Autopoiesis and cognition

What Hacker News says

1. robwwilliamsJun 2026
   You nailed it. Asking the question is asking to define from the outside what is an inner recursive process. The question is a simple confusion of domains. This is Humbert Maturana’s main point in Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980, now reissued). Recommend the whole book, as does Terry Winograd. The most intense part is the appendix specifically about the nervous system. Nagel and others knew no neuroscience and are clueless about recursion.
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2. robwwilliamsMar 2026
   Well worth reading from Pam Vagata. Some important insights and predictions.

   Her vision of autonomy is not true autonomy, but a vision of AI servants on slightly longer chains.

   Is that fair? Yes, I think so.

   The key questions are not being asked: What drives autonomy? Who or what selects the motivation and defines the scope of action in a real stateful world?

   I set my thermostat and it acts “autonomously” over the range I set. But that is not the autonomy she implies.

   Give me CS types and founders like Hassabis, Sutton, Kanerva, Amodei, Bach, Levin, LeCun, Brooks, Hawkins, Sejnowski, and Friston (and about ten other scientists) who understand some of the core requirements of autonomy (but not all).

   One hard but invaluable book to read before contending with the word autonomy: Maturana HC, Varela F (1980) Autopoiesis and Cognition. Finally reissued as a paperback.

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3. robwwilliamsAug 2025
   I find Maturana’s definition satisfactory. Best overview in his book with Francesco Valera:

   Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1980)

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis_and_Cognition:_The...

   Unfortunately out of print.

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4. robwwilliamsJun 2025
   Right on the mark and on the vector we are now are all riding at high speed. Degrees or better yet, gradients of consciousness and levels of recursive self-consciousness. I would enjoy reading a much longer version of your probes of current AI systems.

   What is still missing is autonomous mechanisms of self-controlled balancing between attention to the internal processes and the external needs.

   Bravo Vitali. You would probably greatly enjoy Maturana and Valera’s Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980).

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5. robwwilliamsJan 2025
   Yes! What fun to read and I think you are pointing in a smarter direction.

   Memory as recursion and the key to step toward AGI.

   The trick is recursive self-control of attention while being battered by 1001 input streams. Perhaps better to think about “input” as interrupt requests that a “self” must evaluate and usually ignore to stay on tasks: Making all of those sandwiches!

   Bodies may be essential soon along with all of the hard knocks of selection as motivation to memorize, learn, adapt.

   Here is a great book that Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores read very carefully:

   “Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living” by Maturana and Valera (1980).

   This intense book is an axiomatic approach to life and cognition. Enactivist philosophers are now extending their original insights:

   1: Terrence W. Deacon: Incomplete Nature

   2. Evan Thompson: Mind in Life

   3. Luis Favela: The Ecological Brain: Unifying the Sciences of Brain, Body, and Environment

   4: Alva Noë: Out of Our Heads

   5: Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores: Understanding Computers and Cognition

   6: Douglas Hofstadter: I Am a Strange Loop

   Pretty sure that Demis Hassabis, Rich Sutton, and Karl J. Friston. Like Maturana and Valera, all three of them have strong backgrounds in neuroscience.

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6. robwwilliamsDec 2024
   This is the book you will want to read once, twice, or three times to have a good answer to your question.

   Humbert Maturana and Francesco Valera(1979) Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. ISBN 90-277-1015-5.

   Not an easy book, but one that answers your question.

   Terry Winograd loves this book. I am a neuroscientist and only found this gem late in my career. Damn!

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