Open peer commentary on the article “Homeostats for the 21st Century? Simulating Ashby Simulating the Brain” by Stefano Franchi. Upshot: It is a mistake to characterise Ashby’s view of life (from the 1950s) as passive, abstractly modelled in part by the homeostat; one should distinguish the stasis of homeostasis from the activity of the (model) organism. Likewise mistaken is the accusation of contingency; one should distinguish the purposeless mechanism from the purposeful (model) organism. There is no basic conflict between Ashby’s view and later developments in a similar tradition; technical advances are not the same as foundational gaps.

Life and cognition are inherently circular dynamical processes, and people have difficulty understanding circular causation. We give case studies illustrating some resulting confusions, and propose that the problems may lie in failing to properly distinguish between similar concepts used in different levels of description of a system, typically local and global levels.

Open peer commentary on the article “What Is a Cognizing Subject? Construction, Autonomy and Original Causation” by Niall Palfreyman & Janice Miller-Young. Upshot: When a phenomenon, or a concept such as autonomy, is the outcome of circular causality then analysis in terms of linear causation is a recipe for misunderstanding. The Daisyworld parable as used here is an ideal testbed to illustrate such resulting confusions.

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.

Key words: autopoiesis, boundary

Making sense of the world around us is likened to the task of staying afloat on a stormy sea while rebuilding our craft of ideas and concepts as we go. This metaphor is pursued through successive stages of cognitive development, and more sophisticated appreciation of multiple perspectives; from pre-theoretical to folk science to the theoretical, from individual to social to inter-subjective agreement. This inescapably generates reflections on the relationships between embodied and situated Life and Cognition.

Key words: cognition, life, autopoiesis, epistemology, theory-theory, representation, situatedness