varelahommage biological research 2003

8/6/2019 VarelaHommage Biological Research 2003

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2 1Biol Res36: 21-59, 2003

Received: December 11, 2001. In revised form: May 29, 2002. Accepted: June 27, 2002

Corresponding Author: David Rudrauf. Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Crbrale, CNRS UPR 640,Hpital de la Piti-Salptrire, 47 Bd de lHpital, 75651, Paris Cedex 13, France.

Phone: (33-1) 42 16 11 72 - e-mail: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

In this paper we will review FranciscoVarelas ideas about what is now oftencalled the hard problem (Chalmers,1996): the issue of the relationships betweenour subjective experience and our objectivebio-physical embodiment.

Francisco Varela liked to introduce

himself by saying: Im a biologist who hasbeen interested in the biological roots ofcognitive phenomena (Varela, 1990). Fromthis s tandpoin t , he inves t iga ted thebiological bas is of subject ivi ty andconscious experience throughout his life asa researcher. He did so in a very originalway, illuminating this fundamental issuewith deep and fascinating insights.

From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology:Francisco Varelas exploration of the biophysics of being

DAVID RUDRAUF, ANTOINE LUTZ, DIEGO COSMELLI, JEAN-PHILIPPE LACHAUX,

MICHEL LE VAN QUYEN

Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Crbrale, Paris, France

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews in detail Francisco Varelas work on subjectivity and consciousness in the biological sciences.His original approach to this hard problem presents a subjectivity that is radically intertwined with its biologicaland physical roots. It must be understood within the framework of his theory of a concrete, embodied dynamics,grounded in his general theory of autonomous systems. Through concepts and paradigms such as biologicalautonomy, embodiment and neurophenomenology, the article explores the multiple levels of circular causalityassumed by Varela to play a fundamental role in the emergence of human experience. The concept of biologicalautonomy provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for characterizing biological life and identity as anemergent and circular self-producing process. Embodiment provides a systemic and dynamical framework forunderstanding how a cognitive selfa mindcan arise in an organism in the midst of its operational cycles ofinternal regulation and ongoing sensorimotor coupling. Global subjective properties can emerge at different levelsfrom the interactions of components and can reciprocally constrain local processes through an ongoing, recursivemorphodynamics. Neurophenomenology is a supplementary step in the study of consciousness. Through a rigorousmethod, it advocates the careful examination of experience with first-person methodologies. It attempts to createheuristic mutual constraints between biophysical data and data produced by accounts of subjective experience. Theaim is to explicitly ground the active and disciplined insight the subject has about his/her experience in abiophysical emergent process. Finally, we discuss Varelas essential contribution to our understanding of thegeneration of consciousness in the framework of what we call his biophysics of being.

Keywords: Autonomous systems; Brain dynamics, Consciousness, Embodiment, Francisco Varela,

Neurophenomenology.

In the last years of his life, he proposed ascientific research program, which he calledneurophenomenology (Varela, 1996), thataimed to address the problem pragmatically.This program has already produced interestingresults (Lutz et al, 2002) and is currentlybeing conducted by colleagues from hisFrench Brain Dynamics team, including theauthors of this paper. With more than 180

published articles and 10 books (not tomention the many books he edited) ,Franciscos work extends into many scientificf ields: cybernetics , neurophysiology,theoretical biology, mathematics ,immunology, epistemology, neuropathology(epileptology), brain imaging and braindynamics.


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Francisco Varela was a mentor to all ofthe present authors: one year after hispremature death, this article serves both ashomage and as an occasion to share onepossible synthesis of his work with thescientific community. One of its goals is to

disclose the coherence of his thinkingthroughout his career, situating his laterand f inal views on the biology andphenomenology of consciousness withinthe framework of his general theory ofau tonomous sys tems . This theory ,developed early on, is essential for a fullunders tanding of what he meant byembodied mind (Varela et al, 1991;Thompson and Varela, 2001).

Although this article is presented as a

synthesis, we have chosen to include alarge corpus of quotes and references inorder to provide the reader with concretepoints of access to these abstract andcomplex ideas. We have used a system ofnotes so as not to interrupt the flow of thetext.

The f ramework sketched here isnecessarily partial in relation to the richnessand multiplicity of Francisco Varelasthought, which includes not only reflectionson theoretical biology, immunology,neuroscience, phenomenology and theepistemology of science, but also on ethicsand spirituality, domains of profoundpersonal commitment for him.

Finally, while the authors obviously agreeon the views and material presented here,the interpretations and emphasis placed ondifferent aspects of Franciscos work byeach one of us clearly varies. Given therichness and diversity of his thought, wecannot claim to have exhausted all possiblepoints of view in this synthesis; indeed, toattempt to do so would only limit theposs ib i l i t i e s o f our own per sona lexplorations of his deeply insightful work.

The thematic landscape

Through more than thirty years of research

Francisco searched for an account ofcognition. Some periods of particularinterest can be distinguished: the years from1968 to 1986 were marked by his work both

on the neurophysiology of vision and oncybernetics, first with Torsten Wiesel atHarvard and later with Humberto Maturanaat the University of Chile, (reflections onbrain organization can already be seenhere); from 1986 to 1995 he was particularly

interested in self-organization in immunenetworks; finally, from 1995 until his deathin May 2001, he worked on brain dynamics,anticipation of epileptic seizures andneurophenomenology with his French braindynamics group in the Cogni t iveNeurosc ience and Bra in ImagingLaboratory in Paris.

Yet this arbitrary division into historicalperiods should not mask the continuity ofhis thinking: as early as 1971 he devoted anarticle to the issue of self-consciousness(Varela, 1971) while in 1997 he was stillwriting about autopoiesis and autonomy(Thompson and Varela, 1999).

For Francisco, theory was a crucialcomplement to experimentation in scientificwork. Almost two thirds of his articles,book chapters and reviews are theoretical:about a quarter are experimental papers,principally produced during the first andlast periods of his career; the rest aremethodological papers, mainly writtenduring the last period of his life, in whichVarela addressed large-scale synchroniesand non-linear analysis of brainwaves,including works on seizure anticipation.

In the following paper, while many of theFranciscos views might appear to be veryspeculative, they are so in a heuristic way:we hope they will be received as thefundamental contribution we believe themto be.

Setting the stage: experience asexplanandum

It is a major challenge for contemporarynaturalistic science to explain the existenceand functioning of consciousness on asubjective, experiential level as well as interms of its putative causal efficiency

(Pe t i to t et al , 1999) . The r ecentdevelopment of brain imaging techniques(such as fMRI, PET, MEEG/EEG) andprogress made in signal analysis for

RUDRAUF ET AL. Biol Res 36, 2003, 21-59


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characterising fast dynamical interactions(cf. Tootell et al, 1998; Lachaux et al,1999; Friston, 2002), which allow the studyof the human brain during cognitive tasks,have provided an essential experimentalframework for research into consciousness.

Nevertheless, in spite of an array oftheore t ica l p ropos i t ions (Ede lman,1989, 2001; Gray 1995; Block, 1996 ;Tononi and Edelman,1998a, 1998b; Crickand Koch, 1998; Damasio, 1994, 1995,1999, 2000, 2001; Parvizi and Damasio,2001; Engel and Singer, 2001; Logothetis1998a; Dehaene and Naccache 2001; Varelaet al 1991; Varela, 1999a; Roy et al, 1999;Thompson and Varela 2001; Zeman, 2001),as well as encouraging experimental results

on the neural correlates of consciousness(Lane et al , 1998; Logothetis 1998b;Rodriguez et al, 1999; Srinivasan et al,1999; Damasio et al, 2000; Beauregard etal , 2001; Lutz et al,2002 ), the scientificcommunity is still grappling with what isknown as the explanatory gap (Levine,1983) : the relat ionships between anindividuals physical system and hissubjective properties remain obscure.

Computa t iona l i s t , f unc t iona l i s t o rneuroreductionist approaches generallylead to a paradoxical eliminativism, i.e. theelimination of consciousness as the domainof our subjective experience during thevery process of explanation. No evidenceabout the relation between the objectiveand subjective realms can be provided ifthe initial explanandum itself (that whichhas to be explained), has been banished asa valid object of study! In the explanation,phenomenal properties of consciousness assuch must appear (Varela, 1976; Varela,1996; Roy et al, 1999).

Contrary to eliminativism, it is wellknown that Franciscos posit ion wassituated squarely in the context of what hesaw as the irreducible nature of consciousexperience.

As early as 1976 (Varela, 1976), he calledfor a science of the sense of self, of

direct knowledge1. He sought a scienceof mind embodiment (Varela et al, 1991)that incorporates experience, beingthere (Varela, 1999c), sentience and thefeeling of being alive (Thompson andVarela, 2001). He addressed the need for a

methodology to explore this realm, anexperiential neuroscience (Varela, 1999b)at the concrete roots of the emergence ofconsciousness . Varela posed the problemas follows: on the one hand we need toaddress our condition as bodily processes;on the other hand we are also an existencewhich is already there, aDasein, constitutedas an identity, and which cannot leap outand take a disembodied look at how it gotto be there (Varela, 1991). For Francisco,

cognition always takes place in the contextof feeling consciousness and intuition(Varela, 1976).

