Autonomy of cognition (part 1) — The emergence of sense-making
Cognition is believed to derive from the emergence of autonomy in physical systems. But what actually is autonomy?
In the previous article we outlined the origin of the idea of cognition as embedded and embodied, highlighting the general line of continuity between autopoietic theory (AT) and its enactive reinterpretation (EN). However, the most interesting aspects on this matter are those related to the differences and frictions between the two conceptions of cognition. Besides, this will turn out to be very helpful in pointing out strengths and weaknesses of the enactive line of thought.
As Villalobos greatly explains [4][5], the divergence between AT and EN mainly arises from the fundamental difference in their notion of autonomy, on which their idea of cognition seems to be based on and as well as implying two different (ontological) conceptions of living being.
Autonomy
In a nutshell, the subject can be outlined as follows.
The common assumption of both theories is that cognition originates from the autonomy of autopoietic systems, where autonomy refers to the organization of all processes of an autopoietic system. Thanks to this autonomous dynamic organization, the system is able to adaptively sense and interact with a portion of the environment — selective coupling — without losing its integrity. In both AT and EN, this feature is what makes a system a cognitive entity, with the difference that in AT, this is not an exclusive trait of living beings or a mark of ‘life’, but any entity which adaptively couples with the environment can be labelled as cognitive; on the other hand, in EN the status of cognitive should be attached only to living beings (life = cognition) and only to those systems whose adaptive behaviour is constitutive of themselves. In other words, Enactivists’ autonomy would lead to a distinctive ontological status of ‘cognitive living beings’, which naturalizing the adaptive behaviour in their structure they would develop an orientation toward the environment and allowing them to see this latter through the lenses of their adaptive needs (sense-making, intention, agency, etc.). Conversely, from an AT point of view, autonomy would not generate a distinct ontological realm of cognitive entities, namely, the subjective point of view (phenomenology) of living beings would not be a constitutive propriety of those systems but an arbitrary way to observe and classify certain physical systems.
Let’s try now to point out the key concepts behind the conclusions outlined above.
Organizational closure
In both AT and EN, an essential aspect of autonomy is organizational closure: autonomous systems are organizationally closed in the sense that their processes are organized in a circular manner, and acting recursively they constitute the system as a unity in the environment, thus, defining its own dimension of interaction and being the source of its actions [2][3]. The AT naturalistic view helps us to clarify this concept. Being organizationally closed doesn’t mean that the system is materially-energetically secluded from the environment, indeed, an organism is necessarily an open (dissipative) system which energetically interacts with the environment. The organization of an autonomous system is closed in the sense that (as clearly put in [5]) — the environment is always incorporated as a functional step within the system. The senso-effector system is not closed to the environment; it closes on itself through the environment- .
For this reason, differently from traditional representational-computational view [see article], in which sensory (and motor) surfaces are seen as a sort of access points through which the organism perceives the word, from an autopoietic and enactive view those are actually functional points, closing the sensorimotor loop system, through the environment [5].
In both EN and AT, organizational closure is the key to understand selective coupling. Namely, the fact that a system couples with a portion of the environment rather than a different one, depends on the sensorimotor constraints determined by the closed set of processes of the system. However, now we’re going to explain that this is also the source of one of the most critical tensions between EN and AT.
Directionality and sense-meaning
For AT proponents, since in the dynamic cycle mentioned above it’s not possible in non-arbitrary way to divide portions of the loop, to distinguish internal from external states and the unity from the environment, then it’s not possible to detect the beginning and end of the circle and more importantly, we cannot identify any directionality in it [5]. In other words, following this view it is absolutely impossible to find a natural base for the self-perspective proposed by enactivism, thus, refusing to look at the organisms’ phenomenology as a specific ontological dimension.
Indeed, here is where enactivists make the epistemological jump. As already mentioned, enactivists assign to the organizational unity described above an ontological specificity, namely, attributing to organisms an intrinsic ability to sense the neutral physical environment in a meaningful way (without necessarily involving any form of representation), then, defending a naturalistic foundation of the organisms’ sensorial perspective (subjectivity) towards the environment. In systemic terms, it means that enactivists suggest that from the recursive organizational closure of a system, a directionality would actually emerge; this latter would generate an orientation of the internal processes toward the outside, hence giving to the adaptive coupling described above a sort of intentional directedness having the organism’s sensorial apparatus (nervous system in animals) as a centre of it. In strict philosophical terminology we could say that relationally involving the environment, enactivism gives to the organism’s phenomenological domain an ontological specificity and an intrinsic teleology.
Applying all this to the classical ‘bacterium in sugar gradient’ example (chemotaxis) mentioned in the previous article, we can say that the bacterium, as an autopoietic system, embodies its dynamic sensorimotor cycle, meaning that the way it moves depends on what it senses and what it senses depends on how it moves [5]. And as said by Thompson, — although sucrose is a real and present condition of the physicochemical environment, its status as food is not. That sucrose is a nutrient is not intrinsic to the sucrose molecule, but is a relational feature, linked to the bacterium’s metabolism. Sucrose has significance or value as food, but only in the milieu that the organism itself enacts. Thus, thanks to the organism’s autonomy, its niche has a “surplus of significance” compared with the physicochemical environment — [1]
In order to complete this quick outline of the concept of autonomy, along with organizational closure, the introduction of a second element is needed. Indeed, in the second part of this article, we’re going to describe the different conceptions of self-determination that Enacivism and Autopoietic Theory defender attribute to autonomous systems. Eventually, a possible way out from this theoretical friction will be described.
[1] Thompson E. Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience. Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. 2005 Dec 1;4(4):407–27.
[2] Thompson E. Mind in life. Harvard University Press; 2010 Sep 30.
[3] Varela FJ. Principles of biological autonomy. 1987
[4] Villalobos M, Palacios S. Autopoietic theory, enactivism, and their incommensurable marks of the cognitive. Synthese. 2019 Sep 3:1–7.
[5] Villalobos M, Ward D. Living systems: Autonomy, autopoiesis and enaction. Philosophy & Technology. 2015 Jun 1;28(2):225–39.
