Arts, Faculty of
DSpace
UBCV
Hernandez-Blick, Cristian
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
This thesis looks at two contemporary understandings of biological teleology: a cybernetic-bioengineering model of goal-directedness and an organicist-biocentric account of intrinsic purpose. The cybernetic perspective originates in early 20th century efforts to interpret the organism through a unified behavioristic framework for teleology in both life and machines. Its mechanism of interest is negative feedback: a process where actions adjust to minimize a discrepancy between a controlled variable and a set point, or goal state. Contemporary advocates in bioengineering adopt this approach to teleological explanation, viewing error-minimization mechanisms as ideal models of goal-directed behaviour in diverse systems, both living and nonliving. By contrast, the organicist-biocentric account grounds biological teleology in the intrinsic purposiveness of living organization and the organismâs existential self-concern. This perspective draws from various philosophical and scientific sources: from historical figures like Aristotle and Kant, to the contemporary work of Hans Jonas, and theoretical frameworks like autopoiesis, biological autonomy, and enactivism. On this account, teleology coincides with the continuous production and maintenance of a metabolically instantiated identityâarising internally from lifeâs autonomous ability to organize, regenerate, and perpetuate itself for its own sakeâand an organismâs environmental coupling, whose interactions are normatively oriented toward promoting its viability. I begin by providing some brief historical context to the relation between teleology and biology, then outline core features of the two aforementioned approaches before discussing notable divergences. Building on key themes of the biocentric view of intrinsic teleology, particularly a treatment of biological purposiveness and autonomy informed by the work of Hans Jonas, I hold that the cybernetic-bioengineering outlook disregards critical distinctions between living and nonliving systemsânotably, that only living systems have their existence as the purpose of their operations. By neglecting the self-producing organization and existential concern central to biological purposiveness, the cybernetic-bioengineering view conceals the distinctive source of living teleology which its theory presupposes and obscures qualitative differences in the forms of teleology found in technology, biology, and physics. I suggest that the biocentric perspective provides a richer account of biological teleology and more instructive criteria for distinguishing teleological characteristics of life, machines, and natural abiotic systems.
ON METABOLISM AND MACHINES: TWO VIEWS OF BIOLOGICAL TELEOLOGY by Cristian Hernandez-Blick B.F.A., Emily Carr University of Art and Design, 2017 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Science and Technology Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2025 © Cristian Hernandez-Blick, 2025 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: On Metabolism and Machines: Two Views of Biological Teleology submitted by Cristian Hernandez-Blick in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Science and Technology Studies Examining Committee: John Beatty, Professor, Philosophy, University of British Columbia Supervisor Derek Woods, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies & Media Arts, McMaster University Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract This thesis looks at two contemporary understandings of biological teleology: a cybernetic-bioengineering model of goal-directedness and an organicist-biocentric account of intrinsic purpose. The cybernetic perspective originates in early 20th century efforts to interpret the organism through a unified behavioristic framework for teleology in both life and machines. Its mechanism of interest is negative feedback: a process where actions adjust to minimize a discrepancy between a controlled variable and a set point, or goal state. Contemporary advocates in bioengineering adopt this approach to teleological explanation, viewing error-minimization mechanisms as ideal models of goal-directed behaviour in diverse systems, both living and nonliving. By contrast, the organicist-biocentric account grounds biological teleology in the intrinsic purposiveness of living organization and the organismâs existential self-concern. This perspective draws from various philosophical and scientific sources: from historical figures like Aristotle and Kant, to the contemporary work of Hans Jonas, and theoretical frameworks like autopoiesis, biological autonomy, and enactivism. On this account, teleology coincides with the continuous production and maintenance of a metabolically instantiated identityâarising internally from lifeâs autonomous ability to organize, regenerate, and perpetuate itself for its own sakeâand an organismâs environmental coupling, whose interactions are normatively oriented toward promoting its viability. I begin by providing some brief historical context to the relation between teleology and biology, then outline core features of the two aforementioned approaches before discussing notable divergences. Building on key themes of the biocentric view of intrinsic teleology, particularly a treatment of biological purposiveness and autonomy informed by the work of Hans iv Jonas, I hold that the cybernetic-bioengineering outlook disregards critical distinctions between living and nonliving systemsânotably, that only living systems have their existence as the purpose of their operations. By neglecting the self-producing organization and existential concern central to biological purposiveness, the cybernetic-bioengineering view conceals the distinctive source of living teleology which its theory presupposes and obscures qualitative differences in the forms of teleology found in technology, biology, and physics. I suggest that the biocentric perspective provides a richer account of biological teleology and more instructive criteria for distinguishing teleological characteristics of life, machines, and natural abiotic systems. v Lay Summary Teleology is a form of explanation that accounts for something in terms of goals, purposes, ends, or aims. Despite its complicated history in the context of modern science, there has been recent interest in discussing the concept within biology. This thesis looks at two contemporary approaches to thinking about teleology and its relationship to our understanding of life: cybernetic-bioengineering and organicist-biocentrism. Following some brief historical context, this thesis considers core ideas of each view, discusses notable differences, and explores which body of thought provides a richer account of biological teleology. It finds that the cybernetic-bioengineering view overlooks important teleological characteristics of life which its theory presupposes but doesnât explain, and obscures different forms of teleology across living and non-living systems. By contrast, the organicist-biocentric perspective explains critical differences between the teleological properties of biological and abiotic systems, notably that only life has an intrinsic goal of preserving its existence. vi Preface This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Cristian Hernandez-Blick. No Generative Artificial Intelligence tools were used in the research process, development, or writing of the thesis. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................x Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 Teleology Redux: Historical Context ............................................................................. 1 1.2 The Multiple Meanings of Biological Teleology .......................................................... 10 1.2.1 Teleonomy ............................................................................................................ 11 1.2.2 Teleology .............................................................................................................. 15 1.3 Teleonomic Bioengineering and Biocentric Intrinsic Purpose ..................................... 20 Chapter 2: The Cybernetic Heritage of Teleonomic Bioengineering ......................................24 2.1 Behaviour, Purpose and Teleology ............................................................................... 27 2.2 Teleonomy and Bioengineering .................................................................................... 30 Chapter 3: The Biocentric View of Intrinsic Purpose ..............................................................37 3.1 Metabolism and Teleology ........................................................................................... 41 3.2 Natural Purposes, Autopoietic Organization and Intrinsic Concern ............................. 54 Chapter 4: Theoretical Divergences: Physics, Machines, Life ................................................66 4.1 Teleonomic Explanation and the Bioengineering Approach ........................................ 67 4.1.1 Physics and Teleomatic Processes ........................................................................ 69 viii 4.1.2 Teleology, Life and Machines .............................................................................. 78 4.2 The Metaphysics of Nature ......................................................................................... 107 Chapter 5: Conclusion ...............................................................................................................114 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................121 ix List of Figures Figure 1. A cybernetic classification of behaviour. This tabulation was chosen by the Rosenblueth et al. to emphasize the concepts of purpose and of teleology, propose a means of developing increasingly complex behavioural tests for organisms, and present an approach to the uniform behavioristic analysis of machines and organisms. (Behavior, Purpose and Teleology, Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, Julian Bigelow, Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943, Reproduced with permission.)â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦..â¦â¦.â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦..28 Figure 2. A simplified model of living organization. This diagram depicts a system characterized by thermodynamic openness, causal circularity, metabolic self-production and autopoietic individuation. (MIND IN LIFE: BIOLOGY, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND THE SCIENCES OF MIND by Evan Thompson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.).â¦â¦â¦â¦.â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦â¦38 x Acknowledgements I am forever grateful for my family, friends, supervisory committee, colleagues, and all those who sustained me with enduring love and support during this difficult period of my life, particularly: Bianca Crewe, John Beatty, Derek Woods, Alondra and Jocelyne Blick, Esteban Gonzalez, Jill Corbett, Dave Biddle, Emmy Brown, William Dereume, Kelsey McGowan, Vivienne Bessette, Derya Akay, Liam McClure, Asher Penn. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Teleology Redux: Historical Context Teleology is a mode of explanation which accounts for a phenomenon, process or object in terms of the goals, purposes, ends, aims, or functions which it serves, toward which it is directed, or for which it exists or occurs. It is an idea and form of explanation with a history of diverse philosophical, religious, and scientific interpretations reaching back as far as Greek antiquity (Ruse, 2017). In the context of modern naturalism, teleology is often treated as distinct from, or incompatible with, explanations based on the physical causes by which an explanandum arises. In recent years, however, both scientists and philosophers have shown a growing interest in the relation between teleology and the natural world, pursuing renewed explorations of biological purpose, organismal agency, goal-directed systems and behaviour, minimal cognition, and other related notions (Baedke & Fábregas-Tejeda, 2023; Ball, 2023a; Corning et al., 2023; Deacon, 2011; Fields & Levin, 2020; Jaeger, 2023; Kauffman & Clayton, 2006; Lyon, 2006; Mitchell, 2023; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; Okasha, 2018; E. Thompson, 2010b; Tomasello, 2022; D. M. Walsh, 2015). This developing body of work poses a challenge to the conventions of naturalist inquiry insofar as it resists a prevailing tendency to dismiss teleology as a legitimate approach to the study of nature. During the last few centuries, the natural sciences have largely abandoned teleological thinking. Modern science has generally adopted explanatory frameworks of âpure mechanismâ (Broad, 1925) which focus on what in Aristotelian parlance is regarded as material and efficient 2 causation.1 Such a view rejects accounts of nature which resort to teleological principles or reasoning, and maintains that sufficient explanations of natural processes can be given mechanistically in terms of the physical properties of matter whose operations are governed by deterministic law-like processes. This framework is best illustrated by its near exclusive application in physicsâarguably the prototype for all branches of advanced science. For example, no modern scientific account of planetary motion would describe the trajectory of an astronomical body as if it were striving toward a goal, nor suggest that orbital revolution is the result of a cosmic end or the purpose of a planetâs existence. Rather, scientists might instead seek to explain a planetâs movement in terms of the causal mechanisms at play between a material property like mass, and the physical laws of gravitational force and motion, or a celestial objectâs movement along a geodesic path in warped spacetime. In other words, naturalistic explanations seek to replace talk of goals, purposes, ends, or aims with mechanistic causal models of a phenomenonâs underlying physical processes. Applying this framework to the scientific study of the living world is not as equally straightforward. In the context of biology, clashes between mechanistic and teleological thinking are all the more conspicuous given that life seems to abound in goal-oriented, purposive, end-directed, and agential qualities. Organisms display equifinality in their ontogenetic development and growth; pursue, store and retrieve food sources under dynamic variable conditions; seek out, entice, and discriminate between potential mates; respond adaptively to novel environmental circumstances with creative and flexible behaviour; engage in complex forms of social and 1 Aristotleâs concepts do not correspond neatly to modern terms. However, material causes might relate loosely to what would now be considered the material properties of a systemâs components, while efficient causes might translate roughly to the lawful processes or forces constituting the mechanisms that govern changes and interactions among these physical elements. 3 interpersonal signaling and communication; intentionally and constructively modify their local ecological niche; and perform cognitive feats involving memory, planning and learning. Living systems engage in a repertoire of intrinsically end-directed, purposive, goal-oriented, and agential activities which serve a variety of aims directed towards self-construction, development, self-preservation, and reproduction. In other words, life strikes us as paradigmatically teleologicalâa defining quality which seems to set it apart from the rest of the natural world (D. M. Walsh, 2015). In spite of the seemingly self-evident connection between life and teleology, its explanatory validity is nonetheless treated with suspicion by many contemporary scientists and is often rejected outright in practice. Resistance to teleological thinking in the natural sciences is not an altogether recent point of view. Detractors have long considered teleology to be incompatible with the scientific method of observation, measurement, and experiment, and thus incapable of engendering any verifiable knowledge about the workings of a material universe. This perspective was epitomized by 17th century natural philosopher and ardent critic of teleology, Francis Bacon, whose remarks on the fruitless pursuit of finality in naturalistic explanations is often quoted in the literature: âthe inquisition of Final Causes is barren, and like a virgin consecrated to God produces nothingâ (1857). Bacon dismissed the Aristotelian orthodoxy of his era, viewing its methods of inquiry, particularly the preoccupation with final causes, as a hinderance to scientific progress. In a reaction against this paradigm, he was among the first to advocate for a systematic refutation of teleology in physics, endorsing empirical observation and experiment and promoting explanatory frameworks focused on material and efficient causation in lieu of âspecious and shadowyâ final causes (Jorati, 2019). In keeping with Baconâs approach, teleology was largely expunged from physics during the scientific revolution and continued to be 4 treated with skepticism in other domains, including biology, due in part to the dominance of material reductionism and mechanistic thinking which proliferated and endured across all of the sciences (D. M. Walsh, 2008). This point of view complemented early modern mechanistic interpretations of biology, which similarly rejected the prevailing Aristotelian view of final causes in nature and sought instead to explain nonhuman life and human physiology in terms of material extension and mechanical motion. This perspective was distinctly conveyed in the philosophy of nature espoused by 17th century mathematician and philosopher René Descartesâparticularly in his portrayal of nonhuman organisms as machines (bête machines) (Chene, 2001; Descartes, 1637)âand was later given its purest expression in physician Julien Offray de La Mettrieâs 18th century treatise of mechanistic materialism, LâHomme Machine (1747/1996). Descartes held that unlike purposive systemsâsuch as the mindâanimals, plants, and human bodies are wholly physical structures whose operations must be explained mechanically, analogous to how an engineer would explain the functioning of a machine. Thus, much like the inner workings of the automata on which Descartes modelled much of his physiological analysis, changes in the physical states of biological systems were thought to be driven solely by efficient causes, whose motion scientists must account for in mechanistic terms only (Jorati, 2019). In contrast with the aforementioned frameworksâwhich prioritize material and efficient causes in nature and the physical mechanics of matter and motionâteleology can invoke a number of non-naturalistic ideas associated with anthropomorphism, vitalism, the supernatural, and a seemingly paradoxical interpretation of final causality (Allen & Neal, 2020; Heylighen, 2022; E. Mayr, 1992; Ruse, 2017). In the context of biology, this entails one or more of the following scientifically-objectionable notions: (i) the attribution of human psychological 5 qualities related to consciousness, the intellect, and/or intentionality to various nonhuman forms of life; (ii) vitalist metaphysical theories concerning lifeâs animation by immaterial forces or extra-mechanical processes; (iii) natural theological explanations of life which posit its design by an intelligent, omniscient creator;2 or (iv) backward causation, where future outcomes bring about effects in the presentâa phenomenon ruled out by the now customary principles of causality stemming from Newtonian science and the empiricist philosophy of David Hume (Faye, 2024; Mossio & Bich, 2017, p. 1092). Many if not all of the aforementioned ideas fail to conform with a paradigm for naturalistic explanation shaped by factors such as scientific method and experimentation; the ideals of objectivity and empiricism; mechanistic frameworks of physical causation; and a disavowal of supernatural entities and processes. In short, teleological thinking has long been a source of contention in the natural sciences and has been frequently marginalized or eliminated outright from explanatory frameworks which focus predominantly on a mechanistic view of efficient causal interactions among the material constituents of a physical universe. Continuing in this tradition, teleology has met with an equally problematic reception in present-day biology. During the last century, dominant scientific accounts of life have relied on the framing provided by the Modern synthesis: a mathematical framework which unified Gregor Mendelâs discoveries of the laws of genetic inheritance with Charles Darwinâs theory of evolution by natural selection. The Modern synthesis established a powerful quantitative 2 The conflict depicted here between teleology, theology, and scientific naturalism was not always so cut and dry. For instance, leading modern naturalists such as René Descartes, Robert Boyle, or August Weismann, each held nuanced and varied views on the compatibility of teleology or final causes and the mechanical properties of nature, as well as supernatural and/or theological explanations or beliefs (Clericuzio, 2011; Cragg, 1997; Riskin, 2020). 