nucleation

THEORY-666: A system that produces itself, a network of production that regenerates the components which produce it and constitute it as a distinguishable unity, has by that fact an intrinsic purpose, the maintenance of its identity, and with it a point of view, valence and a world as distinct from an environment, so that teleology in organisms is real and not an observer's as-if; the account is stated for the cell, and a multicellular organism is not itself autopoietic

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Properties4
StatusProposed
Tagsphilosophy-of-biology, individuation, embodied-cognition
SourceLIT-1018 — Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality
RivalsTHEORY-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

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Source

Andreas Weber and Francisco J. Varela (2002), “Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1(2), 97–125, LIT-1018, read in full in NOTE-720. Published after Varela’s death.

What was actually shown

Kant (§ 2). An organism is a natural purpose, “both cause and effect of itself” (KdU § 64), every part “an organ bringing forth the other parts” (§ 65). Its purposiveness is intrinsic, unlike an artifact’s, which always points to an external purpose. Kant’s own position is unstable: an “ontological reductionist, but an epistemological anti-reductionist”. The authors grant his stance “may depend on the chosen quotations”.

Jonas (§§ 3.1–3.2). The organism “keeps its identity exactly by not keeping the same matter”; “Organisms are things whose existence is their own achievement”. Metabolism is the defining quality of life, and with it come precariousness, concern and a subjective perspective even in “the simplest forms of life”. We have “the evidence of our intrinsic teleology in us”.

Autopoiesis (§ 3.3). “A network of processes of production (synthesis and destruction) of components such that these components:

  1. continuously regenerate the network that is producing them, and
  2. constitute the system as a distinguishable unity in the domain in which they exist” (Varela 1997). For the cell, metabolism and the membrane it produces are the key terms. “A multicellular organism … is not in itself an autopoietic unit of second order”; its autonomy comes through a “neural identity”, deferred.

The thesis (§§ 3.4, 4). Self-production “is already and inevitably a self-affirmation that shows the organism as involved in the fundamental purpose of maintaining its identity”. From it follow a purpose of sense-creation, the difference between environment (“the physical impacts it receives”) and world (that environment “evaluated from the point of view established by maintaining an identity”), and valence, “attraction or rejection”. Intrinsic teleology is “an empirical feature of an organism”, objective “only insofar as an organism is a center that organizes matter into a living being and its Umwelt”.

What could have come out otherwise. Little; this is exegesis and synthesis. The authors grant that the metabolism–membrane circle can be described “entirely from the outside”, so what they add is not a mechanism.

What this does not say

  • How to tell a produced boundary from an imposed one. The definition’s second clause separates a membrane the cell makes from a beam joining two pendulums, but the paper applies it only to the cell, where production is known from biochemistry, and gives no test (NOTE-720 for CLAIM-194).
  • That combined forms have produced boundaries. If even an animal is not itself autopoietic, a pair, a group or a firm is not.
  • Where autopoiesis differs from a candle flame in organisation. The difference is placed in “concern” and “the instauration of a point of view”, a phenomenological claim with no observable.
  • That grades of better and worse follow. Valence here follows from self-production directly. A system that only maintains itself or fails has no grades, which is the gap Di Paolo’s adaptivity fills (THEORY-628).
  • That persistence is the standard of value. The paper quotes Jonas: “Not duration as such, but ‘duration of what?’ is the question.” But in § 3.1 it also calls the “Yes!” to continued existence “the mother-value of all values” and runs, in one paragraph, to a “right to the pursuit of an undisturbed life”. That step is asserted and left to Hösle (note 14), and it is not part of this account.

Connections

  • Rival: Di Paolo (THEORY-628, from LIT-1017), who grants this paper’s intrinsic teleology and denies that autopoiesis alone yields sense-making or valence.
  • Organisational differentiation (THEORY-072, from LIT-570 and LIT-582) answers the candle-flame question in organisation, which this paper does not address.
  • Organisational closure (THEORY-221, from LIT-1027) places autopoiesis in a genealogy of closure notions and separates closure from feedback and self-organisation.
  • Minimal agency (THEORY-071, from LIT-566) takes its individuality condition and Jonas’s identity “owned by, not loaned to its subject” from this tradition, but separates individuality from agency, which this paper does not.
  • Spatial boundaries (THEORY-622, from LIT-1024). Smith and Varzi sort boundaries by whether they track a discontinuity; this paper’s test, who made the boundary, is a different one.
  • CLAIM-194 and CLAIM-075 are the record’s claims this reading was registered for.

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