Though my motives may differ somewhat, I agree with the target article Villalobos and Razeto-Barry, (VR; 2019) in rejecting the tentative claims of Virgo, Egbert and Froese, (VEF; 2011) and others that the relevant boundaries for autopoietic systems may extend beyond their physical boundary. I appeal to a habeas corpus principle: the boundary that matters is that which allows an individuated self-maintaining entity to survive transfer from one environment to another.
Virgo N., Egbert M. D. & Froese T. (2011) The role of the spatial boundary in autopoiesis. In: Kampis G., Karsai I. & Szathmáry E. (eds.) Advances in artificial life: Darwin meets von Neumann. 10th European Conference ECAL 2009. Springer, Berlin: 234–241. https://cepa.info/2254
Abstract: We argue that the significance of the spatial boundary in autopoiesis has been overstated. It has the important task of distinguishing a living system as a unity in space but should not be seen as playing the additional role of delimiting the processes that make up the autopoietic system. We demonstrate the relevance of this to a current debate about the compatibility of the extended mind hypothesis with the enactive approach and show that a radically extended interpretation of autopoiesis was intended in one of the original works on the subject. Additionally we argue that the definitions of basic terms in the autopoietic literature can and should be made more precise, and we make some progress towards such a goal.