Wednesday, 8 April 2026

1 Life Is Not Meaning: Reading Biosemiotics Under Constraint

Biosemiotics presents itself as an extension of semiotic theory into the domain of life.

In the work associated with Jakob von Uexküll, and later developed by figures such as Jesper Hoffmeyer and Kalevi Kull, the central claim is both simple and far-reaching:

life is intrinsically semiotic.

On this view:

  • organisms do not merely process signals,
  • they interpret them,
  • and meaning is already present at the most basic levels of biological organisation.

Semiosis, therefore, is not restricted to language or culture.

It is continuous with life itself.

At first glance, this appears compatible with a relational account of meaning.

It rejects:

  • reduction of meaning to physical causation,
  • and the confinement of semiosis to human language.

It emphasises:

  • organisation,
  • relation,
  • and the irreducibility of meaning.

But this apparent alignment conceals a deeper problem.

1. The Expansion of the Semiotic

Biosemiotics proceeds by expanding the scope of the semiotic.

Where traditional semiotics might restrict meaning to symbolic systems, biosemiotics extends it to:

  • cellular signalling,
  • genetic processes,
  • organism–environment relations,
  • and evolutionary dynamics.

In doing so, it redefines semiosis as:

the interpretation of signs by living systems.

This move is strategic.

It avoids:

  • strict mechanism,
  • and purely physical accounts of life.

But it introduces a critical ambiguity:

what counts as “interpretation,” and what counts as “meaning,” at this level?

2. The Ambiguity of “Meaning” in Biosemiotics

At the biological level, “meaning” is often described in terms such as:

  • relevance to survival,
  • functional significance,
  • adaptive response,
  • or selective value.

For example:

  • a chemical gradient “means” food,
  • a signal “means” danger,
  • a stimulus “means” an opportunity or threat.

But these descriptions rely on a shift.

They move from:

  • value (what matters for survival or functioning),

to:

  • meaning (as construed significance within a semiotic system).

This shift is rarely made explicit.

Instead, value-laden distinctions are redescribed as semiotic ones.

3. The Constraint: Meaning Is Not Value

Under the present framework, this shift cannot be accepted.

A strict distinction must be maintained:

  • value: organised selectivity within biological systems
  • meaning: organised construal within semiotic systems

These are not different levels of the same phenomenon.

They are distinct organisations.

This does not imply separation.

But it does require:

that one cannot be reduced to, or expanded into, the other.

4. Where Biosemiotics Crosses the Line

Biosemiotics crosses this line when it treats:

  • adaptive responsiveness
  • functional organisation
  • or selective sensitivity

as instances of semiosis.

This occurs when:

  • “interpretation” is used to describe differential response,
  • “sign” is used to describe causal correlation,
  • and “meaning” is used to describe biological relevance.

At this point:

value has been redescribed as meaning.

Not derived.

Not explained.

Simply renamed.

5. The Problem of Continuity

A central motivation for biosemiotics is continuity:

  • no sharp break between life and meaning,
  • no privileged threshold at which semiosis begins.

Instead:

meaning is continuous with life.

Under constraint, this continuity cannot be taken as given.

Because continuity here functions as a bridge:

  • it allows biological organisation to be read as semiotic,
  • and semiotic organisation to be grounded in life.

But this bridge depends on:

treating value and meaning as points along a single continuum.

This is precisely what must be refused.

6. Reframing the Relation

If meaning is not reducible to value, and value is not expandable into meaning, then their relation must be reconsidered.

We already have the resources to do this.

From earlier work:

distinct organisations can be coupled without collapsing into one another.

So instead of:

  • life as inherently semiotic,

we have:

biological organisation (value) and semiotic organisation (meaning) as distinct, but non-independent.

This preserves:

  • the irreducibility of meaning,
  • without projecting it downward into biology.

7. What Biosemiotics Gets Right

Despite its category slippage, biosemiotics captures something important:

  • living systems are not indifferent to their conditions,
  • they exhibit organised selectivity,
  • and their behaviour cannot be fully described in purely mechanical terms.

