Essay 1

Autopoiesis and a
Biology of Intentionality

Francisco J. Varela
CREA, CNRSEcole Polytechnique,
Paris, France.

Parts of this text have been published in (Varela 1991).

Biology of Intentionality

1.1

Francisco J. Varela

Introduction

enumeration of properties. But what is this basic

process? Its description must be situated at a very
specific level: it must be sufficiently universal to allow us to recognize living systems as a class, without
essential reference to the material components. Yet
at the same time it must not be too abstract, that
is, it must be explicit enough to allow us to see such
dynamical patterns in action in the actual living system we know on earth, those potentially to be found
in other solar systems, and eventually those created
artificially by man. As stated by the organizer of a
meeting on artificial life: Only when we are able to
view life-as-we-know-it in the larger context of lifeas-it-could-be will we really understand the nature
of the beast (Langton 1989b, p. 2).
Contemporary cell biology has made it possible
for some years now to put forth the characterization of this basic living organizationa bio-logic
as that of an autopoietic system (from Greek: selfproducingMaturana & Varela 1980; Varela et al.
1974). An autopoietic systemthe minimal living
organizationis one that continuously produces the
components that specify it, while at the same time
realizing it (the system) as a concrete unity in space
and time, which makes the network of production
of components possible. More precisely defined: An
autopoietic system is organized (defined as unity) as
a network of processes of production (synthesis and
destruction) of components such that these components:

As everybody here knows, autopoiesis is a neologism, introduced in 1971 by H. Maturana and myself to designate the organization of a minimal living
system. The term became emblematic of a view of
the relation between an organism and its medium,
where its self constituting and autonomous aspects
are put at the center of the stage. From 1971, until
now much has happened to reinforce this perspective. Some of the developments have to do with the
notion of autopoiesis itself in relation to the cellular
organization and the origin of life. Much more has
to do with the autonomy and self-organizing qualities of the organism in relation with its cognitive
activity. Thus in contrast to the dominant cognitivist, symbol-processing views of the 70s today we
witness in cognitive science a renaissance of the concern for the embeddedness of the cognitive agent,
natural or artificial. This comes up in various labels
as nouvelle-AI (Brooks 1991c), the symbol grounding problem (Harnad 1991), autonomous agents in
artificial life (Varela & Bourgine 1992), or situated
functionality (Agree 1988), to cite just a few selfexplanatory labels used recently.
Any of these developments could merit a full talk;
obviously I cannot do that here. My intention
rather, profiting from the position of opening this
gathering, is to try to indicate some fundamental
or foundational issues of the relation between autopoiesis and perception. Whence the title of my
talk: a biology of intentionality. Since the crisis of
classical cognitive science has thrown open the issue
of intentionality, in my eyes autopoiesis provides a
natural entry into a view of intentionalty that is
seminal in answering the major obstacles that have
been addressed recently. Ill came back to that at
the end. Let me begin at the beginning.

1.2
1.2.1

(i) continuously regenerate and realize the network

that produces them, and
(ii) constitute the system as a distinguishable unity
in the domain in which they exist.
Thus, autopoiesis attempts to capture the mechanism or process that generates the identity of the
living, and thus to serve as a categorical distinction of living from non-living. This identity amounts
to self-produced coherence: the autopoietic mechanism will maintain itself as a distinct unity as long
as its basic concatenation of processes is kept intact in the face of perturbations, and will disappear
when confronted with perturbations that go beyond
a certain viable range which depends on the specific
system considered. Obviously, all of the biochemical pathways and membrane formation in cells, can
be immediately mapped onto this definition of autopoiesis.
A different exercisewhich I do not pursue here
at allis to see how this basic autopoietic organization, present at the origin of terrestrial life
(Fleischaker 1988), becomes progressively complexi-

Cognition and
Minimal Living Systems
Autopoiesis as the
skeletal bio-logic

The bacterial cell is the simplest of living systems because it possesses the capacity to produce,
through a network of chemical processes, all the
chemical components which lead to the constitution
of a distinct, bounded unit. To avoid being trivial, the attribute living in the foregoing description
must address the process that allows such constitution, not the materialities that go into it, or an

Biology of Intentionality

Francisco J. Varela

1.2.2

fied though reproductive mechanisms, compartmentalization, sexual dimorphism, modes of nutrition,

