“I am an observing system observing itself observing:”
Humberto Maturana’s Autopoietic Theory of Cognition
Han-yu Huang
Department of English
National Taiwan Normal University
14 August 2008
I.
To recap the three stories
A. Reification of information
B. Cultural and technological construction of the cyborg
C. Transformation of the human into the posthuman
II.
Some functional definitions of “autopoiesis”
A. [A] living system is a dynamic composite entity, realized as a unity as a
closed network of production of components such that through their
interactions in composition and decomposition the components: a)
recursively constituted the same network of production that produced
them, and b) specified the extension of the network and constituted
operational boundaries that separate it as a dynamic unity in a space
defined by elements of the kind of those that compose it, is an autopoietic
system. (Maturana, “Autopoiesis, Structural coupling and cognition,”
http://www.isss.org/maturana.htm)
B. “living systems operate within the boundaries of an organization that
closes in on itself and leaves the world on the outside” (136)
C. “In autopoietic theory, one of the principal effects of autopoiesis is to
secure for a living system the crucial qualities of autonomy and
individuality” (142)
III.
(things to remember: self-remaking, self-organization, circularity, closure,
structural coupling, conservation, autonomy and reflexivity)
The observer
A. Distinguishing domains of description (136-37)
B. A non-subjective system separate from the organism (133-34)
C. A problem of communication among systems (134)
D. Depending on positionality rather than personality (143)
E. generating and interacting with the representations of the system’s own
interactions (143)
IV.
V.
Structural coupling
A. To account for a system’s embeddedness in an environment (138)
B. Living systems structurally coupled to their environments and to each
other (138)
C. Not the causality that the observer constructs (138-39): “time and
causality are not intrinsic to the processes themselves but are concepts
inferred by an observer” (and so are information, coding and
teleology)(139)
Interventions
A. a new way of talking about life (131)
B. including the observer as part of the system and solving the problem of
solipsism (131, 33)
C. new conception of reflexivity or internal world of subjective experience
D.
E.
F.
G.
VI.
(without resorting to psychoanalysis) (132-33)
non-representational theory of perception (135-36)
counteracting anthropomorphic projection (136)
(not unequivocally) departing from liberal/rationalistic/Enlightenment
subjectivity, objectivist epistemology and behaviorism (134-35, 142-43),
and theory of evolution (in terms of genetic code) (149-50)
Consciousness as an emergent phenomenon
Maturana’s problems
A. Uncertain about “closure” and “unity”(145-46)
B. Affinity for utopian anarchy (147)
C. Tainted with solipsism (147) and autism (148)
D. State as the paradigmatic cyborg in autopoietic theory (149)
E. Unable or unwilling to articulate the circularity of autopoiesis together
with evolutionary lineages (150-51) and historical contingency (153)
F. Neutralizing the observer (158)