Living is a teleologically-constituted mode of being

revisiting the deep continuity between life and mind

Abstract

The argument brought forward is that living is a teleologically-constituted mode of being, that all living systems are cognitive in a basal sense. Teleology and its place in the study of the living is where I start. Then I explore two specific theories of minimal individual life that strongly link living and cognazing in a way that opposes brain-centered views of cognition, classical autopoiesis and the enactive approach (EA). It can be shown that they part ways when the topic is the naturalization of purpose. I argue that minimal life according to the enactive approach requires sense-making and agency. The enactive conception of cognition as sense-making is then explained. From minimal requirements and constraints for life, I explore operational definitions of both cognition and agency that set empirical and theoretical agendas for further inquiry. But the notions of agency and cognition that one arrives at by looking at minimal requirements for life are generalizable in such a way that their characterizations do not imply minimal individual life. Agency and sense-making can be instantiated in other self-organizing systems; a cognitive agent does not need, in principle, to be a biological individual. The final section reinstate what I think to be the cornerstone of the deep continuity between mind and life, not the reduction of mind to life, but the opening up of life to the flexibility, historicity and path-dependency that we unproblematically attribute to mind and culture.

Keywords: cognition; teleology; life-mind continuity; agency; autopoiesis.