symbiosis, and so on, giving rise to the variety of
pro- and eukaryotic life on Earth today (Margulis
1981; Fleischaker 1988). In particular, I take here
the view that reproduction is not intrinsic to the
minimal logic of the living. Reproduction must be
considered as an added complexification superimposed on a more basic identity, that of an autopoietic unity, a complexification which is necessary due
to the constraints of the early conditions on a turbulent planet. Reproduction is essential for the viability of the living, but only when there is an identity
can a unit reproduce. In this sense, identity has
logical and ontological priority over reproduction,
although not historical precedence.
We do not pursue here these historical complexifications, neither do I pursue another equally pertinent empirical question: Can a molecular structure
simpler than the already intricate bacterial cell, satisfy the criteria of autopoietic organization? This
question can be answered by two complementary approaches: (1) simulation and (2) synthesis of minimal autopoetic systems. There are advances in both
fronts. As to the first, there some new results in
the burst of work in artificial life, partly extending our early simulations in tesselation automata
of (Varela et al. 1974). The second front, takes
the form of a new cell-centered approach to the
origin of life which seeks chemical embodiments of
minimal autopoietic systems. In fact, the encapsulation of macromolecules by lipid vesicles has been
actively investigated as a promising candidate for
an early cell (Deamer & Barchfeld 1982; Lazcano
1986; Baeza et al. 1987; see Deamer 1986). Luisi
& Varela (1989) make the case that a reverse micellar system can come close to the mark for being a
minimal autopoietic system. In particular, they discuss the case of a reverse micellar system hosting in
its aqueous core a reaction which leads to the production of a surfactant, which is a boundary for the
reverse micellar reaction. The interest of this case
is that much is known about these chemical systems
making it possible to actually put into operation a
minimal autopoietic system. But I must leave these
fascinating issues to return to my chosen topic here.

Identity of the living

and its world

Autopoiesis addresses the issue of organism as a

minimal living system by characterizing its basic
mode of identity. This is, properly speaking, to
address the issue at an ontological level: the accent is on the manner in which a living system becomes a distinguishable entity, and not on its specific molecular composition and contingent historical configurations. For as long as it exists, the autopoietic organization remains invariant. In other
words, one way to spotlight the specificity of autopoiesis is to think of it self-referentially as that
organization which maintains the very organization
itself as an invariant. The entire physico-chemical
constitution is in constant flux; the pattern remains,
and only through its invariance can the flux of realizing components be ascertained.
I have addressed here only the minimal organization that gives rise to such living autonomy. As I
have said, my purpose is to highlight the basic biologic which serves as the foundation from which the
diversity visible in current organisms can be considered: only when there is an identity can elaborations
be seen as family variations of a common class of living unities. Every class of entities has an identity
which is peculiar to them; the uniqueness of the living resides in the kind of organization it has.
Now, the history of biology is, of course,
marred by the traditional opposition between
the mechanist/reductionists on the one hand and
holist/vitalists on the other, a heritage from the biological problem-space of the XIXth century. One
of the specific contributions of the study of selforganizing mechanismsof which autopoiesis is a
specific instanceis that the traditional opposition
between the component elements and the global
properties disappears. In the simple example of the
cellular automaton illustrated above, it is precisely
the reciprocal causality between the local rules of interactions (i.e. the components rules, which are akin
to chemical interactions) and the global properties
of the entity (its topological demarcation affecting
diffusion and creating local conditions for reaction)
which is in evidence. It appears to me that this reciprocal causality does much to evacuate the mechanist/vitalist opposition, and allows us to move into a
more productive phase of identifying various modes
of self-organization where the local and the global
are braided together explicitly through this reciprocal causality. Autopoiesis is a prime example of
such dialectics between the local component levels
and the global whole, linked together in reciprocal

Biology of Intentionality

Francisco J. Varela

relation through the requirement of constitution of

an entity that self-separates from its background. In
this sense, autopoiesis as the characterization of the
living does not fall into the traditional extremes of
either vitalism or reductionism.
A second, complementary dimension of basic biologic that is central to focus our discussion is the
nature of the relationship between autopoietic autonomous unities and their environment. It is exhypothesis evident that an autopoietic system depends on its physico-chemical mileu for its conservation as a separate entity, otherwise it would dissolve
back into it. Whence the intriguing paradoxicality
proper to an autonomous identity: the living system
must distinguish itself from its environment, while
at the same time maintaining its coupling; this linkage cannot be detached since it is against this very
environment from which the organism arises comes
forth. Now, in this dialogic coupling between the
living unity and the physico-chemical environment,
the balance is slightly weighted towards the living
since it has the active role in this reciprocal coupling. In defining what it is as unity, in the very
same movement it defines what remains exterior to
it, that is to say, its surrounding environment. A
closer examination also makes it evident that this
exteriorization can only be understood, so to speak,
from the inside: the autopoietic unity creates a
perspective from which the exterior is one, which
cannot be confused with the physical surroundings
as they appear to us as observers, the land of physical and chemical laws simpliciter, devoid of such
perspectivism.
In our practice as biologists we switch between
these two domains all the time. We use and manipulate physico-chemical principles and properties,
while swiftly shifting to the use of interpretation and
significance as seen from the point of view of the
living system. Thus a bacteria swimming in a sucrose gradient is conveniently analyzed in terms of
the local effects of sucrose on membrane permeability, medium viscosity, hydromechanics of flagellar
beat, and so on. But on the other hand the sucrose
gradient and flagellar beat are interesting to analyze only because the entire bacteria points to such
items as relevant: their specific significance as components of feeding behavior is only possible by the
presence and perspective of the bacteria as a totality.
Remove the bacteria as a unit, and all correlations
between gradients and hydrodynamic properties become environmental chemical laws, evident to us as
observers but devoid of any special significance.
I have gone into this lengthy harangue because
I believe that this truly dialectical relationship is a