Exper ience or phenomena lexperience (Varela, 1996) is that part ofour cognition that we access from asubjective point of view; it is the realm ofconsciousness. Mind, on the other hand,embraces the more general domain ofcognition, which includes conscious andunconscious phenomena while always beingrooted in a self. Indeed, our intuitiveapprehension of mind shows it to befundamentally related to subjectivity andconsciousness: A mind is always someonesmind, my mind; thus, the issue of the mindcannot be seen to be independent from thatof the self. In Franciscos words: Here, bymind I mean anything that has to do withmentality, with cognition and ultimatelywith experience (Varela, 1999b).

The Nagel Effect

In Nagels famous article, What is it like tobe a bat?, to which Francisco often referred(1974) the author framed the issue by statingthat fundamentally an organism hasconscious mental states if and only if thereis something that it is like to be that

1 In 1976 Francisco (Varela, 1976) already deplores that description of other minds (generally addressed in term of

computation, neurological net and logical discourses) leaves a residue, my mind, including the being, the sense of self,

a direct knowledge, experience : as long as there is such a remnant [...] the Mind-Body relation is still a problem.



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organism something it is like for theorganism. For Nagel this ef fectcorresponds to the subjective character ofexperience, which is related to a point ofview, constituting the essence of theinternal world. Pithily, he observes that

if mental processes are indeed physicalprocesses, then there is something it is like,intrinsically, to undergo certain physicalprocesses . We wil l refer to thishypothetical mental effect of having

physical processes as the Nagel Effect.Within such a framework we must wonder,

as Nagel suggests, what objectivity cantell us about subjective experience, how anobjective process can have a subjectivenature and, reciprocally, how subjective

experience can have an objective nature.Accord ing to the phys ics mode l ,

objectivity accounts for observableproperties in the World, by describing themas spatial-temporal interactions betweenspatial- temporal elements def ined asstructures or dimensions in a state spacewith laws of evolution. Objectivity is therealm of the phenomenology of objects,processes , t ra jector ies , force , f ie ld ,attraction, repulsion, acceleration, mass,energy, etc. The crucial question is howsuch modes of description can provide uswith deep insights about the origin of oursubjective experience.2

According to Francisco, the search forthe origin of thisNagel Effectof subjectiveexperience must be grounded in the notionof a radicalembodiment, that is, in theconcrete situated phenomenology of ourcoping as a biophysical system (Varela etal , 1991; Thompson and Varela, 2001).

Embodimentis a key, if complex, concept.This article will illuminate precisely what

Francisco meant by embodiment orembodied mind. References to the notionof embodimentalways include the notionofmind; in humans, it cannot be separatedfrom either the notion of mind or that ofself. In Franciscos view, embodiment is

our departure point as living beings, a giventhat we must characterize, but also theexplanans, i.e. the domain of explanationfor a future science of being. Embodimentis fundamentally related to what he calledthe natural history of circularity (Varela,1988a). Throughout this article the notionof c i rcular i ty and i ts precisephenomenology will be omnipresent.

As will become apparent in the followingpages , his theory of embodiment

continuously moves between the pursuit ofan operational, concrete description ofbiophysical processes and the choice of veryabs tract and general tools to bui ldexplanations or fill out insights (Varela,1979). Yet these abstract or general conceptswere always shaped to fit as closely aspossible the model or nature of the systemsmechanisms. Francisco studied the naturalfact of embodiment simultaneously fromthe perspect ives of a biologis t , acybernetician and a neuroscientist, oftenusing tools and systemic descriptions basedon non-linear mathematical physics3. Hisapproach motivated the reference to abiophysics of being4 in the title of this article.

At the same time, Franciscos conceptionsare all grounded in a phenomenologicalapproach to subjectivity as well as to theorganism itself. In Franciscos theoreticaldevelopments,5 the embodiment of mindwhether approached from the first- or third-person point of viewalways has thecharacter of a descriptive phenomenology.

2 In this sense objectivity is simply a phenomenology, a description of behaviors of systems in general. As such, it obviously

depends on an observer. But, for the moment let us avoid the realism/idealism debate, by saying that this does not really matter!

Even if objective descriptions are mental constructions, let us just work within their internal logic without wondering if they

correspond to a realityper se . As in other realms of science, the criteria for understanding should only be the heuristic value

and conceptual generative power of such an approach without needing to refer to the issue of its metaphysical ontology.

3 The biological spontaneity and complex behaviors of living beings, their intrinsic dynamic character, drove Francisco to

call for a brownian science, a rigorous theory of vagueness adapted to biological systems (Varela, 1981).

4 Far from having any exclusively molecularist connotations, here the notion ofbiophysics can be understood as the scientifichorizon of an integrative biophysics yet to come.

5 In The specious present(Varela, 1999a), Francisco promoted naturalizing phenomenology as well as phenomenologizing

neuroscience.



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This paper is an attempt to highlight thelogic that guided the greater part ofFranciscos work, starting from his generalprinciples of living systems as a necessaryprelude to the understanding of humansubjectivity. Our approach to Franciscos

theory follows a constructivist path:beginning with the theory of autopoiesisand autonomy, we move on to examine howFrancisco frames embodiment theoretically,and end wi th neurophenomenology .Although our objective is not to look at theconcepts historically, the order of thispresentation coincides generally with thehistorical order of Franciscos conceptualdevelopments.

THE FRAMEWORK: THE CONDITION OF BEING AN

AUTONOMOUS SYSTEM

Our point of departure as embodied beingsis situated in a general framework thatconcerns a l l l iv ing sys tems: that of autonomy.6 In this section, we will presentFranciscos thought on our fundamentalorganization as living beings, and thecor responding theore t ica l ob jec t heconstructed: the autonomous system.

Life as a bringing forth of identity

What a re the b io log ica l roo ts o f ind iv idua l i ty?(Vare la , 1987) Thefundamental fea ture that Humber toMaturana and Francisco identified in theirsearch for what is common to all livingbeings (that which makes us recognize themas belonging to the same class despite theirdiversity), was the evidence of a unitarynature, a coherent wholeness, an autonomythat is brought forth by the system itself(Maturana and Varela, 1973; Varela et al,1974; Maturana and Varela, 1980). Thereis a capacity of living systems to maintaintheir identity in spite of the fluctuations

which affect them (Varela, 1979; Maturanaand Varela, 1973; Varela et al, 1974). Thisidentity is actively resistant to all the naturalforces and tendencies, such as the increaseof entropy, that tend to annihilate it. Whatis indeed fascinating about living beings is

that they assert their identity from within,thus opening up the possibility ofobservingthem as distinct units in their domain ofoperation. The living being is a process,that of being autonomous (Varela,1977a). Therefore, it is not Reproductionor Evolution or any list of properties thatprimordially characterizes life, but ratherindividual organization that allows forautonomy (Varela, 1984a). For instance wecan conceive of the existence of such an

organiza t ion wi thout ab i l i ty of Reproduction and Evolution, but thereciprocal is not true.

As an autonomous individuality, a livingsystem does indeed present i tself toobservers with wholeness, as a system-whole, a total, closed, complete, full,stable, self-contained system (Varela,1976). As a whole, it behaves as a dynamicalsystem exhibiting continuous structuralchanges but with organizational invariance.This organizationally invariant processdefines the systems identity (Varela,1984a): the domain of deformations thatthe system can be submitted to withoutlosing its identity (i.e. and still maintain itsorganiza t ion) i s the domain of transformations where it exists as a unity(Varela, 1979).

From a cybernetic perspective Franciscoconceived this wholeness as the result of aco-dependency of parts in an ongoingprocess : A whole i s here a se t of s imul taneous in te rac t ions of pa r t s(components, nodes, sub-systems) whichexhibit stability as a totality. Theparts arethe carriers of particular interactions whichwe can chop out from the whole andconsider their participation in varioussequential processes that constitute the

6 In this section we introduce Franciscos concepts of autonomy and autopoiesis. As we chose to focus on the embodiment of

mind and consciousness in this article, we will consider these concepts from the perspective of embodied living beings, whichare autopoietic systems in the physical space (Varela, 1976), and particularly in the context of animals, as this is precisely our

own condition of being. But we must note that in Franciscos theory autonomy is a general phenomenon applicable in other

spaces of interaction such as ecosystems, artificial intelligence and artificial life, social sciences, linguistics, economics and

so on. In the same way autopoiesis can apply in abstract space.



