Among the notions of levels invoked in accounts of biological phenomena, I focus on two: levels of production mechanisms and levels of control mechanisms. I argue that these two notions of level exhibit different characteristics: production mechanisms are organized hierarchically while control mechanisms are often organized heterarchically. I illustrate the differences in these modes of organization by examining production and control mechanisms involved in cell division in Escherichia coli and in circulation of blood in mammals. I conclude by exploring how (...) these two notions of levels can be integrated by adopting a perspective in which organisms are autonomous systems maintaining themselves far from equilibrium. (shrink)

The new mechanists and the autonomy approach both aim to account for how biological phenomena are explained. One identifies appeals to how components of a mechanism are organized so that their activities produce a phenomenon. The other directs attention towards the whole organism and focuses on how it achieves self-maintenance. This paper discusses challenges each confronts and how each could benefit from collaboration with the other: the new mechanistic framework can gain by taking into account what happens outside individual mechanisms, (...) while the autonomy approach can ground itself in biological research into how the actual components constituting an autonomous system interact and contribute in different ways to realize and maintain the system. To press the case that these two traditions should be constructively integrated we describe how three recent developments in the autonomy tradition together provide a bridge between the two traditions: (1) a framework of work and constraints, (2) a conception of function grounded in the organization of an autonomous system, and (3) a focus on control. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present the ontic approach to the normativity of cognitive functions and mechanisms, which is directly related to the understanding of biological normativity in terms of normative mechanisms. This approach assumes the hypothesis that cognitive processes contain a certain normative component independent of external attributions and researchers’ beliefs. This component consists of specific cognitive mechanisms, which I call normative. I argue that a mechanism is normative when it constitutes given actions or behaviors of a (...) system. More precisely, it means that, on the one hand, it is their constitutive cause, and on the other hand, it determines a certain field of possibilities from which the system, guided by its own goals, preferences, environmental constraints, etc., chooses the appropriate action or behavior according to a given situation. The background for the analyses presented here is the predictive processing framework, in which it can be shown that at least some of the predictive mechanisms are in fact normative mechanisms. I refer here to the existence of a motivational relation which determines the normative dependence of the agent’s actions due to specific predictions and environmental constraints. (shrink)

While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, and Leonardo Bich seek a more deflationary account of these normative phenomena. Critiques directed at both of these accounts of organismic normativity motivate the introduction of the precedential account of organismic normativity, (...) which I nevertheless locate within the enactivist approach, broadly construed. After detailing empirical evidence that would seem to vindicate the precedential account, I explore some of its implications. (shrink)