key point. In fact, it might appear as so obvious that

we dont appreciate its deep ramifications. I mean
the important distinction between the environment
of the living system as it appears to an observer and
without reference to the autonomous unitywhich
we shall call hereafter simply the environment and
the environment for the system which is defined
in the same movement that gave rise to its identity and that only exists in that mutual definition
hereinafter the systems world.
The difference between environment and world is
the surplus of signification which haunts the understanding of the living and of cognition, and which
is at the root of how a self becomes one. In other
words, this surplus is the mother of intentionality.
It is quite difficult in practice to keep in view the dialectics of this mutual definition: neither rigid isolation, nor simple continuity with physical chemistry.
In contrast, it is easy to conflate the units world
with its environment since it is so obvious that we
are studying this or that molecular interaction in the
context of an autonomous cellular unit, and hence
to miss completely the surplus added by the organisms perspective. There is no food significance in
sucrose except when a bacteria swims upgradient
and its metabolism uses the molecule in a way that
allows its identity to continue. This surplus is obviously not indifferent to the regularities and texture
(i.e. the laws) that operate in the environment,
that sucrose can create a gradient and traverse a
cell membrane, and so on. On the contrary, the systems world is built on these regularities, which is
what assures that it can maintain its coupling at all
times.
What the autopoietic system doesdue to its
very mode of identityis to constantly confront the
encounters (perturbations, shocks, coupling) with
its environment and treat them from a perspective which is not intrinsic to the encounters themselves. Surely rocks or crystal beads dont beckon
sugars gradients out of all the infinite possibilities of physico-chemical interactions as particularly
meaningfulfor this to happen a perspective from
an actively constituted identity is essential. It is
tempting, at this point, to slide into some vaporous
clouds about meaning reminiscent of the worst
kind of vitalism of the past or informational jargon
of the present. What I emphasize here is that what
is meaningful for an organism is precisely given by
its constitution as a distributed process, with an indissociable link between local processes where an interaction occurs (i.e. physico-chemical forces acting
on the cell), and the coordinated entity which is the
autopoietic unity, giving rise to the handling of its

Biology of Intentionality

Francisco J. Varela

environment without the need to resort to a central

agent that turns the handle from the outsidelike
an elan vital or a pre-existing order at a particular localizationlike a genetic program waiting to
be expressed.
I would like to rephrase this basic idea by turning it upside down as it were. The constant bringing forth of signification is what we may describe
as a permanent lack in the living: it is constantly
bringing forth a signification that is missing, not
pre-given or pre-existent. Relevance must be provided ex nihilo: distinguish relevant from irrelevant
molecular species, follow a gradient uphill and not
downhill, increase the permeability to this ion and
not to that one, and so on. There is an inevitable
contretemps between an autonomous system and its
environment: there is always something which the
system must furnish from its perspective as a functioning whole. In fact, a molecular encounter acquires a significance in the context of the entire operating system and of many simultaneous interactions.
The source for this world-making is always the
breakdowns in autopoiesis, be they minor, like
changes in concentration of some metabolite, or
major, like disruption of the boundary. Due to
the nature of autopoiesis itselfillustrated in the
membrane repair of the minimal simulated example
aboveevery breakdown can be seen as the initiation of an action on what is missing on the part
of the system so that identity might be maintained.
I repeat: no teleology is implied in this so that:
thats what the self-referential logic of autopoiesis
entails in the first place. The action taken will be
visible as an attempt to modify its worldchange
from place of different nutrients, increase in the flow
of a metabolite for metabolic synthesis, and so on.
In brief, this permanent, relentless action on what
is lacking becomes, from the observer side, the ongoing cognitive activity of the system, which is the basis for the incommensurable difference between the
environment within which the system is observed,
and the world within which the system operates.
This cognitive activity is paradoxical at its very
root. On the one hand the action that brings forth
a world is an attempt to reestablish a coupling with
an environment which defies the internal coherence
through encounters and perturbations. But such actions, at the same time, demarcate and separate the
system from that environment, giving rise to a distinct world.
The reader may balk at my use of the term cognitive for cellular systems, and my cavalier sliding
into intentionality. As I said above, one of my main

points here is that we gain by seeing the continuity between this fundamental level of self and the
other regional selves, including the neural and linguistic where we would not hesitate to use the word
cognitive. I suppose others would prefer to introduce the word information instead. Well, there
are reasons why I believe this even more problematic. Although it is clear that we describe an X
that perturbs from the organisms exteriority, X is
not information. In fact, for the organism only is
a that, a something, a basic stuff to in-form from
its own perspective. In physical terms there is stuff,
but it is for nobody. Once there is bodyeven in
this minimal formit becomes in-formed for a self,
in the reciprocal dialectics I have just explicated.
Such in-formation is never a phantom signification
or information bits, waiting to be harvested by a
system. It is a presentation, an occasion for coupling, and it is in this entre-deux that signification
arises (Varela 1979, 1988; Castoriadis 1987).
Thus the term cognitive has two constitutive dimensions: first its coupling dimension, that is, a link
with its environment allowing for its continuity as
individual entity; secondby stretching language, I
admitits imaginary dimension, that is, the surplus
of significance a physical interaction acquires due to
the perspective provided by the global action of the
organism.