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whole. The whole re-emerges when we seethe resulting total stability (i.e. the fixedpoint of the limit process) (Varela, 1976).Thus, it is more than a question of specificchemical components (carbon hydrates,proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, etc.), but is

fundamentally one of the relations whichthe components must satisfy in order toconstitute a living system (Varela, 1979).

Within this framework it must be noticedthat Franciscos approach was radicallymechanis t ic : our approach wi l l bemechanistic. We wont appeal to any forcesor principles not belonging to the universeof physics [...] We adopt in fact the basicprinciples of the Cybernetics and the Theoryof systems. What is just the essence of the

modern mechanism. Living systems aremachines (Varela, 1979). Thus, forFrancisco, living beings were mechanistic(dynamical) systems defined by theirorganization (Varela, 1981).

Star t ing from these considerations,F ranc isco and Humber to Maturanaproposed a general but powerful biophysicalmechanism, foundational to what Varelacalled the bio-logic (Varela, 1991).

Contrary to the usual way a machinefunctions, with a product that is differentfrom the machine itself, in the case of livingmachines se l f -produc t ion i s thefundamental def ining feature of the

autonomy of the organism (Maturana andVarela, 1973). Thus, in the particular caseof living organisms, the mechanism ofautonomy was baptized autopoiesis or self-

production: An autopoietic system isorganized (defined as a unity) as a network

of processes of production (transformationand destruction) of components thatproduces the components that: 1) throughtheir interactions and transformationscontinuously regenerate and realize thenetwork of processes (relations) thatproduce them; and 2) constitute it (themachine) as a concrete unity in the space inwhich they ex is t by spec i fy ing thetopological domain of its realization assuch a network (Varela, 1979).

In such a process (Fig 1) there is a mutualspecification or definition of the internal,chemical transformations and of thephysical boundaries (Varela, 1988b).Identity emerges and persists within thebounded system through a continuouscircular or recurrent process. Specificorganizational relations (like the ensembleof biochemical pathways of the cell and itsmembranes), bounding the metabolism andthe phys io logy of the sys tem, a recontinuously regenerating through theinternal production of their substratumcomponents (cell organelles and structures,molecules controlling the metabolism) in

FIGURE 1 The autopoietic machine: a circular causality.

The autopoietic organization is defined as a unit by a network of production of components (chemical

reactions) which (i) participate recursively in the same network of production of components (chemical

reactions) that produced them, and (ii) carry out the network of production as a unit in the space in which

the components exist.



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the correct functional, dynamical andspatial distribution. In other words, thesystem continuously produces itselfthroughthe production of its own components inthe topological distribution that the ongoingglobal process constrains, and that the

components require to mainta in therelations that define them. Living systemstransform matter in themselves in such away that their organization is the productof their operation (Varela, 1979).

Within such a self-referential framework,the origin of life is conceived as thetransition from a chemical environment toa self-produced identity (Dupuy and Varela,1991) . The mos t pa rad igmat ic caseexemplifying this mechanism is that of cell

autonomy, but it applies to all livingsystems. This is valid also for superiororganisms whose internal self-producingmechanism lies in integrated, recurrent,internal, metabolic and physiologicalrelationships, with increasingly complexbehaviors and functional dependencies.

As generative of living autonomoussystems, autopoiesis appeared to Franciscoas the common, specific feature, theuniqueness, of life: autopoiesis is themechanism which endows living systemswith the property of being autonomous;autopoies is is an expl icat ion of theautonomy of the living (Varela, 1981). Itis the biophysical origin of individuality:It is autopoiesis which defines the cell asa unity endowed with an individuality(Varela, 1979). Furthermore, autopoiesisis a generative concept: We claim that thenotion of autopoiesis is necessary andsufficient to define the organization of theliving being (Maturana and Varela, 1973).To Franciscos mind, this far f romequilibrium process lives: If a physicalsys tem is autopoie t ic , i t i s l iv ing.Described as a mechanism, autopoiesismakes the link between physics and biology:The phenomenology of living systems is

then the mechanicist phenomenology ofthe physical autopoietic machines [...] withpurely mechanicist notions, true for everymechanicist phenomenon in any space, onecan explain completely this organizationand its origin. (Varela, 1979)7

Organizational closure: the general logicof embodiment

The fundamental salient feature of thisframework of autonomy is the circular,closed, self-referential characteristic of theorganization of the living system, whichcreates a minimal distinction between aninterior and an exterior, and guarantees the

continuous dynamical, mechanic generationof the stable internal coherence of anautonomous system (Varela and Goguen,1977) . To de l inea te th i s c i r cu la rorganization and causality at work in thenetwork of co-dependencies of suchsystems, Francisco proposed, within theframework of what he called a system-centered logic, the general concept oforganizational closure or operationalclosure.

Closure is the circular mechanismdefining the class of self-organizingsystems in general.8 Autopoietic systemsare a particular case of a larger class ororganiza t ion tha t can be ca l ledorganizationally closed (Varela, 1979).

For Francisco this concept was essentialfor an understanding of the condition of aliving system: in order to study life andcognition, we need to explore the almostentirely unexplored land of autonomous-closure machines, clearly distinct from thec lass ica l Car tes ian input -machines(Varela, 1984a).

Closure is a response to the attempt 1) toformal ize and to character ize themechanism of autonomy in general as aself-organizing behavior and 2) to specify

7 Francisco summarized the features characterizing organisms within this framework. Proposition I: Organisms are fundamentally

a process of constitution of an identity. Proposition II: The organisms emergent identity gives, logically and mechanistically,

the point of reference for a domain of interactions (Varela, 1997a).

8 From a topological point of view, he defined closure as follows: A domain K has closure if all operations defined in it remain

within the same domain. The operation of a system has therefore closure, if the results of its action remain within the system

itself. (Bourgine and Varela, 1992)



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the circular organization or mechanism ofa given autonomous system as it gives riseto its specific identity: closure accountsnot only for the uniqueness of Life butalso for its diversity (Varela, 1981). Theobservable specificity of living beings

indicates that there is species-specificorganizational closure. Each system has itsown way of being operationally closed.Organizational closure specifies the domainof interaction of the system with itssurroundings, conditioning its possibleways of coupling with the environment. Inhigher organisms, the meshwork of co-dependenc ies inc ludes the d i f f e ren tphysiological systems (cardio-vascular,respiratory, nervous, immune, etc.), and

their sub-sys tems. The componentsinvolved and the kind of interactions to beconsidered depend upon the type of autonomous systems to be considered at(cells, organisms, animal populations,ecological systems).

Moreover, there are two aspects ofclosure: organizational, which defines thepossible interactions in a static circularframework, and operational , i .e . therecurrent dynamics that closure elicits.9 Assuch, the concept of closure aims tointroduce a universal mechanism forstabilization. Identity is always identityin time, and exists in relation to anenvironment with perturbations that mustbe compensated for. This process ofrecurrent stabilization, involving internalcircular processes with matter and energyflux, is at the core of the dynamicalpersistence of the autonomy and wholenessof the system. As a whole, the system existsand subs i s t s on ly insofa r as i t i s

organizationally closed. When a system nolonger has organizational closure, it is nolonger in its domain of viability, andtherefore dies.

It is essential to understand that the ideaof closure does not contradict that of

openness. Closure doesnt mean a closedsystem. We are looking at far f romequilibrium systems, with an exchange ofmatter and energy with their surroundings(Varela , 1977a). The core of circularcausality is coupled with the systemstrophic and adaptive dependence on itsenvironment. Francisco always emphasizedthat a system is not separable from itsinteraction domains (Varela, 1980a).

Franciscos thesis maintains that every

system-whole is organizationally closed:The wholeness of a system is embodied inits organizational closure. The whole is notthe sum of its parts; it is the organizationalclosure of its parts (Varela and Goguen,1977).

This last point must be kept in mind in thefollowing paragraphs. It can be seen as thefundamental feature and the first theoreticaldefinition ofembodiment.

Intuiting the dynamic core

The adaptations and highly complexbehaviors of animals sometimes make themappear as if they had their own project, asif they had an intrinsic intentionality.However, notions such as those of goaland purpose come from a realm ofdiscourse proper to observers describingand somehow summarizing the behavior ofa system. Since they overlook the effective

9 The systems stability is dynamic. It centers on a huge internal movement, a perpetual flow. Therefore, autonomy is the result

of the set of possible internal transformations or endomorphisms [Sn => Sn] defined by the system closure into its domain or

state space. The indefinite recursion of component interactions, sustained through systemic re-entries, has the central role in

the flux of constitution of the system. (Francisco referred to Wiener who introduced the fundamental revolutionary concept of

feedback).

As we are considering real physical processes, the scientific paradigm for such a concept, beyond a general theory of systems,

would be biophysics. The whole dynamical process that organisational closure defines can thus be represented, in a very general

way, by a system of non-linear differential equations:

),,( tpxSx=&

including the setx of co-dependent variables, the set of interaction laws S, and a space of internal and external parametersp

(we have drawn the generic properties of such a system in Figure 1). If in such a formalism the closure remains implicit, the

stability of a dynamical system can be considered as the representation of the operational closure of an autonomous system

(Varela, 1979).



