I agree with Villalobos and Razeto-Barry’s main argument that living beings are autopoietic bodies. I suggest, however, that if we apply this definition of life to a consideration of living beings as dissipative systems, we find opportunities for further refinement. I propose that living bodies are autopoietic bodies that maintain themselves by using their boundaries to control their constituent processes of dissipative adaptation.

Key words: dissipative systems, autopoiesis, living bodies.

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.

This paper argues that biological organisation can be legitimately conceived of as an intrinsically teleological causal regime. The core of the argument consists in establishing a connection between organisation and teleology through the concept of self-determination: biological organisation determines itself in the sense that the effects of its activity contribute to determine its own conditions of existence. We suggest that not any kind of circular regime realises self-determination, which should be specifically understood as self-constraint: in biological systems, in particular, self-constraint takes the form of closure, i.e. a network of mutually dependent constitutive constraints. We then explore the occurrence of intrinsic teleology in the biological domain and beyond. On the one hand, the organisational account might possibly concede that supra-organismal biological systems (as symbioses or ecosystems) could realise closure, and hence be teleological. On the other hand, the realisation of closure beyond the biological realm appears to be highly unlikely. In turn, the occurrence of simpler forms of self-determination remains a controversial issue, in particular with respect to the case of self-organising dissipative systems.

Key words: Teleology, organisation, self-determination, closure, circularity.

This thesis is about the ontology of living beings as natural systems, their behavior, and the way in which said behavior, under special conditions of social coupling, may give rise to mental phenomena. The guiding questions of the thesis are: 1) What kinds of systems are living beings such that they behave the way they do? 2) How, through what kinds of mechanisms and processes, do living beings generate their behavior? 3) How do mental phenomena appear in the life of certain living beings? 4) What are the natural conditions under which certain living beings exhibit mental phenomena? To answer these questions the thesis first assumes, then justifies and defends, a Strict Naturalistic (SN) stance with respect to living beings. SN is a metaphysical and epistemological framework that, recognizing the organizational, dynamic and structural complexity and peculiarity of living beings, views and treats them as metaphysically ordinary natural systems; that is, as systems that, from the metaphysical point of view, are not different in kind from rivers or stars. SN holds that if in natural sciences rivers and stars are not conceived as semantic, intentional, teleological, agential or normative systems, then living beings should not be so conceived either. Having assumed SN, and building mainly on the second-order cybernetic theories of Ross Ashby and Humberto Maturana, the thesis answers question 1) by saying that living beings are (i) adaptive dynamic systems, (ii) deterministic machines of closed transitions, (iii) multistable dissipative systems, and (iv) organizationally closed systems with respect to their sensorimotor and autopoietic dynamics. Based on this ontological characterization, the thesis answers question 2) by showing that living beings’ behavior corresponds to the combined product of (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv). Points (i) and (ii) support the idea that living beings are strictly deterministic systems, and that, consequently, notions such as information, control, agency or teleology—usually invoked to explain living beings’ behavior—do not have operational reality but are rather descriptive projections introduced by the observer. Point (iii) helps to understand why, despite their deterministic nature, living beings behave in ways that, to the observer, appear to be teleological, agential or “intelligent”. Point (iv) suggests that living beings’ sensorimotor dynamics are closed circuits without inputs or outputs, where the distinction between external and internal medium is, again, an ascription of the observer rather than a functional property of the system itself. Having addressed the basic principles of living beings’ behavior, the thesis explores the possible origin of (truly) mental phenomena in the particular domain of social behavior. Complementing Maturana’s recursive theory of language with Vygotsky’s dialectic approach the thesis advances, though in a still quite exploratory way, a sociolinguistic hypothesis of mind. This hypothesis answers questions 3) and 4) by claiming that the essential properties of mental phenomena (intentionality, representational content) appear with language, and that mind, as a private experiential domain, emerges as a dialectic transformation of language.