Autopoietic enactivism (AE) is a relatively young but increasingly influential approach within embodied cognitive science, which aims to offer a viable alternative framework to mainstream cognitivism. Similarly, in biology, the nascent field of biosemiotics has steadily been developing an increasingly influential alternative framework to mainstream biology. Despite sharing common objectives and clear theoretical overlap, there has to date been little to no exchange between the two fields. This paper takes this under-appreciated overlap as not only a much needed call to begin building bridges between the two areas but also as an opportunity to explore how AE could benefit from biosemiotics. As a first tentative step towards this end, the paper will draw from both fields to develop a novel synthesis – biosemiotic enactivism – which aims to clarify, develop and ultimately strengthen some key AE concepts. The paper has two main goals: (i) to propose a novel conception of cognition that could contribute to the ongoing theoretical developments of AE and (ii) to introduce some concepts and ideas from biosemiotics to the enactive community in order to stimulate further debate across the two fields.
BainsP. (2006). The primacy of semiosis: An ontology of relations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
2.
BarandiaranX. E.Di PaoloE. A.RohdeM. (2009). Defining agency: Individuality, normativity, asymmetry, and spatio-temporality in action. Adaptive Behavior, 17(5), 367–386.
3.
BarbieriM. (2009). A short history of biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, 2(2), 221–245.
4.
Ben-JacobE. (2008). Social behavior of bacteria: from physics to complex organization. The European Physical Journal B, 65(3), 315–322.
5.
BuchananB. (2008). Onto-ethologies: The animal environments of Uexküll, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze. Albany, NY: Suny Press.
6.
CalarcoM. (2008). Zoographies: The question of the animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
7.
ClarkA. (2001). Mindware: An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
8.
ClarkA. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
9.
ColombettiG. (2014). The feeling body: affective science meets the enactive mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10.
CumminsF.De JesusP. The loneliness of the enactive cell: Towards a bio-enactive framework. Adaptive Behavior.
11.
DeaconT. W. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: Norton.
12.
DeaconT. W. (2012). Incomplete nature: How mind emerged from matter, 1st ed. New York: Norton.
13.
DeelyJ. (2009). Pars pro toto from culture to nature: An overview of semiotics as a postmodern development, with an anticipation of development to come. American Journal of Biosemiotics, 25, 167–192.
14.
De JaegherH.Di PaoloE. A. (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485–507.
15.
De JaegherH.FroeseT. (2009). On the role of social interaction in individual agency. Adaptive Behavior, 17(5), 444–460.
16.
De JesusP. (2015). Autopoietic enactivism, phenomenology and the deep continuity between life and mind. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1–25.
17.
Di PaoloE. (2003). Organismically-inspired robotics: homeostatic adaptation and teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop. In MuraseK.AsakuraT. (Eds.), Dynamical Systems Approach to Embodiment and Sociality (pp. 19–42). Adelaide, Australia: Advanced Knowledge International.
18.
Di PaoloE. (2005). Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429–452.
19.
Di PaoloE. (2009). Extended life. Topoi, 28(1), 9–21.
20.
Di PaoloE. A.RohdeM.De JaegherH. (2010). Horizons for the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play. In StewartJ.GapenneO.Di PaoloE. A. (Eds.), Enaction: Toward a new paradigm for cognitive science (pp. 33–87). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
21.
EmmecheC. (2001). Does a robot have an Umwelt? Reflections on the qualitative biosemiotics of Jakob von Uexkull. Semiotica, 134(1/4), 653–693.
22.
EmeryN. J.ClaytonN. S. (2008). Imaginative scrub-jays, causal rooks, and a liberal application of Occam’s aftershave. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(02), 134–135.
23.
FarinaA. (2008). The landscape as a semiotic interface between organisms and resources. Biosemiotics, 1(1), 75–83.
24.
FavareauD. (2007a). The evolutionary history of biosemiotics. In BarbieriM. (Ed.), Introduction to biosemiotics. The new biological synthesis (pp. 1–67). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
25.
FavareauD. (2007b). Animal sensing, acting and knowing: Bridging the relations between brains, bodies and world. In WitzanyG. (Ed.), Biosemiotics in transdisciplinary contexts. Proceedings of the gathering in Biosemiotics 6, Salzburg, 2006 (pp. 61–69). Helsinki, Finland: Umweb
26.
FetzerJ. H. (1988). Signs and minds: An introduction to the theory of semiotic systems. In FetzerJ. (Ed.), Aspects of artificial intelligence (pp. 133–161). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
27.
FetzerJ. H. (1997). Thinking and computing: Computers as special kinds of signs. Minds and Machines, 7, 345–364.