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subjacent processes, for Francisco they arepurely pedagogical.10

Francisco considered it important toenvision the system from the perspectiveof its operation, which always unfolds inthe present, as in every determined system

(Vare la , 1979) . He emphas ized thenecessity to understand that cognition orbehaviors are operational phenomenawithout final cause: they work in a particularway. Intentionality is an interpretation ofthe observer. Coherence is afactand not asupposed design (Varela, 1986b). As wehave already noted, for Francisco, the onlyinteractions being carried out in organismson the level of continuous processes aremechanistic ones.

Thus, the vital bringing forth (Varela,1990) exhibited in living beings, (that weperceive, for instance, as a struggle forlife), can be seen as purely a consequenceof their mechanical operation: the closureand the identity of a system are imbricatedin such a way that an operationally closedsystem necessarily subordinates everytransformation to the conservation of itsidentity (Varela, 1979). This maintainingof identity is a result of its operation, notfinality. Thus, from a mechanical point ofview, what we observe as intentionalbehaviors are, Francisco claimed, simplythe operational persistence of specificprocesses (Varela, 1980a). From the pointof view of closure, a system is adaptives imply because i t s organiza t ion i smaintained invariant through changes ofstructure which do not violate constraints.

(Varela, 1984a). In a purely descriptiveaccount, an intentional act, as it appears tothe observer, is a mechanical succession ofdynamical processes ofconvergence towarda certain state, a transitory persistence ofthe coupling between the system and its

environment.This notion ofpersistence, which is

related to stability and has its origins inoperational closure, was fundamental toFranciscos character izat ion of theorganism as a bringing forth of an identity.Such identity is maintained in spite of allthe perturbations that affect it. In this sense,we can say that it possesses somehow acertain force ofinertia (Varela, 1997a).11.

In order to account for the bringing forth

(Varela, 1990) carried out by living systems,we will use the concept of dynamic core(Edelman and Tononi, 2000), although it isnot a term Francisco used (the issue isdeveloped on the scale of brain dynamicsin Michel Le Van Quyens paper here)12.

The eigenbehaviors and the dynamic core

Although it is fundamentally characterizedby its organizational identity, every livingsys tem shows specif ic s t ructura ltransformations, some of which correspondto what we usually call behaviors. Theinternal, dynamical side of this observablee tho logy13, f rom Franciscos purelyoperational, non- functionalist perspective,is the presence of self-organizing dynamicaltendencies shaping the ongoing, specific

10 Francisco always criticized the naive use of information and purpose, which indicates a lack of a theory for the structureof the system [...] of a theory of the kind of machines living systems are (Varela and Maturana, 1973). They do not belong

in the definition of the system itself. Against a purely functional characterization of the system leading to teleological views

(certainly useful for communication, but lacking the nomic intermediate), he always gave priority to material interactions,

prediction and causality (through a network of nomic relationships). However, Francisco considered the role of observer in

the constitution of meaning to be irreducible: The theory illuminates the subject, and the subject is what makes theorizing

possible (Varela and Goguen, 1977). He sometimes admitted the concept of teleonomy, i.e. causal processes under

abstraction, and, in a collaborative work with Andreas Weber he supported some form of teleology in biology. They

distinguished between external, seemingly purposeful design, which was Darwins main concern, and an intrinsic teleology

that, on the contrary, is concerned with the internal purposes immanent to the living. In relation to this latter case, they

defended the idea that one can go beyond the simple as-if character of natural purposes and grasp immanent teleology as

a truly biological feature. (Weber and Varela, 2002)

11 The notion of inertia was explicitly present in his work on immune networks: All these observations are consistent with

the notion that the prevalent state of affairs in the lymphoid system has an inertia, which resists attempts to induce sudden andprofound deviations in its course of events (Vaz and Varela, 1978).

12 The term was introduced by Edelman in brain -centered meaning (Edelman and Tononi, 2000). Here we will use it in a more

general sense.



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attitudes of the system. Francisco calledthem eigenbehaviors (own-behaviors)(Varela and Goguen, 1977; Soto-Andradeand Varela, 1984). Eigenbehaviors arespecif ic , preferent ia l , in ternaltransformations that are recurrent in the

state space of the system (Fig 2). Theypossess the following properties: a) aneigenbehavior is a global observable stateof the autonomous system under study; b)it is specified by the organizational closureof the system; c) it expresses the coherenceof the systems operation; d) it relies oninternal cooperative interactions; e) it isnot separable from the history of structuralcoupl ing of the sys tem wi th i t ssurroundings. The richness and complexity

of a system is therefore based on theintricacy of its landscape of eigenbehaviors.

Michel Le Van Quyen discusses (thisissue: Le Van Quyen, 2003) how suchgener ic or sys temic proper t ies arefundamental for orienting our search forscientific tools that address the issue of thedynamic core. Francisco studied the notion

of eigenbehaviours using concepts issuingfrom mathematical and physical paradigmssuch as chaos, complex systems, dynamicalsystems theory, morphodynamics, self-organizing critical ity, synergetics, far fromequilibrium thermodynamics, coupled non-l inear osci l la tors , e tc . Al l of theseparadigms provided tools foroperationalizing and understanding theemergence of dynamical regularities inliving systems, and their tendencies to shift

from one to another of their preferentialregimes. Concepts like attractors in phasespace (or state space), differentiable flow,morphodynamical field, phase transitions,bifurcations, fluctuations etc. constitutepowerful tools for characterizing thedynamical properties of living systems.

The central nervous system as a closednetwork

The brain occupied a central place inFranciscos theory. Given the nervoussystems complexity and its properties ofconnectivity, the brain stands out as anideal candidate in the living world toactually embody a foundation for thedynamic core and to play a critical role inthe self-organization and complexity of thesystems eigenbehaviors.

Franciscos more recent views on braindynamics (Varela et al. 2001; Varela1995b)14 are rooted in conceptions hedeveloped earlier in his work (Varela,1977b), that were influenced by newconvergent trends: the re-discovery of theissues around self-organization in physics,and the re-discovery of self-organizingprocedures in AI (neo-connectionism). In1979, he was a l ready interes ted in

13 Here the term ethology is used in a very general sense; it can be as complex as is imaginable in order to account for all

observable behaviors, up to the human ability to create. It can be plastic, i. e. possess a capability of self transformation through

adaptive metadynamics with a highly non linear determination, allowing progressive changes in the organizational closure

itself.

FIGURE 2 The eigenbehaviors and the dynamic

core.

Living systems are dynamical systems. They showensembles of eigenbehaviors, i.e. a specific ethology.

Always transient, such eigenbehaviors can be seen

as unstable dynamical tendencies in the trajectory of

the system, represented here in an abstract state

space. They suggest the existence of self-organizing

dynamical laws mechanically producing, through

internal cooperative interactions, the richness of the

systems behavior and constituting its dynamic

core. (see Le Van Quyen, 2003, in this issue for

technical developments)



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explaining the emergence of large scalecoherences in complex neural-like nets,emphasizing that statistical reasoningcould be used to characterize genericbehaviors of the network (cf. Varela,1986a).

Following Maturana (1969), and usingthe same logic used for autonomous systemsin general, Francisco proposed movingtowards viewing the brain as a systemcharacterized not by its inputs, but by theoperational closure of its dynamics ofs ta tes , as a complement to thecomputa t iona l i s t v iew on cogni t iveprocessing (Varela, 1984b; Varela, 1977b).Francisco and Maturana insisted on theclosed and recurrent character of brain

organization: the nervous system is anoperationally closed networkof neurons ininteraction (Varela, 1979).

Although the central nervous systemappears to the neuroanatomist as a veryhierarchical and differentiated system withstrong functional divisions (such as thesensory-motor divis ion) , i t s in ternalrecursiveness led Maturana to state: thenervous system, as a mode of organization,seems to begin at any arbitrary point thatwe may choose to consider (Maturana,1969). Inspired by Erich von Holst andMittelstaedt, Francisco referred to thehighly recurrent neuroanatomical structureof bra in ne tworks as the Law of

Reciprocity: if a region Asay, a corticalarea, or a specific nucleusconnects toanother r eg ion B, then B connec tsreciprocally back to A, albeit by a differentanatomical route.

