Autopoiesis (Thompson Reading)

Autopoiesis names the organizational form through which living systems produce and maintain themselves. A cell generates the membrane that contains the chemical processes that generate the membrane; the system is simultaneously product and producer. Thompson takes this biological concept and builds it into the foundation of the life-mind continuity thesis: all living systems are autopoietic, all autopoietic systems are cognitive (in the minimal sense of making sense of their environment through their own operations), and human consciousness is an elaboration of this basic capacity. The argument's force for the AI discourse is that computational systems are not autopoietic — they do not maintain themselves, do not have boundaries they continuously regenerate through their own operations, and therefore lack the organizational property from which cognition, on Thompson's account, actually emerges.