28.
FetzerJ. H. (2001). Computers and cognition: Why minds are not machines. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
29.
FodorJ. A. (2008). LOT 2: The language of thought revisited. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
30.
FroeseT. (2007). On the role of AI in the ongoing paradigm shift within the cognitive sciences (pp. 63–75). Berlin, Germany: Springer.
31.
FroeseT. (2011a). Breathing new life into cognitive science. Avant. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard, 2(1), 113–129.
32.
FroeseT. (2011b). From second-order cybernetics to enactive cognitive science: Varela’s turn from epistemology to phenomenology. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 28(6), 631–645
33.
FroeseT.Di PaoloE. A. (2009). Sociality and the life–mind continuity thesis. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(4), 439–463.
34.
FroeseT.PaoloD.EzequielA. (2011). The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to society. Pragmatics & Cognition, 19(1).
35.
FroeseT.ZiemkeT. (2009) Enactive artificial intelligence: Investigating the systemic organization of life and mind. Artificial Intelligence, 173(3–4), 466–500
36.
FuchsT.De JaegherH. (2009). Enactive intersubjectivity: Participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(4), 465–486.
37.
GallagherS. (2012). In defense of phenomenological approaches to social cognition: interacting with the critics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 3(2), 187–212.
38.
Godfrey-SmithP. (1994) Spencer and Dewey on life and mind. In BrooksR.MaesP. (Eds.), Artificial Life IV: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
39.
GouldJ. L. (1990). Honey bee cognition. Cognition, 37, 83–103 (1990).
HoffmeyerJ. (2008). Biosemiotics: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press.
42.
HoffmeyerJ. (2012) The natural history of intentionality. A biosemiotic approach. In SchilhabT.StjernfeltF.DeaconT. (Eds.), The symbolic species evolved. (Biosemiotics 6) (pp. 97–116). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
43.
HollisK, L.GuilletteL. M., (2011). Associative learning in insects: Evolutionary models, mushroom bodies, and a neuroscientific conundrum. Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews, 6, 24–45.
44.
HuttoD. D. (2008), Folk psychological narratives: The sociocultural basis of understanding reasons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
45.
HuttoD. (2011). Enactivism: Why be radical. Sehen und Handeln, 21–44.
46.
HuttoD. D.MyinE. (2013). Radicalizing enactivism: Basic minds without content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
47.
JonasH. (1966) The phenomenon of life: Toward a philosophical biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by Northwestern University Press (2000).
48.
KawadeY. (2009). On the nature of the subjectivity of living things. Biosemiotics, 2(2), 205–220.
49.
KullK. (1998) On semiosis, Umwelt, and semiosphere. Semiotica, 120(3/4), 299–310.
50.
KullK. (2014). Zoosemiotics is the study of animal forms of knowing?Semiotica, 2014(198), 47–60.
51.
KullK.DeaconT.EmmecheC.HoffmeyerJ.StjernfeltF. (2009). Theses on biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a theoretical biology. Biological Theory, 4(2), 167–173.
52.
LestelD. (2002). The biosemiotics and phylogenesis of culture. Social Science Information, 41(1), 35–68.
53.
LyonP. (2007). From quorum to cooperation: lessons from bacterial sociality for evolutionary theory. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38(4), 820–833.
54.
MagnusR.KullK. (2009). Exemplifying Umweltlehre through one’s own life. A biography of Jakob von Uexküll by Florian Mildenberger. Biosemiotics, 2(1), 121–125.
55.
MarkošA.GrygarF.HajnalL.KleisnerK.KratochvilN. Z. (2009). Life as its own designer: Darwin’s origin and Western thought. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer
56.
MartinelliD. (2010). A critical companion to zoosemiotics: People, paths, ideas (Vol. 5). Berlin, Germany: Springer.
57.
MaturanaH.VarelaF. J. (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing.
58.
MenaryR. (2010). Introduction to the special issue on 4E cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 459–463.
59.
MerrittM. (2015). Dismantling standard cognitive science: It’s time the dog has its day. Biology and Philosophy, 30(6), 811–829.
60.
NewellA.SimonH. A. (1976), Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search. Communications of the ACM, 19(3), 113–126. doi:10.1145/360018.360022
61.
NoëA. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
62.
Odling-SmeeJ. F. (2009). Niche construction in evolution, ecosystems and developmental biology. Mapping the Future of Biology, 69–91.
63.
OyamaS. (2011). Life in mind. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18(5–6), 83–93.
64.
PascalF.O’ReganJ. K. (2008). Commentary on Mossio and Taraborelli: Is the enactive approach really sensorimotor?Consciousness and Cognition, 17(4), 1341–1342.