6 approach to understanding the evolution of populations of organisms in terms of how heritable genetic variations arise and accumulate through an intergenerational process of differential survival and reproduction (Huxley, 2009). Building on Darwinâs theory of evolutionâwhich offered a naturalistic mechanism for adaptive modifications in the structures, functions and behaviours of a speciesâthe architects of the Modern synthesis furnished this framework with the statistical mathematics of population biology and a richer molecular science of the physico-chemical operations underlying genetic variation and heredity. This synthesis of population, molecular, and evolutionary biology showed how adaptive changes in the distribution of reproductively successful molecular factors drove the gradual generation and development of traits and species over time. The Modern synthesis approached biological explanation with an emphasis on population- and gene-centered views of evolutionary processesâi.e., how genetic material and allelic frequencies in populations are subject to processes of change via the physico-chemical mechanisms of mutation, the laws of inheritance, and the reproductive success of structural, functional, and behavioural adaptations specified by differences in DNA. In other words, this view concentrated largely on causes issuing from micro-level physical events in the genome3 and the macro-level dynamics of natural selection steering population-scale changes in organismal traits (D. M. Walsh, 2015).4 To a large extent, this framework drove biological research and 3 The attribution of causal agency to genesâin terms of âself-replicatorsâ (Dawkins, 2006) or as that which initiates and controls development processesâhas been criticized as a form of âgenetic animismâ (Nicholson, 2014, pp. 165â166), a view of biological causation which obfuscates the dynamic holism of various organismal processes involved in the actuation and regulation of the otherwise largely inert and inactive molecules of the genome. 4 Some philosophers of biology, such as Elliot Sober, go so far as to draw direct comparisons between evolutionary theory and physical mechanics, construing both in terms of a theory of forces (1993). In this view, much like one can understand an objectâs movement by measuring certain physical properties subject to forces, natural selection could be interpreted analogously by comparing organismal trait fitness to mass, and natural 7 analysis for the better part of the 20th centuryâa âcentury of the geneâ (Fox Keller, 2002) which engulfed the fields of ecology, paleontology, systematics, cell biology, physiology and more (Chiu, 2022). Accordingly, the Modern synthesis and much of modern biological thought in general also sought to dispense with purposes, goals, or final causes in their explanations of the living world. The tenets of the Modern synthesis alone seemed to provide a suitable account of the ultimate causes driving the existence of biological diversity and the purpose and function of various organismal phenotypes. For instance, biologists could now contend that the existence of a heritable trait was the product of the advantageous functional consequences it had for previous generations. As a result, the âpurposeâ of the traits of living systems could be ascribed to the strictly biophysical mechanisms of molecular biology and natural selection, rather than resorting to vitalism, backward causation, intelligent design, and so on. Thus, it would be incorrect to think of biological evolution as being teleological,5 that is to say, as a process either designed for an ordained purpose or directed toward specific ends. The purpose of the functional adaptations produced by natural selection derive from their reproductive fitness in the past: evolution cannot be âforward-lookingâ, it does not respond to foreseen environmental pressures, nor can it develop adaptive features in anticipation of future benefits (Gregory, 2009, p. 163). Hence it would also be mistaken to think that organisms possess foresight into the future utility of heritable traits or selection to a force which shapes the evolutionary trajectory of populations by acting on fitness (D. M. Walsh, 2015). 5 As philosopher and historian of biology John Beatty has shown, the relationship between mechanism, teleology, and Darwinian evolution by natural selection was the subject of vexed dispute throughout the late 1800s and well into the 20th century (Beatty, 1990). While Darwinâs theory of natural selection is generally viewed as a challenge to teleological thinking in biology, effectively grounding adaptation in mechanistic explanations, his work has been interpreted in varied and contradictory waysâseen by some to have repudiated teleology and others as having reinforced it with new terms, while receiving praise and criticism for both. 8 an innate tendency to develop toward some intended end. Once more, the adaptations and functions of life result from prior conditions, thus organisms cannot adopt teleological actions or features that are known to be better suited to some predicted or predetermined evolutionary aim. Put succinctly by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr: âAdaptedness â¦ is an a posteriori result rather than an a priori goal seekingâ (2004, p. 58). Lifeâs existing forms and behaviours are simply the products of various physical mechanisms filtered selectively by heritable variation in fitness, where the frequency of some genotype persists due to being favoured by the historical conditions of an environmental niche. The Modern synthesis, and the related selectionist account of evolved purposeful functionality, afforded scientists the means to overlook and overturn a number of topics related to biological teleology. These included the natural theological argument from design (Sulloway, 2009), orthogenesis and progressionist theories of evolution (E. Mayr, 1982), and various concerns for the causal potency or explanatory merit of the agentic and purposive character of the organism (D. M. Walsh, 2021). Owing as well to its continued alignment with a mechanistic interpretation of the workings of a physical cosmos, biological explanation in the context of the Modern synthesis generally remained devoid of purposes, goals, and intrinsic agency, and teleological notions such as these remained marginalized on the basis of a prevailing account of life premised on the interplay between physico-chemical molecular mechanisms and evolutionary selection construed as a causal force. Yet, in spite of its dominance throughout much of 20th century biology, this paradigm did not achieve universal acceptance across the discipline. For instance, scientists affiliated with organicism sought to counter the molecular reductionism and population-centric approaches customary to modern evolutionary biology with frameworks centering the causal potency of 9 organismal agency (Baedke & Fábregas-Tejeda, 2023). In their research programs, proponents of organicism embraced the holistic, dynamic, and purposive character of living organization (Haraway, 1976) and many were engaged in overt discussions of the relationship between teleology, science, and life. Examples of the latter included biochemist Lawrence Henderson, who developed teleological theories of biology, and nature more broadly (1916; Peterson, 2016); developmental biologist Conrad Hal Waddington, whose work attended to âself-regulating processes of change â¦ so organized that they tend to arrive at a determined goalâ (1961, p. 119); and systems theorist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who wrote of how one âcannot conceive of a living organism â¦ without taking into account â¦ purposiveness, goal-seeking and the likeâ (1968, p. 45). Bertalanffy was also keen to note that cognizing life teleologically was wholly compatible with naturalist explanations: âteleological behaviour directed toward a characteristic final state or goal is not something off limits for a natural science and an anthropomorphic misconception of processes which, in themselves, are undirected and accidentalâ (1968, p. 46). On this view, lifeâs teleological characteristics are considered empirical phenomena at the core of biological analysis, not solely the deluded or fantastical projections of anthropomorphism, theology, or speculative metaphysics. This outlook was also consistent with the work of many early 20th century theoretical biologists working in the organicist tradition, such as J. B. S. Haldane, DâArcy W. Thompson, Joseph Needham, E.S. Russell, Joseph Henry Woodger, and Paul Alfred Weissânone of whom saw an insurmountable conflict between science and the study of lifeâs teleological qualities (Gambarotto, 2019; Nicholson & Gawne, 2015). In fact, the idea that teleology is an integral factor of the life sciencesâat least discursively or heuristicallyâwas the subject of interest for some non-organicist 20th century 10 biologists, as well. Among them was molecular biologist Jacques Monod, who regarded organisms as âobjects endowed with a purposeâ and considered it âindispensable to recognise that [purposiveness] is essential to the very definition of living beingsâ (1972, p. 9). Another notable example was Mayr, one of the architects of the Modern synthesis, who throughout his career took up the question of how to define and classify teleological notions and their applicability within biology (1974, 1982, 1992, 1998, 2004). In spite of the metaphysical, theological, or otherwise supernatural baggage that tends to put teleology at odds with scientific explanation, Mayr nonetheless felt that a âfirm and unambiguous answerâ could be given to the question: âWhere â¦ is it legitimate to speak of purpose and purposiveness in nature?â (1961, p. 1503). In so many words, Mayrâs response to such a question favoured a viewâconsistent with the principles of natural scienceâof the compatibility between mechanistic causality and the purposive development and behaviour of organisms. Valuing conceptual clarity and lexical precision, Mayr also felt that a careful and rigorous classification of teleological notions in biology was necessary to avoid equivocation, as failing to distinguish the varied meanings that such terms elicit could result in ambiguous, misleading or counterproductive usage in both scientific and philosophical discourse (1998, 2004). Moreover, due to its various interpretations, Mayr held that attempts to treat teleology as a unitary phenomenon with a single explanation were misconceived and futile (2004, p. 48). 1.2 The Multiple Meanings of Biological Teleology A concern for the semantic diversity of teleology is no minor contention, and the topic of biological teleology remains a subject of ongoing philosophical and scientific debate (Kodaj et al., 2025). Even amongst those for whom teleology is central to an understanding of life, 11 divergent approaches and conceptual discordance may emerge as thinkers draw from varied theoretical traditions in their engagement with the topic. Within the Western philosophical tradition alone, discussions of biological teleology have ancient origins and the intellectual history of the subject contains considerably disparate outlooks (Allen & Neal, 2020; Gambarotto, 2019). Given the limitations of this written project, looking closely at contemporary instances of this complex issue is a more feasible task than an extensive historical survey. As even in the present period, disciplinary, conceptual, and methodological differences underlie distinct theoretical approaches to what is a contested issue and an area of discourse and research lacking a unified consensus (Moss, 2024; Mossio, 2022). For this reason, it is important to investigate these conceptual differences in order to clarify varied present-day approaches to the relation between teleology and life, and to understand what kind of knowledge each favors and neglects. 1.2.1 Teleonomy One entry point into such an investigation is to consider the contrast between the notions of teleology and teleonomy. Biologist Colin Pittendrigh introduced the latter term to denote an instrumentalist or heuristic method for interpreting apparent goal-directedness in biology with the primary objective of uncovering its underlying mechanisms which natural selection had brought about (E. Mayr, 1974; Pittendrigh, 1958). Introducing teleonomy into the lexicon of science served the crucial aim of naturalizing teleological concepts by severing their association with a vexed history of theological and metaphysical thinking about the logic of life (Dresow & Love, 2023). The motive was to retain the teleological language that was seen as stubbornly indispensable in our descriptions of living organisms, while remaining committed to a naturalist worldview and mechanistic explanations of physical reality. After all, attempts to purge goals, 12 purposes, ends and the like, from descriptive phrasing in biology has never been an incontrovertibly simple task. Scientists have long struggled to find language that refrains from ascribing purposiveness to living form and function and portrays life and its activities solely in terms of intricate physical mechanismsâa complication crudely summarized in a popular sentiment among early 20th century scientists that teleology is like a mistress which biologists cannot live without, yet are ashamed to be seen with in public (Loewi, 1953; E. Mayr, 1988). Although teleonomic phrasing was put first forth by Pittendrigh in 1958, the intellectual attitude which it typified had already emerged in other guises during the prior decade, namely with cybernetics. In this early 20th century discipline, teleology, purpose, and goal-directedness were decoupled from what was seen as needlessly vague metaphysical abstractions and characterized instead by observable behaviours and error-correction control mechanisms involving negative feedback (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 5). The seminal publication Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology (1943), co-authored by physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth, computer engineer Julian Bigelow, and mathematician Norbert Wiener, laid the groundwork for this early naturalistic conception and behaviouristic analysis of teleology. Although teleonomy has since become tied mainly to discussions of how the appearance of biological purpose arises from evolutionary processes, it was the cybernetic account of teleological behaviour which initially motivated Pittendrigh to introduce his terminological distinctionâone which was later taken up by Mayr, Monod, and others in an effort to adjudicate the proper role of teleology in modern biology (Allen & Neal, 2020). Mayr acknowledged this cybernetic influence throughout his writing, celebrating its contribution to scientific discourse about the heuristic utility of teleological parlance and adopting cybernetic terms like âinformationâ and âprogramâ into his own treatment of teleonomy (E. Mayr, 1961, 1974, 1988; Vitale, 2022). 