The kinds of operations taking place inthe bra in depend s t rongly upon i t sinterconnectedness, its recurrent graph ofconnect ivi ty , showing very specif ic ,reciprocal (neuroanatomical) mappingsbetween various distributed internal brainsurfaces, with highly differentiated sub-networks. As a consequence of these

massive re-entries (reciprocal connections),the brain shows a sustained endogenousactivity (cf. Edelman and Tononi, 2000).Examples of this are the oscil latorybehaviors elicited by the intertwining ofthe reticulo-thalamo-cortical networks, the

cortico-cortical networks and the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical networks, whichcan be indirectly observed through thebrainwaves in EEGs or MEGs. Neuraleigenbehaviors emerge from among theseendogenous oscillations through distant,non- l inear , recurs ive interact ions indistributed neural networks (Varela et al,2001; cf. Le Van Quyen in the same issue).15

We note here that, as for organizationallyclosed systems in general, closure in the

brain is not incompatible with openness.The central nervous system is, of course,open to interactions with the body and itssurroundings in a circular mode, as will beextensively developed in the followingsections on embodiment. The vision of thebrain as a closed network, as emphasizedhere, is intended to highlight its power ofendogenous spontane i ty and se l f -organiza t ion . Such c losure appear snatura l ly as an impor tant source of organization of the systems dynamic core.

Autonomous sys tems are mutual lyembedded subsystems

Through the concepts of autopoiesis andoperational closure we have introduced thegeneral characteristics of the kind ofmachines humans are: autonomous systems.As the example of the brain as a closedsystem that is nonetheless open to itsenvironment has shown, one of the featuresstressed by Francisco is that we areconstituted of many embedded sub-systemsin interaction (Fig 3).

An organism (and this is particularly truefor higher organisms) is composed of highly

14 It can be noted here that Franciscos work on epilepsy with Michel Le Van Quyen and Jacques Martinerie actually became

for him a laboratory for studying, at a fundamental research level, the properties of the dynamical patterns in the brain.

15 The need to elucidate the coherence of behavior and cognition, and, in particular, sensory-motor coordination, led Franciscoto hypothesize mechanisms of internal coherency, involving self-organizing regulation of temporal relationships in the brain

system. This brought him to the hypothesis of ensembles of transiently correlated neurons, working in the system, that are

both the source and the result from the activity of sensory and effector surfaces (Varela, 1991). These views have been

extensively confirmed (cf. Varela et al, 2001 for a review).



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differentiated structures and organizations,including many long distance physiologicalinteractions between the multiple sub-systems it contains (for example organs, ona macroscopic scale, and cells on amicroscopic one). The autonomous systemas a real biophysical entity is spatially andfunctionally distributed. Moreover, theinteractions are costly in time and energy;thus one can consider the many sub-systemsin the organism as having a cer tainautonomy relative to others. Some sub-systems have a certain degree of closuredue to both their specific internal processesand time constants, and to the long-rangeconnec t ions tha t r es t r ic t poss ib leinteractions among sub-systems to a finitedelay. According to Francisco, this relativeautonomy is particularly obvious in theimmune network and the nervous system.

Naturally, the definition of a sub-systemis always somewhat arbitrary. 16 Forinstance, in an autonomous framework, thebrain, as a sub-system, can be viewed as acontrolled system that is hierarchicallydependent on the rest of the system, the

individual body. Yet the brain can also beseen as an au tonomous cen te r o f behavioral organization for the body: thenervous sys tem, the body and theenvi ronment a re h igh ly s t ruc tureddynamical systems, coupled to each otheron multiple levels; they are mutuallyembedded systems (Thompson and Varela,2001).

It can be deduced from such a circulardis t r ibuted f ramework with mult ipledifferent embedded time constants andbiophysical pathways of interactions, thatautonomous systems are fundamentallyrecur rent sys tems with delays . Thismultiplication of the recurrent levels ofinteraction can be a source of self-perturbation in the system, the propertiesof which we will look at later in this article.Such an embedded organization, with thehigh level of constraints of mutual influencebe tween d i s t r ibu ted sub- s t ruc tures(involving a finite time of propagation inphysiological , b iochemical , or evenbiomechanica l ne tworks ) makes thesystems dynamics highly non -linear17.

FIGURE 3 The autonomous system as a mutual embedding of subsystems.

Diagramatic evocation of a hierarchy of system levels: systems Si-1

*,Si-1

**,Si-1

***, of level (i 1)

constitute system Si

j at level i; similarly, systems Si

*,Si

**,Si

***, of level i constitute system Si+1

at level (i+1);

and Si+1

together with other systems of level (i+1) will constitute a system at level (i+2); and so on, upward

and downward.The organism is thought of as an organizational closure of interacting sub-systems.

16 At the level of the whole system it is difficult to define a hierarchy of relations: At a given level of the hierarchy, a particular

system can be seen as an outside to systems below it, and as an inside to system above it: thus, the status (i.e. the mark of

distinction) of a given system changes as one passes through its level, in either the upward or the downward direction. The

choice of considering the level above or below corresponds to a choice treating the given system as autonomous or controlled

(constrained) (Goguen and Varela, 1979).

17 These notions that Francisco developed are certainly very general, but have to be considered in the context of the precise

physiological specifications of a given system, with all the integrated sub-systems it includes (the specificity of its

organizational closure) that define the functional relations it has in the different contexts it encounters.



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Since the identity of the system depends onthe dynamics of its mutually embeddedsystems, i t is perpetually at r isk of breakdown, of divergence; it is, so to speak,operating at the edge of chaos. Identity isintrinsically precarious and intrinsically

fragile.18

SELFLESS SELF, EMBODIED MIND

After having sketched out the basics ofFranciscos theory of autonomy andoperational closure, two actors take onparticular importance in his approach: thewhole individual as an autonomous systemand a fundamental level of organization,

and its brain, as an organizing embeddedsub-system.

In this section we will try to specify howFrancisco conceived the shaping of amind within such a framework of autonomyand circular causality by means of a firststep towards the concrete phenomenologyof the embodiment. It is indeed essential tokeep in mind that we are not only talkingabout an abstract way of dealing with thefundamental properties of the living, butalso about our own organizational anddynamical condition in the concrete domainof our flesh, which is at the root of ourexperience (Varela et al, 1991).

Franciscos entire conception of mind andultimately of experience is concerned withthe constraints exerted by the specificphenomenology of our concrete coping(Varela, 1999b) upon our internal dynamicsas autonomous systems, and reciprocally,the effects of the latter upon the former, ina circular framework. Thus, his approach isgrounded in the disenchantment of theabstract and the re-enchantment of theconcrete (Varela, 1995a). He rejectedpurely computational, logical, views of themind in favor of a concrete, embodied,lived description of the processes. In

keeping with his systemic framework, hisapproach to embodiment proposes anoriginal way to define the problematiclocus of the mind.

Basics of Embodiment

According to Francisco, if we want tounderstand what the mind is , it is not enoughto observe the specific brain structuresinvolved in the functioning mind. There isa gap in terms of insight when we try tomake the realm of mind fit into a brainstructure or even into a brain response.This does not mean that some parts or sub-processes of the system are not more crucial

than others for the emergence of subjectiveexperience and consciousness, just as thereare organs that are more vital than others.Certainly, the loss of certain parts of onesbody or ones brain (after an accident forinstance), does not generally lead to thedisappearance of the properties that makeus minded subjects (although often theyappear very altered); nonetheless somesubstructures in the brain, as well as somespecific processes, appear crucial andlimiting for the constitution of mind or thepossibility of consciousness. 19 Thesesubstructures are only critical nodes for theminds functioning . They cannot be themind itself.20

Such considerations led Francisco to adramatic conclusion: the mind is not inthe head (Varela, 1999b; Thompson andVarela, 2001).

The domain of constitution of the mindmust therefore be sought in brain-body-world divisions and certainly not in brain-bound neural events: we conjecture thatconsciousness depends crucially on themanner in which brain dynamics areembedded in the somatic and environmentalcontext of the animals life, and thereforethat there may be no such thing as a minimal,

18 Thus, at the level of system/environment interactions, Francisco stressed the notion of contretemps between the autonomous

system and its surroundings.

19 This has been well demonstrated by neuropsychology (see Damasio, 1994, 1999).

20 Along the same lines, the philosophical fiction of a brain isolated in a bath with a functioning and conscious mind was an absurd

idea according to Francisco. It would just produce incoherent activity (Varela, 1999b).



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internal neural correlate whose intrinsicproper t ies are suf f ic ient to produceconscious experience (Thompson andVarela, 2001).

The first step, Francisco claimed, is toconsider that the mind cannot be separated

from the entire organism. We tend to thinkthat the mind is in the brain, in the head, butthe fact is that the environment also includesthe rest of the organism; includes the factthat the brain is intimately connected to allof the muscles, the skeletal system, theguts, and the immune system, the hormonalbalances and so on and so on. It makes thewhole thing into an extremely tight unity.In other words, the organism as a meshworkof entirely co-determining elements makes

i t so tha t our minds a re , l i t e r a l ly ,inseparable, not only from the externalenvironment, but also from what ClaudeBernard already called the milieu intrieur,the fact that we have not only a brain but anent i re body (Varela , 1999b) . As aconsequence of closure, this irreducibleembodiment of our biophysical structureappeared to Francisco as a radical prison :We cant get outfrom the domain definedby our own body and our nervous system.Only one world exists for us: the one we areexper iencing by these physiologicalprocesses that make us what we are. We aretaken in a cognitive system, from which wecant neither escape, nor chose where itbegins or how it works (Varela, 1988a).