1.3

Perception-action and
basic neuro-logic

1.3.1

Operational closure of the

nervous system

In the previous Section, I have presented the fundamental interlock between identity and cognition
as it appears for a minimal organism. In this Section I want to show how the more traditional level
of cognitive properties, involving the brains of multicellular animals, is in some important sense the
continuation of the very same basic process.
The shift from minimal cellularity to organism
with nervous system is swift, and skips the complexity of the various manners in which multicellular organisms arise and evolve (Margulis & Schwartz
1988; Buss 1987; Bonner 1988). This is a transition
in units of selection, and one that implicates the somatic balance of differentiated populations of cells
in an adult organism, as well as crafty development
pathways to establish a bodily structure. As Buss
has stated recently: The evolution of development
is the generation of a somatic ecology that mediates

Biology of Intentionality

Francisco J. Varela

potential conflicts between cell and the individual,

while the organism is simultaneously interacting effectively with the extrasomatic environment (Buss
1987).
For most vertebrates, this somatic ecology is
bound together through the network of lymphocytes that constitute the core of the immune system. Again, a discussion of an immunological self
is not my purpose here. I cannot resist the temptation, nevertheless, to point out, for completeness
sake, that elsewhere I have presented in extenso a
network approach to the immune system and its role
in the establishment of a flexible cellular/molecular
self during the ontogeny of mammals (see Varela
et al. 1988; Varela & Coutinho 1991). In my view
this identity is not, as traditionally stated, a demarcation of self as defense against the non-self of
invading antigens. It is a self-referential, positive assertion of a coherent unitya somatic ecology
mediated through free immunoglobulins and cellular
markers in a dynamical exchange. Immune reactions
against infections, although clearly important, are
mediated by a peripheral immune system, a different sub-population of lymphocytes mobilized not
through network but clonal expansion mechanisms,
like a reflex reactivity acquired through evolution.
But enough of this excursus. For my purposes here
I will expeditiously assume the identity of a multicellular organism, distinctly different from an autopoietic minimal entity in its mode of identity, but
similar in that it demarcates an autonomous entity
from its environment.
Now, whats the specific place of the nervous
system in the bodily operation of a multicellular?
Whenever motion is an integral part of the lifestyle
of a multicellular, there is a corresponding development of a nervous system linking effector (muscles,
secretion) and sensory surfaces (sense organs, nerve
endings). The fundamental logic of the nervous system is that of coupling movements with a stream
of sensory modulations in a circular fashion. The
net result are perception-action correlations arising
from and modulated by an ensemble of intervening
neurons, the interneuron network. Correspondingly,
neurons are unique among the cells of a multicellular organism in their axonal and dendritic ramifications permitting multiple contacts and extending for
large distances (relative to cellular soma sizes) providing the essential medium for this intra-organismic
sensor-effector correlation.
Contrary to current habit, I wish to emphasize
from the start the situatedness of this neuro-logic:
the state of activity of sensors is brought about most
typically by the organisms motions. To an impor-

tant extent, behavior is the regulation of perception.

This does not exclude, of course, independent perturbations from the environment. But what is typically described as a stimulus in the laboratory,
a perturbation which is deliberately independent of
the animals ongoing activity, is less pertinent (outside the laboratory) for understanding the biology
of cognition.
The perceptuo-motor coherencies we describe externally as behavior disguises the arising, within the
interneuron net, of a large sub-setan ensemble as
is usually saidof transiently correlated neurons.
These ensembles are both the source and the result
from the activity of the sensory and effector surfaces.
What changes is the amount of mediating interneurons, and the specific architecture of the respective
nervous system, containing various cortical regions,
layers and nuclei. In humans some 1011 interneurons interconnect some 106 motoneurons which relate to 107 sensory neurons distributed in receptor
surfaces throughout the body. This is a ratio of
10 : 100, 000 : 1 of interneurons mediating the coupling of sensory and motor surfaces. The rise and
decay of neuronal self-organization, say, in the modest Aplysia siphon withdrawal (Zecevic et al. 1989)
is all the more valid in larger brains. Thus for instance a study in the cat (John et al. 1986) finds
that 5100 million neurons are active throughout the
brain during a simple visuo-motor task of pressing
a lever. Such neural assemblies arise in a patchwork
of regional areas, evincing the enormous distributed
parallelism proper to vertebrate brains.
The neuronal dynamics underlying a perceptuomotor task is, then, a network affair, a highly cooperative, two-way system, and not a sequential stageto-stage information abstraction. The dense interconnections among its sub-networks entails that every active neuron will operate as part of a large and
distributed ensemble of the brain, including local
and distant regions. For example, although neurons
in the visual cortex do have distinct responses to
specific features of the visual stimuli (position, direction, contrast, and so on), these responses occur
only in an anesthetized animal with a highly simplified (internal and external) environment. When
more normal sensory conditions are allowed, and the
animal is studied awake and behaving, it has become
increasingly clear that the stereotyped neuronal responses to features are highly labile and context
sensitive. These have been shown, for example, for
the effect of bodily tilt or auditory stimulation. Furthermore, the response characteristics of most neurons in the visual cortex depend directly on other
neurons localized far from their receptive fields (see