13 In the present, teleonomic ideas and vocabulary continue to circulate within the context of evolved purposiveness as well as certain niche but growing areas of biology which touch on a range of theoretical issues related to symbiogenesis, cognition, niche construction, development, biosemiotics, and more (Corning et al., 2023). Within the latter of these two contexts, recent efforts to explore goal-directedness from a bioengineering standpoint have stood out among contemporary instances of teleonomic thinking. A notable expression of this approach is found in the work of Michael Levinâa biologist working at the intersection of cognitive and computer science, developmental biology, biophysics, and robotics, whose research has been central to the nascent discipline of synthetic morphology (J. Davies & Levin, 2023; Kriegman et al., 2020). Levinâs research shows a deep interest in advancing teleonomic frameworks to harness goal-directed systems for medical, bioengineering, and robotics applications, while moving biological understanding toward a cybernetic conception of life. In a number of publications, Levin speaks of teleonomy as an essential tool for studying end-directed phenomena in a range of embodiments and extols the theoretical legacy of cyberneticsâencapsulated in the foundational work of Rosenblueth et al. (1943)âin the following terms: a ânaturalistic, quantitative science and engineering approach to mechanisms with goalsâ (2023b, p. 142); a ânon-magical science of physically-embodied goal-directednessâ (2024); and âa mature framework for understanding goal-directed behaviourâ (2023a, p. 177; Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470). The cybernetic teleonomic approach which Levin adopts is similarly characterized by a behavioristic analysis of error-minimization processes. Goal-directed functions are teleonomic models which drive empirical research based on the prediction and control they afford an observer (Levin, 2023a) and are construed as substrate-independent mechanisms (Levin, 2022) which reduce âthe margin of error at which [an] object stands at a 14 given time with reference to a relatively specific goalâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 2). For Levin, these âsimple homeostatic circuits are an ideal candidate for the âhydrogen atomâ of goal-directed activityâ (2022, p. 10), permeating a wide range of substrate and scale independent systems, such as protein structures, computer algorithms, molecular networks, morphological processes, animal brains and various machines. Levinâs bioengineering approach greatly emphasizes the cybernetic dimension of teleonomyâs conceptual lineage and differs in some respects from the views held by proponents of teleonomic thinking in evolutionary and molecular biology. Yet, their similarities nonetheless reflect a shared commitment to rendering teleological notions amenable to naturalistic, heuristic, and/or mechanistic frameworks for studying the behaviour of organisms and, in many cases, machines.6 As with other teleonomic approaches, the bioengineering perspective varies to some degree from alternative conceptions of the relation between teleology and life which stem from other traditions of thought. 6 Despite being a thorough going selectionist in much of his thinking, Mayr was nonetheless indebted to cybernetic teleonomy and the parallels it drew between biology and computers. Mayr made this clear in his discussion of the word âprogramâ and the key role it plays in his definition of teleonomic processes: âMy definition of program is deliberately chosen in such a way as to avoid drawing a line between seemingly âpurposiveâ behavior in organisms and in man-made machines â¦ Any machine which is programmed to carry out goal-directed activities is capable of doing this âmechanicallyâ (1988, p. 49). Earlier in the same book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Mayr also writes: âAn individual who â to use the language of the computer â has been âprogrammedâ can act purposefully â¦ A bird that starts its migration, an insect that selects its host plant, an animal that avoids a predator, a male that displays to a female â they all act purposefully because they have been programmed to do so. When I speak of the programmed âindividual,â I do so in a broad sense. A programmed computer itself is an âindividualâ in this sense, but so is, during reproduction, a pair of birds whose instinctive and learned actions and interactions obey, so to speak, a single programâ (E. Mayr, 1988, p. 30). 15 1.2.2 Teleology In contrast with teleonomy, teleology has an even more complicated set of connotations which reach far back into the rich and varied history of the termâs use and conceptual meanings. Firstly, it is necessary to consider the origins of the phrase itself. In the 18th century, teleologia was coined by natural philosopher Christian Wolff in connection with the idea of acquiring insight into Godâs perfection and wisdom through a science of natural facts (Gambarotto, 2019; Wolff, 1732). This teleological perspective was closely associated with the natural theological argument that the appearance of structural and functional complexity in nature leads one to infer that it had been designed by an intelligent creator to serve divinely inspired ends. Such a view is arguably prefigured by Platoâs conception of teleological explanation, where âthe natural world [was pictured] as the end-product of a divine craftsman who looked to the world of eternal being for his model of the good and then created a natural orderâ (G. Lennox, 1994, p. 325). In general terms, this view involves an agent whose actions realize a goal that is external to the object being explained and whose value is determined by extrinsic phenomena and not the explanandum itself. In other words, the Platonic perspective offers a historical precedent for treating the natural world as the product of a divine craftsman, and the application of teleological language to natural objects as though they were analogous to artifacts fashioned by a cosmological designer. This view was exercised by an assortment of thinkers throughout the modern period. For instance, the role of final causes in natural philosophy was a key consideration for 17th century chemist Robert Boyle. The Anglican pioneer of modern science strongly supported the idea of God as a divine artificer, remarking that â[i]t is rational, from the manifest fitness of some things to cosmical or animal ends or uses, to infer, that they were framed or ordained in reference thereunto by an intelligent and designing agentâ (Boyle, 16 1688, p. 160; Ruse, 2002). Clergyman and philosopher William Paley was another prominent purveyor of this attitude. Writing in the early 19th century, Paleyâs argument from design posited the resemblance between a watchmakerâs skilled handiwork and the contrivances of a cosmic designer who brings about the complexity observed in nature (1802/2008). In the present, variations of this view inform a number of kindred but subtly distinct positions falling primarily under the purview of evolutionary creationism and intelligent design.7 It was common for these ideas about a divine craftsman or intelligent creator to dominate conceptions of teleology within mainstream 20th-century scientific discourse (Dawkins, 1996). These associations played no small role in motivating biologists to reject teleology completely, or to situate their perspectives on the heuristic value of teleonomic language at armâs length from ideas about intelligent design; evidence of divine aims, mind, or purpose in nature; and the inverse causality that might be implied by a cosmic telos (Gambarotto, 2019). However, despite its relatively recent affiliation with external or divine intent, contrasting notions of an internal teleology, or immanent natural purposiveness, date back as far as antiquity, particularly in Aristotleâs natural philosophy and his investigation of living beings and their development 7 Evolutionary creationism postulates a cosmic designer who either fashions laws governing physical processes before setting the universe into motion or recurrently intervenes into otherwise natural processes so as to bias their direction of change in accordance with a divine purpose (Bowler, 2003). Intelligent design, on the other hand, argues that aspects of nature are too complex to result from an undirected, chance-like process such as natural selection and are instead best explained by an extrinsic intelligent cause (Denyse, 2002). In some cases, theological and modern scientific views of this topic are brought together. For instance, philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has also put forward a teleological view of evolution informed by religious and spiritual ideas closely aligned with evolutionary creationism, where a cosmic law is thought to drive increasing complexification and consciousness in the universe (1955/2008). Adjacent to intelligent design, 20th century cosmologists and physicists have also entertained the notion of an Anthropic Cosmological Principle which suggests that the structure of the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent observers and may hence imply that cosmological evolution is directed towards the goal of generating life (D. Barrow & J. Tipler, 1988). 17 (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E./2011; Corcilius, 2021; G. Lennox, 1994; Gambarotto, 2019; Shambaugh, 2024; D. Walsh, 2021; D. M. Walsh, 2017). Aristotle's notion that life possesses a teleological principle of self-motion, marked by holistic organization and intentional behavior, stands as a salient reference for alternative lines of thought regarding immanent or intrinsic biological teleology (Shambaugh, 2024). In his treatise De Anima, Aristotle captures this characterization of life with the term entelecheia, meaning âhaving oneâs purpose withinâ (Dresow & Love, 2023, p. 104) or, in philosopher Mark Shiffmanâs translation, the ââbeing-fully-itselfâ â¦ of an organized living bodyâ and the âpersistence or continuityâ of a âtelosâ or âfulfillment, end [or] final causeâ (2011a, p. 101). This conception is closely interconnected with a number of complementary notions in Aristotleâs metaphysics. These include: psuche, or âsoulâ, a general principle or essence of natural organic bodies (Boylan, 2024); final causality, the fourth component in Aristotleâs doctrine of causes or explanations (Falcon, 2023); and bios, a teleological account for the coordinated integration of the various parts and activities of an animalâs body, organized as a unity of life (Lennox, 2010). In broad strokes, although Aristotle took teleological motion to be widespread throughout all of nature, he submits that only living beings are uniquely capable of moving themselvesâthat their agential, purposive behaviour and constitutive organization exist for the sake of their own end as a living unity (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E./2011; Shambaugh, 2024). In the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant expressed a kindred perspective (albeit in reference to a slightly different subject matter) in his text âCritique of Teleological Judgmentââpart II of his major work, the Critique of Judgement (1790/2007). In these writings, Kant discusses the notion of a ânatural endâ, citing the organism as an exemplary system which is âboth cause and effect of itselfâ (1790/2007, p. 199). This form of circular causality relates to 18 Kantâs portrayal of the organism as a holistic unity with intrinsically generated purposiveness, as opposed to having extrinsically determined ends accorded to it by an intelligent agent, such as in the case of products of art.8 Kant uses the example of a tree to illustrate this point, noting that these organic entities reproduce themselves at both the level of the genus (hereditary reproduction) and the individual (development and growth). Moreover, their components rely reciprocally on each other, and the whole to which they belong, to continually perpetuate ontogenetic and phylogenetic self-regeneration. In other words: trees are both the cause and effects of other trees; the effects of their developmental processes constitute the very system which causes them; and each part of the organism is an element in an interdependent network of components and relations which both engenders the unified system, and its varied activities, and is itself engender by this whole. In Kantâs own words: âA tree produces, in the first place, another tree â¦ it produces itself. In the genus, now as effect, now as cause, continually generated from itself and likewise generating itself, it preserves itself generically. Secondly, a tree produces itself even as an individual â¦ understood in a sense that makes it entirely different from any increase according to mechanical laws, and renders it equivalent, though under another name, to generation â¦ Thirdly, a part of a tree also generates itself in such a way that the preservation of one part is reciprocally dependent on the preservation of the other parts â¦ the leaves are certainly products of the tree, but they also maintain it in turnâ (1790/2007, pp. 199â200). 8 The distinction between extrinsic or external and intrinsic or immanent teleology has an historical antecedent which stretches back as far as classical Greece and is reflected in Aristotle and Platoâs respective treatments of teleological concepts. As historian and philosopher of science James G. Lennox writes: âTeleological explanation on the Platonic model â¦ is the origin of what is sometimes referred to as âexternal teleologyâ â¦ The âexternalityâ involved is twofold: (a) the agent whose goal is being achieved is external to the object that is being explained teleologically, and (b) the value aimed at is the agentâs value, not the objectâs â¦ Aristotleâs approach to teleology is embedded within a very different theory of causality and explanation â¦ Aristotle devotes two chapters of the Physics (II.8, 9) and most of the first chapter of Parts of Animals, I, to justifying his view that certain natural changes take place, and certain natural attributes exist, for the sake of some end. Not only do these changes and attributes contribute to an endâthey take place and exist in part because they contribute to an end â¦ Aristotleâs argument for the operation of ends as causes in nature in no way depends on the actions of a rational agent â¦ For this reason, Aristotle is often identified as the origin of what is referred to as âimmanentâ or âinternalâ teleologyâ (1994, pp. 325â326). 19 According to Kant, this peculiar causal structure belongs to a self-organized being with inherent self-propagating formative power, in contrast with the mere motive power of a machine, or some equivalent object or process understood solely in terms of the mechanical principles governing physical nature. Put differently, the features of self-construction, self-determination, and self-movement which organisms embody do not originate from the intentions of an external entity, nor can they be explained mechanistically according to Newtonian laws, a framework which Kant viewed as the only legitimate conception of natural causality at the time. Thus, living systems are âthe only beings in nature that â¦ cannot be thought possible except as ends of natureâ and on this basis âsupply natural science with the basis for a teleologyâ (Kant, 1790/2007, p. 204). This exploration of a naturalistic conception of intrinsic organic teleology was advanced further during the 19th century by post-Kantian naturalists such as Friedrich Schelling and the philosophical tradition of Romantische Naturphilosophie, German teleomechanists working to build the foundations of a unified theory of biology, and in Hegel's reflections on agency and life (Gambarotto, 2019; Lenoir, 1989; Shambaugh, 2024). In the early 20th century, organicist biologists also took up the scientific study of those very teleological aspects of life highlighted in this condensed overview of Aristotelian and Kantian thought: i.e., holistic self-organization, organismal growth and development, and their explanatory role in biology contra mechanistic reductionism (Haraway, 1976; Peterson, 2016). Some decades later, Chilean neurobiologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela put forth their concept of âautopoiesisâ (1980)âa neologism formed from the Greek terms for âselfâ and âcreation/making/formationââto capture 20 similar ideas about the causal circularity underpinning lifeâs autonomous and agential ability to produce and maintain itself through the creation of its own parts. Along related lines, the past few decades have seen a rise in biologists and philosophers finding common ground in a conception of life as self-organizing, self-producing, and intrinsically or immanently teleological. These thinkers are variously informed by many of the aforementioned ideas about the nature of life found in Aristotle, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, as well as the more contemporary philosophy of Hans Jonas, and scientifically-adjacent notions like autopoiesis and biological organization and autonomy (E. A. Di Paolo, 2005; Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022; Jonas, 1966/2001b; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; Mossio & Bich, 2017; E. Thompson, 2010b; Weber & Varela, 2002). They too adopt a view of life as irreducibly teleological, characterized not by its relation to extrinsic endsânor to heuristic interpretations of purpose or reductive mechanistic explanations for goal-directednessâbut by the intrinsic telos of a self-organized and self-producing living unity. 