We frequently talk about sensory-motoror action-perception loops. Francisco isknown for his enactive approach, in whichthe systems coping is described as 1)mediated by perpetual sensory-motor loopsand 2) mediated by the ongoing endogenouspattern of its brain activity, defining thespecific coupling of the system with itssurroundings (Varela et al, 1991) (Fig 4).

In his last article with Evan Thompson(Thompson and Varela 2001), he proposedthe concept of cycles of operationrefer r ing to the mult i - level specif icphenomenology of the individual concreteoperations taking place during integrated

sequences of behavior, in which cognitiveacts and mindtake place. Through a highlyspecific phenomenology, the cycles ofoperations include, notably, organismic

regulation, ongoing sensorimotor coupling,cogni t ive ac t s and in te r - ind iv idua linteractions (Thompson and Varela, 2001).The drama of the cycles of operationoccurs, therefore, within a very particular

field of constraints, that of the entire

organism and its surroundings.The minimal level of the operational

cycles is thus the brain-body system.Francisco described early on the genericcircular causality between brain and bodyas follows. 1) The organism, including thenervous system, is the physical andbiochemical environment of the autopoiesisof the neurons and other cells. It is thereforea source of physical and biochemical

per turbat ions which t r ans form theproperties of the neurons and lead tocouplings 2 and 3. 2) Certain physical andbiochemica l s ta tes of the organismtransform the state of activity of the neuralnetwork by acting on the membranereceptors of certain neurons, leading to the

FIGURE 4 The operational closure of the embodied

system.

As a circular process, an individual is engaged in the

continuous cycles of operation defined by its

eigenbehaviors. Three levels of circular causality

are distinguished in the figure: (i) the level of the

central nervous system as a closed dynamical system;

(ii) the level of the sensory-motor mutual definition

of the state of the brain and of the body; (iii) and thelevel of the ongoing coupling between the

autonomous system and its surroundings, including

potential inter-individual interactions.



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coupling 3. 3) Certain states of the nervoussystem change the state of the organismand lead anew to couplings 1 and 2. (Varela,1979).

As implied by the enactive approach, thisembodied (brain/body) conception of the

minds functioning through cycles ofoperation, that include at a certain levelsubjective sequences, does not, of courseexclude the grappling with the environment.The embodied mind is not a solipsist ghost(Varela, 1991). It works in the body-in-space, which contributes to its shaping.The ongoing, endogenous regimes ofactivity in the brain embedded in therhythms of organism regula t ion andphysiology, must be conceived as taking

place within a constant sensory-motorcoping be tween the sys tem and i t ssurroundings: animality invents a mode ofbeing which is inseparable from movement,going towards, seeking in movement(Varela and Depraz 2000).

In accordance with the views of thephilosopher Merleau-Ponty, the sensoryprocesses of the brain are conceived indirect relation to the organization of themotor eigenbehaviors of the whole system,i.e. its ethology. Motor behaviors definehow sensory interfaces will be modulatedin a specific situation: the state of activityof sensors is brought about mosttypicallyby the organisms motions (Varela, 1991).Thus, given this intimate link between brainactivity and action, we must consider thesituatedness of the autonomous systemits par ticular engagement in specif icsituationsas fundamental to the neuro-logic.

From the standpoint of Franciscosenactive perspective (Varela et al, 1991),the sys tem lends s ignif icance to i tssurroundings, creates a meaningful worldthrough its organizational closure, a worldthat the environment doesnt possess byitself: like jazz improvisation, environmentprovides the excuse for the neuralmusic from the perspective of the

cognitive system involved (Varela, 1991).But if, in Franciscos view, the environmentdoesnt contain pre-defined informationthat is independent of the domain ofcoupling that the autonomous systemdefines, it literally in-forms the systems

coping21.As a complex, distr ibuted, circular

biophysical system that is self-affirming,the body is the place of intersection of thedifferent identities emerging from closure,which makes it so that inside and outsideare intricated. We are and we live in suchan intertwined place. Our body doesnthave a single external identity alone butcons t i tutes a meshwork divided andinter twined without any other sol id

founda t ion than i t s own procedura l[processuelle] determination (Varela andCohen, 1989).

So, what is embodied?

The notion of cycles of operation(Thompson and Varela, 2001) conceptuallycircumscribes the deployment of theembodied mind as a process that takes placein a context of constant coping. It providesthe understanding of mind with a kind ofunity of action, that evokes its dynamicalstatus and temporal extension. Here wewill look more closely at how Franciscoapproached the issue of the locus of thisembodied mind. The central problem istherefore how to define the correct level ofexistence of what we intuitively call themind.

The term itself, em-bodiment, refers tosomething immanent to the system, shapingits way of being in the world, its way ofbeing coupled. In Franciscos view,cognition was nothing other than thisdynamical coupling (Varela, 1981;Varela, 1983). From a phenomenologicalpoint of view, in our daily apprehension,our mind appears as a very integratedphenomenon, which extends beyond

21 Francisco considered, from a strictly operational point of view, that interactions between brain and environment through

sensor-motor interfaces could be seen more as perturbations of an autonomous endogenous dynamics than as the processing

of external information: the fundamental logic of the nervous system is that of coupling movements with a stream of sensory

modulations in a circular fashion (Varela, 1991).



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conscious experience; it behaves as a globalphenomenon actively asserting its identity,our identity, with a certain autonomy. Wecould say that, as such, the mind behaves asa self-concerned cognition, or, in theframework of autonomous systems, a mode

of pers is tence, i . e . a dynamic core ,associated with a way of interacting, oftenwith itself.

Francisco liked to use intuitions from ourdaily experience, and considered it as avalid domain of investigation. He illustratedthe irreducible global nature of the mindas embodied through the way we as humansinteract among ourselves. For you, Im anentity that interacts with you in a non-compact temporal process (if you look at

the prec i se phenomenology of ourinteractions): my answers to your questions,as you can see when you are waiting forthem, take time; my minds operations taketime. My concrete mind also acts as anactual though indirect level of coupling,which you can perceive through oursustained exchange and communication,that involves a global synergy of corporaloperations engaging me as an individual.This global level of me as an individualappearing in our mind-related interactionsis a mode of existence of which you cannotsay it doesnt exist. (Francisco doesntexist), and without which nothing realwould remain of what leads you to see meas minded or imbued with a subjectivity.There is a domain of mutual coupling andmutual determination in which the person-whole is brought forth. This ontologicallevel of the behaving whole in my bodycannot be denied. As soon as you try toreduce it to independent sub-systems, youlose it. This resistance to reduction is thedirect expression of its systemic nature.Francisco claimed: Im an integrated, moreor less harmonic unity that I call myselfor my mind, and you interact with me atthat level: Hi, Francisco. That interactionis happening at the level of individuality,which is the global, the emergent. Yet weknow that the global is at the same time

cause and consequence of the local actionsthat are going on in my body all the time(Varela, 1999b). Thus, from both thebiophysical and the concrete experiential

points of view, there is no central I, otherthan the one sporadically actualized in al inguis t ic , se l f - referent ia l mode incommunication. The I can only belocalized as an emergence but it acts as thecenter of gravity of the subject himself, of

his real-life experience(Varela, 1993).So, if the mind is not in the head, where

the hell is it? The answer takes the form ofan enigmatic paradox: [thats] preciselythe point here: it is in this non-place of theco-determination of inner and outer, so onecannot say that is outside or inside (Varela,1999b). My mind is a selfless self (orvirtual self): a coherent whole which isnowhere to be found andyetcan provide anoccasion for coupling (Varela, 1991).Because of its radical embodiment, the mindis not a substantial mind: The mind neitherexists nor does it not exist [...] it is and itisnt there (Varela, 1999b). Finally: itdoes not physically or functionally resideanywhere (Varela, 1997c).

If we want to insist on looking at the mindobjectively, as a cycle of operation, thatwe can describe, we might be satisfied withconsidering it as a spatially and temporallydistributed process that behaves in a waythat corresponds to a mind. The mind asa phenomenology in action, viewed fromeither a first- or a third-person perspective,can be described as a behavior, literallysituated in a specific cycle of operation.Francisco thus conceived of i t as abehavioral cognition working at thelevel of a spatially behavioral bodily entity(Varela, 1991). The notion of behavioralcognition equates having a mind withhaving a particular behavior. Franciscoasserted that each of us, as a mindedliving being, is a dynamical process opento interaction with others and itself. Thelocus of the mind is an emergencethrough a distributed process within theorganizational closure. But, as a process oforganization, a non-substantial self cannevertheless act as if present, like a virtualinterface (Varela, 1991).