Biology of Intentionality

Francisco J. Varela

e.g. Allman et al. 1985); even a change in posture,

while preserving the same identical sensorial stimulation, alters the neuronal responses, demonstrating
that even the supposedly downstream motorium is
in resonance with the sensorium (Abeles 1984).
If I may continue to use vision as an example,
I can take the previous discussion up one level
of generalization, to note that in recent years research has become the study, not of centralized
reconstruction of a visual scene for the benefit
of an ulterior homunculus, but that of a patchwork of visual modalities, including at least form
(shape, size, rigidity), surface properties (color,
texture, specular reflectance, transparency), threedimensional spatial relationships (relative positions,
three-dimensional orientation in space, distance),
and three-dimensional movement (trajectory, rotation). It has become evident that these different aspects of vision are emergent properties of concurrent
sub-networks, which have a degree of independence
and even anatomical separability, but cross-correlate
and work together so that a visual percept is this
coherency.
This kind of architecture is strongly reminiscent
of a society of agents to use Minskys (1987)
metaphor. This multi-directional multiplicity is
counterintuitive but typical of complex systems.
They are counterintuitive because we are used to the
traditional causal mode of input-processing-output
directionality. Nothing in the foregoing description
suggests that the brain operates as a digital computer, with stage-by-stage information processing;
such popular descriptions for a system with this type
simply goes against the grain. Instead, to the network and parallel architecture corresponds a different kind of operation: there is a relaxation time of
back and forth signals until everybody is settled into
a coherent activity. Thus the entire cooperative exercise takes a certain time to culminate, and this is
evident in that, behaviorally, every animal exhibits
a natural temporal parsing. In the human brain
this flurry of cooperation typically takes about 200500 msec, the nowness of a perceptuo-motor unity.
Contrary to what it might seem at first glance either
ethologically or in our own introspection, cognitive
life is not a continual flow, but is punctuated by behavioral patterns which arise and subside in chunks
of time. This insight of recent neuroscienceand
cognitive science in general in factis fundamental for it relieves us from the tyranny of searching
for a centralized, homuncular quality to a cognitive
agents normal behavior.
Let me backtrack a moment and reframe our discussion on cognitive self alongside that of a mini-

mal molecular self. I am claiming that contemporary neuroscienceslike cell biology for the case of
the living organizationgives enough elements to
conceive of the basic organization for a cognitive
self in terms of the operational (not interactional!)
closure of the nervous system (Maturana & Varela
1980; Varela 1979). I speak of closure to highlight the self-referential quality of the interneuron
network and of the perceptuo-motor surfaces whose
correlations it subserves. The qualification operational emphasizes that closure is used in its mathematical sense of recursivity, and not in the sense
of closedness or isolation from interaction, which
would be, of course, nonsense. More specifically,
the nervous system is organized by the operational
closure of a network of reciprocally related modular
sub-networks giving rise to ensembles of coherent
activity such that:
(i) they continuously mediate invariant patterns of
sensory-motor correlation of the sensory and effector surfaces;
(ii) give rise to a behavior for the total organism
as a mobile unit in space.
The operational closure of the nervous system
then brings forth a specific mode of coherence, which
is embedded in the organism. This coherence is a
cognitive self : a unit of perception/motion in space,
sensory-motor invariances mediated through the interneuron network. The passage to cognition happens at the level of a behavioral entity, and not, as
in the basic cellular self, as a spatially bounded entity. The key in this cognitive process is the nervous
system through its neuro-logic. In other words the
cognitive self is the manner in which the organism,
through its own self-produced activity, becomes a
distinct entity in space, but always coupled to its
corresponding environment from which it remains
nevertheless distinct. A distinct coherent self which,
by the very same process of constituting itself, configures an external world of perception and action.

