“Are living beings extended autopoietic systems? An embodied reply,” makes the case for grounding the autopoietic definition of living beings to the discrete bodies of organisms rather than to autopoietic systems that extend beyond the organisms into their environments. They attempt this grounding by amending a clause to the original formulation of autopoiesis that identifies living beings with their bodies, and then they explicitly define “bodies”. This commentary makes the case that bodily grounding can be derived from molecular autopoiesis by taking the molecular domain seriously, and no new amendment is required.

Key words: autopoiesis, embodiment, organisms.

Villalobos and Razeto-Barry propose a theory of living individuals that includes both considerations about autopoietic systems and about material individuals. However, I think that their characterisation of individuality is problematic and would not be useful to account for living individuals.

Key words: individual bodies, autopoiesis.

Open peer commentary on the article “I Can’t Yet and Growth Mindset” by Fiona Murphy & Hugh Gash. Abstract: Childhood is a sensitive developmental stage with lasting impacts into adulthood. Successful interventions that tackle poor learning strategies provide the child with a stronger foundation for dealing with adversity. Roleplays and immediacy are proposed as two methods of improving learning strategies.

Open peer commentary on the article “Précis of The Philosophy of Affordances” by Manuel Heras-Escribano. Abstract: I question the notion that we need to understand affordances in terms of Rylean non-factualist dispositions. This is not because I disagree with Herlas-Escribano’s analysis; on the contrary, I consider it illuminating and essential. Rather, his analysis shows that affordances can be understood as originally defined by Gibson and elaborated by Stoffregen (i.e., as a particular kind of non-reductionist, non-physicalist relation between organism and environment. Translation into Rylean dispositions is therefore unnecessary.

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.

Villalobos and Razeto-Barry’s target article highlights a debate about the role of spatial boundaries in autopoiesis that has been simmering for some time. I argue that, ultimately, controversies such as this are best resolved not by verbal argument, but rather in the context of actual mathematically formulated theories of biological individuality. Finally, I briefly review some initial efforts in this direction as they relate to the question of boundaries.

Key words: autopoiesis, boundary, toy model, theory, game of life.

This paper is a practical guide to neurophenomenology. Varela’s neurophenomenological research program (NRP) aspires to bridge the gap between, and integrate, first-person (1P) and third-person (3P) approaches to understanding the mind. It does so by suggesting a methodological framework allowing these two irreducible phenomenal domains to relate and reciprocally support the investigation of one another. While highly appealing theoretically, neurophenomenology invites researchers to a challenging methodological endeavor. Based on our experience with empirical neurophenomenological implementation, we offer practical clarifications and insights learnt along the way. In the first part of the paper, we outline the theoretical principles of the NRP and briefly present the field of 1P research. We speak to the importance of phenomenological training and outline the utility of cooperating with meditators as skilled participants. We suggest that 1P accounts of subjective experience can be placed on a complexity continuum ranging between thick and thin phenomenology, highlighting the tension and trade-off inherent to the neurophenomenological attempt to naturalize phenomenology. We then outline a typology of bridges, which create mutual constraints between 1P and 3P approaches, and argue for the utility of alternating between the bridges depending on the available experimental resources, domain of interest and level of sought articulation. In the second part of the paper, we demonstrate how the theory can be put into practice by describing a decade of neurophenomenological studies investigating the sense of self with increasing focus on its embodied, and minimal, aspects. These aspects are accessed via the dissolution of the sense-of-boundaries, shedding new light on the multi-dimensionality and flexibility of embodied selfhood. We emphasize the evolving neurophenomenological dialogue, showing how consecutive studies, placed differently on the thin-to-thick 1P continuum, advance the research project by using the bridging principles appropriate for each stage.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Critique of Barbieri’s Code Biology” by Alexander V. Kravchenko. Abstract: This commentary is largely congruent with the premises advanced by Kravchenko’s target article. It further develops the idea that humans operate in multiple domains of relational behaviour grounded in an ongoing mixture of systemic cognition, oral language, and written symbolic language. Cognition, and hence behaviour, is constrained differently in each of these overlapping modalities so that each affords a different set of understanding and action.

All information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of info-autopoiesis or information self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s ‘difference which makes a difference’. To highlight and illustrate the fundamental nature of the info-autopoietic process, initially, two simulations based on one-parameter feedback are presented. The first, simulates a homeostatic control mechanism (thermostat) which is representative of a mechanistic, cybernetic system with very predictable dynamics, fully dependent on an external referent. The second, simulates a homeorhetic process, inherent to biological systems, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. Further, the active incorporation/interference of viral particles by prokaryotic cells and the activation of CRISPR-Cas can be understood as info-autopoiesis at the most fundamental cellular level, as well as constituting a planetary network of self-referenced information. Moreover, other examples of the info-autopoietic nature of information are presented to show the generality of its applicability. In short, info-autopoiesis is a recursive process that is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Critique of Barbieri’s Code Biology” by Alexander V. Kravchenko. Abstract: My commentary criticizes Kravchenko’s objections to Barbieri’s biosemiotic theory. Because Kravchenko holds that concepts of signs, codes, and languages should be applied only to humans, his position, which is neither clearly explained nor defended, completely rules out any semiotics that would apply to biological construction in organisms (genetic codes and their expression), intra-organismic communication processes (molecular signals and their interpretations), informational processes in nervous systems (neural codes and how they are read out), and animal communication. I argue that most of the critique is about unproductive disagreements over word usages rather than an attempt to develop an alternative biosemiotics. Kravchenko’s critique also misconstrues how biosemioticians think about signs, codes, interpretation, meaning, and epistemology.