Dcg design computation group at MIT
http://dcg.mit.edu/2011/09/week-4-autopoesis-structuralcoupling-and-cognition/
Autopoesis, Structural Coupling
and Cognition
September 26th, 2011 by Daniel Rosenberg
By Humberto Maturana Romesin. Cybernetics & Human
Knowling, Vol. 9, No 3-4, 2002, pp. 5-34.
1.
wortmann says: October 11, 2011 at 9:27 am Of apples and vacuum
cleaners – a critical commentary on Maturana’s
‘Autopoiesis,
Structural Coupling and Cognition’
Maturana’s philosophy has been labeled as Radical
Constructivism, and such has been the object of controversial debates
since the 1970ies. His position asserts that all experiences, and
therefore all knowledge, are internal to an organism, as apparent in
the following statement:
‘As living systems are structure determined systems, all that
occurs in them or to them, happens determined in their structure. […]
An external agent can only trigger in the living system a structural
change determined in it. An external agent, therefore, does not and
cannot be claimed to constitute an input for the living system
because it “tells” nothing to the living system about itself or about
the medium from which it comes. […] It is in this sense that I claim
that a living system does not have inputs or outputs, and that its
relation with the medium cannot be described in informational terms.’
(p. 24)
In short, a living system cannot receive inputs because it is
structurally determined, that is all changes to the system are
predicated on its internal structure. This assertion is based on
Maturana’s definition of all living systems as molecular autopoetic
systems:
‘A living system as a molecular system is a structure
determined system, and everything that happens in it or to it,
happens in each moment determined by its structure at that moment’
(p.12).
This is the case for all living systems, since
‘it is only in the molecular domain that systems like living
systems can exist because it is only in this domain where autopoiesis
can take place’ (p.14).
In other words, all living systems are structurally
determinate, because all living systems are molecular autopoetic
systems. But what constitutes a molecular autopoetic system for
Maturana?
A molecular autopoetic system is
‘a closed network of molecular productions that recursively
produces the same network of molecular productions that produced it
and specifies its boundaries, while remaining open to the flow of
matter through it [...]’ (p.8).
Therefore, all living systems consist
of interactions between molecules, and this is why they are
structurally determined.
I would argue that interactions between molecules can only be
understood as determinate in the sense that, under identical
conditions and given a set of molecules, the same biochemical
reaction will occur. This implicit claim is central to Maturana’s
argument, and is extended to cognition, consciousness and language
towards the end of his discussion.
However, it is problematic to frame cognition and consciousness
exclusively in the molecular sphere:
The natural sciences can be
construed as a hierarchical set of explanatory frameworks, with each
set resting on a different set. Organisms can be explained in terms
of molecular biology, molecular biology in terms of chemistry, and so
on right down to the elementary particles of quantum physics.
Crucially, each set carries with it a description of properties that
are only valid and specific for each set.
For example, a falling
apple can be construed according to Newton’s laws or Einstein’s
Relativity, but, as of today, not in terms of quantum theory (which
would describe the apple as a probabilistic wave form, but fail to
account for gravity). In addition, it also does not yield additional
explanatory benefits to include relativistic effects when discussing
the falling apple. This is the case because relativity is only
relevant for phenomena occurring with a speed relatively close to the
speed of light. Therefore we can say that a non-relativistic and nonquantum framework such as Newton’s laws is appropriate for and
specific to falling apples and other objects with speeds
significantly slower than the speed of light.
In the same vain, I would argue that human consciousness cannot
be satisfactorily framed in terms of molecular interactions. One
reason is that contemporary biochemistry fails to explain which
properties of molecules lead to the experience of self-awareness,
another that molecules are most likely an inappropriate scale when
looking at cognition and consciousness (Again, it is unrepresentative
to look at an apple in terms of quantum physics, or even chemistry,
when we are interested in its properties as a falling object).
Because of that, even a complete description of the biochemical state
of a human brain with its billions of neurons would fail to explain
the actions of a human in a relevant fashion. On a different but related note, another challenge to
Maturana’s theory of cognition is presented by robotics and
artificial intelligence: Let us consider a simple robot that
navigates obstacles employing Rodney Brook’s Subsumption architecture
(i.e. the programming of the robot does not include an internal
representation of the world). Cameras and sensors detect obstacles
based on filtering algorithms, and a deterministic tree-search is
employed to calculate the shortest route. In the last ten years,
these types of robots have become common to the point that they can
be purchased as autonomous vacuum cleaners by ordinary consumers
under the brand name ‘Roomba’. According to Maturana, we would have
to assign such a ‘Roomba’ cognitive capacities, because ‘knowledge is
something that an observer assigns to a human being or to a living
system when he or she sees such an organism behaving adequately (in
operational coherence) with a changing medium’ (p.27). As ‘it does
not matter if the living system observed is an insect or a human
being’ (p.26) we surely also have to extend this observation to
robots: It is no question that a robot avoiding (moving) obstacles
when vacuuming the living room fit’s Maturana’s definition of
behaving adequately.