These are genuine insights.

But they concern:

value, not meaning.

8. What Must Be Refused

To maintain coherence, the following must be rejected:

  • meaning as a general property of life
  • semiosis as continuous with biological function
  • interpretation as equivalent to adaptive response

These moves collapse a critical distinction.

Once collapsed, it cannot be recovered.

Closing Formulation

Life is not meaning.

Biological systems are organised around value—
what matters for their continuation.

Semiotic systems are organised around meaning—
what is construed as such.

These are not stages of a continuum.

They are distinct organisations that may be coupled,
but cannot be reduced to one another.

By at No comments:

Coupling Without Domain — 6 What Survives Enactivism Under Constraint

The preceding analyses have not argued against enactivism in its own terms.

They have done something more restrictive:

They have examined what remains of enactivist concepts when a set of assumptions are no longer available:

  • no shared domain in which systems interact
  • no substrate in which systems are constituted or maintained
  • no world as the container or correlate of meaning
  • no temporal process that carries identity, development, or history

These removals are not optional refinements.

They eliminate the conditions under which enactivist explanations are typically formulated.

The question is therefore no longer whether enactivism is correct as a theory of cognition.

The question is:

what remains of enactivism when its explanatory supports are removed?

1. What Does Not Survive

Several core components of enactivist explanation cannot be retained in their standard form.

Structural coupling (as interaction)

Coupling cannot be:

  • interaction within a domain
  • reciprocal influence across a medium
  • a process linking independent systems

Without a shared domain, there is no “between” in which interaction occurs.

Autopoiesis (as self-production)

Self-production cannot be:

  • generation of components within a system
  • maintenance of organisation through material processes
  • closure achieved through ongoing internal dynamics

Without substrate, there is no medium in which production or maintenance takes place.

Sense-making (as enactment of a world)

Sense-making cannot be:

  • the enactment of a meaningful world
  • the constitution of meaning through engagement with an environment
  • a relation of aboutness directed toward external objects

Without a world, there is no domain in which meaning is made.

Continuity (as temporal process)

Continuity cannot be:

  • persistence through time
  • accumulation of interaction history
  • development as a sequence of transformations

Without process, there is no mechanism linking past and present.

These are not partial revisions.

They are eliminations.

2. What Can Be Retained—Under Reinterpretation

Despite these removals, enactivism is not left empty.

Several of its core intuitions survive—but only in altered form.

(a) Rejection of Representationalism

Enactivism’s refusal to treat cognition as internal representation remains intact.

There is no need to reintroduce:

  • symbolic encoding
  • inner models of an external world
  • or mediation between mind and reality

Under constraint, this becomes even sharper:

meaning is not a representation of something else; it is intrinsic to determinacy within construal.

(b) Primacy of Relation (Without Domain)

Enactivism’s insistence that cognition is relational also survives.

But relation can no longer be:

  • interaction between pre-existing entities
  • or coupling within a shared environment

Instead:

relation is the non-independence of distinctions constituted under the same conditions of constraint.

This preserves relationality while removing the need for a connecting medium.

(c) Non-Isolation of the Cognitive

Enactivism rejects the idea of cognition as isolated within an internal system.

This remains valid.

But the alternative is not:

  • embedding cognition in an environment

Rather:

what is distinguished as “cognitive,” “biological,” or “environmental” is itself co-constituted under constraint.

There are no independently grounded domains to embed one within another.

(d) Structured, Non-Arbitrary Experience

Enactivism emphasises that experience is structured, meaningful, and not arbitrary.

This also survives.

But not as:

  • structure imposed through interaction with a world
  • or meaning generated through engagement with an environment

Instead:

structure is intrinsic to the determinacy of construal.

Meaning does not arise through relation to a world.

It is already present in the conditions that make construal determinate.

3. What Changes in the Explanatory Regime

What has been removed is not explanatory ambition, but a specific kind of explanation.

Enactivism, in its standard form, explains cognition through:

  • processes
  • interactions
  • histories
  • and embodied dynamics

Under constraint, these cannot function as explanatory primitives.