Here we must be careful not to

misinterpret Francisco: as we said earlier,he had no doubt as to the mechanical originof this global entity. Virtual entity(Varela, 1997c) or not, dualism and



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functionalism are excluded. As stated inthe f irs t section with respect to thefundamental expression ofembodiment, allwholeness in the physical space is theorganizational closure of its parts, and, assuch , i s r ad ica l ly embedded in i t s

interacting constituents and processes andis continuously generated by them. Mind isan aspect of the pattern in flux in whichour concrete, biophysical being lives(Varela, 1999b). It depends on multiplelevels of constitution, and is a way in whichthe system is coupled within itself and withthe environment.

As such , i t conserves the genera lproperties of the autonomous systemsdescribed above. That is, the mechanical

conservation of an identity, brought forthby an internal dynamic core, in a specificembodiment, giving rise to a history ofcoupling through the particular coping ofthe system with its environment, definingregularities and making a particular beingin the world. As a biophysical process ofbringing forth identity, it is not surprisingthat phenomenologically our mind has aself-affirming quality. Physically, thisoperation of bringing forth can be relatedin part to the non-linear dynamics of thebrain, since the brain is the strongest sourceof self-organization in us and the mostplastic one: the operational closure of thenervous system then brings forth a specificmode of coherence, which is embedded inthe organism. This observable coherence isa cognitive self: a unit of perception/motionin space, sensory-motor invar iancesmediated through the interneuron network[...] the cognitive self is the manner inwhich the organism through its own self-produced activity becomes a distinct entityin space, but a lways coupled to i tscorresponding environment from which itremains nevertheless distinct (Varela,1991).22 Thus, from the point of view of theexternal observer, the experimentalist forexample, who must voluntarily distancehimself from the natural coupling with hisobject, this cognitive self evokes the

embodied waves of an active dynamic core

reverberating through the entire livingbody. Its determination, or persistenceremind us of what we usually think of aswill.

As embodied acting selves, we are aglobal dynamical process, in a dynamical

equilibrium, emerging and acting frominteractions of constituents and interactionsof in te rac t ions : organisms , thosefascinating meshworks of selfless selves,no more, nor less than open-ended, multi-level circular existences, always driven bythe lack of significance they engender byasserting their presence (Varela, 1991).

However, Francisco viewed the body as adynamical locus where a corporal ego canemerge (Varela and Cohen, 1989). This

issue of the ego giving rise to a sense of selfmust be situated in Franciscos theory in avery particular field of causality, that shapesembodiment.

The morphodynamical f i e ld and i t sdialectics with the dynamic core

With the notion of the cycle of operationwe have begun to specify the nature of thesystems coping and the notion of theselfless self as a dynamical, embodiedexpression of the dynamic core at work inthe individual. But how does the selflessself take on a form so that it looks likeour experience from the inside? The livedego of the embodied mind must be thoughtof as the continuous shaping of the dynamiccore. But again, beyond the basics of thespecif ic medium of our embodimentsketched above, it is essential to understandthe levels of causali ty at which theembodied coping, that constitutes our mind,occurs. One of the fundamental sources ofshaping, according to Francisco, was thebody shape itself: the most specificproperty of multicellular organisms is toshow a form. This last one gives a body totheir operational closure and become thekey to understand many dimensions of theiroperations (Varela, 1988b).

22 Here we should note how close Franciscos conceptions about the importance of the body and the interactions between the

brain and the body in the making of consciousness are to Damasios (1994,1999,2001).



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If there is a reciprocal determination(Varela and Frenk, 1987) between globalstructures and parts of systems, as thehypothesis of closure implies, the specificstructural and morphological organizationof the body must have a structuring causal

role. According to Francisco, shapes or formsin themselves, of the whole body as well asof its parts, should have a causal role in thedynamics of the system. They are anongoing medium and a specif ied/specifying space: The intuition behindour framework is that space is a constitutiveelement in the dynamics of living organisms

just as much as the solidity of their molecularconstituents (Varela and Frenk, 1987).

Now, we are dealing with what we could

call a dense living body, perpetuallyacting, moving, transforming from oneeigenbehavior to another in its cycles ofoperation, in such a way that more thanexte rna l shape , i t i s the g loba lmorphodynamical behavior of its integratedstructures which appears central to the wayi t behaves as a whole au tonomousorganization. The field of embodiment is amorphodynamical field.23 In Franciscosframework this concept complements themore general notion of organizationalc losure . Appl ied to the i s sue of embodiment, it emphasizes the constraintsthat instantaneous morphological states ofthe body can exert on the whole system. Ofcourse in the case of a biological organismthis is an abstraction which must beconceived of as acting through specificfunctional or biomechanical pathways in aspecific organizational closure.

Francisco called for a research program inwhich to understand biological shape, andits morphodynamical constraints (Varela,1988b). Such morphodynamical constraintscan be found in the biomechanical degrees offreedom of a specific body, defining a limited

set of possible behaviors, as well as in itsspecif ic visco-elastic responses toperturbations. The dynamics of internalliquids are also very important. Franciscoconsidered that the extracellular matrix(ECM)the extracellular medium which

forms a continuum and links all the bodyparts to make a wholewas a very importantbiomechanical medium for morphodynamicalcausality: As in the notion of a field and itscorresponding particles, there is in livingshape a dynamic complementarity: the entireglobal shape of the body affects the localconditions for the ECM/cell relationship, butat the time the local dynamics conditionshow the entire body is actually built (Varelaand Frenk, 1987)24. The body organs and

tissue mechanics as well as the properties ofdeformation of the muscular-skeletal andtegument systems should also play afundamental role in the shaping of theendogenous dynamics of the whole system.All these levels of mechanical causality canaffect the whole system and its dynamic corethrough the interconnections of i tsorganizational closure, i.e. through nervous,hormonal and mechanical pathways. At themost integrated level, posturology can beunderstood as an initial or boundary conditionfor the enactive dynamics of the system, towhich the internal morphodynamics of thebrains eigenbehaviors, in a shaped sensory-motor coupling, responds.

Within such a framework, the cycles ofoperation referred to above becomemorphocycles (Varela and Frenk, 1987).With each sensory-motor cycle in thebehavior of the system, a morphocycle iscompleted, with its causality potential onthe evolution of the systems dynamics.

This potential for effective dynamicaldeformations through the shaped closureof the system is an important point in theconsideration of the constitutive role of the

23 Morphodynamics was developed by the French mathematician Ren Thom and applied in France to cognitive sciences by

Jean Petitot (cf. Petitot, 1992), in order to address the physics of natural forms. The notion of field comes from physics,

designating the structure of laws of interaction within a space. Although highly developed by Thom and Petitot in many fields,

including biological morphogenesis, and for the later study of self-organization in neural networks, the application of

morphodynamics to the issue of mind embodiment is barely under construction and is still seeking precise operationalizations.

24 It can be noted that such mechanical influence of morphological constraints on the cell dynamics (cell growth, differentiation,

secretion, movement, signal transduction, and gene expression) has been demonstrated and related to mechanotransduction

through the tensed network of the cytoskeleton in the cell, which can be considered to be a tensegritysystem, a contraction of

tension and gravity (cf. Ingber, 1997 for a review).



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body in the subjective properties of asys tem. Shaping i ts embodiment , i tconstrains the possible view from within,as a biomechanical horizon instituting adialogue, (that may, potentially, containconflicts), within the brain and between the

brain and body dynamics25.

Reciprocal causality in embodiment

Francisco was looking for some essentialaspect of mind processes in the globaloperation of the system, viewed not only asan emergent property but also as anorganizing (and therefore causal) factor. Inthis section we will go into more detail on

this issue, which is related to the global/local levels of causality in the embodimentof mind. In keeping with the paradigm ofautonomy, the basic idea is to cut throughthe opposit ion between vitalism andreductionism by considering the mechanisticbraiding together of the local and the globalin the determinism of the individual.

Francisco is known for his emergentistpoint of view on cognition, but he wasalways distrustful of certain uses of thenotion of emergence. This notion, he said,is often gifted with some mystical ability(Varela , 1971) . Ini t ia l ly , Franciscoassociated the notion of emergence withthe connectionist paradigm, which heconsidered as limited (for epistemologicalreasons that we wont discuss here),emphasiz ing that emergence s imply

corresponds to the appearance of globalbehaviors, patterns resulting from localinteractions in networks, through relaxationprocesses. Emergence was a fundamentallyupward phenomenon in F ranc isco sthinking, working from the local to the

collective (Varela, 1990) 26. Only in hislater works (Thompson and Varela, 2001),for purposes of simplification, he did notlimit the notion to upward phenomena.

