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.

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.

The enactive turn in cognitive science fundamentally changes how questions about experience and behaviour are addressed. We propose that there exists a suite of core concepts within enaction that are suited to the characterisation of many kinds of intentional subjects, including and especially animals, plants, collectivities and artefacts. We summarise some basic concerns of enactive theory and show how the common illustration of the single cell ascending a chemotactic gradient serves as a focus point for discussion of important topics such as identity, perspective, value, agency and life-mind continuity. We also highlight two important deficits of this example: the cell is ahistorical and asocial. Historicity and sociality are defining characteristics of living beings and are addressed within enactive theory by the concepts of structural coupling and participatory sense-making, respectively. This strongly biological framework is to be distinguished from scientific psychology which is, we argue, necessarily anthropomorphic. We propose a constrained bio-enactive framework that remains true to its biological foundations and that would allow us to negotiate consensus-based understanding in contested domains, where incompatible value systems enacted by competing systems are in conflict. A consensual ‘we’ is, we contend, a matter of negotiation, not of fixed essence. A bio-enactive framework may serve as a jumping off point for consensus-based discussion within contested domains.

In this paper we develop the autopoietic approach to the definition of the living developed by Maturana and Varela in the Seventies. Starting from very simple observations concerning the phenomenology of life, we propose a reformulation of the autopoietic original definition of life which integrates some of the contemporary criticism to it. Our definitional proposal, aiming to stimulate the further development of the autopoietic approach, expresses what remains implicit in the definition of the living originally given by Maturana and Varela: life, as self-production, is a process of cognitive coupling with the environment.

Key words: autonomy, autopoiesis, cognition, life, structural coupling

The article presents a synopsis of the fruitful relationship between Niklas Luhmann and Humberto Maturana. The Luhmannian theory is a conceptual structure whose dimensions include the understanding of the social as a whole. Notwithstanding the passing of the author in 1998, his posthumous writings are still being published and the influence of his thinking is gradually extended to several domains within social sciences. A core part of that complex thinking was developed with the benefit of concepts that Luhmann adapted from Humberto Maturana’s biology. This study explains the workings of such tie and its reach for understanding modern globalized society.

Key words: autopoiesis, emergence, operational closure, communication, structural coupling, self-reference

Problem: Can communication emerge from the interaction of “self-referentially closed systems,” conceived as operating solely on the base of the “internal” output of their onboard means? Or in terms of philosophical conceptions: can communication emerge without (“outward” directed) “intention” or “will to be understood”? Method: Multi-agent simulation based on a conceptual analysis of the theory of social systems as suggested by Niklas Luhmann. Results: Agents that co-evolutionarily aggregate probabilities on how to cope with their environment can structurally couple and generate a form of “eigenbehavior” that retrospectively (i.e., by an observer) might be interpreted as communication. Implications: The “intention” or the “will to be understood,” as prominently claimed to be indispensable in communication by theoreticians such as Jürgen Habermas, can be seen as a retrospective ascription to an emergent property of complex interaction. Constructivist content: The paper attempts to base constructivist reasoning on data generated in simulations.

Key words: Communication, information, contingency, structural coupling, intentionality, observer dependency, multi-agent simulation.

This article proposes a possible synthesis between the concept of structural coupling with the milieu, derived from the thought of Maturana and Varela, and the concept of semeiosis derived from Peirce. The purpose is to develop a vocabulary and conceptual framework in which to envisage the relationships among autopoietic systems i.e. organisms, against which communication can take place. By showing how the sign emerges from structural coupling, this article hopes to encourage (or reinforce) a gestalt shift in scholars of communication, away from a conduit metaphor of sending and receiving communications, and towards a grounding of communication in the relationships among organisms and their environment(s), which include other organisms. When these organisms engage habitually in what Maturana calls the “coor-dination of coordination of behavior,” and especially when this involves languaging of the human type, then the environment to which they are coupled also involves a system of signs, which, as Peirce demonstrates, is continually changed by the very interpretive actions which constitute it. Human languaging is “the play of signs” because play is a process of “co-imagining” in which organisms generate a repertoire of potential behaviors by placing themselves outside the immediate (‘serious’) context of adaptation/ structural coupling. But within the cooperative domain of human work i.e. the human collaborative structural coupling with its shared environ-ment or milieu, this “play of signs” can pass or fail the test of effectiveness. Humans engaged in cooperative work co-coordinate their structural couplings by way of conversationing, a co-coordination which depends upon their shared encounter with a Secondness or “otherness” with which they grapple together – an “otherness” which can never be known directly, but only approached by the work of fallibilist human cooperation.