What replaces them is a different regime:

  • constraint instead of mechanism
  • determinacy instead of process
  • co-constitution instead of interaction
  • construal instead of enactment

This is not a translation of enactivism into a new vocabulary.

It is a reparameterisation of what counts as explanation.

4. The Cost of Survival

What survives enactivism under constraint is not its original form.

It is a reduced and reinterpreted set of commitments.

What is lost includes:

  • dynamic narratives of interaction
  • process-based accounts of development
  • substrate-grounded notions of embodiment
  • and domain-based conceptions of world

What remains is more austere:

  • no mechanism
  • no medium
  • no unfolding process
  • no external domain

This is not a defect.

It is the cost of coherence under stricter conditions.

5. Final Formulation

We can now state, without qualification, what survives:

Enactivism persists only to the extent that it can be reformulated as a non-representational account of determinacy under constraint, without appeal to domain, substrate, or process.

Closing Remark

Enactivism began as an attempt to overcome:

  • representationalism
  • dualism
  • and the separation of mind from world

Under constraint, this attempt is partially fulfilled.

But only by abandoning the very resources it used to articulate that overcoming:

  • interaction
  • embodiment as substrate
  • and world as domain

What remains is not enactivism as originally formulated.

It is something more severe:

a relational account in which meaning, distinction, and organisation hold without being grounded in a world, sustained by a process, or realised within a substrate. 

By at No comments:

Coupling Without Domain — 5 Continuity Without Process: History Without Temporal Ground

In enactivist accounts, continuity is rarely foregrounded as a principle.

It appears instead as an assumption:

  • organisms persist over time,
  • interactions accumulate into histories,
  • structures stabilise through repeated engagement,
  • and cognition develops as an ongoing trajectory.

In the work of Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson, this continuity is essential:

  • structural coupling is historical,
  • autopoiesis is maintained through ongoing processes,
  • and sense-making unfolds through lived experience.

Continuity, in this sense, is what allows the entire framework to hold together.

1. What Continuity Presupposes

To speak of continuity is to assume:

  • persistence: something remains the same across change
  • temporal extension: a before and after linked through duration
  • process: transitions that connect one state to another
  • identity over time: a system that endures through its transformations

Even when enactivism rejects static substances, it retains:

a continuity of organisation unfolding through time.

This continuity is what makes:

  • history meaningful,
  • development intelligible,
  • and learning possible.

2. The Constraint: No Process

Under the logic of the cut, the following are no longer available:

  • time as a medium in which processes unfold,
  • events that occur in sequence as causal transitions,
  • persistence as something carried through a substrate,
  • or identity as something maintained by continuity of material or structure.

This does not deny that temporal language can be used.

It denies that time functions as an explanatory ground.

3. The Problem of “History”

Enactivism frequently appeals to history:

  • a system’s current organisation reflects its past interactions,
  • coupling deepens over time,
  • patterns of behaviour are shaped by prior experience.

This implies:

  • a sequence of events,
  • linked through causal continuity,
  • producing the present state.

Under constraint, this cannot be sustained.

Because “history” presupposes:

  • a temporal domain in which events are ordered,
  • and a continuity that connects them.

Without process, there is no mechanism by which the past produces the present.

4. Removing Temporal Ground

If time is not a medium in which processes occur, then:

  • the past cannot act on the present,
  • sequences cannot generate outcomes,
  • and development cannot be explained as accumulation.

This removes a powerful explanatory narrative:

that cognition is shaped by a history of interactions unfolding over time.

What remains must be reformulated without temporal causation.

5. Continuity as Construal

If continuity cannot be grounded in process, how does it appear at all?

The answer must be precise:

continuity is not a feature of an underlying reality; it is a feature of how stability is construed across distinctions.

That is:

  • what appears as persistence is a way of relating determinate instances,
  • not a thread that connects them in a temporal medium.

Continuity does not underwrite identity.

It describes how identity is recognised.