1.3.2

Cognitive self and

perceptual world

The nature of the identity of the cognitive self just

discussed is, like that of the basic cellular self, one
of emergence through a distributed process. The
emergent properties of an interneuron network are,
however, quite different in their properties and likely
to be much more rich in possibilities. What I wish
to emphasize here is recent insights into the easiness with which lots of simple agents having simple properties may be brought together, even in a
10

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Francisco J. Varela

haphazard way, to give rise to what appears to an

observer a purposeful and integrated whole, without
the need for a central supervision. We have already
touched on this theme when discussing the nature of
the autopoietic process and cellular automata modelling, and later when discussing the constant arising and subsiding of neuronal ensemble underlying
behavior. This issue of emergent properties is crucial for my whole argument here, although I base
my conclusions on contemporary studies from various biology-inspired complex systems (Farmer et al.
1986; Langton 1989a).
What is particularly important is that we can admit that (i) a system can have separate local components which (ii) there is no center or localized self,
and yet the whole behaves as a unit and for the observer it is as if there was a coordinating agent virtually present at the center. This is what I meant
when referring to a selfless selfwe could also postulate a virtual self: a coherent global pattern that
emerges through simple local components, appearing to have a central location where none is to be
found, and yet essential as a level of interaction for
the behavior of the whole unity.
The import of such current models, formalisms
and case studies of complex systems (i.e. emergent
properties through coordinated simple elements) is,
in my eyes, quite profound for our understanding of
cognitive properties. It introduces an explicit alternative to the dominant computationalist/cognitivist
tradition in the study of cognitive properties for
which the central idea is that of syntax independent
of materiality which can support a semantics for an
environment. This is also becoming more and more
true for the researchers of artificial cognitive systems, as the current connectionist schools have made
it clear by now. What we find in brains is a promiscuous tinkering of networks and sub-networks giving
no evidence for a structured decomposition from top
to bottom as is typical of a computer algorithm. Accordingly, one of the first messages from the study
of artificial neural networks in modern connectionist terms is the absence of a principled distinction
between software and hardware, or more, precisely
between symbols and non-symbols. In fact, all we
find in modern artificial neural network machines
are relative activities between ensembles underlying the regularities we call their behavior or performance. We may see that some of these ensembles
recur regularly enough to describe them as being
program-like, but this is another matter. Although
artificially built, such emerging ensembles cannot be
called computations in the sense that their dynamics cannot be formally specifiable as the imple-

mentation of some high-level algorithm. Neural networks even in their fine detail are not like a machine
language, since there is simply no transition between
such elemental operational atoms with a semantics
and the larger emergent level where behavior occurs. If there were, the classical computer wisdom
would immediately apply: ignore the hardware since
it adds nothing of significance to the actual computation (other than constraints of time and space). In
contrast, in distributed, network models these details are precisely what makes a global effect possible, and why they mark a sharp break with tradition
in AI. Naturally this reinforces the parallel conclusions that apply to natural neural networks in the
brain, as we discussed before.
I have raised this point to caution the reader
against the force of many years of dominance of
computationalism, and the consequent tendency to
identify the cognitive self with some computer program or high level computational description. This
will not do. The cognitive self is its own implementation: its history and its action are of one piece.
Now this demands that we clarify now the second
aspect of the self to be addressed: its mode of relation with the environment.

1.3.3

Intentionality and neuro-logic

Ordinary life is necessarily one of situated agents,

continually coming up with what to do faced
with ongoing parallel activities in their various
perceptuo-motor systems.
This continual redefinition of what to do is not at all like a plan,
stored in a repertoire of potential alternatives, but
enormously dependent on contingency, improvisation, and more flexible than planning. Situatedness
means that a cognitive entity hasby definitiona
perspective. This means that it isnt related to its
environment objectively, that is independently of
the systems location, heading, attitudes and history. Instead, it relates to it in relation to the
perspective established by the constantly emerging
properties of the agent itself and in terms of the role
such running redefinition plays in the systems entire
coherence.
Again, as we did for the minimal cellular self, we
must sharply differentiate between environment and
world. And again the mode of coupling is double.
On the one hand, such body-in-space clearly happens through the interactions with the environment
on which it depends. These interactions are of the
nature of macrophysical encounterssensory transduction, muscle force and performance, light and radiations, and so onnothing surprising about them.

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Francisco J. Varela

However this coupling is possible only if the encounters are embraced from the perspective of the system
itself. This amounts, quite specifically, to elaborating a surplus signification relative to this perspective. Whatever is encountered must be valued one
way or anotherlike, dislike, ignoreand acted on
some way or anotherattraction, rejection, neutrality. This basic assessment is inseparable from the
way in which the coupling event encounters a functioning perceptuo-motor unit, and it gives rise to
an intention (I am tempted to say desire), that
unique quality of living cognition (Dennett 1987).
Phrased in other terms, the nature of the environment for a cognitive self acquires a curious status:
it is that which lends itself (es lehnt sich an. . . ) to
a surplus of significance. Like jazz improvisation,
environment provides the excuse for the neural
music from the perspective of the cognitive system involved. At the same time, the organism cannot live without this constant coupling and the constantly emerging regularities; without the possibility
of coupled activity the system would become a mere
solipsistic ghost.
For instance, light and reflectance (among many
other macrophysical parameters such as edges and
textures, but let us simplify for the arguments
sake), lend themselves to a wide variety of color
spaces, depending on the nervous system involved
in that encounter. During their respective evolutionary paths, teleost fishes, birds, mammals, and
insects have brought forth various different color
spaces not only with quite distinct behavioral significance, but with different dimensionalities so that
it is not a matter of more or less resolution of colors (Thompson et al. 1992). Color is demonstrably not a property that is to be recovered from
the environmental information in some unique
way. Color is a dimension that shows up only in
the phylogenetic dialogue between an environment
and the history of an active autonomous self which
partly defines what counts as an environment. Light
and reflectances provide a mode of coupling, a perturbation which triggers, which gives an occasion
for the enormous in-formative capacity of neural
networks for constituting sensori-motor correlations
and hence to put into action their capacity for imagining and presenting. It is only after all this has
happened, after a mode of coupling becomes regular and repetitive, like colors in oursand others
worlds, that we observers, for ease of language, say
color corresponds to or represents an aspect of the
world.
A dramatic recent example of this surplus significance and the dazzling performance of the brain as