In that light, it seem downright absurd to claim
that ‘any attempt to explain the adequate behavior of human beings,
or any other living system, (which in daily life we call cognition)
as if it were the result of some computation made by the nervous
system using data or information obtained by sensors about an
external objective world, is doomed to fail’ (p.27). After all, the
preceding sentence perfectly describes how the ‘Roomba’ was designed
and functions. This is not to say that such as robot is intelligent
or conscious, or that human cognition works along the same lines a
described for the ‘Roomba’, but only to show that Maturana’s
framework is insufficient to describe cognition in general.
In
conclusion, we have to reject Maturana’s structural determinism, or
at least the chain of arguments that leads to it, because it rests on
the fundamentally flawed premise that all living systems are
molecular systems exclusively, and can be explained as such.
Maturana’s framework of cognition also contradicts basic insights
from artificial intelligence. It is conceivable that advances in
neuroscience might be able to reconcile psychology, artificial
intelligence and molecular biology at some future point in time.
However, such a hypothetical unified theory of cognition would most
likely required a more refined frame work than Maturana’s structural
determinism, analogous to the fundamental uncertainty that quantum
theory has introduced into formerly determinate physics.
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Reply 2.
Theodora Vardouli says: October 17, 2011 at 7:52 am I was very
intrigued by Thomas’ response, epitomized in his conclusion: “We have to
reject Maturana’s structural determinism, or at least the chain of
arguments that leads to it, because it rests on the fundamentally flawed
premise that all living systems are molecular systems exclusively, and can
be explained as such”. Although I do not intend to take the position of a
Maturana apologetic, I found that although Thomas’ arguments might be
rhetorically sound, they are based on an interpretative scheme of
“Autopoiesis, Structural Coupling and Cognition”, which can be
contradicted by Maturana’s own arguments. The purpose of my comment is to
locate some of these points of tension and open them to discussion.
Thomas
observes an implicit determinism, in the Newtonian sense, in Maturana’s
discourse. He writes: “I would argue that interactions between molecules
can only be understood as determinate in the sense that, under identical
conditions and given a set of molecules, the same biochemical reaction
will occur. This implicit claim is central to Maturana’s argument, and is
extended to cognition, consciousness and language towards the end of his
discussion.” However, it is my impression that this understanding is
somewhat misaligned with Maturana’s definition of structural determinism:
“A structure determined system is a system such that all that takes place
in it, or happens to it at any instant, is determined by its structure at
that instant” In this argument, structure is not seen as a stable,
undisturbed entity but as immanently changing within a set of
organizational constraints. As Maturana denotes, “The structure of a
system is open to change [...] a system conserves its class identity, and
stays the same while its structure changes, only as long as its
organization is conserved through those structural changes”
Also, in my
reading, the rejection of the notions of input and output does not
reinforce an ontological discussion (stable entities, objects abiding to
their own transcendental rules) but does precisely the opposite: defines
entity and identity as the result of the constant
interplay of systems, where it is impossible to define
clear cut “IN”s and “OUT”s. Thomas also accuses Maturana of
reductionism, claiming that he subjects all of nature and human cognition
in one interpretative scheme. He says: “It is problematic to frame
cognition and consciousness exclusively in the molecular sphere; The
natural sciences can be construed as a hierarchical set of explanatory
frameworks [...] Maturana’s framework is insufficient to describe
cognition in general”. However, Maturana explicitly states that he does not intend to produce an
explanatory or ontological framework: “I think that what is commonly
presented as an epistemological difficulty is the frequent mistake of
using autopoiesis as an explanatory principle” and identifies his
epistemological shift as “abandoning the question of reality for the
question of cognition while turning to explain the experience of the
observer with the experience of the observer” In short, I feel that
Thomas’ argumentation does not escape “our cultural refusal to accept that
things, systems, relations, and entities in general, arise into existence
in the instant in which the conditions of their constitution take place.”
and in that sense, although logically sound, can be seen as asymptotical
with the main premises of Maturana’s discourse being therefore unable to
either validate or falsify it, as they participate in different
discussions.
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