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These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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Autopoiesis From a different
perspective, similar conceptual changes were advanced in the 1960s by the
Chilean neurobiologist Humberto Maturanawhen he argued that the
relationship with the environment molds the configuration of a cognitive system
(Biology of Cognition, 1970).
Maturana had worked with the US
neurophysiologist Jerome Lettvin on the vision system of frogs, and they had reached the conclusion that the
frog does not see the world but only
what is relevant to the frog's survival, for example patterns of small moving
shadows; and, by reacting to such
patterns, the frog "catches" flies, its foodstuff ("What the
Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain", 1959). "Autopoiesis" is
the process by which living systems form and maintain their boundaries in the
face of an ever-changing environment. It is the process by which an organism
can continuously reorganize its own structure to interact with the world while
remaining itself. Adaptation consists in regenerating the organism's structure
so that its relationship to the environment remains constant. Autopoiesis is a pattern of organization
common to all living systems. Living systems are organized
in closed loops. A living system is a network in which the function of each
component is to create or transform other components while maintaining the
circular organization of the whole. A cell exhibits autopoiesis, as does the
Earth as a whole. The product of a living
system is a new organization of itself. It continually produces itself. The
being and the doing are the same. Autopoiesis is
self-maintenance. Organisms use energy (mainly from light) and matter (water,
carbon, nitrogen, etc) to continuously remake themselves. Living systems are units of
interaction. They only exist in an environment. They cannot be understood independently of their environment.
They exhibit exergonic metabolism, which provides energy for the endergonic
synthesis of polymers, i.e. for growth and replication. In fact, the organism
reorganizes based on environmental stimuli. The stimulus, therefore, can be
viewed as that part of the environment that is absorbed by the structure. The circular organization of
living organisms constitutes a homeostatic system whose function is to maintain
this very same circular organization. It is such circular organization that
makes a living system a unit of interaction. At the same time, it is this
circular organization that helps maintain the organism's identity through its
interactions with the environment. Due to this circular organization, a living
system is a self-referential system. At the same time, a living
system operates as an inductive system and in a predictive manner: its
organization reflects regularities in the environment. Living systems are
organized according to the principle: "what happened once will happen
again". Cognition is biological in
the sense that the cognitive domain of an organism is defined by its
interactions with the environment. Cognition is the way in
which an autopoietic system interacts with the environment (i.e., reorganizes itself).
It is the result of the structural coupling with the environment that causes
the continuous reorganization. All living systems are
cognitive systems. Cognition is simply the process of maintaining oneself by
acting in the environment. Action and cognition
cannot be separated: "all doing is knowing and all knowing is doing".
Living is a process of cognition. In summary, an autopoietic
system is a network of transformation and destruction processes whose
components interact to continuously regenerate the network. An autopoietic system holds constant its
organization (its identity).
Autopoiesis generates a structural coupling with the environment: the
structure of the nervous system of an organism generates patterns of activity
that are triggered by perturbations from the environment and that contribute to
the continuing autopoiesis of the organism.
Autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize a living system. A living organism is defined
by the fact that its organization makes it continually self-producing
(autopoietic), i.e. not only autonomous but also self-referential ("the
being and doing of an autopoietic system are inseparable"). Autopoiesis progressively
generates more and more complex organisms and then intelligent organisms. Multi-cellular organisms are
born when two or more autopoietic units engage in an interaction that takes
place more often than any of the interactions of each unit with the rest of the
environment (a "structural coupling"). Inert elements then become
macromolecules, and macromolecules become organic cells, and so on towards
cellular organisms and intelligent beings. A nervous system enables the
living organism to expand the set of possible internal states and to expand the
possible ways of structural coupling. But the nervous system is
self-referential: perception is not representation of external world.
Perception does not represent, it specifies the external world. No living system exists
independent of cognition. Each cognitive act is not about knowing the environment,
but about reorganizing oneself in accordance with the environment. The
autopoietic system knows only itself. There is no representation of the
external world. There is just reorganization of the system based on the
external world. Intelligent behavior
originates in extremely simple processes: the living cell is nothing special,
but many living cells one next to the other become a complex system thanks to
autopoiesis. Even life's origin can be
easily explained: at some point in its history the Earth presented conditions
that made the formation of autopoietic systems almost inevitable. The whole
process of life depends not on the components of a living organism, but on its
organization. Autopoiesis is about organization, not about the nature of the
components. Evolution is a natural
drift, a consequence of the conservation of autopoiesis and adaptation. There
is no need for an external guiding force to direct evolution. All is needed is
conservation of identity and capacity for reproduction. For Maturana, information is a pointless concept. Communication is not transmission
of information but rather coordination of behavior among living systems. Maturanaextends the term
"linguistic" to any mutually generated domain of interactions (any
"consensual domain"). When
two or more living organisms interact recurrently, they generate a social
coupling. Language emerges from such social coupling. In this view, language is "connotative" and not
"denotative". Its function is to orient the organism within its
cognitive domain. The point Maturanareiterates is that cognition is
a purely biological phenomenon. Organisms do not use any representational
structures: their intelligent behavior is due only to the continuous change in
their nervous system as induced by perception.
Intelligence is action. Memory is not an abstract entity but simply the
ability to recreate the behavior that best couples with a recurring situation
within the environment. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Ecological Realism: The Embodied Mind" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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