1.3 Teleonomic Bioengineering and Biocentric Intrinsic Purpose Teleology has stubbornly pervaded our perception and understanding of life for millennia, and despite the ostensible dissonance with scientific naturalism, it nonetheless continues to surface in various forms within contemporary biology. While it would be rewarding to catalogue the many ways that life and teleology have been conceptually coupled throughout the history of thought, I will undertake a more manageable task of examining what I take to be two contrasting approaches to this relationship in the present: a teleonomic bioengineering framework and a biocentric account of intrinsic purpose. These two contemporary outlooks on the question of teleology in nature are limited but instructive examples of the conceptual 21 disparity between teleonomy and inherent teleology; observed behaviour and intrinsic purpose; mechanism and organization; and to some extent the traditions of cybernetics and organicism. By placing these two perspectives at the centre of my analysis, this thesis will explore their incongruity by drawing attention to a few notably divergent attitudes that follow from their theoretical commitments and their respective understandings of teleology and life. I claim that the cybernetic bioengineering account alone lacks the conceptual resources to support a thorough exploration of biological teleology. Notably, the framework does little to explore connections between differences in system organization or composition (e.g., abiotic, machinic, living) and distinctive attributes of diverse teleological phenomena (e.g., intrinsic or extrinsic purpose, terminal equilibrium processes, designed servomechanisms, autopoietic self-production). Rather, teleonomic bioengineering obscures qualitative differences in the forms of teleology found in technology, biology, and physicsâtreating organisms, machines, and certain principles in physics with uniformity by interpreting their activity through a heuristic lens of substrate-independent error-minimization and an observer-relative analysis of goal-directed behaviour (Levin, 2022; Levin & Martyniuk, 2018; Rosenblueth et al., 1943). The strength of the cybernetic bioengineering framework is thus also its shortcoming: so general as to lend itself to a broad suite of phenomena (and wide-ranging applications) yet too sweeping to be specific or informative about qualitatively distinct teleological processes in nature. Consequently, the cybernetic view conceals the distinctive source of living teleology which its theory presupposes but does not explain. That is to say, cybernetic models that describe how actions minimize deviation from a set point, or improve the precision with which a physical system pursues a goal, do not explain that which initiates or determines goal-seeking behaviour to begin with. 22 By contrast, the biocentric theory of intrinsic purpose builds on a conceptual framework equipped with a more meticulous consideration of the categorical differences between the telos of living systems and other varieties of teleological phenomena. This framework holds that the constitutive features of biological organization and self-construction ground a unique and intrinsic form of teleology (Jonas, 1966/2001b; Mossio & Bich, 2017). Such systems are constituted by their own activity and the organized activity of their parts which are holistically oriented towards promoting the conditions of their own flourishing, carried out for the sake of their own self-production and maintenance (Moreno & Mossio, 2015). From this perspective, living beings are arguably the only kind of system known to have their own existence as the purpose of their operations (Nave, 2022, p. 6). In other words, lifeâs teleological organization is closely entangled with the goal-directedness of its behaviourâactions which acquire intrinsic purpose for the living system relative to the perpetuation of its autopoietic individuality (Mossio & Bich, 2017; Weber & Varela, 2002). The teleological features of machines on the other hand are imposed from without and fail to coincide with their own existence, while abiotic end-directed processes alone cannot account for the emergent teleological identity and novel causal regime of an autonomous self-maintaining living system. The biocentric view thus provides the theoretical foundation for a more detailed explanation of lifeâs distinctive relationship to teleology and contributes instructive criteria for developing a more fine-grained ontology of teleological processes. In summary, the cybernetic bioengineering framework obfuscates variation among teleological processes and fails to account for the distinctive purposiveness of the very system it presupposes and whose behaviour it seeks to explain. Conversely, the biocentric account places these features at the center of its explorationânamely, self-construction and self-determination, 23 the immanent teleology of constitutive organization, and the intrinsic concern at the core of organic purposiveness that results from a system whose existence is the purpose of its operations. Therefore, it arguably provides a critical contribution to any framework seeking to explore teleological systems and their behaviour, supplementing the cybernetic view with an enriched consideration of biological purposiveness and offering a more detailed point of reference for distinguishing living, machinic, and abiotic teleology. To examine these claims, the text will be structured in the following way. Chapter 2 will begin by reviewing the cybernetic heritage of the bioengineering view, focusing on Rosenblueth et al.âs foundational work on the topics of behaviour, purpose and teleology (1943) and its relationship to the present-day bioengineering perspective epitomized in the work of Michael Levin. Chapter 3 will outline the biocentric view of intrinsic teleology with an emphasis on the work of Hans Jonas (1966/2001b) and its connection to the historically antecedent ideas of Aristotle and Kant, as well as developments in theoretical biology regarding autopoiesis, biological organization, and autonomy. Chapter 4 will recapitulate these summaries, underscoring key features that reflect theoretical contentions between the two views. I will then elaborate on these divergences and how they impact teleological explanations of life, machines, and abiotic physical processes, and what these might contribute to an ontological consideration of teleology in nature. Chapter 5 will provide concluding thoughts and suggest future directions for research. 24 Chapter 2: The Cybernetic Heritage of Teleonomic Bioengineering Synthetic morphology is an emerging sub-discipline of synthetic biology and a novel form of bioengineering. This incipient research program began to take shape during the late aughts when developmental biologist Jamie Davies first outlined the endeavour in his paper Synthetic morphology: prospects for engineered, self-constructing anatomies (2008). This new disciplinary undertaking combines ârecent developments in basic developmental biology and in synthetic biology â¦ to provide a foundation for [the practice of programming cells] to organize themselves into specific, designed arrangements, structures and tissuesâ (J. A. Davies, 2008, p. 707). Put simply, practitioners seek to understand the principles of morphogenesis and apply them to building self-assembling constructs of engineered living matter (Ball, 2023b). In his 2008 text, Davies makes no direct reference to the intellectual history of cybernetic teleology when describing the processes and mechanisms of natural or synthetic biological development. However, this framing is faintly apparent in his reference to robotics as the field of engineering most proximal to the ambitions of synthetic morphology. For example, Davies turns to the work of computer scientist and father of cybernetics Norbert Wiener when likening the biological components of a synthetic morphological system to sensory, effector, and information-processing modules. Besides the occasional mention of closely related notions such as self-organization and feedback loops, there is no explicit use of conventional teleological nomenclature in this early formulation. Teleological terms are first introduced to the still fledgling field a few years later by way of Michael Levinâs publication Morphogenetic fields in embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer: Non-local control of complex patterning (2012). Here Levin begins exploring the 25 connections between a teleological perspective of morphogenesis and the ârational control of growth and formâ reflected in Daviesâ proposal to engineer âfunctional artificial systems using principles and building blocks abstracted from the biological worldâ (2012, p. 243). The idea that biological development is guided by a âtarget morphologyâ (Bessonov et al., 2015; Levin, 2012; Tosenberger et al., 2015) or âa physically encoded map or template of [a] final goal stateâ (Levin, 2012, p. 243) is the central focus of this approach to the study and explanation of morphogenesisâone which follows from an earlier conjecture about the existence of morphological goal states and their relationship to regenerative medicine (Levin, 2011). In this incipient formulation, Levin also brings traces of a cybernetic perspective to his framing of biological development, stating that âOne is tempted to describe the process [of morphogenetic pattern regulation] as the behavior of a cybernetic systemâ implementing error-correction mechanisms to orient itself towards a specified end-state or desired set-point (2012, p. 250). These early expressions of cybernetic teleology, situated in the context of control theory applications in bioengineering, are augmented further in later publications as Levin becomes increasingly comfortable implementing this theoretical framework. Of note are a handful of co-authored papers in 2015 and 2016 which link organismal development and form to cybernetic conceptions of teleology and are replete with descriptions of goal-seeking despite perturbation; goal states being represented or pursued; goal-directedness via homeostatic mechanisms; and other goal-oriented processes and behaviours at various scales of life (Friston et al., 2015; Pezzulo & Levin, 2015, 2016). It is here where Levin begins to anchor his work more directly in cybernetic references and formalisms. This includes presenting schematic models of error-correction mechanisms in biological systems and more frequent citations of cyberneticist W. Ross Ashbyâs work on self-organization and goal-seeking, as well as Rosenblueth, Bigelow, and 26 Wienerâs views on cybernetics, teleology, and behaviour. In his writing over the last few years, the latter of these two references has become increasingly fundamental in supporting Levinâs conception of goal directed behaviour and the instrumentalist or heuristic role of teleology in the bioengineering approach to a science of life (Abramson & Levin, 2021; Baluška & Levin, 2016; J. Davies & Levin, 2023; Levin, 2022, 2023b, 2023a, 2024; Levin & Clawson, 2023). As the espousal of cybernetic teleonomy grows increasingly ubiquitous in Levinâs later work, it remains invariably entangled with the prospects of synthetic morphology, that is to say, the control and engineering of cellular behaviour and hybrid biotech systems and applications in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, artificial life and biorobotics (Abramson & Levin, 2021; J. Davies & Levin, 2023; Levin & Clawson, 2023). Indeed, one might argue that for Levin applied bioengineering and the cybernetic view of life are each otherâs counterpart. Cybernetics is but one of many interconnected theoretical and methodological frameworks which Levin draws from, including work in computer science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, control engineering, neuroscience, behaviourism, the free energy principle and active inference. This text will not engage with the entire scope of Levinâs research nor with all facets of its theoretical foundation and thus does not intend to put forth a strawman of this broad set of complex ideas and practices. Instead, the focus is narrowly concerned with the throughline of Rosenblueth et al.âs ideas of teleology, purpose, and goal-directedness and how this precursor guides aspects of Levinâs research and functions as a pertinent resource underpinning an account of teleology which he endorses in his written work. For this reason, I will now turn to Rosenblueth et al.âs seminal text for a closer look at this foundational account of naturalized teleology and some of its connections with contemporary bioengineering. 27 2.1 Behaviour, Purpose and Teleology In 1943, Rosenblueth et al. published their foundational essay Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology which outlined a naturalistic, behaviouristic account of teleology and purpose. According to co-author Norbert Wiener, the text was âa statement of program for a large body of experimental workâ (1948/1985, p. 8)âa research endeavour later designated âcyberneticsâ in his seminal 1948 book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Rosenblueth et al.âs paper sets out to explore the study and classification of behaviour with an emphasis on a few core features: (i) omitting a functional analysis of natural events; (ii) underscoring the importance of the concepts of purpose and teleology; and (iii) revealing âa uniform behavioristic analysis â¦ applicable to both machines and living organismsâ (1943, pp. 1, 4). The crux of this framework resides in the notion of feedback, particularly error-controlled negative feedback: the corrective regulation of behaviour relative to âthe difference between the state of the behaving object at any time and the final state interpreted as the purposeâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 5). Before proceeding with the topic of feedback, itâs helpful to present a quick overview of how the authors classify and model behaviour relative to goal-directedness, purpose, teleology and the like. In a diagrammatic schema (see Figure 2.1 below), the authors represent various forms of behaviour using successively bifurcating categories. Each dichotomy is comprised of one increasingly complex form of animate behaviour and a corresponding ânon-classâ, with every consecutive dividing branch proceeding from the former of these two categories. The diagram thus begins with behaviour, splitting into active and non-active behaviour, then active behaviour dividing into purposeful and non-purposeful, then purposeful into feedback (or 28 teleological) and non-feedback, then predictive and non-predictive, and finally first-, second-, etc. orders of prediction. Figure 1. A cybernetic classification of behaviour. This tabulation was chosen by the Rosenblueth et al. to emphasize the concepts of purpose and of teleology, propose a means of developing increasingly complex behavioural tests for organisms, and present an approach to the uniform behavioristic analysis of machines and organisms. (Behavior, Purpose and Teleology, Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, Julian Bigelow, Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943, Reproduced with permission.) Rosenblueth, Bigelow, and Wiener are primarily concerned with behaviour broadly classified as purposeful, which they interpret to mean âbehaviour â¦ directed towards the attainment of a goal â i.e., to a final condition in which the behaving object reaches a definite correlation in time or in space with respect to another object or eventâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 1). The authors are particularly interested in âintrinsic purposeful behaviourâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 2), which they equate with servomechanical control by negative feedback and designate as teleological in the context of both living and nonliving systems. This idea is illustrated with examples of instances when behavioural control failsâi.e., actions affected by 29 insufficiently dampened feedback which result in corrective movements that overshoot a target and lead to a series of increasingly amplified oscillations and failure to attain a goal. Rosenblueth et al. discuss two specific cases: the clumsy, wavering motion of a malfunctioning machine set to impinge on a light source, and the disorderly motor behaviour of a patient with cerebellar disease attempting to bring a glass of water to his mouth. These examples serve to strengthen an analogy between machine behaviour and its âvividâ resemblance to cognitive control of the nervous mechanisms of purposeful motor activity. They also throw into relief the âsufficiently restricted connotationâ of teleology as âsynonymous with behaviour controlled by negative feed-backâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 5). For cybernetics, teleology ought thus to be interpreted in terms of a systemâs activities which adjust to reduce the discrepancy between a current state and a target state, as in the case of a phototropic servomechanism or the voluntary action of a human subject attempting to drink a glass of water. This conception of teleology is shaped by an insistence that while the concept of purpose is critical for investigating and understanding certain modes of behaviour it is advisable to avoid the problems of causality associated with it, specifically âthe vague concept of a final causeâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 5). The aim here was to eschew scientifically ill-defined speculations about so-called backward causationâhistorically, a means of discrediting teleologyâand concentrate instead on the mechanisms underlying empirically observable behaviours of deterministic systems examined heuristically as purposeful or teleological. To summarize, in the context of a cybernetic research program, teleology is conceived as a heuristic construct anchored in a naturalistic framework for studying behavioural mechanisms interpreted as purposefulâi.e., modes of goal-directed actions exhibited uniformly by both living and non-living systems where error-minimization is regulated by feedback. 30 2.2 Teleonomy and Bioengineering Salient features of this canonical view have been adopted and developed by cyberneticists, philosophers and biologists alike. Notable examples include Ashbyâs work on adaptation, goal-seeking and ultrastability (1960), Ernest Nagelâs systems theory of goal-directedness (1961), and Pittendrighâs coinage of teleonomy (1958). What unites these otherwise disparate thinkers is an interest in reductive, mechanistic, naturalistic accounts of teleology. Rosenblueth, Bigelow and Wiener lay the foundations for this view by seeking the congruity of physical determinism and teleology, rejecting vitalism and dismissing metaphysical views related to backward or final causation (Rosenblueth et al., 1943; Rosenblueth & Wiener, 1950; Wiener, 1948/1985). Their behaviouristic analogy between organisms and machines, and reduction of teleology to feedback mechanisms controlling behavioural traits, are also indicative of this stance (Rosenblueth & Wiener, 1950). Ashby and Nagel equally share an interest in reducing teleological activity to strictly mechanistic terms: the latter advocating for a deflationary teleology formulated in terms of non-teleological statements about physico-chemical processes, and the former refraining from teleological explanations in light of a mechanistic perspective on animals and machines (Nave, 2022; Tugby, 2024). For biologists like Pittendrigh, Mayr, or Monod, the term teleonomy became a desired label for end-directed organismal behaviour, coined with the intent of uncoupling descriptions of goal-directednessâparticularly as it relates to biological adaptation arising through natural selectionâfrom the disrepute of Aristotelean teleology (Pittendrigh, 1958). The teleonomic nomenclature was intended to stand in for the more fundamental underlying mechanisms of evolutionary and molecular biology driving the appearance of goal-directedness, such as the operations of a genetic program (E. Mayr, 1974, 1992) or the mechanical pursuit of reproduction 31 (Dresow & Love, 2023; Monod, 1972). In the present, the teleonomic framework and the heritage of the cybernetic approach to goal-directedness, purpose, and teleology are considered closely linked (Deacon & García-Valdecasas, 2023; E. Mayr, 1974, 1988, 1998; Mossio & Bich, 2017). Together they reflect a paradigmatic mode of thought in the life sciences where teleological notions are extricated from philosophical or metaphysical viewsâand related objectionsâconcerning ârealâ intrinsic teleology in nature and are employed instrumentally or heuristically to access what are taken to be more essential, largely behaviouristic and/or mechanistic, explanations. Developmental biologist Michael Levin builds on this theoretical lineage in his work, adopting the heuristic teleonomic orientation and cybernetic ideas about goal-directedness. For starters, Levin places himself squarely in the cybernetic tradition with his extensive endorsement of Rosenblueth et. al.