Are living beings extended autopoietic systems? An embodied reply

Abstract

Building on the original formulation of the autopoietic theory (AT), extended enactivism argues that living beings are autopoietic systems that extend beyond the spatial boundaries of the organism. In this article, we argue that extended enactivism, despite having some basis in AT’s original formulation, mistakes AT’s definition of living beings as autopoietic entities. We offer, as a reply to this interpretation, a more embodied reformulation of autopoiesis, which we think is necessary to counterbalance the (excessively) disembodied spirit of AT’s original formulation. The article aims to clarify and correct what we take to be a misinterpretation of AT as a research program. AT, contrary to what some enactivists seem to believe, did not (and does not) intend to motivate an extended conception of living beings. AT’s primary purpose, we argue, was (and is) to provide a universal individuation criterion for living beings, these understood as discrete bodies that are embedded in, but not constituted by, the environment that surrounds them. However, by giving a more explicitly embodied definition of living beings, AT can rectify and accommodate, so we argue, the enactive extended interpretation of autopoiesis, showing that although living beings do not extend beyond their boundaries as autopoietic unities, they do form part, in normal conditions, of broader autopoietic systems that include the environment.

Habeas corpus: the ins and outs of autopoiesis

“…I agree with both Villalobos and Razeto-Barry (VR; 2019) and VEF that autopoietic theory has used ambiguous terms, has been open to different interpretations of the line between inside and out – since any boundary choice still leaves some transport of material, energy, cause and effect across it. A choice defines a subject inside a world of objects and hence defines what counts as cognition.…”

Why living bodies could be dead weight

“…So, I agree with Villalobos & Razeto-Barry (2019) that the proposition that ‘organisms have discrete bodies’ is an indispensable feature of our current folk theory of biology. The authors’ task, however, is not simply to articulate this constraint of folk biology, but to explain why a foundational scientific theory of life should incorporate it.…”

Regulación emocional como modulación emocional

“…78-79). Autopoietic theory draws a clear line between organisms and their environments (Villalobos and Razeto-Barry 2019) and therefore autopoiesis may involve mechanisms in the environment that are different from those in a living being (sometimes even including mechanisms in other living beings). Thus, autopoiesis is perhaps not a form of control (in the sense of a more or less 'direct' feedback function).…”