6. Identity Without Persistence

Enactivism relies on the idea that systems maintain identity through continuous self-production.

Under constraint, identity cannot be based on:

  • persistence of material components,
  • continuity of structure,
  • or ongoing processes of maintenance.

Instead:

identity must be understood as the stability of a distinction under the conditions that make that distinction possible.

This stability does not require:

  • a past that sustains the present,
  • or a process that preserves identity over time.

7. Development Without Accumulation

Development is often described as:

  • the gradual shaping of cognition through experience,
  • the accumulation of interactions,
  • the refinement of behaviour over time.

This presupposes:

  • a temporal sequence,
  • and a mechanism by which earlier states influence later ones.

Under constraint:

  • there is no accumulation,
  • no temporal layering of states,
  • no process of transformation across time.

Instead:

what is described as development must be reinterpreted as patterns of variation across instances, construed as if they formed a sequence.

Development is not a process.

It is a way of organising differences under a temporal description.

8. The Residual Import: Time as Hidden Substrate

Even when enactivism avoids explicit mechanism, it often relies on time as a silent substrate:

  • processes unfold “over time,”
  • histories “shape” present states,
  • identities “persist” across change.

Time, in this role, functions as:

the medium that holds everything together.

Under constraint, this role cannot be maintained.

Time cannot serve as:

  • a container for events,
  • a carrier of causation,
  • or a ground for continuity.

9. Reframing Continuity

We can now restate continuity in a form consistent with constraint:

  • It is not a process linking past and present.
  • It is not a medium in which change unfolds.
  • It is not a ground of identity.

Instead:

continuity is the construal of stability across determinate instances, without presupposing a temporal process that produces that stability.

This preserves the descriptive usefulness of continuity.

But removes its explanatory role as a grounding mechanism.

10. What Remains of History

If we remove:

  • process,
  • temporal causation,
  • and persistence as a substrate-based phenomenon,

what remains of “history”?

Only this:

a way of relating determinate instances under a temporal description.

History does not generate the present.

It is a way of organising what is already determinate.

Closing Formulation

Continuity does not consist in the persistence of something through time.

It names the way stability is construed across determinate instances,
without presupposing a process that carries identity from past to present.

History does not produce the present.
It is a way of describing it.

With this, the final stabilising support has been removed:

  • no domain (coupling),
  • no substrate (autopoiesis),
  • no world (sense-making),
  • no process (continuity).

What remains is a fully constrained reading of enactivism.

By at No comments:

Coupling Without Domain — 4 Sense-Making Without World: Meaning Without a Pre-Given Domain

In enactivist theory, sense-making names the process by which an organism brings forth a meaningful world through its embodied engagement.

In the work of Evan Thompson and Alva Noë, this is often expressed as:

  • organisms do not passively receive information,
  • they actively enact a world,
  • and meaning arises through their situated activity.

This formulation rejects both:

  • representational models of cognition, and
  • the idea of a fixed, observer-independent world fully specified in advance.

At first glance, this appears compatible with a relational ontology.

But the compatibility is only superficial.

Because even in its most refined form, sense-making still depends on a crucial assumption:

that there is a world—however enacted—in which meaning is realised.

It is this assumption that must now be placed under constraint.

1. What “Sense-Making” Presupposes

In its standard formulation, sense-making involves:

  • an organism
  • a world (or environment)
  • and an activity that brings the two into relation

Even when the world is said to be enacted rather than pre-given, the structure remains:

  • there is something that counts as a world,
  • and something that makes sense of it.

This implies:

  • a domain in which sense is made,
  • and a distinction between what is making sense and what is made sense of.

2. The Constraint: No Pre-Given World

Under the logic of the cut, the following are no longer available:

  • a pre-existing world as a domain of objects or states,
  • a shared environment in which organism and world co-exist,
  • or a process that connects an organism to a world through interaction.

This does not deny that something like “world” appears in experience.

It denies that “world” can function as an ontological ground.

3. The Problem with “Enacting a World”

Enactivism attempts to avoid realism by claiming that organisms enact their worlds.

