nucleation

THEORY-1166: Di Paolo argues that autopoiesis as originally defined entails conservation and not active homeostasis, so it gives a system only an all-or-nothing norm, to go on or to die, which an observer and not the system can use; that a graded norm the system itself has needs adaptivity, a capacity to detect tendencies toward the boundary of its viability and to act so as to reverse them; and that sense-making and agency need adaptivity

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Properties5
StatusActive
Tagsphilosophy-of-biology, agency, embodied-cognition
SourceLIT-1017 — Autopoiesis, Adaptivity, Teleology, Agency
ExtendsTHEORY-628 — Self-production alone gives a system only an all-or-nothing norm, to go on or to die, and that distinction is available to an observer, not to the system; a graded norm the system itself has, by which viable states are better or worse for it, needs adaptivity, a further capacity to detect tendencies toward the boundary of its viability and to act so as to reverse them, and sense-making and agency need adaptivity
Cited as “grounds” byCLAIM-288 — In a population whose operators each maximize an objective the modeller fixed, the norms the organization appears to maintain are set by the modeller, not by the organization: they can become its goals through their role in selecting what persists, but it does not produce or revise them, CLAIM-339 — A judgement–observation loop cut off from action loses one route for evidence it did not select, and the free-energy principle's reason for minimizing surprise, that a persisting system must keep its states in bounds, needs action on the world, though a loop can confirm itself with action available too

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Source

Ezequiel A. Di Paolo (2005), “Autopoiesis, Adaptivity, Teleology, Agency”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4(4), 429–452, LIT-1017, read in full in NOTE-719.

The argument

Conservation, not homeostasis. Autopoiesis, “a concept allowing no degrees, can only entail the more general case of conservation (thus admitting the possibility of fortuitous self-maintenance)”. Its only norm is that “organisms live as long as they don’t die”. That lets an observer tell lethal from non-lethal encounters, but not the system.

Two cases. “Balancing at the edge of a cliff is a perfectly viable behaviour, so is falling over the edge – both are interactions that conserve autopoiesis.” A bacterium whose nutrient intake is below its consumption will not “seek higher concentrations just because [it is] autopoietic”.

The definition. Adaptivity is “a system’s capacity, in some circumstances, to regulate its states and its relation to the environment with the result that, if the states are sufficiently close to the boundary of viability, 1. Tendencies are distinguished and acted upon depending on whether the states will approach or recede from the boundary and, as a consequence, 2. Tendencies of the first kind are moved closer to or transformed into tendencies of the second”. It is “not a direct consequence of the definition of autopoiesis”.

What adaptivity gives. “An inner norm, a distinction between good, neutral, and bad ways of realizing autopoiesis”, graded and recursive. Norms are then norms for the system, which it can use.

Agency. An agent is “a self-constructed unity that engages the world by actively regulating its exchanges with it for adaptive purposes that are meant to serve its continued viability”. Agency comes in degrees.

This is the norm-for-the-system CLAIM-288 cites and the enactive account of norms CLAIM-339 sets beside the free-energy principle.

What this does not say

It does not say the argument is right. Di Paolo argues from the bacterium and the cliff, chosen to illustrate it, and grants (note 1) that later formulations of autopoiesis may contain adaptivity. Weber and Varela (THEORY-666) hold that self-production suffices for sense-making. A worked case with the viability set and state space stated formally is THEORY-628’s promote_when, and THEORY-628 stays Proposed until the record holds it.

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