âs views on teleological behaviour (J. Davies & Levin, 2023; Levin, 2022, 2023b, 2023a, 2024; Levin & Clawson, 2023). References to other core cybernetic figures are also present in his work, but Levin predominately cites Rosenblueth et. al.âs views on teleology and behaviour as the basis for a naturalistic, quantitative framework for understanding the behaviour of physically embodied mechanisms with goals. Levin also tends to position this cybernetic account of teleology against what he characterizes as âmagicalâ thinking latent within alternative approaches to the study of goals in nature, which he interprets as implicitly invoking supernatural processes beyond physico-chemical determinism at the lowest level of analysis (McMillen & Levin, 2024; Pezzulo & Levin, 2015).9 9 Levin often uses the term âmagicâ or âmagicalââespecially in informal contexts such as interviews, podcasts, and blogsâto characterize views on teleology that differ from his bioengineering perspective; invoke the negative connotations of anthropocentrism and vitalism; convey his opposition to the distinction between organisms 32 Relatedly, Levin stresses the influence of a practical engineering outlook on both his view of teleology and how it differs from alternative perspectives. Following from a preference for empirical research and prediction, Levin differentiates the teleonomic framework for studying apparent goal-seeking behaviour from âphilosophical wrangling over real, objective purpose or agencyâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470). The insinuation is similar to that which follows from the foil of âmagical thinkingâ: alternative views of teleology which do not conform to the cybernetic bioengineering framework are presumed to be either non-naturalistic or entailing fruitless and speculative philosophical discussion of teleologyâs ontological status in nature. Instead, the question of teleology ought to be addressed with the instrumentalist engineering approach and pragmatic empirical testing which Levin finds most workable from a cybernetic teleonomic perspective (Fields & Levin, 2022; Levin, 2022; Levin & Clawson, 2023). This claim is articulated in a number of different works but is expressed quite clearly in a recent paper titled Collective Intelligence of Morphogenesis as a Teleonomic Process: The key aspect of teleonomy as discussed herein [i.e. goal-directed function] is that it refers to models of complex systemsâ activity that are empirically testable based on the degree of explanation, prediction, and control it affords to an observer. Teleonomy is a lens (akin to the pragmatic intentional stance [Dennett, 1987]) through which scientists see biological systems, creatures see each other, and parts of living systems model other parts and themselves to gain optimal causal control (Levin, 2023a, p. 176). The reference to the intentional stance is tellingâa term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett to describe how one might use heuristic abstractions about the mental state or agential capacities of a system in order to make predictions about its behaviour (1989). For Levin, and machines; and object to the notion that biological purposiveness is fundamentally inaccessible to mechanical explanation and practical engineering or applied uses. 33 ascriptions of teleonomy ought to function similarly. Their foremost use is heuristic, to assess the degree of prediction and control they afford an observer and to âdrive empirical research, not â¦ preserve philosophical positions that make armchair decisions on questions of agency in the absence of specific experimentâ (Levin, 2023a, p. 176). This approach thus seeks to avoid âthe pseudo-question of whether systems âreallyâ have teleologic goals in favor of empirical research focused on understanding and exploiting the robust control provided by a teleonomic perspectiveâ (Levin, 2023a, p. 192).10 Levin also subscribes to the cybernetic view that teleology is modelled best in terms of behavioural regulation and control via error-minimization or homeostatic feedback. Citing Rosenblueth et al, this error-correction mechanism represents the elemental form of goal-directed activityâa precursor upon which more sophisticated teleonomic capacities involving agency, preferences, or cognition can scale (Levin, 2022, p. 10).11 One example given numerously is the TOTE (test-operate-test-exit) model (Levin, 2019, 2022; Pezzulo & Levin, 2015, 2016). The architecture of this âsimplified control scheme â¦ exemplifies a class of cybernetic modelsâ of motor control and cognitive processing (Pezzulo & Levin, 2016, pp. 5â6) and represents a 10 Levin and Dennett co-authored an article (2020) on this very approach where they elaborate on its basic premiseâmaking a bid for scientists to adopt a teleonomic, behaviouristic framework for positing purpose or goal-directedness in a miscellany of biological, physical, and chemical processes in order to enhance prediction and control. 11 One way this gets elaborated in Levinâs work is through the concept of a âcognitive light coneâ (Doctor et al., 2022; Levin, 2019, 2022). In so many words, a cognitive light cone is the bounded scope of an agentâs goal-space, agency, or concern, formulated in terms of its extension along conjoined axes of time and space. With the error-minimizing or homeostatic mechanism as the primordial unit of goal-directedness, the goals of various agents progressively scale from âhumble metabolic hunger-satiety loopsâ to âgrandiose planetary-scale engineering ambitionsâ and beyond (Levin, 2022, p. 10). For example, individual cells that âengage in predictive coding to manage their sensory experienceâ have a smaller light cone than coupled cells that âmaintain large, spatial patterns â¦ [or] instructive â¦ memories guiding the activity of a cell collective through anatomical morphospace toward the correct target morphologyâ (Levin, 2022, p. 23). Likewise, âa tick has a relatively small cognitive boundary, having very little memory or predictive power in the temporal direction, and sensing/acting very locallyâ while a âdog has much more temporal memory, some forward prediction ability, and a degree of spatial concernâ (Levin, 2019, p. 8). 34 âminimal component of agencyâ (Levin, 2022, p. 11) in self-regulating processes where actions minimize the discrepancy between existing conditions and a set point or desired variable or state. The TOTE mechanism is multi-scalar and substrate-independent, operating in a continuum of systems ranging from simple to complex, abiotic to living. Examples include gene-regulatory networks, cruise control, machine learning algorithms, bioelectric morphogenesis, simple food seeking behaviours, and higher-order cognitive inference. For instance, in terms of modelling biological phenomena, Levin and his colleagues have discussed the similarities between morphogenic regenerationââwhere a discrepancy between the organism's target morphology and the current anatomical state (caused by injury) activates pattern homeostatic remodelling and growth â¦ and cease[s] when the correct shape has been achievedââand action control in human agents, such as hammering a nail or grasping at an object, where âa desired state value â¦ can trigger a series of â¦ actionsâ which adjust based on a âcomparison between desired and sensed state valuesâ (Pezzulo & Levin, 2015, p. 1504, 2016, p. 6). TOTE mechanisms are also routinely used in control engineering systems, such as thermostats, governors, anti-aircraft artillery, or cruise control, where the âdesired value of a reference variable (e.g., a certain [temperature] position or speed) is compared with the actual variable value [and] the discrepancy serves as an âerror signalâ that is used to adjust the systemâ (Pezzulo & Levin, 2015, p. 1504). In the case of these servomechanical artifacts, or âclosed-loop controlâ machines, a human agent selects or determines the set point, goal state, or target variable from which the machine works to correct deviations and achieve a desired outputâsuch as when a mechanical fly-ball governor regulates fuel input to maintain a constant speed and ensure an engineâs safe and efficient operation, or when a fire-control system refines its aim by tracking an 35 adversarial target, predicting its future position, and adjusting ballistic calculations to minimize error between its line of fire and the enemyâs location. The substrate-independence of cybernetic regulatory mechanisms also carries over into Levinâs interests in efficient prediction and control within the âimmense option spaceâ of unconventionally embodied goal-directed agentsâi.e., novel bioengineered systems such as hybrots, cyborgs, animats, and artificial chimaeras (Levin, 2022, p. 7; Levin & Clawson, 2023, pp. 462, 478). Calling attention to this hybridity serves to strengthen the view that demarcating biological and technological systems is unwarranted in the domain of teleonomic engineering. This view is also inherited from the legacy of cybernetics, which in Levinâs words foresaw long ago âthe dissolution of shallow, contingent boundaries between evolved and engineered systemsâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470). Recall, for example, the significance of Rosenblueth et al.âs advocacy for behaviouristic analysis, their resultant omission of any link between teleology and âthe intrinsic organization of the entity studiedâ, and their acknowledgement of the âdeep differencesâ between machines and living organisms that an emphasis on organization and structure would disclose (1943, pp. 1, 4). Levin effectively restates this position when discussing how âBehaviorist approaches are ideally suited to the new science of synthetic and chimeric organisms because they focus on observable functionality and are fundamentally agnostic about the internal construction of the subjectâ (Abramson & Levin, 2021, p. 234). As Rosenblueth et al. contend, the upshot of a substrate independent and uniform behaviouristic approach is its applicability to a broad classification of purposeful behaviour exhibited by living organisms and machines alike. Likewise, by leveraging cybernetic principles in his study of goal-directed systems, Levin widens his teleonomic frame of reference to encompass a wide array of entitiesâwhether machinic, living, or a mixture of both. Levin thus 36 brings three central ideas from Rosenblueth et al.âs work into his contemporary research program: (i) a heuristic stance informed by a behaviouristic engineering framework, deliberately set apart from considerations of the ontological status of teleological phenomena; (ii) error-minimization mechanisms undergirding purposiveness, goal-directedness, or other teleological properties; and (iii) substrate independence and the dissolution of differences between life and machines, particularly with respect to teleonomic behaviour. The biocentric view of intrinsic purpose diverges from this cybernetic bioengineering framework on many of these core conceptions of teleology. In the following chapter, I will outline this alternative perspectiveâemphasizing the work of Hans Jonas and its connection to the ideas of Aristotle, Kant, and contemporary theories of autopoiesis and biological autonomyâbefore exploring its conceptual incongruities with cybernetics and the contemporary bioengineering approach to the question of teleology and life. 37 Chapter 3: The Biocentric View of Intrinsic Purpose Turning now to a collection of views united by their interest in a biological account of intrinsic purpose, we find alternative perspectives on teleology which differ in key respects from the teleonomic cybernetic framework. Namely, scholarship in this area tends to focus on an intrinsic form of natural teleology located within the constitutive features of living organization (Jonas, 1966/2001b; Mossio & Bich, 2017; Nicholson, 2013; Weber & Varela, 2002). In this literature, biological organization is generally characterized in terms of a self-producing circular network of causes and effects consisting of reciprocal relations and mutual determination among (i) interdependent components and (ii) a bounded global whole. These two principal elementsâa delineated, unified system and an organized reaction network of component processesâdepend on each other to regenerate and rebuild themselves. This holistic dynamic serves as the basis upon which a living system differentiates itself from an environment and maintains its continuity through self-construction (H. Maturana & Varela, 1980). As such, the purpose of this organizational regime arises from within the system by virtue of how its activity serves to maintain the very organization to which it owes its existence. That is to say, the living individual, the parts which comprise it, and the activities of each, are oriented towards promoting the conditions of their mutual flourishing, acting for the sake of their integrated and recursively regenerative existence. In this view, an organism is regarded as intrinsically purposive in the sense that its telos corresponds with the promotion and maintenance of itself. Just as the effects of biological organization contribute to the determination and reproduction of said organization, so too can organisms be said to act on their own behalf, toward their own ends (Kauffman, 2000; Mossio & Bich, 2017; Nicholson, 2013). 38 Figure 2. A simplified model of living organization. This diagram depicts a system characterized by thermodynamic openness, causal circularity, metabolic self-production and autopoietic individuation. (MIND IN LIFE: BIOLOGY, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND THE SCIENCES OF MIND by Evan Thompson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.) In so many words, the final cause of an organism corresponds with its very existence. Put differently, the purpose, goal, or telos served by a living system is both generated by, and directed towards, the preservation of a self. In addition to this largely descriptive account of the intrinsic teleology of life, for some, biological organization also occasions a novel property in an otherwise abiotic cosmos: a form of minimal selfhood and a frame of reference where natural processes acquire meaning and normative value relative to the welfare of a subject (Glasgow, 2020; E. Thompson, 2010a; Weber & Varela, 2002).12 With the existence of biological selfhood, 12 Philosopher Evan Thompson illustrates this point in his book Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind: âWhen swimming in the presence of a sucrose gradient, [E. coli] will tumble about until they hit upon an orientation that increases their exposure to sucrose. At this point they will swim forward, up-gradient, propelled by their flagella, toward the zone of greatest sucrose concentration. While sucrose is a real and present 39 nature may now come to matter for itself, that is to say, acquire meaning in relation to the continuity of organismal identity. Unlike the non-normative status of various physicochemical structures and the transformations they undergo in the realm of lawful, mechanical causation, natural phenomena encountered in the biological realm may acquire positive or negative significance or valence relative to how its effects enable or inhibit the mutually dependent network of processes that constitute biological organization and its self-determined existence (Jonas, 1966/2001a; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; Weber & Varela, 2002). That is to say, an organism must adaptively interpret the conditions of its world along a normative continuum of good to bad, safe to hazardous, propitious to adverse, relative to the existence which it strives to maintainâa means of evaluation which âAt its simplest â¦ takes the form of the dual valence of attractive or repulsive and the correlative behaviors of approach or escapeâ (E. Thompson, 2010b, p. 154). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biocentric perspective views life as the paradigmatic case of intrinsic teleology. It is not uncommon for advocates to insist that biological systems are the only intrinsically teleological systems known to exist (Mossio & Bich, 2017). By extension, life and the attributes which make it inherently teleological are largely considered to be categorically distinct from machines and any seemingly analogous properties found in artefactual systems (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022; Jonas, 1953; Mossio, 2022; Nave, 2022; Nicholson, 2013). There is a specificity to the intrinsic teleology of lifeâcharacterized by an organizational regime that condition of the physicochemical environment, the status of sucrose as a nutrient is not. Being a nutrient is not intrinsic to the physicochemical structure of the sucrose molecule; it is a relational feature, linked to the bacterium 's metabolism â¦ the status of sucrose as food â¦ is enacted or brought forth by the way the organism, given its autonomy and the norms its autonomy brings about, couples with the environment. Sucrose belongs to the physical order; sucrose-as-nutrient belongs to the living order. Sucrose has meaning and value as food but only in the milieu that "the system itself brings into existence" Or "constitutes for itself."â (2010b, p. 74) 40 enables self-production, self-maintenance, and self-determinationâwhich is thought to vary considerably from the teleology at play in artefacts and machines, including those which possess cybernetic error-correction mechanisms. The biocentric view of intrinsic teleology brings together theoretical elements from various thinkers throughout the history of Western philosophy and science. Facets of the framework stretch back as far as Greek antiquityâparticularly in Aristotleâs philosophy of biologyâand can be traced through the early modern periodânotably in Immanuel Kantâs conception of natural purposesâwell into contemporary work in theoretical biology, cognitive science, and philosophy. In the interest of brevity, I will focus on a set of ideas articulated by 20th century philosopher Hans Jonas which capture key aspects of both historical and present-day expressions of the biocentric view of intrinsic teleology. In his work, one can identify a set of core ideas related to the teleology of biological existence, exemplified by the process of metabolism, and an account of existential concern premised on this idiosyncratically purposive character of life. Following this overview, I will outline some connections between Jonasâ work and certain historically antecedent philosophical conceptions of lifeâs intrinsic purposiveness, as well as contemporary developments in this line of thinking related the notions of autopoiesis and biological autonomy. These perspectives will set the stage for a final chapter which delves into theoretical divergences between the biocentric and cybernetic treatments of teleology in the domains of physics, machines, and life, using the biocentric view to present a sharper critique of the cybernetic account and its manifestations in present-day teleonomic bioengineering. 