65.
PeirceC. S. (EP1, 1992; EP2, 1998.). The essential Peirce. Selected philosophical writings [Vol. 1, HouserN.KloeselC.; Vol. 2, Peirce Edition Project (Eds.)]. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press (quoted as EP, followed by volume and paragraph).
66.
PeirceC. S. (1931–1935). The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Electronic edition reproducing Vols. I–VI [HartshorneC.WeissP. (Eds.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931–1935]; Vols. VII–VIII [BurksA. W. (Ed.), same publisher, 1958]. Charlottesville, VA: Intelex Corporation (quoted as CP, followed by volume and paragraph).
67.
PeirceC. S. (1967). Annotated catalogue: The papers of Charles S. Peirce [RobinR. S. (Eds.)]. Boston, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press (quoted as MS, followed by the number of the manuscript).
68.
PennD. C.HolyoakK. J.PovinelliD. J. (2008). Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(02), 109–130.
69.
QueirozJ.RibeiroS. (2002). The biological substrate of icons, indexes, and symbols in animal communication, In: ShapiroM. (Ed.), The Peirce Seminar Papers – The State of the Art. Vol. V (pp. 69–78). Oxford, UK: Berghan Books.
70.
RieglerA. (2005). Editorial. The constructivist challenge. Constructivist Foundations, 1(1), 1–8.
71.
RuütingT. (2004). Jakob von Uexküll – Theoretical biology, biocybernetics and biosemiotics. European Communications in Mathematical and Theoretical Biology, 6, 11–16.
72.
SebeokT. (1989). The sign and its masters. New York: University Press of America.
73.
SeyfarthR. M.CheneyD. L.MarlerP. (1980). Vervet monkey alarm calls: Semantic communication in a free-ranging primate. Animal Behaviour, 28(4), 1070–1094.
74.
ShapiroJ. A. (2007). Bacteria are small but not stupid: Cognition, natural genetic engineering, and sociobacteriology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38(4), 807–819.
ShortT. L. (2007) Peirce’s theory of signs. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
77.
StewartJ. R.GapenneO.Di PaoloE. A. (2010). Enaction: Toward a new paradigm for cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
78.
TorranceS. (2005). In search of the enactive: Introduction to special issue on enactive experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 357–368.
79.
TorranceS.FroeseT. (2011). An inter-enactive approach to agency: Participatory sense-making, dynamics, and sociality. Humana. Mente, 15, 21–53.
80.
ThompsonE. (2004). Life and mind: From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. A tribute to Francisco Varela. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3(4), 381–398.
81.
ThompsonE. (2007) Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
82.
ThompsonE. (2011a). Living ways of sense making. Philosophy Today, 55(Supplement), 114–123.
83.
ThompsonE. (2011b). Reply to commentaries. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18(5–6), 5–6.
84.
TønnessenM. (2015). Uexküllian phenomenology. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 11(3), 347–369.
85.
UexküllJ. von (1957). A stroll through the world of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. In SchillerC. H. (Trans. and Ed.), Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept (pp. 5–80). New York: International University Press, Inc.
86.
VarelaF. J. (1997). Patterns of life: Intertwining identity and cognition. Brain and Cognition, 34(1), 72–87.
87.
VarelaF.ThompsonE.RoschE. (1991). The embodied mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Cambridge.
88.
VörösFroese Riegle. (forthcoming). Epistemological Odyssey: Introduction to the special issue on the diversity of enactivism and neurophenomenology. Constructivist Foundations.
WeberA. (2001) The ‘surplus of meaning.’ Biosemiotic aspects in Francisco J. Varela’s philosophy of cognition. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 9(2), 11–29.
91.
WeberA.VarelaF. J. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1(2), 97–125.
92.
WeltonD. (2011). Can a top-down phenomenology of intentional consciousness be integrated with a bottom-up phenomenology of biological systems?Philosophy Today, 55(Supplement), 102–113.
93.
WheelerM. (1997) Cognition’s coming home: the reunion of life and mind. In HusbandsP.HarveyI. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Artificial Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
94.
WheelerM. (2005). Reconstructing the cognitive world: The next step. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
95.
WheelerM. (2010). Mind, things and materiality. In RenfrewC.MalafourisL. (Eds.), The cognitive life of things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Publications.
96.
WheelerM. (2011). Mind in life or life in mind? Making sense of deep continuity. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18(5–6), 148–168.
97.
WheelerM.Di PaoloE. A. (2011) Existentialism and cognitive science. In ReynoldsJ.WoodwardA.JosephF. (Eds.), The continuum companion to existentialism. London, UK: Continuum.
