This chapter situates the conception of language (and communication) in enaction in the context of the research program of the cognitive sciences. It focuses on the formulation of the synthesis of hermeneutics and speech acts and the vision of language according to the metaphor of structural coupling. The exclusion of expressive speech acts in this design is problematized. An examination is offered of the critical steps to the theory of language as a reflection and the linguistic correspondence of cognitivism. We examine the foundations of the proposal in the line of language and social enaction as emergent phenomena which are not reducible to autopoiesis but which constitute a new neurophenomenological position in the pragmatic language dimension. A proposal is made for the integration of hermeneutic phenomenology with genetic and generative phenomenology in social semiotics. The inclusion of expressive speech acts based on the functions of language in the Habermas–Bühler line is also addressed. An opening is proposed of enaction to the expressive dimension of language and meaning holism with the referential use of language.

Key words: enaction, neurophenomenology, performative speech acts, expressive speech acts, background, meaning holism.

Compared with traditional theories, systems theory presents a deviation. It replaces causal explanation by functional explanation. This paper shows what scandalon is inherent in this substitution and elucidates some models (self-organization, dance, non-triviality, structural coupling) which put the explanatory principle to work. The paper concludes by showing how systems theory aims at a general concept of communication that not only means a passing on of knowledge but above all the tracing of ignorance. Overall, systems theory is presented as a joker dealing with the paradox that the system is never identical to itself as soon as it is considered as a function of itself and its environment. The system has to withdraw into the function it is a function of in order to enfold this paradox.

The concept of “autonomy,” once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al. in The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991), is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary neglect of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis (or basic autonomy in the molecular or biological realm) and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure (autonomy), deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling (sensorimotor dynamics); making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio (a 1D cellular automata) as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds.

Key words: Autonomy, enactivism, operational closure of the nervous system, sensorimotor constitution of experience, mental life, habit, sensorimotor autonomous agency, autonomist sensorimotor enactivism.

Maturana and Varela’s notion of autopoiesis has the potential to transform the conceptual foundation of biology as well as the cognitive, behavioral, and brain sciences. In order to fully realize this potential, however, the concept of autopoiesis and its many consequences require significant further theoretical and empirical development. A crucial step in this direction is the formulation and analysis of models of autopoietic systems. This article sketches the beginnings of such a project by examining a glider from Conway’s game of life in autopoietic terms. Such analyses can clarify some of the key ideas underlying autopoiesis and draw attention to some of the central open issues. This article also examines the relationship between an autopoietic perspective on cognition and recent work on dynamical approaches to the behavior and cognition of situated, embodied agents. Relevance: The article focuses on the theory of autopoiesis and related concepts such as structural coupling and cognitive domain.

This article examines in some technical detail the application of Maturana and Varela’s biology of cognition to a simple concrete model: a glider in the game of Life cellular automaton. By adopting an autopoietic perspective on a glider, the set of possible perturbations to it can be divided into destructive and nondestructive subsets. From a glider’s reaction to each nondestructive perturbation, its cognitive domain is then mapped. In addition, the structure of a glider’s possible knowledge of its immediate environment, and the way in which that knowledge is grounded in its constitution, are fully described. The notion of structural coupling is then explored by characterizing the paths of mutual perturbation that a glider and its environment can undergo. Finally, a simple example of a communicative interaction between two gliders is given. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential implications of this analysis for the enactive approach to cognition.

Key words: autopoiesis, enaction, cognitive domain, structural coupling, cellular automata.

The notion of structural coupling plays a central role in Maturana and Varela’s biology of cognition framework and strongly influenced Varela’s subsequent enactive elaboration of this framework. Building upon previous work using a glider in the Game of Life (GoL) cellular automaton as a toy model of a minimal autopoietic system with which to concretely explore these theoretical frameworks, this article presents an analysis of structural coupling between a glider and its environment. Specifically, for sufficiently small GoL universes, we completely characterize the nonautonomous dynamics of both a glider and its environment in terms of interaction graphs, derive the set of possible glider lives determined by the mutual constraints between these interaction graphs, and show how such lives are embedded in the state transition graph of the entire GoL universe.

Key words: autopoiesis, enaction, structural coupling, cellular automata, enactivism

A key challenge in modern computing is to develop systems that address complex, dynamic problems in a scalable and efficient way, because the increasing complexity of software makes designing and maintaining efficient and flexible systems increasingly difficult. Biological systems are thought to possess robust, scalable processing paradigms that can automatically manage complex, dynamic problem spaces, possessing several properties that may be useful in computer systems. The biological properties of self-organisation, self-replication, self-management, and scalability are addressed in an interesting way by autopoiesis, a descriptive theory of the cell founded on the concept of a system’s circular organisation to define its boundary with its environment. In this paper, therefore, we review the main concepts of autopoiesis and then discuss how they could be related to fundamental concepts and theories of computation. The paper is conceptual in nature and the emphasis is on the review of other people’s work in this area as part of a longer-term strategy to develop a formal theory of autopoietic computing.

Key words: autopoiesis, computing, computability, structural coupling

This paper seeks to extend the usefulness of autopoietic theory within organization studies by tying it to a renewal of interest in that field in real-world activities, micro-level practices and process thinking more generally. Focusing specifically on strategic management, the paper attempts to demonstrate how autopoietic theory’s distinctive perspective on cognition and structural coupling can provide more convincing accounts of this area of practice than is possible using conventional understandings. Using the dominant ‘cognitivist’ approach as a starting point and using illustrative material taken from a major research project that has examined the strategic management process in exemplar firms, the paper questions the idea that strategic activities and outcomes reflect the intent, decisions and interventions of managers to accommodate, respond to and/or exploit external circumstances. The paper has argued that more convincing accounts are possible using the autopoietic theory’s more process-based, co-evolutionary and self-organizing perspective.

Key words: Autopoietic theory, cognition, strategic management.

This paper focusses on how researching is done through reflections about, or at a meta-level to, the practice over time of an enactivist mathematics education researcher. How are the key concepts of enactivist theory (ZDM Mathematics Education, doi: 10. 1007/s11858–014–0634–7, 2015) applied? This paper begins by giving an autobiographical account of the author’s engagement with enactivist ideas and the development of enactivist research projects. The rest of the paper then discusses principles of the design of enactivist followed by four themes of learning, observing, interviewing and find-ing(s). The spelling, find-ing(s), draws attention to the findings of enactivist research being processes not objects. In the case of the collaborative research group used as an exemplar throughout the paper, for instance, the find-ing(s) shed light onto the journeys of professional development travelled by the members of the group as they develop their teaching.

Key words: mathematics, teacher prospective, teacher collaborative group, structural coupling, mathematics lesson

This article is an early step in the development of a methodological approach to the study of language deriving from an enactivist theoretical stance. Language is seen as a co-ordination of co-ordinations of action. Meaning and intention cannot easily be interpreted from the actions and words of others; instead, careful attention can be placed in not going beyond what is observable within the text itself, for example by focusing on patterns in word use. Conversations are highly ritualised affairs and from an enactivist perspective these rituals can be read in terms of pattern. The notion of the ‘structural coupling’ of systems, which will inevitably have taken place in a classroom, means that the history and context of communication needs to be taken into account. The methodological perspective put forward in this article is exemplified with an analysis of two classroom incidents (involving different teachers) in which almost identical words are used by the teachers, but markedly different things happen next. The analysis reveals a complexity within the classroom that, although available to direct observation, only became apparent using an approach to studying language that took account of the context and history of communication in a recursive process of data collection and analysis.

Key words: language, enactivism, mathematical learning, methodology