41 3.1 Metabolism and Teleology The metabolic process which sustains living beings is a crucial component of Jonasâ philosophy of biology and his ontology of life. The topic receives an extensive treatment in the third essay of his book The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology. In this text, titled Is God a Mathematician? The Meaning of Metabolism, Jonas examines this âremarkable mode of beingâ (1966/2001a, p. 75) in relation to ideas concerning matter, causation, identity, and life and their understanding in the context of conventional scientific naturalism. In short, the essay asks whether a purely mechanistic, quantitative analysis of nature can account for the metabolic form of biological existence and the intrinsic âfelt inwardnessâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 65) and ontological unity of organismal being. For Jonas, these existential and metaphysical characteristics of biological selfhood are intimately connected to metabolism: i.e., the totality of all constitutive biochemical relations which comprise the organism and facilitate growth, reproduction, adaptive behaviour, the production and use of energy, the elimination of waste, and the overall maintenance and continuity of organismal existence. Relatedly, metabolism is also interpreted as the basis of a particular mode of being that is both intrinsically teleological and unique to biological systems. Jonas explores these distinctive attributes of life by first considering the incongruity between the identity of living form and the material identity of the components which an organism consists of at any given instant. Jonas draws our attention to this idiosyncratic relation between form and matter by noting that the stability or persistence of biological selfhood relies on a restless flux of matter passing through the spatial system of the whole organism. This pervasive, processual activity underlies âthe total mode of continuity (self-continuation) of the subject of life itselfâ, such that âif any two "time slices" of [an organism] become, as to their individual contents, identical with each 42 other and with the slices between themâ the organism âceases to liveâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 76).13 Thus, the perpetual material circulation characteristic of metabolism is foundational to organismal identity. Living form âis never the same materially and yet persists as its same self, by not remaining the same matterâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 76). This aspect of metabolism involves both an inner dynamic of breaking down and regenerating molecular parts and relations, as well as an outward thermodynamic openness whereby the organism exchanges matter and energy with its environment to sustain the metabolic transformations that preserve its identity amid continuous material turnover. Organisms are traversed by thermodynamic flows through processes like respiration, photosynthesis, ingestion, excretion, and heat dissipation, and their form is never identical to their material contents, as these must perpetually change to maintain the organismâs viability as a living individual. Two additional supplementary ideas are critical to fleshing out the full implications of Jonasâ metabolic account of biological identity. The first builds on the processual character of living form, highlighting the self-construction of organismal metabolism; the second focuses on an ontological concept of individuality and existential concern tied to this metabolic form of biological existence. 13 It can be clarifying to think of this idea in relation to an entity like a crystal. If we imagine an organism temporally as a successive sequence of discrete states, what makes it alive, for Jonas, is that these slices are never exactly identical, as some component is always in the process of being metabolically transformed (broken down, rebuilt, or replaced) during each time slice. Living identity thus entails material flux or changeâor identity of biological form through material non-identityârather than identity though material sameness. By contrast, a crystal is a materially stable structure whose repeating molecular order persists without requiring ongoing metabolic activity. Even as a crystal changes over time through growth, it does so in an additive and structurally predetermined wayâits molecular lattice simply repeats itself and this passive accretion occurs given the appropriate external conditions. Therefore, a crystalâs continuity is based on a static identity, or identity through the congruity of form and matter, as any two time slices would always be effectively identical. 43 Firstly, in a lengthy footnote, Jonas broaches a machine analogy of metabolism to illustrate incongruities between the material and energetic fluctuations of a technological system and their holistic self-producing effects for life. Biological metabolism is not merely an inflow-outflow system akin to the kinetic-combustion model of a machine like an engine. With technical objects like this, the passage of matter and energy through the system roughly consists of an input of fuel, its transformation into kinetic energy, and an outflow of waste. However, despite undergoing motional changes as a result of this process, the broader physical identity of the engine remains the same as when it is at a standstill with no energy or matter traversing it at all (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 76). Unlike the metabolic transformations of biological systems, machines and their components are not produced, replaced, or repaired as a result of the material and energetic flows that traverse them. Machines are built and maintained externally by separate independent processes and their components remain unchanged during their operations and throughout the energetic operations they facilitate. By contrast, the energetic and material transformations involved in metabolism are self-constructing and the enduring stability of the living system relies on this recursive and dynamic process of continually rebuilding itself. As Jonas puts it: âin addition to, and more basic than, providing kinetic energy for the running of the machine â¦ [metabolismâs] role is to build up originally and replace continually [its] very partsâ (1966/2001a, p. 76). Material and energetic flow is integral to lifeâs mode of being, a characteristic that is entirely lacking in machines: âMetabolism thus is the constant becoming of the machine itselfâand this becoming itself is a performance of the machine: but for such performance there is no analogue in the world of machinesâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 76). Secondly, Jonas attempts to distinguish living systems from physical objects whose spatio-temporal structure similarly involves transient flows of matter. Physical systems like this 44 resemble lifeâs metabolic activity insofar as they too are âdynamic wholes enjoying an "identity" of their own in time different from that of their changing constituentsâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 77). For Jonas, the wave serves as an ideal example of such a structure, one resembling the organismâs physical conditionâa unified manifold of material fluctuationsâwhich nonetheless remains well-known to modern physics and whose existence can be fully accounted for by mechanistic and mathematical explanations. From the quantitative, mechanistic point of view of the physicist, the form of a wave is deducible from consecutive elementary events consisting of transitory material particles and their mathematical descriptions. Thus, according to Jonas, such physical structures can be explained in terms of the discrete, successive movements of its constituent parts and the causal interactions that obtain both when they are passing through or operating outside of its form. Nothing additional is needed to account for the existence of systems like these, as they can be sufficiently understood by reduction to the aggregate effects of âthe mere concurrence of the forces that bind their parts togetherâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 79). In Jonasâs words: âTo illustrate once more by the example of the wave: strictly speaking, not its progress as a moving form causes the successive entering of new units into the collective motion of which it consists, but the transmission of individual motion among adjoining elementary units adds up to the seeming whole-form which progresses on their account â¦ Every happening involved, and consequently their sum total at each instant, can and thus must be accurately accounted for on the lines of the general scheme underlying the mathematical-mechanical world-picture: on the lines of teleological indifference, efficient cause, inertial uniformity, smallest particle, quantitative extensity, and so onâ (1966/2001a, p. 78). On this view, one might be tempted to ascribe a similar understanding to the organism: the metabolic continuity of the living form would simply amount to âthe transmission of individual motion among adjoining elementary units [that] adds up to the seeming whole-form 45 which progresses on their accountâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 78). The organism could thus be conceived solely as an effect of metabolism in the same way that the wave is simply the function of the elementary physical mechanics of which it consistsâi.e., the appearance of a distinct unity whose identity is reducible to the identity of its ultimate parts. Likewise, a full understanding of metabolism would thus be achievable using a nonteleological framework of physics alone. For Jonas, this view fails to take into consideration the âself-integratingâ (1966/2001a, p. 79) form of metabolism, whereby individuation is sustained and reproduced by a unified system, for its own sake. The organism is not a result of metabolism in the sense of being an accidental product of the more fundamental causal concurrence of physical particles and forces. The organism is a metabolically self-constructing systemâa unique form of causal circularity whose existence is its own achievement. For Jonas, this self-producing unity is the unique mode of being which defines the living formââAn identity which from moment to moment reasserts itself, achieves itselfâ (1966/2001a, p. 83) through the incessant transit of material contents which its metabolic operations organize, transform, and use to continuously rebuild the organism and reconstitute the metabolic relations themselves. Metabolism not only sustains the living system by enabling its continual reconstruction but implies an orientation towards conditions of existence that favour this dynamic and precarious mode of beingâconditions which its self-generated identity must work to maintain, lest it cease. It would thus seem insufficient to describe life as merely an aggregate phenomenon of matter and motionâas one might with a mechanical theory of a physical system like a waveâfor its metabolic mode of being more closely resembles an integrated system with a proto-agential concern for its own continuity. The organism as a metabolic system is therefore understood to be teleological in the sense that it exists for the sake 46 of itself. Put differently, self-actualization is an inbuilt, intrinsically purposeful property of biological formâmetabolic organization is such that its activity constantly tends to enact, preserve, and promote its own existence, oriented towards the continual self-production which perpetuates its form and propels its identity into the future. Unlike the wave, the organism occupies an existential domain wherein natural systems acquire the need to strive for their own flourishing, whose operations are shaped by the fundamental drive to generate the conditions that enable its metabolic processes as a whole to persist. Metabolic self-construction, and the attendant existential concern for self-preservation, also occasions a dialectical relation between the inwardness of organic individuation and an external world from which life is committed to maintaining its distinction. Let us unpack this statement. A metabolic system is inherently characterized by vulnerability, precariousness, and finitude and must work to continuously distinguish itself from its environment (i.e., to stay alive). Its identity is achieved through self-production, resulting in an ongoing independence from the external forces of other processes and systems in the world. Motivated by this self-concern for survival, life nonetheless requires energy and matter from its environment which it must use to continually reconstitute its selfhood. As such, that which is internal to the bounds of an individual living system, and that which is outside, form a dynamic interplay between two opposing yet interdependent phenomena. As Jonas writes, the organismâs world is âa horizon of co-reality thrown open by the mere transcendence of want which widens the seclusion of internal identity into a correlative circumference of vital relationshipâ (1966/2001a, p. 84). Thus, while living form may be construed by Jonas as a mode of being which transcends the lawful regularities and mechanical interactions of matter in motion, it is also implicated in a relationship of âneedful freedomâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 80) between self and world, form and matter, 47 organism and environment, will and necessity. Thus, the simultaneous âsovereignty of [organic] form with respect to its matterâ and âits subjection to the need of itâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 83) renders life open to its surroundings in a ârelatedness of dependence and possibilityâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 84). If it is to endure as a living unity, the organism needs to be in communion with that which is other, if for no other reason than the fundamental need to replenish its material components and sustain itself as a metabolic unity.14 Critically, this openness is described as being qualitative, affective, sensitive and responsive to stimuliâan â(even infinitesimal) degree of âawarenessââ, âfelt inwardnessâ, or âgerminal experienceâ of the world âappropriated by the sensesâ which one might designate as âappetition or nisusâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, pp. 65, 84, 85). For Jonas, the individuation of living form and its dialectic relation with matter establishes an exterior world as âthe basic setting for experienceâ (1966/2001a, p. 84), present from the earliest and most elementary beginnings of metabolic existence. Lifeâs activity, driven by biological âself-concern [and] actuated by wantâ, is complemented by a sensory receptivity which âenables life to be selective and "informed" instead of a blind dynamismâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 85). Together they constitute lifeâs obligatory yet discerning and adaptive relationship with the worldâs potential sources for metabolic material turnover. In other words, the organism cannot flourish by haphazardly 14 The concepts of needful freedom and organismic precariousness are closely related to a number of core tenets of enactivism: a subfield of cognitive science which views cognition as emerging from dynamic and embodied sensorimotor interactions between an autonomous, self-individuating living agent and its environment (E. Di Paolo & Thompson, 2010; F. J. Varela et al., 1993). Much like Jonas, thinkers in this tradition emphasize the continuity of life and mind, the intrinsic teleology of self-constructing systems, and the significance of a subjective, phenomenological viewpoint from which interactions with the world bring forth or enact a domain of significance for the organism. While Jonasâ work is not present in some of the earliest, foundational enactivist texts, such as The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (F. J. Varela et al., 1993), he is acknowledged as an intellectual forerunner and referenced frequently in a number of major later works, such as Sensorimotor Life (E. A. Di Paolo et al., 2017) and Mind in Life (E. Thompson, 2010b). 