Enactive Cognitive Science and Biology of Cognition: A Response to Humberto Maturana

We very much appreciate that Maturana (2011) responded to our article, where we had made an attempt to excavate some of the hidden conceptual context in which the idea of autopoiesis had originally been formulated (Froese & Stewart, 2010). Our investigation was motivated by the growing interest in autopoiesis and related ideas among a new generations of researchers in cognitive science, driven by the increasing popularity of the enactive approach to cognitive science (Stewart, Gapenne, & Di Paolo, 2010). This enactive paradigm has been developed as an alternative to the traditional cognitivist-computationalist paradigm, and it is remarkable for its serious consideration of first-person experience and biological autonomy, two important domains of human existence that have so far been neglected in cognitive science. Some proponents of the enactive paradigm have proposed that the concept of autopoiesis can serve as a potential explanatory link between the domains of phenomenological embodiment and biological embodiment. As a part of this project, we have recognized a need to go beyond considering living merely in abstract terms, such as an Ashbyan cybernetics of stability, and recognize that being alive essentiall entails a precarious existence, or, as Maturana puts it, recognize “living beings as beings that die” (Maturana, 2011, p. 145). Given that only autopoietic systems are systems that can die, there is a possibility to ground the phenomenon of subjective existential concern in the objective process of autopoiesis (Weber & Varela, 2002). This is because only mortal beings can be concerned about their existence and therefore value its continuation and realization. Non-autopoietic systems persist, but they do not exist. In this way autopoiesis has provided the enactive paradigm with a useful conceptual locus in order to overcome Cartesian mind-matter dualism in a scientifically respectable manner (Thompson, 2007). However, it has slowly become evident that the way in which autopoiesis had been described, following the primary literature of Maturana and Varela (1980), was inadequate for its new role in enactive cognitive science. For example, because