In order to embody the idea of a causalrole of global-level processes in physicalsystems, Francisco proposed early on thenotion of reciprocal causality betweenthe local rules of interactions, (i.e. thecomponent rules, which are akin to chemicalinteractions), and the global properties of

the entity, (its topological demarcationaffecting diffusion and creating localconditions for reaction); these relationshave the same organizational effect ofboundary conditions as does autopoiesis(Varela, 1991). Reciprocal causality meansthat there is two-way traffic betweenupward causation (initially emergence)and downward causation or downwardeffect (Varela, 1990; Varela, 1999b;Thompson and Varela, 2001).27

Here, the notion of cause does not havethe local value of efficient causation, butthat of structuring causes, contextsensitive constraints (Thompson andVarela, 2001) that shape the responseproperties of the system as in a field. Thisidea was already well developed inNot onenot two (1976).28

25 As a result of the organism structure, the morphodynamics of the system should also be subject to the constraints of delay

transmission in the system. Shape cycles could be consequently subject to constraints of propagation through the functionalpathways of the system. Transformations of the whole system could work somehow as inertial propagative waves flowing into

its recursive structure, affecting the dynamic core in a delayed mode. The consequences of such an idea will be developed in

the last section of this review in order to gain insight on what we have called at the beginning of this article, theNagel Effect,

the hypothetical subjective effect of having objective processes, i. e. of purely spatial-temporal processes.

26 In emergence, interconnected simple units can form complex systems and give rise to a powerful and integrated whole,

withoutthe need for a central supervision (Varela, 1991). Emergent processes are at work in many scientific domains: lasers,

chemical oscillation, cells, genetic networks, development, genetics of populations, immune and neural networks, ecology and

geophysics.

27 At the scale of the cell, the downward effects can be found in its topological demarcation, which affects diffusion and creates

local conditions for reactions (Varela, 1997a), or in changes in control parameters and boundary conditions (Thompson and

Varela, 2001), i.e. in the constraints on the local interaction due to the global coherence (Varela, 1999b).

28 In this article he proposed the conception of the global and local relationships, although in an asymmetrical relation, as aduality in which the two levels mutually specify each other: the system / the process leading to it. Francisco proposed even

the notion of trinity, in a pure logical sense (he was working on arithmetic), without any spiritualist meaning, to characterize

this relation: not a new synthesis, but just expressions of a relation of co-dependence, in which a bottom-up evolution and

a top-down devolution take place between the two levels.



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We thus have a bootstrapping of twoterms: (i) a dynamical term that refers to anassembly of components in networkinteractions that are capable of emergentproper t ies : metabol ic ne t s , neura lassemblies, clonal antibody networks,

linguistic recursivity, mind, consciousness; (ii) a global term which refers to emergentproper t ies , inc lud ing consc iousness(Thompson and Varela, 2001), which(downwardly) condi t ion the networkcomponents: cellular membranes, sensory-motor body in space, se l f /non-self discrimination, personal I, and the twoterms are truly in a relation of co-definition(Varela, 1991). 29

Holism/reductionism: a false controversy

To under s tand the groundwork of Franciscos thinking about embodiment andcausality it is necessary to lay out someimportant aspects of his epistemology.His epistemological thought is anchored inhis particular point of view on systems and,in particular, in the issue of global/localrelations. It is particularly important tokeep this in mind, in order to guard againstspiritualist or vitalist interpretations of histhinking. He is known to be have a non-reductionist position about consciousnessor wholeness, but his non-reductionism hasa very specific significance in his theory. Itconcerns global/local and organization/structure relationships in a framework thatis perfectly compatible with mechanisticaccounts.

As we have seen, Francisco claimed thatcircular processes of closure offer the bestapproach for understanding the living. Hedistinguished this point of view from theusual input-output approach of CognitiveScience. He always stressed that clearly

these two views (input and closure) are notcontradictory, but the important point is torecognize that they lead to radicallydifferent consequences, and to radicallydifferent experimental approaches as well(Varela, 1984a).

He considered both reductionism andholism to be erroneous points of view. Thecorrect position is one that considers themutual dependency of the two domains ofexplanation which, in fact, are for him

definitively complementary.30

NEUROPHENOMENOLOGY

The first two sections have followedFranciscos constructive pathway from theemergence of biological identity to itscomplex evolution into human embodiedcognition. The general properties of thebiophysical organization in which wesubsist as a circular dynamical process havebeen discussed with reference to conceptssuch as autonomy, operational closure andcircular causality. Objective considerationsabout the properties of autonomous systemsallowed us to understand the generic basesof the emergence of a self, and helped to setup the domain of explana t ion byemphasizing that the problem is radicallydynamical . The organisms ident i ty ,

29 The distinction between the two levels is somewhat artificial, but it is a theoretical distinction for gaining insights into, for

instance, the properties of a living being and its mind embodiment. In the real working of the system, all is continuous circular

processes.

30 With respect to the complementarity of the approaches, Francisco emphasized that: to consider hierarchical non-circular

interactions is quite possible, but they cannot account for the re-entering ones, which can, instead, be seen to arise from them

by an infinite approximation. Thus the study of forms, open or closed, is a ground, on which there is a superation of the

dichotomy holism/reductionism (Varela and Goguen, 1977). In another article he explained: It is not that one has to have a

holistic view as opposed to reductionist view, or vice versa, but rather that the two views of systems are complementary [...]

there is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating holistic views as some sort of cure-all [...] Reductionism implies

attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description:

and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain [...] there is no whole system without an

interconnection of its parts and there i s no whole system without an environment (Varela, 1977a). The two ways of consideringthe properties of a system, reductionist and holistic, can be compared respectively to a hierarchical tree or pointed graph

description versus a network (or graph) description. Both approaches are mathematically equivalent and quite complementary,

as can be demonstrated by the existence of morphisms from one to another (Varela and Goguen, 1977). The difference lies in

the recognition of specific levels of organization (cf. also Goguen and Varela, 1979).



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construed as a dynamical bringing forthin an embodied and situated field, hasi l lumina ted the mind problem bypositioning it as a complex dialecticbetween a dynamic core and the morpho-dynamical field of the body, emphasizing

in F ranc isco s theory the r ad ica lintertwining of subjectivity and biophysics.Yet, it is important to highlight that, so far,the point of view of the organism has beenstudied and characterizedfrom the outside ,by an observer who basically relies on his/her own experience of being alive andconscious in order to infer the internalpoint of view of the agent.

Francisco thought that the precisemodalities of this intertwining between our

subjective experience and its biophysicalroots should be addressed with a rigorousmethodology taking fully into account theconcrescence of the experiential andphenomenal domains.

The issue

Francisco insisted on the importance ofconsidering the constitution of experiencefrom the point of view of the subjecthimself, a lived world (Varela, 1999d).For Francisco, first-person events are thelived experience associated with cognitiveand mental events (Varela and Shear,1999b).31 This is the starting point ofNeurophenomenology and the level atwhich all our questioning necessarilybegins.

In neurophenomenology, one now dealswith a pragmatic approach where theobserver, the experimentalist, explicitlytakes into account a subjects point of view,conceived as situated and embodied in itsown individuated space and time (Bitbol,

2002; for an empirical illustration see Lutzet al, 2002).

As we mentioned before, Francisco had anon-reduct ionis t pos i t ion concerningsubjective experience in that he rejectedthe eliminativist position. 32 He also rejected

any a priori overrating of subjectiveexperience. Mysterianism (Nagel 1974),which claims that the limitations of ourcognition make insoluble the hard problem,leads nowhere.

On the contrary, his approach wasgrounded in the postulate that in many of itsaspects, human experience is not so subtle,evanescent and non-communicable that wecannot circumscribe it. In fact, Franciscopostulated the existence of a relatively fixed

and f ini te s t ructura l archi tecture of experience: we are similarly assuming thathuman experience (mine as well as yours),follows fundamental structural principleswhich, like space, enforce the nature ofwhat is given to us as contents of experience(Varela, 1996).33

Although non-reductionist in the sensementioned above, Franciscos proposalgoes beyond the simple search for the neu rob io log i ca l ( b r ain o r bod ily )correlates of consciousness becausesimply studying correlates would leave inthe shadow the precise circulation betweenthem (Varela, 1997b). It would amount to

just putting on one side a list of items orprocesses, and on the other seemingequivalencies as phenomenological dataand separating the two sides by a mysteryline, a no-mans land left unexamined(Varela, 1997b). Francisco promotednaturalizing phenomenology as well asphenomenologiz ing neurosc ience(Vare la , 1999a) . i . e . no t to r educeconsciousness but re-enchant the concreteof biology itself.

31 the processes being studied (vision, pain, memory, imagination, etc.) appears as relevant and manifestfora self or subject

that can provide an account; they have a subjective side. (Varela and Shear, 1999a).

32 We must look for a non-reductive explanation in the sense that, in the end, it mustnt lead to an elimination of experience,

what we want to accoun

varelahommage biological research 2003

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