But this still presupposes:

  • that there is something that can be enacted as a world,
  • and that enactment is an activity occurring over time.

This raises a problem under constraint:

what is being enacted, if there is no domain from which a world is drawn?

If “world” is not pre-given, but is enacted, then:

  • enactment cannot be a transformation of something already there,
  • nor a process applied to a substrate.

Otherwise, the world is simply reintroduced at a different level.

4. Removing the Domain of Meaning

Sense-making is typically understood as:

  • the attribution or constitution of meaning within a world.

This implies:

  • a domain in which meaning appears,
  • and a distinction between meaningful and non-meaningful aspects of that domain.

Under constraint, there is no such domain.

So meaning cannot be:

  • located in a world,
  • applied to objects,
  • or generated through interaction with an environment.

Instead:

meaning must be understood as intrinsic to the determinacy of what is construed.

5. Meaning Without “Aboutness”

A central feature of sense-making accounts is aboutness:

  • meaning is about something in the world,
  • perception is directed toward objects,
  • action is oriented within an environment.

This introduces a relational structure:

  • subject → world
  • organism → environment

Under constraint, this structure cannot be maintained.

Because it presupposes:

  • distinct relata existing prior to relation,
  • and a domain in which that relation is realised.

Instead:

what appears as “aboutness” must be reinterpreted as a feature of determinacy within construal, not a relation to an external object.

Meaning does not point outward.

It is not directed at a world.

It is already fully specified within the conditions that make that construal determinate.

6. From Sense-Making to Construal

If we remove:

  • world as domain,
  • interaction as process,
  • and aboutness as directed relation,

then “sense-making” can no longer be understood as an activity bridging organism and world.

What remains is closer to:

construal—the determinate organisation of meaning without reference to an external domain.

This does not deny that experience appears structured, oriented, or meaningful.

It reinterprets that structure as:

  • internally constituted under constraint,
  • rather than arising through engagement with a world.

7. The Residual Import: World as Container

Even when enactivism rejects objective realism, it often retains a weaker assumption:

  • that there is a domain—call it “lived world,” “environment,” or “Umwelt”—
    in which sense-making occurs.

This domain may be:

  • organism-relative,
  • historically shaped,
  • or dynamically enacted.

But it still functions as:

a container for meaning.

Under constraint, no such container can be admitted.

Because it would reintroduce:

  • a shared domain,
  • a medium of relation,
  • and a place where meaning resides.

8. Reframing Sense-Making

We can now restate sense-making in a form that remains coherent under constraint:

  • It is not the enactment of a world.
  • It is not an activity that generates meaning through interaction.
  • It does not presuppose a domain in which meaning appears.

Instead:

sense-making describes the determinacy of construal under conditions where no external domain is required for that determinacy to hold.

This preserves:

  • the rejection of passive reception,
  • the emphasis on structured experience,
  • and the non-representational character of cognition.

But it removes:

  • the need for a world in which meaning is made.

9. What Has Been Removed—and What Remains

Removed:

  • world as domain
  • interaction as meaning-generating process
  • aboutness as relation to external objects

Retained (under reinterpretation):

  • meaning is not given in advance
  • experience is structured and non-arbitrary
  • cognition is not reducible to internal representation

Closing Formulation

Sense-making does not consist in enacting a meaningful world.

It names the determinacy of construal under conditions where no world is presupposed as the domain of that meaning.

The moment a “world” is introduced—even as enacted—
it functions as a container for meaning,
and reintroduces the very domain the account seeks to avoid.

At this point, the core enactivist triad has been placed under constraint:

  • coupling without domain
  • autopoiesis without substrate
  • sense-making without world

What remains is the final stabilising element:

continuity.

In the next post, we turn to that directly:

what does “history” or “development” mean when there is no process unfolding across time?

By at No comments:

Coupling Without Domain — 3 Autopoiesis Without Substrate: Self-Production Without a Producing Medium

Within enactivist theory, particularly in the work of Francisco Varela and colleagues, autopoiesis is used to characterise living systems as self-producing networks:

  • a system continuously regenerates its own components,
  • maintains its organisation,
  • and thereby preserves its identity over time.