the generator of neural narratives is provided by

the technology of the so-called virtual realities.
Visual perception and motions thus give rise to regularities which are proper to this new manner of
perceptuo-motor coupling. What is most significant
for me here is the veracity of the world which rapidly
springs forth: we inhabit a body within this new
world after a short time of trying this new situation (i.e. 15 minutes or so), and the experience is of
truly flying through walls or of delving into fractal
universes. This is so in spite of the poor quality of
the image, the low sensitivity of the sensors, and the
limited amount of interlinking between sensory and
image surfaces through a program that runs in a personal computer. Through its closure, the nervous
system is such a gifted synthesizer of regularities
that any basic material suffices as an environment
to bring forth a compelling world.
This very same strategy of the situatedness of an
agent which is progressively endowed with richer internal self-organizing modules is becoming a productive research program even for the very pragmatically oriented field of artificial intelligence. To
quote R. Brooks, one of the main exponents of this
tendency at some length:
I . . . argue for a different approach to creating Artificial Intelligence:
We must incrementally build up the
capabilities of intelligent systems at
each step of the way and thus automatically ensure that the pieces and
their interfaces are valid.
At each step we should build complete
intelligent systems that we let loose in
the real world with real sensing and
real action. Anything less provides a
candidate with which we can delude
ourselves.
We have been following this approach and
have built a series of autonomous mobile
robots. We have reached an unexpected
conclusion (C) and have a rather radical
hypothesis (H).
C : When we examine very simple level
intelligence we find that explicit representations and models of the world
simply get in the way. It turns out to
be better to use the world as its own
model.
H : Representation is the wrong unit of
abstraction in building the bulkiest
parts of intelligent systems.
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Francisco J. Varela

Representation has been the central issue

in Artificial Intelligence work over the last
15 years only because it has provided an
interface between otherwise isolated modules and conference papers.

closure of the interneuron network. This activity is

observable as multiple sub-networks, acting in parallel and interwoven in complex bricolages, giving rise
again and again to coherent patterns which manifest
themselves as behaviors. Secondly, I have tried to
clarify how this emergent, parallel and distributed
dynamics is inseparable from the constitution of a
world, which is none other than the surplus of meaning and intentions carried by situated behavior. If
the links to the physical environment are inevitable,
the uniqueness of the cognitive self is this constant
genesis of meaning. Or, again to invert the description, the uniqueness of the cognitive self is this constitutive lack of signification which must be supplied
faced with the permanent perturbations and breakdowns of the ongoing perceptuo-motor life. Cognition is action about what is missing, filling the fault
from the perspective of a cognitive self.
This view amounts to a biology of intentionality. In fact, it answers without ambiguity two key
problems: the symbol (Harnad 1991) and the syntax grounding problems (Searle 1990). The first one
refers to the mystery of the origin of signification
of natural symbols, since in the classical cognitivist
option there is an intrinsic need for an arbitrary semantic assignment. The answer provided by this
approach is that the signification arises in the emergence of a viewpoint proper to the autonomous constitution of the organism at all its level, starting
with its basic autopoiesis. The syntax grounding
problem claims that all syntactic operations in a
symbol system are observer-dependent. Our answer
is precisely that the constitution of an autonomous
unit provides the means for regularities to appear
which are the bases of composionality. This can
manifest at the cellular level as with the celebrated
genetic code for protein sysnthesis, or at the brain
level with compositional properties of neural ensembles. There is nothing mysterious in the emergence
of such composable regularities. Thus contrary to
most philosophical debate today (be this Searle,
Harnad, or Dennett) we do not need to have an arbitrary observer-dependent assiginment of either significance or compositionality. The key is in the identity properties generated by the self-constitution of
the organism.

