Abstract
This paper seeks to explain the nature of autopoiesis and its capacity to be efficacious, and to do this, it uses agency theory as embedded in metacybernetics. Agency, as a generalised intelligent adaptive living system, can anticipate the future once it has internalised a representation of an active contextual situation through autopoiesis. The role of observation and the nature of internalisation will be discussed, explaining that the latter has two states that determine agency properties of cognition. These are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is an information process and results in implicit cognition and recognition, whereas accommodation uses assimilated information delivering explicit cognition, recognition, and conscious awareness with rationality. Similarly, anticipation, a required property of the living, has two states, weak and strong, and these correspond to the two states of internalisation. Autopoiesis has various properties identifiable through the lenses of three autonomous but configurable schemas: General Collective Intelligence (GCI), Eigenform, and Extreme Physical Information (EPI). GCI is a pragmatic evolutionary approach concerned with a contextually connected purposeful and relatable set of task processes, each undertaken by a team of subagencies seeking collective fitness. Eigenform is a symbolic approach that is concerned with how observations can be suitably internalised and thus be used as a token to determine future behaviour, and how that which has been internalised can be adopted to anticipate the future. Extreme Physical Information (EPI) is an empirical approach concerned with acquiring information through observation of an unknown parameter through sampling regimes. The paper represents the conceptualisations of each schema in terms of autopoietic efficacy, and explores their configurative possibilities. It will adopt the ideas delivered to enhance explanations of the nature of autopoiesis and its efficacy within metacybernetics, providing a shift in thinking about autopoiesis and self-organisation.
Highlights
This is a cybernetic paper concerned with living systems that use networks of autopoietic processes to enable them to have versatile adaptive behaviour, this enabling them to maintain their viability, i.e., to have a capacity to both survive and develop
Living systems are cognitive systems [1], operating through information processes [2], and studied through cognitive science, which, for Simon [3], has a fundamental set of common concerns that are shared by the disciplines of psychology, computer science, linguistics, economics, epistemology, and the social sciences, generally all connected with information processing and adaptive systems
It will be useful to take an overview of the nature of agency theory within metacybernetics, where agencies are taken as living systems that have a variety of self properties, and they maintain their viability through changing contexts and adaptation
Summary
This is a cybernetic paper concerned with living systems that use networks of autopoietic processes to enable them to have versatile adaptive behaviour, this enabling them to maintain their viability, i.e., to have a capacity to both survive and develop. There are certain attributes of the nature and relationship between internalisation and anticipation within the concept of autopoiesis that require investigation, such as whether and how the posterior and anterior networks individually operate coherently, how the two networks might mutually relate to ensure living system stability, or how one may estimate autopoietic efficacy To provide such explanations, we shall call on three autonomous but relatable schemas. Whether or not they are, they provide us with templates of ideal or representative relationships and modes of being that can be applied to complex activity situations where living systems are deemed to exist These have certain characteristics that, through the use of cybernetic principles, enable us to explain how and why they function as they do.
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