This notion is often taken to ground autonomy:

a system is autonomous insofar as it produces and sustains itself through its own internal dynamics.

At first glance, autopoiesis appears to offer a rigorous, non-representational account of life and cognition grounded in relational processes rather than static structures.

However, when examined under constraint, the explanatory role of “self-production” requires careful reconsideration.

1. What Autopoiesis Presupposes

In its standard formulation, autopoiesis relies on several implicit assumptions:

  • A substrate in which components are produced and regenerated
  • A boundary that distinguishes the system from its environment
  • Processes that operate over time to maintain organisation
  • Material or energetic exchanges that enable self-maintenance

Even though autopoiesis reframes living systems as self-organising rather than externally designed, it still assumes:

a system that exists within a domain where its components can be produced and replaced.

Self-production, in this sense, is always self-production in something.

2. The Constraint: No Substrate

Under a relational ontology organised around the logic of the cut, the following constraints apply:

  • There is no underlying medium in which systems exist as pre-given entities.
  • There is no substrate in which components are produced or replaced.
  • There is no temporally unfolding process that operates independently of construal.
  • There is no environment that serves as a containing field for system dynamics.

This does not eliminate distinction.

It removes the assumption that distinctions are realised within a pre-existing material continuum.

3. The Question of “Self-Production”

If autopoiesis is defined as self-production, then the immediate question under constraint is:

what is being produced, and in what?

In standard accounts:

  • components are produced within a system,
  • the system is maintained through these components,
  • and the system’s identity persists through their ongoing regeneration.

This implies:

  • a producer,
  • a produced,
  • and a medium in which production occurs.

Under constraint, none of these can be taken as ontologically prior.

4. Removing the Producing Medium

Without a substrate:

  • “production” cannot refer to the generation of material components within a physical system.
  • “maintenance” cannot refer to the preservation of structure through continuous internal processes.
  • “organisation” cannot be treated as something instantiated in a pre-given medium.

This removes the standard causal narrative:

a system produces components that, in turn, sustain the system.

What remains must be reformulated without invoking a producing environment.

5. Autopoiesis Reinterpreted Under Constraint

If we remove substrate, autopoiesis can no longer function as a description of physical self-production.

Instead, it must be reinterpreted as:

the stability of a distinction that is identifiable as a “system” under conditions where its identity is not grounded in an underlying medium.

In this reading:

  • “self-production” does not describe a process occurring within a system,
  • but a way of describing the persistence of a distinction across instances of construal.

Autopoiesis becomes less about how a system maintains itself materially, and more about:

how a system is distinguished as a coherent unit under constraint.

6. Boundary Without a Container

Autopoietic theory places strong emphasis on the boundary of a system:

  • the boundary separates system from environment,
  • regulates exchanges,
  • and helps define system identity.

However, a boundary is typically understood as:

  • a demarcation within a containing medium,
  • something that divides interior from exterior.

Under constraint, there is no containing medium in which such a boundary can be drawn as a physical partition.

So the boundary cannot be:

  • a physical membrane enclosing a system within space,
  • or a surface separating two regions of a shared domain.

Instead:

the boundary must be understood as a distinction that is constituted through the same conditions that allow the system/environment distinction to hold.

The boundary does not enclose a pre-existing system.

It is part of what makes “system” intelligible as a distinction at all.

7. The Problem of Component Production

Autopoiesis relies heavily on the idea that systems produce their own components.

For example:

  • metabolic processes generate molecules,
  • cellular structures are continuously regenerated,
  • organisational closure is maintained through internal activity.

Under constraint, “component production” cannot be treated as an ontological primitive.

Without a substrate:

  • there is no medium in which components are generated,
  • no material continuity across which production occurs,
  • and no process that transforms inputs into outputs over time.

Thus:

“components” themselves must be understood as aspects of a construal, not as pre-existing entities assembled by a system.

