation, reach, philosophical commitments, and theoretical status of EAT. I do this, mainly, by explicating the notions of body and autopoiesis, and by reconstructing EAT, not as a conceptual definition of life but as a theoretical identity statement of living beings as a natural kind.

Key words: embodied autopoietic theory, extended enactivism, autopoiesis, body