От глаза лягушки к человеческому сознанию: трансформации неокибернетического проекта в теории аутопоэзиса

Философский журнал. 2020. Т. 13. № 2. С. 126–143.

Miroshnichenko M.

The article considers the evolution of theoretical views of the representatives of “Santiago school” on the relationship between cognition and biological processes within the context of neocybernetic movement. In contract to the classic (first order) cybernetics, neocybernetics concentrated on observation of the living organisms’ cognitive agency instead of engineering the machines imitating the biological and/or cognitive processes. Basing on the synthesis of data achieved during the studies of the amphibians’ visual perception, in the early 1970s Humberto Maturana, along with Francisco Varela proposed the theory of autopoiesis which considered living systems as cognitive systems. According to theory of autopoiesis, cognition and life are two sides of one process of the living system’s self-production and maintenance. Due to its tensions with the genetic and evolutionary aspects of mainstream biology, this theory received almost no recognition among the biologists, but instead was widely accepted within the countercultural movement. In particular it was the community of CoEvolution Quarterly magazine which was the first to bring up the questions of ecology, systemic thinking and holistic methodology in the social field. Further evolution of “Santiago school” was related to Varela’s project of “neocybernetic dialectics” which aimed at dissolving the dualistic thinking. In it, the elements of binary oppositions (such as “mind/body”) were assessed as two sides of dynamically emerging process. It is shown that Varela’s later studies related to widening the scope of cognitive science (enactivism), methodological solution of the “hard problem of consciousness” (neurophenomenology) and reclaiming the notion of teleology in biology develop the neocybernetic project, which was initially launched by Maturana basing on his criticism of classic cybernetic epistemology.

Keywords: эмерджентность, теория систем, autopoiesis, emergence, enactivism, энактивизм, аутопоэзис, systems theory, neocybernetics, “Santiago school”, неокибернетика, «школа Сантьяго»

Publication based on the results of: Contemporary Historical Culture: Popular Practices and Critical Debates (2020)