Brooks (1987, p. 1)
When the synthesis of intelligent behavior is approached in such an incremental manner, with strict
adherence to the sensory-motor viability of an agent,
the notion that the world is a source of information
to be represented simply disappears. The autonomy of the cognitive self comes fully in focus. Thus
in Brookss proposal his minimal creatures join together various activities through a rule of cohabitation between them. This is homologous to an
evolutionary pathway through which modular subnetworks intertwined with each other in the brain.
The expected result are more truly intelligent autonomous sense-giving devices, rather than brittle
informational processors which depend on a pregiven environment or an optimal plan.
It is interesting to note that in this paper Brooks
also traces the origin of what he describes as the
deception of AI to the tendency in AI (and in
the rest of cognitive science as well) to abstraction,
i.e., for factoring out situated perception and motor
skills. As I have argued here (and as Brooks argues
for his own reasons), such abstraction misses the
essence of cognitive intelligence, which resides only
in its embodiment. It is as if one could separate
cognitive problems in two parts: that which can be
solved through abstraction and that which cannot
be. The second is typically perception-action and
motor skills of agents in unspecified environments.
When approached from this self-situated perspective there is no place where perception could deliver a representation of the world in the traditional
sense. The world shows up through the enactment
of the perceptuo-motor regularities. Just as there
is no central representation there is no central system. Each activity layer connects perception to action directly. It is only the observer of the Creature
who imputes a central representation or central control. The creature itself has none: it is a collection
of competing behaviors. Out of the local chaos of
their interactions there emerges, in the eye of the
observer, a coherent pattern of behavior (Brooks
1986, p. 11).
To conclude, the two main points that I have been
trying to bring into full view in this Section devoted to the cognitive self are as follows. First, I
have tried to spell out the nature of its identity as a
body in motion-and-space through the operational

1.4

Organisms double
dialectics

Organism, then, is a key center for cognitive science,

and it cannot be broached as a single process. We
are forced to discover regions that interweave in

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Francisco J. Varela

complex manners, and, in the case of humans, that

extend beyond the strict confines of the body into
the socio-linguistic register.
Further, what I have argued is that behind this
meshwork of the various selves we carry around, is
that all of these selves share a common and fundamental logic while differing in their specificity. This
is a case of what Wittgenstein would have called
family resemblances: rather than any characteristic being common to all instances, we deal with a
cluster of overlapping characteristics. We may also
speak of this cluster of common characteristics as
a shared dialectic, since we are dealing here with
double-sided process, where co-definition is at the
core of the matter. In fact, I submit that the organismic dialectic of self is a two-tiered affair: We have
on the one hand the dialectics of identity of self;
on the other hand the dialectics through which this
identity, once established, brings forth a world from
an environment. Identity and knowledge stand in relation to each other as two sides of a single process:
that forms the core of the dialectics of all selves.
First, a dialectics of identity establishes an autonomous agent, a for-itself (pour soi). This identity is established through a bootstrapping of two
terms:

does not exist out there in an environment that

acts as a landing pad for an organism that somehow drops or is parachuted into the world. Instead, living beings and their worlds of meaning
stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or co-determination. Thus what we describe as significant environmental regularities are
not external features that have been internalized, as
the dominant representationalist tradition in cognitive scienceand adaptationism in evolutionary
biologyassumes. Environmental regularities are
the result of a conjoint history, a congruence which
unfolds from a long history of co-determination. In
Lewontins (1983) words, the organism is both the
subject and the object of evolution.
This second tier of the organisms dialectics, then,
is also established through the bootstrapping of two
terms:
(i) a significance term which refers to the necessary emergence of a surplus meaning proper
to the perspective of the constituted self: cellular semantics, behavioral perception and action, self/non-self as somatic assertion, personal
identity,
(ii) a coupling term which refers to the necessary and permanent embeddedness and dependency of the self on its environment, since only
through such coupling can its world be brought
forth: physico-chemical laws for the cellular
world, macroscopic physical properties for cognitive behavior, molecular interaction for immune self, socio-linguistic exchanges for our
subjective selves.

(i) a dynamical term which refers to an assembly of

components in network interactions and which
are capable of emergent properties: metabolic
nets, neural assemblies, clonal antibody networks, linguistic recursivity;
(ii) a global term which refers to emerging properties, a totality which conditions (downwardly)
the network components: cellular membranes,
sensory-motor body in space, self/non-self discrimination, personal I.

Double dialectics: the nature of an identity and

the nature of a relation to a world. Double paradoxicality: Self-production by dependent containment; autonomy of knowledge through environmental coupling. Both dialectics give rise to the shifting
nature of organism, ineluctably forming itself and
in-forming where it is, and equally ineluctably implicated in the background from whence it springs
forth. Organisms, those fascinating meshworks of
selfless selves, no more nor less than open-ended,
multi-level circular existences, always driven by the
lack of significance they engender by asserting their
presence.

These two terms are truly in a relation of codefinition. On the one hand the global level cannot exist without the network level since it comes
forth through it. On the other hand the dynamical
level cannot not exist and operate as such without
it being contained and lodged into an encompassing
unity which makes it possible.
Second, a dialectics of knowledge establishes a
world of cognitive significance for this identity. This
can only arise from the perspective provided by this
identity, which adds a surplus of significance to the
interactions of the environment proper to the constituting parts.
The key point, then, is that the organism brings
forth and specifies its own domain of problems
and actions to be solved; this cognitive domain

Acknowledgments
The financial support of CNRS, Fondation de France
(Chaire Scientifique) and the Prince Trust Fund is
gratefully acknowledged.
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