8. From Production to Stability of Distinction

If we remove production as a literal process, what remains of autopoiesis?

We can reframe its central insight as follows:

  • Systems are not independent objects given in advance.
  • What counts as a “system” is identifiable through the stability of a distinction.
  • This stability is not grounded in a substrate, but in the conditions under which the distinction holds.

In this sense:

autopoiesis does not explain how a system produces itself; it describes how a system is recognised as maintaining coherence under constraint.

Self-production becomes a retrospective interpretation of stability, rather than a process that generates that stability.

9. Autonomy Without Self-Maintenance

Autopoiesis is often used to ground autonomy:

  • a system is autonomous because it produces and maintains itself.

Under constraint, autonomy cannot be based on self-production in a material sense.

Instead, autonomy must be reframed as:

the non-independence of a distinction’s identity across instances of construal.

This preserves the idea that a system is not externally defined.

But it removes the idea that the system is self-sustaining through internal causal mechanisms.

10. Residual Imports: Where Substrate Returns Indirectly

Even in sophisticated enactivist accounts, substrate assumptions often reappear indirectly:

  • references to physical embodiment,
  • appeals to metabolic closure,
  • descriptions of energy flows or material exchanges.

These are not errors within their own framework.

They are necessary to make autopoiesis operational.

However, under constraint, they signal something important:

the explanatory force of autopoiesis depends on a background assumption of a substrate in which processes unfold.

When that assumption is removed, autopoiesis must either:

  • be reinterpreted at the level of distinction, or
  • lose its role as a mechanistic explanation.

Closing Orientation

Autopoiesis, in its original formulation, provides a powerful account of how living systems maintain themselves through internal organisation.

Under constraint, however, the notion of self-production cannot be sustained as a process occurring within a system embedded in a substrate.

What remains is a more austere formulation:

what autopoiesis describes is not the production of a system by itself, but the stability of a distinction that can be construed as a system without presupposing an underlying medium in which that system exists.

In the next post, we can turn to sense-making, where the final major pillar of enactivism is tested:

what does “meaningful engagement with a world” amount to when there is no pre-given world in which meaning is enacted?

By at No comments:

Coupling Without Domain — 2 Structural Coupling Under Constraint: Interaction Without a Shared Domain

In enactivist theory, one of the central explanatory notions is structural coupling.

Associated with the work of Francisco Varela and further developed by Evan Thompson and Alva Noë, structural coupling is typically invoked to describe the ongoing history of mutual influence between an organism and its environment.

At a glance, the idea appears straightforward:

  • an organism and its environment repeatedly interact,
  • each perturbing the other,
  • resulting in coordinated, co-evolving structures.

This “coupling” is often presented as the mechanism by which cognition becomes embodied and situated.

However, when placed under constraint, the assumptions supporting this mechanism require closer examination.

1. What Structural Coupling Presupposes

In its standard formulation, structural coupling involves:

  • distinct systems (organism and environment),
  • a shared domain in which interaction occurs,
  • temporal continuity allowing interactions to accumulate as a history,
  • and reciprocal perturbation between systems over time.

Even when enactivism explicitly rejects internal/external dualism, it retains:

  • a distinction between coupled systems,
  • and a medium in which their coupling is realised.

Structural coupling is thus not merely a descriptive term; it carries implicit ontological commitments.

2. The Constraint: No Shared Domain

Under a relational ontology organised around the logic of the cut, the following constraints apply:

  • There is no pre-given domain within which entities interact.
  • There is no substrate that hosts interaction.
  • There is no temporally unfolding process that connects independent systems.
  • Distinctions between “organism” and “environment” are not assumed in advance.

This does not eliminate distinction.

It reframes it:

distinctions are constituted under conditions of constraint, rather than presupposed as elements within a shared field.

3. Reinterpreting “Coupling”

If there is no shared domain, then “coupling” cannot denote:

  • interaction within a medium,
  • causal influence between independently existing systems,
  • or a process linking entities across time.

Instead, the term must be re-evaluated.

What is described as coupling must be understood as:

the non-independence of determinations that are distinguishable under the cut.

