From Autopoiesis to Enaction

Abstract

This paper reconstructs a conceptual shift from the original theory of autopoiesis to later enactive approaches to cognition and experience. The central claim is that the transition is not a straightforward deduction from autopoiesis. Maturana’s identification of life with cognition expands the concept of cognition from the outset. Later developments add embodied action, autonomy, adaptivity, agency, sense-making, and first-person experience. Each addition addresses a genuine problem, but the sequence risks turning biological regulation into semantic and eventually phenomenal vocabulary without identifying the mechanism that warrants the transition. The paper therefore distinguishes self-production, regulation, cognition, and experience as different explanatory targets. It argues that autopoiesis remains a powerful account of biological individuality if it is not equated with cognition. An alternative continuation is proposed: instead of locating the decisive development primarily in organism–environment coupling, the analysis follows the evolutionary differentiation of the living system itself, especially the emergence of nervous systems, fast signal integration, recursive closure, and a neurally constituted epistemic operational interior. Embodiment and environmental coupling remain necessary conditions, but they are not thereby mechanisms of experience. The result is a reconstruction of the historical divergence between autopoietic theory and later enactivism and a proposal for a biologically grounded route from living organization to cognition and phenomenal experience.