Авторепродукция және өзін-өзі сақтау жүйесінің ұғымы

Systems concept which entails automatic reproduction and maintenance

The term autopoiesis refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self maintaining chemistry of living cells. The concept has since been applied to the fields of cognition, neurobiology, systems theory, architecture and sociology. Niklas Luhmann briefly introduced the concept of autopoiesis to organizational theory.

An extensive discussion of the connection of autopoiesis to cognition is provided by Evan Thompson in his 2007 publication, Mind in Life. The basic notion of autopoiesis as involving constructive interaction with the environment is extended to include cognition. Initially, Maturana defined cognition as behavior of an organism "with relevance to the maintenance of itself". However, computer models that are self maintaining but non cognitive have been devised, so some additional restrictions are needed, and the suggestion is that the maintenance process, to be cognitive, involves readjustment of the internal workings of the system in some metabolic process. On this basis it is claimed that autopoiesis is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for cognition. Thompson wrote that this distinction may or may not be fruitful, but what matters is that living systems involve autopoiesis and (if it is necessary to add this point) cognition as well. It can be noted that this definition of 'cognition' is restricted, and does not necessarily entail any awareness or consciousness by the living system. With the publication of The Embodied Mind in 1991, Varela, Thompson and Rosch applied autopoesis to make non representationalist, and enactive models of mind, brain and behavior, which further developed embodied cognitive neuroscience, later culminating in neurophenomenology.

The connection of autopoiesis to cognition, or if necessary, of living systems to cognition, is an objective assessment ascertainable by observation of a living system. One question that arises is about the connection between cognition seen in this manner and consciousness. The separation of cognition and consciousness recognizes that the organism may be unaware of the substratum where decisions are made. What is the connection between these realms? Thompson refers to this issue as the "explanatory gap", and one aspect of it is the hard problem of consciousness, how and why we have qualia. A second question is whether autopoiesis can provide a bridge between these concepts. Thompson discusses this issue from the standpoint of enactivism. An autopoietic cell actively relates to its environment. Its sensory responses trigger motor behavior governed by autopoiesis, and this behavior (it is claimed) is a simplified version of a nervous system behavior. The further claim is that real time interactions like this require attention, and an implication of attention is awareness.

There are multiple criticisms of the use of the term in both its original context, as an attempt to define and explain the living, and its various expanded usages, such as applying it to self organizing systems in general or social systems in particular. Critics have argued that the concept and its theory fail to define or explain living systems and that, because of the extreme language of self referentiality it uses without any external reference, it is really an attempt to give substantiation to Maturana's radical constructivist or solipsistic epistemology, or what Danilo Zolo has called instead a "desolate theology". An example is the assertion by Maturana and Varela that "We do not see what we do not see and what we do not see does not exist". According to Razeto Barry, the influence of Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living in mainstream biology has proven to be limited. Razeto Barry believes that autopoiesis is not commonly used as the criterion for life. Zoologist and philosopher Donna Haraway also criticizes the usage of the term, arguing that "nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self organizing", and suggests the use of sympoiesis, meaning "making with", instead.