Biological roots of cognition and the social origins of mind : autopoietic theory, strict naturalism and cybernetics
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Date
30/06/2015Author
Villalobos, Mario Eduardo
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Abstract
This thesis is about the ontology of living beings as natural systems, their
behavior, and the way in which said behavior, under special conditions of
social coupling, may give rise to mental phenomena. The guiding questions
of the thesis are: 1) What kinds of systems are living beings such that they
behave the way they do? 2) How, through what kinds of mechanisms and
processes, do living beings generate their behavior? 3) How do mental
phenomena appear in the life of certain living beings? 4) What are the
natural conditions under which certain living beings exhibit mental
phenomena? To answer these questions the thesis first assumes, then justifies
and defends, a Strict Naturalistic (SN) stance with respect to living beings.
SN is a metaphysical and epistemological framework that, recognizing the
organizational, dynamic and structural complexity and peculiarity of living
beings, views and treats them as metaphysically ordinary natural systems;
that is, as systems that, from the metaphysical point of view, are not different
in kind from rivers or stars. SN holds that if in natural sciences rivers and
stars are not conceived as semantic, intentional, teleological, agential or
normative systems, then living beings should not be so conceived either.
Having assumed SN, and building mainly on the second-order cybernetic
theories of Ross Ashby and Humberto Maturana, the thesis answers question
1) by saying that living beings are (i) adaptive dynamic systems, (ii)
deterministic machines of closed transitions, (iii) multistable dissipative
systems, and (iv) organizationally closed systems with respect to their
sensorimotor and autopoietic dynamics. Based on this ontological
characterization, the thesis answers question 2) by showing that living
beings’ behavior corresponds to the combined product of (i), (ii), (iii) and
(iv). Points (i) and (ii) support the idea that living beings are strictly
deterministic systems, and that, consequently, notions such as information,
control, agency or teleology—usually invoked to explain living beings’
behavior—do not have operational reality but are rather descriptive
projections introduced by the observer. Point (iii) helps to understand why,
despite their deterministic nature, living beings behave in ways that, to the
observer, appear to be teleological, agential or “intelligent”. Point (iv)
suggests that living beings’ sensorimotor dynamics are closed circuits
without inputs or outputs, where the distinction between external and
internal medium is, again, an ascription of the observer rather than a
functional property of the system itself. Having addressed the basic
principles of living beings’ behavior, the thesis explores the possible origin
of (truly) mental phenomena in the particular domain of social behavior.
Complementing Maturana’s recursive theory of language with Vygotsky’s
dialectic approach the thesis advances, though in a still quite exploratory
way, a sociolinguistic hypothesis of mind. This hypothesis answers questions
3) and 4) by claiming that the essential properties of mental phenomena
(intentionality, representational content) appear with language, and that
mind, as a private experiential domain, emerges as a dialectic transformation
of language.