This shifts the role of coupling from:

  • a mechanism of interaction,

to:

  • a description of relational dependence between distinctions.

Coupling does not connect pre-existing entities.

It expresses that what is distinguished as “organism” and “environment” are not independently grounded.

4. The Problem of the Interaction Medium

Structural coupling, in its standard usage, presupposes a medium:

  • a physical, biological, or environmental substrate in which interactions occur.

Examples typically include:

  • chemical exchanges,
  • sensory-motor coordination,
  • physical perturbations.

Under constraint, the notion of a shared medium becomes problematic.

A medium implies:

  • something that contains both interacting entities,
  • and across which interaction is transmitted.

But if no such containing domain is available, then:

interaction cannot be located within a shared environment.

This does not deny that correlations, coordination, or dependencies can be described.

It denies that these are grounded in a pre-existing field that hosts interaction.

5. Temporal Accumulation and the History of Coupling

Structural coupling is often characterised as historical:

  • interactions accumulate over time,
  • leading to stable patterns of coordination,
  • which in turn shape future interactions.

This introduces a temporal narrative in which coupling is something that develops.

Under constraint, temporal continuity cannot be treated as a primitive explanatory layer.

Instead:

  • “history” is a way of construing stability across distinctions,
  • not a process that underwrites their formation.

Thus, structural coupling cannot rely on:

  • a sequence of past interactions building toward present organisation.

Rather:

what is described as a “history of coupling” must itself be reinterpreted as a pattern of co-variation observed under a given construal.

6. From Interaction to Co-Determination

If we remove:

  • shared domain,
  • substrate,
  • and temporal process as explanatory primitives,

then structural coupling can no longer be understood as interaction between independent systems.

What remains is a more minimal formulation:

distinctions such as “organism” and “environment” are not independently grounded, but are co-determined under the conditions that allow them to be distinguished at all.

In this sense:

  • “organism” and “environment” are not two entities that become coupled,
  • but two poles of a distinction that only holds under constraint.

Coupling, then, does not join them.

It expresses their non-independence.

7. The Residual Import: Hidden Domain Assumptions

Even when enactivist accounts reject Cartesian dualism, they often retain a weaker assumption:

  • that organism and environment are already embedded within a common ontological field.

This assumption is rarely stated explicitly, but it becomes visible in phrases such as:

  • “organism–environment interaction”
  • “embedded in an environment”
  • “situated in a world”

Each of these expressions subtly reintroduces a shared domain in which interaction is meaningful.

Under constraint, this domain cannot be taken as given.

It must itself be understood as:

a product of the conditions under which distinctions are made, rather than a pre-existing container for those distinctions.

8. Reframing Structural Coupling

We can now restate structural coupling in a way that remains coherent under constraint:

  • It does not describe interaction within a shared environment.
  • It does not describe a process unfolding between independent systems.
  • It does not presuppose a medium in which coordination occurs.

Instead:

structural coupling describes the relational dependence between distinctions that are co-constituted under the same conditions of constraint.

This reframing preserves the intuition that organism and environment are not independent.

But it removes the idea that their relationship is mediated by a common domain.

9. What Has Been Removed—and Why It Matters

Under this reading, three key components of standard enactivist explanation are no longer available as primitives:

  • The shared domain in which coupling occurs
  • The temporal process through which coupling unfolds
  • The independent entities that enter into coupling

What remains is not interaction, but co-determination under constraint.

This is not a weakening of the account.

It is a reparameterisation of what counts as explanation.

Closing Orientation

Structural coupling, as ordinarily understood, is a mechanism that explains how organism and environment influence one another within a shared world.

Under constraint, that mechanism cannot be retained in its original form.

What survives is not a model of interaction, but a description of dependence:

the distinction between organism and environment does not precede their relation; rather, it is sustained through the very conditions that allow such a distinction to be made.

In the next post, we can take the same approach to autopoiesis, which will force an even sharper question:

what does “self-production” mean when there is no substrate in which a system produces itself?

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