48 appropriating any and all resources from a given environment. Some conditions are propitious, some are hazardous, and a metabolic system endures only to the extent that it can adapt, detect, and/or respond to such differences.15 That is so say, the organism acts selectively and discriminately on the basis of ongoing and historical interactions with its environmentâa complex process in which hedonic tone plays a crucial role in orienting, informing, and enabling the continual self-individuation of the living system. In summary, Jonas identifies an intrinsic teleological dimension to metabolic organization and self-construction and, building on this insight, differentiates life from both machines and mechanical accounts of physical phenomena, while elaborating on the link between the 15 Lifeâs sensitivity to favorable or adverse environmental differences is a highly general description of a process manifesting at varying levels of biological complexity. For our purposes, it is instructive to consider it in very basic terms. For example, in his book Every Life is on Fire, physicist Jeremy England discusses how biological organization, with its specialized precision of metabolic processes, is adaptively correlated with specific types of energy use: ââ¦people can eat sugar, but not dynamite; plants love sunlight, but not intense gamma rays. Life needs access to energy, but it has to absorb it in specific ways that are conducive to activating âhealthyâ motions while avoiding âunhealthyâ ones â¦ The metabolism of a slew of sugar molecules by a living cell is a remarkably orchestrated process whereby specific chemical reaction steps get catalyzed in a particular order, so that the sugarâs breakdown through its reaction with oxygen can be coupled in the right way to the generation of other, more general-purpose fuel molecules for the cell. Meanwhile, most parts of the cell do not react with the sugar at all. In contrast, when an electrically charged, high-energy alpha particle from a radioactive nuclear decay crashes into the same cell, countless protein, water, and nucleic acid molecules â¦ pick up some of that energy and go flying in myriad unpredictable directions. Ionizing radiation can cause cell death so easily because it takes a collection of matter in a highly nonrandom shape and brings about many drastic and seemingly random changes in that shape all at onceâ (2020, pp. 166â167). Life also demonstrates a clear link between sensory experience and discerning behaviour guided by metabolic needs: organisms must selectively and differentially seek out certain physical structures which are metabolically advantageous for their form of life but may be toxic or fatal for others. Conversely, organisms must be careful to detect and avoid matter which is harmful to them but may serve as beneficial sources of energy for others. For instance, in most animals, hydrogen sulfide inhibits cellular respiration and can directly damage nervous systems in high concentrationsâyet it also functions as a primary energy source for sulfide-oxidizing deep-sea bacteria. These chemosynthetic microorganisms use specialized regulatory proteins to sense and metabolize the compound, while organisms for whom hydrogen sulfide is hazardous might rely on olfactory detection or adverse physiological changes to trigger avoidance behaviour. This example reflects the point raised earlier concerning the relationality between living systems and their environment: value, meaning, or valence are only actualized by an agentâs engagement with its milieu, as normative content is not inherent in the physicochemical structure of molecular compounds themselves but rather emerges from the dynamic interplay between the living order and the physical order (E. Thompson, 2010b, pp. 72â76). 49 organismâs self-concern for survival and the affective experience, or primordial felt inwardness, of biotic individuation. Jonasâ work shares key features with other earlier philosophical conceptions of intrinsic biocentric purpose. For instance, his notion of organic teleology is evocative of some general concepts in Aristotleâs biology, particularly the notions of entelecheia and the soul and his ideas about the self-movement and self-orientation of the organism. In his treatise De Anima (350 B.C.E./2011), Aristotle sets out to describe the nature of the fundamental governing principle common to all living things (350 B.C.E./2011, p. 25). Therein, he employs the term entelecheiaâwhich roughly translates to âhaving oneâs purpose withinâ (Dresow & Love, 2023, p. 104) or âpersisting in completenessâ (Shiffman, 2011a, p. 101)âto describe this principle, equating it with the âsoulâ or the âbeing-fully-itself of an organized natural bodyâ (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E./2011, p. 49). As Shiffman writes in his translation, entelecheia âdenotes a thingâs active self-sustaining as what it isâ (2011a, p. 101), the persistence or continuity of lifeâs natural self-orientation towards its own being, or its intrinsic telos, end or final cause. Aristotleâs teleological understanding of nature finds a distinctive expression in his theory of life, where the agential activities and constitutive organization of a living being exist for the sake of its own end as a holistic biological unity (Shambaugh, 2024). âTo be alive is to be continually oriented toward and engaged in sustaining, enacting and fulfilling that form in its suitable materialâ (Shiffman, 2011b, p. 20), and entelecheia represents this ongoing self-sustaining fulfillment which guides organismal operations toward their continuity via development, growth, nourishment, and so on. This teleological view of life resonates with much of what Jonas has to say about natural self-orientation of living beings. That is to say, for both thinkers, life possesses an internal and purposeful governing principle that drives it to enact and sustain its form and guides its actions 50 of towards the continual self-fulfillment of its being. We might say that Jonas reformulates Aristotleâs teleological principle of organic determination in terms of the intrinsic purposiveness of metabolic organization, whose self-integrated causal form and inbuilt concern for continuous self-production similarly impels life to enact, preserve, and promote its own existence. Critically, unlike the Platonic model of teleology, this notion of an intrinsic telos is not the product of intelligent craftsmanship but is rather rooted in the needs, preferences, and inclinations of the organism which determine the normative conditions of its livelihood (Dresow & Love, 2023; Lennox, 2017). Organisms are understood by both Aristotle and Jonas to be self-nourishing, self-sustaining, self-oriented and self-moving with desiring, appetitive, perceptive and adaptive characteristics that share in governing the organismâs activity towards the conservation of its form and the persistence of its being. Jonas acknowledges these theoretical parallels in section VIII of his text, naming the Aristotelian influence while discussing the finalistic nature of life both as âfreedom and identity of form in relation to matterâ and âthe relation of organic parts to the whole and in the functional fitness of [the] organismâ (1966/2001a, p. 86). Much like Aristotleâs investigation of the living world, where an organismâs final cause and form take precedence over its material and efficient causes (350 B.C.E./2011, p. 52; Lennox, 2017), Jonas similarly focuses on the primary and dominant role of teleological self-orientation and form in the causal regime of living organization and its dialectical relation to the mechanics of matter. These features are taken to be of critical importance to an epistemological understanding of biologyâone which withstands reduction to descriptions of elementary physical entities and their motionâas well as a conception of the ontological status of biological teleology. For âthe teleological structure and 51 behavior of organism is not just an alternative choice of descriptionâ (Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 91) but rather a glimpse into the purposive nature of life itself. Another significant contribution to this philosophical legacy comes by way of Immanuel Kantânamely, with the conception of a ânatural endâ, which he explores in part II of his major work, the Critique of Judgement (1790/2007). Kant characterizes a natural end as an object which appears as both cause and effect of itself. His exemplar is a living beingâspecifically, a treeâwhich is said to reproduce itself genetically, individually, and through collective, reciprocal relations of maintenance and production between parts and a global whole. Put differently, living beings are both the cause and effects of other members of a hereditary lineage; their individuation results from self-construction, reorganizing matter to regenerate themselves; and the maintenance and reproduction of one component is reciprocally dependent on the maintenance and reproduction of every other, as these internal elements inhabit an integrated network of relations which both engenders the unified system and its varied activities and is itself engender by this whole (Kant, 1790/2007, pp. 199â200). Organisms are thus conceivable as both purposive, owing to how the existence and form of their parts are made possible by their relation to the whole (similar to artifacts), yet natural as a result of the self-organizing and self-constructing features which they alone display (unlike abiotic objects) (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022). Much like Jonas, Kant too finds that efficient causation and the mechanical powers of matter alone are incapable of explaining the defining attributes of biological self-organization. Through their self-reproducing operations, living beings accord a âspecifically distinctive quality [to matter] which the mechanism of nature outside it cannot supplyâ (Kant, 1790/2007, p. 199) and thus our conception of life demands an additional principle of teleology in nature when the 52 âlaws of its purely mechanical causality do not carry us sufficiently farâ (Kant, 1790/2007, p. 188). The Kantian concept of natural purposiveness also introduces a critical distinction between life and machines. For Kant, to recognize an organismâs intrinsic nature as a natural end requires seeing how its parts arise through the agency of other parts, exist for the sake of each other and the whole, and bring about one another through a process of mutual production. Thus, biology must be characterized by a teleological description which âNo instrument of art can answer toâ and âOnly under these conditions and upon these terms can such a product be an organized and self-organized being, and, as such, be called a natural endâ (Kant, 1790/2007, pp. 201â202). Thus, an organismâas a natural end and a self-producing, self-organizing beingâis unlike a mere machine, for âa machine has solely motive power, whereas an organized being possesses inherent formative power, and such, moreover, as it can impart to material devoid of itâmaterial which it organizes. This, therefore, is a self-propagating formative power, which cannot be explained by the capacity of movement alone, that is to say, by mechanism. We do not say half enough of nature and her capacity in organized products when we speak of this capacity as being the analogue of art. For what that suggests to our minds is an artistâa rational beingâ working from without. But nature, on the contrary, organizes itself, and does so in each species of its organized productsâ (Kant, 1790/2007, p. 202). Kantâs recognition that mechanistic explanations fail to capture biological self-construction and organization also correspond with Jonasâ own discrimination between organisms and machines. Jonas likewise remarks extensively on the limits of mechanical accounts of efficient and material causation in explaining the intrinsic teleological features of biological individuation and organized self-production. Moreover, the central concept of âself-organizationâ (Kant, 1790/2007, p. 202), a term which Kant coins to grasp the irreducible singularity of living systems (Fox Keller, 2008), also calls to mind the cornerstone of Jonasâ 53 philosophy of biology: metabolism. That is to say, where Jonas speaks of the teleological organization of metabolism and the organism as both product and agent of continuous self-construction, we hear echoes of Kantian natural ends, their self-generated individuation and the reciprocal maintenance and reproduction of their parts and whole. And much like Kantâs approach to the machine analogy for life, Jonasâ treatment of metabolism also foregrounds the features of lifeâi.e., intrinsic natural purpose, causal circularity, self-producing material turnover and the continuity of identity and formâwhich, he emphatically notes, have âno analogue in the world of machinesâ (1966/2001a, p. 76). In the philosophical literature, it is a matter of dispute whether Kantâs account of natural ends should be understood as a regulative principle for the faculty of judgementâthat is to say, in modern terms, âas a heuristic tool aimed at producing mechanistic explanationsâ (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022, p. 47) or âteleology [considered] simply as a manner of speakingâ reducible to mechanist terms (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022, p. 49)âor whether the concept of intrinsic purposiveness contains âthe seed of a radically new way of thinking about biological systems which should be brought to fruition by turning teleology into a legitimate concept of natural scienceâ (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022, p. 47). For those sympathetic of the latter, this germinal formulation of an internal organic teleology resonates with a number of focal points in Jonasâ philosophical perspective (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; E. Thompson, 2010b; Weber & Varela, 2002). These include: (i) the self-constructing organization of the living system; (ii) biological form transcending mechanical accounts of efficient and material causation; (iii) the intrinsic teleological dimension of biological individuation (iv) and a distinction between machines and organisms. While an extensive review of these thinkers and ideas is far outside the scope of this text, I will nonetheless touch on some of these 54 aforementioned themes as they emerge from the ideas of Kant and Jonas, renewed and reinterpreted through the lens of concepts like autopoiesis and biological organization and autonomy. 3.2 Natural Purposes, Autopoietic Organization and Intrinsic Concern Jonasâ ideas appear in a number of contemporary works in theoretical biology and philosophy of biology, particularly among authors writing in the frameworks of enactivism and biological autonomy theory (E. Di Paolo, 2009; E. Di Paolo & Thompson, 2010; Kyselo, 2014; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; E. Thompson, 2010b; Weber & Varela, 2002). In this subsection, I will focus on one text of note which captures some key features of this affinity, exploring Jonasâ philosophy in conjunction with the theory of autopoiesis and Kantâs thoughts on biological teleology. In this piece, titled Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality (2002), biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber and neuroscientist Francisco Varela propose a reframing of biological teleology on the basis of three core references: (i) Kantâs notions of self-organization and natural ends; (ii) Jonasâ ideas regarding the intrinsic self-concern and autonomy of the organism; (iii) and a modern âstream of thought concerning biological individuality and the organism (with the autopoiesis school as the central figure)â (2002, pp. 97â98). In essence, Weber and Varela attempt to offer a resolution to what they perceive to be Kantâs âunstable middle positionâ (2002, p. 99) in his Critique of Judgment (1790/2007): i.e., his indeterminate outlook on the explanatory merits of teleology and mechanism as they relate to an understanding of life and its natural purposiveness. As noted earlier, there are ongoing debates as to how one ought to interpret Kantâs misgivings about the possibility of a mechanistic 55 explanation of life, and his suggestion that human judgement requires the additional postulate of a teleological principle in order to make sense of biology (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022). For Kant, there is an intractable discordance between mechanistic explanations of physical events and the necessity for the human mind to explain organisms teleologically. Consequently, an objective or scientific account of the biological world seems like a difficult task and the question of âwhether a teleological understanding unveils things as such or only shows the situation of an observer overlaying an idea over some structures that are not farther accessibleâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 108) is left unanswered in Kantâs work.16 Weber and Varela argue that Kantâs unresolved dilemma between teleology and mechanism has been misunderstood by modern thinkers. Rather than viewing the issue in terms of a problematic tension between two maxims for approaching biologyâfinalism and mechanism as epistemologically distinct principles with equivalent explanatory strengthâthere has instead been a tendency to interpret Kant as an advocate for the complete subsumption of teleology under a purely mechanistic understanding of life. As a result, âKant has become, in the tradition of biology, a witness for the reading that teleology is an illusionâ (Weber, 2021). For Weber and Varela, this perspective has informed a reductionist attitude among Anglophone thinkers âthat allowed discourse about organisms âas ifâ they behave teleologically, but sees them in reality as strictly mechanisticâ (2002, p. 99). Teleonomic explanations in biology are 16 This text will not expound on Kantâs views in great detail so those looking for a more comprehensive account of his nuanced positionâone which has been characterized more specifically by philosopher Clark Zumbach as ontologically reductionist but explanatorily anti-reductionist (1984)âshould consult Gambarotto and Nahas (2022) as well as Weber and Varelaâs text and the sources cited therein. For those with an interest in philosophical and historical discussions of teleology, mechanism, Kantian philosophy and the natural sciences see e.g., Zumbachâs The Transcendent Science (1984), McLaughlinâs Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation (1990), or Timothy Lenoirâs The Strategy of Life (1989). 56 taken to be a specific manifestation of this misunderstanding, where âpurpose-directed structures or events are only allowed in an âas-ifâ modeâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 98) and organisms are regarded only heuristically as goal-oriented or purposive until adequate mechanistic explanations are given. Contra this prevailing interpretation, Weber and Varela aim to reformulate Kantâs ideas about natural ends in connection with the organismic phenomenology of Hans Jonas and a notion of intrinsic teleology conceived through an empirical account of life offered by autopoiesis. In other words, the authors seek to move beyond the unstable aporia set out by Kant by pursuing âa fresh re-understanding of natural purpose and living individualityâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 98) grounded in new scientific possibilities for explaining biological self-organization and teleology, while advocating for âvalue and subjectivity as indispensable organic phenomenaâ and a view of organisms as âsubjects having purposes according to values encountered in the making of their livingâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 102). By presenting âthe organism as the dynamics of establishing an identity and, hence, as a process of creating a materially embodied, individual perspectiveâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 102), the authors advance two interrelated extensions of Kantian natural purposiveness: (1) autopoiesis as a naturalistic account of teleological self-organization, and (2) an enriched phenomenological understanding of the self-production of biological subjectivity. Firstly, the authors note that âJonasâ description â¦ that organisms materially create themselvesâ stands âentirely parallel to the definition of autopoiesis proposed at about the same 57 time Jonas formulated a comprehensive concept of his ideasâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 113).17 As a cellular model of causal circularityâor âclosure with respect to production and constitutionâ (H. Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. x)âautopoiesis denotes the interrelation between a recursive metabolic reaction network of component processes and a boundary constructed therefrom, each of which continuously supplies the necessary conditions for the otherâs regeneration and enables the global system to differentiate itself topologically and operationally from its milieu (H. Maturana & Varela, 1980; Moreno & Mossio, 2015). In Maturana and Varelaâs original formulation, autopoiesis is: âorganized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes â¦ that produced them; and (ii) constitute it â¦ as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network â¦ an autopoietic organization constitutes a closed domain of relations specified only with respect to the autopoietic organization that these relations constitute, and, thus, it defines a 'space' in which it can be realized as a concrete system; a space whose dimensions are the relations of production of the components that realize itâ (1980, pp. 78â79, 88). 17 As it happens, a close association between metabolism and autopoiesis appears at the very roots of the latterâs inception. In Maturanaâs early work Biology of Cognition (1970), later reproduced in the seminal book Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1980), the circular nature of metabolism forms the basic organizational dynamics underpinning the autonomy of lifeâa fact that Maturana connects with the circular nature of neuronal processes and illustrates with reference to contemporaneous developments in the science of metabolism and its evolution (H. Maturana & Varela, 1980; F. J. Varela, 1996). In their foundational work, Maturana and Varela also underscore exergonic metabolism, growth and replication as fundamental operations of the autopoietic form which characterizes life on earth, and discuss how they are organized in a closed causal circular process whose function is to produce and maintain its very circular organization (1980, p. 9). The graphic representation of cellular autopoiesis which appears in the opening pages of Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980, p. x) similarly demonstrates an organizationally closed, mutually dependent network of metabolic relations of production, where DNA encodes for amino acid chains which fold into enzymes that regulate metabolite transformations and produce energy and cellular components like glucides, lipids, and nucleotides, all of which are involved in anabolic biosynthesis, energy production, DNA replication and repair, and the construction of the cellular membrane. 58 Both the etymology of the termâa neologism based on the Greek terms for âselfâ (auto) and âcreation, production, or formationâ (poiesis)âas well as the conceptual abstraction itself, reflect the metabolically self-constructed unity of the minimal organism, or living cell, which lies at the core of Jonasâs philosophical thinking about the teleology of life (Jonas, 1966/2001b; H. Maturana & Varela, 1980). Importantly, the theory of autopoiesis stems from research in neurobiology and cognitive science and consequently adopts a strictly naturalistic approach to the nature of living organization (H. Maturana & Varela, 1980). Weber and Varela thus view autopoiesis as a window into a naturalized teleology grounded in metabolic self-production and self-maintenance, and an empirical basis for treating intrinsic purpose as an ontological feature of biological individuality, one that arises from the constitutive organization of a living system. So, while Kant proposes a teleological consideration of life in terms of causal circularity and self-organization, and Jonas places metabolism at the centre of his philosophy of biological autonomy and intrinsic purpose, autopoiesis points to connections between these philosophical formulations and a more concrete, naturalistic exploration of living organization and teleology consistent with advances in modern cell biology (Moreno & Mossio, 2015). Indeed, core principles of autopoiesis have been instrumental to, and extended by, contemporary naturalist accounts of living organization and autonomy, intrinsic biological purposiveness, and various empirical investigations supported by these ideas (Bechtel & Bich, 2023, 2024; Bich et al., 2020). Drawing on these descriptions of life as self-organized and intrinsically purposefulâi.e., as âan interrelated totalityâ where âall relations of cause and effect are also relations of means and purposeâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 106)âWeber and Varela also highlight a distinction noted by Kant and Jonas: machines or artifacts âalways point to an external purpose they are 59 made or used forâ whereas organisms âare purposes with the goal of keeping existent by organizing themselvesâ (2002, p. 107). Recall that for Kant, âAn organized being is â¦ not a mere machine â¦ [it] possesses inherent [self-propagating] formative power â¦ We do not say half enough of nature â¦ when we speak of this capacity as being the analogue of art. For what that suggests to our minds is an artistâa rational beingâworking from without. But nature â¦ organizes itself, and does so in each species of its organized productsâ (1790/2007, p. 202). As philosophers of science Andrea Gambarotto and Auguste Nahas rightly state: âKant's great insight was to argue that the purposiveness of organisms is of a fundamentally different kind from that of machines. Machines are extrinsically teleological â¦ organisms are intrinsically teleologicalâ (2022, p. 48). The authors also connect these divergent understandings of purpose to contemporary teleonomic frameworks which conceive of living systems in artifactual terms, either as âmachines acting teleonomically to unfold the underlying [genetic] programâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 117) or through cybernetic talk of teleonomic regulation mechanisms (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 116). This wariness towards machine analogies in biology is a prominent theme for Jonas, who is particularly critical of the cybernetic machine-theory of life and its model of teleology (1953). According to Jonas, as well as others in the biocentric tradition (Mossio, 2022; Mossio & Bich, 2017), cybernetics overlooks fundamental aspects of living teleology, above-all the metabolic self-production which serves as the basis of the purposive behaviour which cybernetics seeks to explain. A great deal more can be said about how a naturalistic account of biological self-organization sheds light on critical differences between life and machines, and Chapter 4 will explore some of these key considerations in more detail. 60 Secondly, the authors emphasize how autopoiesis proposes an understanding of individuation âas a relation of an organism with it-self, and the origin of âconcernâ based on its ongoing self-produced identityâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 116), linking these ideas to the Jonasian phenomenology of felt inwardness, or the subjective perspective of organic individuality generated through continuous self-construction and self-enactment. Weber and Varela regard this interpretation of autopoiesis as an alternative to a customary âphysicalist view of natureâ (2002, p. 116) where metabolic circularity is envisaged âentirely from the outsideâ (2002, p. 116), as simply a self-organizing mechanism, with no appreciation of the interior âpoint of view provided by the self-constructionâ (2002, p. 116): âautopoiesis is a singularity among self-organizing concepts in that it is on the one hand close to strictly empirical grounds, yet provides the decisive entry point into the origin of individuality and identity, connecting it, through multiple mediation with human lived body and experience, into the phenomenological realmâ (2002, p. 116). Much like Jonas, Weber and Varelaâs approach to autopoiesis draws clear connections between biological individuality and certain teleological and normative dimensions associated with subjective experience and the primordial apprehension of value and meaning by all living beings in their ongoing process of self-realization.18 These phenomenological and proto-cognitive 18 It is important to note that Varelaâs views on autopoiesis, teleology, and phenomenology changed throughout his career. In their seminal work Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980), Maturana and Varela dedicate a chapter to showing that teleonomy belongs solely to the domain of discourse and is unnecessary for the understanding of living organization. In short, they claim that autopoietic systems are anti-teleological and mechanistic (in the sense that their account does not resort to âforces or principles â¦ which are not found in the physical universeâ (1980, p. 75), and thus that the organization and origins of living systems âare fully explainable with purely mechanistic notionsâ (1980, p. 116)). In fact, much of Varelaâs thoughts on autopoiesis disavowed non-heuristic teleological explanations (F. J. Varela, 1997; F. Varela & Maturana, 1972), with the exception of his later work with Andreas Weber. This shift in perspective saw Varela employing Kantâs idea of organisms as natural purposes to argue that teleology arises from autopoiesis. Evan Thompson describes this transition thusly: âFranciscoâs change of view reflects his immersion in phenomenology at the end of his life â¦ [and] his deeper study of traditions of biological thought influenced by Kant. The type of teleology Maturana and Varela criticized â¦ was 61 qualities issue from the latter of two complementary modes of intrinsic teleology brought forth by Weber and Varelaâs analysis: (1) âa basic purpose in the maintenance of â¦ identityâ and (2) âa sense-creation purpose whence meaning comes to its surroundingâ (2002, p. 117). Arising from a concern for survival, this sense-creation telos corresponds with an organismâs effort to establish a world of relevance oriented towards maintaining its self-determination, i.e., âhow [an] environment is evaluated from the point of view established by maintaining an identityâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 117). In other words, to maintain its identity through self-construction, an autopoietic entity embodies and enacts a perspective from which environmental interactions acquire existential meaning and normative status relative to how they support the organismâs ongoing viability (E. Thompson, 2010a). Organisms cannot survive in a neutral environment, they must inhabit a world interpreted by their capacities and needsâa world whose meaning is relational, arising from the interplay between an organism and its surroundings. In the authorsâ own words: âAn autopoietic system[âs] â¦ actions consist in establishing the dynamical processes of staying alive. Stimuli from outside enter the sphere of relevance of such a unit only by their existential meaning for the keeping of the process of self-establishment. They acquire a valence which is dual at its basis: attraction or rejection, approach or escape. Form, then, is not just an abstract goal â¦ but a material task to fulfil from moment to momentâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 117). Critically, this domain of organismal sense-creation is not understood as simply the product of passive exposure to external stimuli but is rather viewed as a dynamic centre of teleonomy or Neo-Darwinian functionalistic explanation. But the type of teleology Francisco later discussed is Kantâs idea that the organism is a ânatural purposeâ because it is a self-organizing being (Kant, 1951, §64â65). Francisco came to think that autopoiesis provides a naturalistic way of grounding, reformulating, and advancing the Kantian view of living beings as teleological, in a way Kant thought was impossibleâ (2004, pp. 391â392). 62 agency. Life actively enacts a world of significance through a constructive process of sense-making in order to regulate its relationship with its surroundings in a manner conducive to the continuity of its own self-generated identity (E. Di Paolo & Thompson, 2010; F. J. Varela et al., 1993; Weber & Varela, 2002).19 Organisms establish their identities through their own ongoing acts of self-creation and preservation and by doing so simultaneously transform the affordances of their environment into a subjective sphere of relevance, a world of meaning and value that shapes the dynamic and requisite coupling between the living system and its milieu. A prospective resolution to Kantâs problematic middle ground thus emerges through this account of biological individuality, one which ties Jonasâ phenomenology of metabolic self-construction and self-concern to the naturalistic theory of autopoiesis, and points towards teleology as an ontological reality of biological being (Gambarotto & Nahas, 2022; Weber & Varela, 2002). Put differently, Kant recognized that organisms appear be organized in a purposive way which mechanical causation is unable to explain. Yet, in the absence of a naturalistic theory of this intrinsic teleological feature of life, his ambivalence about whether purposiveness was a true feature of nature or simply a heuristic necessary for human judgment lent support to a prevalent teleonomic position in modern biology which held that teleology was 19 For some, the primordial activity of sense-making lies at the heart of all manifestations of cognition: from its origins in the adaptive behaviour of minimal living systems acting to maintain their metabolically self-organized identity, to abstract problem solving capabilities and other complex and specialized forms of mental and phenomenal experience (E. Thompson, 2010b; F. J. Varela et al., 1993). A view of life as both autopoietic and cognitive has its roots in Maturana and Varelaâs seminal work: âA cognitive system is a system whose organization defines a domain of interactions in which it can act with relevance to the maintenance of itself, and the process of cognition is the actual (inductive) acting or behaving in this domain. Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and without a nervous systemâ (1980, p. 13). This foundational perspective has been especially relevant to the work of those associated with the enactivist framework in philosophy of biology and cognitive science, many of whom have elaborated, to varying degrees, on the continuity of life and cognition, mind, metabolism, or phenomenology (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2008; E. Di Paolo & Thompson, 2010; E. Thompson, 2010b; F. J. Varela et al., 1993). 63 merely âa bias added by an observerâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 97). By integrating Jonasâ ontological and phenomenological treatment of biological teleology and metabolic self-construction with the empirical account of living organization presented by autopoiesis, Weber and Varela offer a preliminary framework for the very naturalistic theory which was inaccessible to Kant during his timeâone which reframes natural purposiveness as a constitutive property of life, not simply a âmethodological fictionâ where âthe observer add his perspective to an otherwise completely neutral behaviorâ (2002, pp. 98, 108). Moreover, by virtue of âour factual membership in the organic worldâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 120), the authors argue that living beings share basic ontological access to natural purposiveness. We do not, and perhaps cannot, stand outside of the teleological organization of biological being and thus possess a phenomenological intuition for grasping it with our concepts. Similar to the intellectual predecessors outlined in subsection 3.1, Weber and Varela belong to an intellectual lineage which places intrinsic teleology at the heart of a scientific and philosophical conception of life grounded in autonomous self-production and a self-concern for existence. From this perspective, final causality coincides with an organismâs active maintenance of the conditions that promote its continued existence: a purpose, goal, or telos both established by, and directed towards, the preservation of an organized identity or self. Life is understood as inherently teleological, grounded in the constitutive organization of its metabolic regimeâi.e., as a concrete realization of autopoietic unity, or a closed domain of relations, which enable self-determination, self-construction and self-maintenance. Correspondingly, the ongoing self-concern for existence generated by this mode of individuation gives rise to a second sense of intrinsic purpose: a sense-making purpose which imbues the interplay between organism and environment with significance, valence, normative 64 value and meaning conducive to its survival. Life brings forth âthe original split of subject and its world and their dialectical interrelatednessâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 120), a dynamic which goes hand-in-hand with the transformation of an organismâs surroundings into a domain of relevance, or âubiquitous scale of valueâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 118). Put differently, this account of a self-organizing and sense-making subject points to an understanding of life premised on the distinctionâbrought about by the autopoietic process of lifeâbetween metabolic form and the underlying mechanics of matter alone. Living systems appear to âtranscend the neutrality of pure physicsâ through the creation of their own concern and âa perspective which changes the world â¦ to an Umwelt that always means something in relation to the organismâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 118). By the same token, this naturalistic account of intrinsic purpose points to fundamental differences in our descriptions of life and machines and their respective teleological, and perhaps even ontological, characteristics. Living systems and their constitutive organization are purposeful in themselvesâhaving continual self-production and maintenance as the goal of their operations. On the other hand, the telos of a machine or artifact is always external to itself, as it lacks a self-organized identity and the intrinsic concern for existence which arises from metabolic organization. In summary, Chapter 3 touched on core themes shared by those whose work and ideas I have assembled under the label of a biocentric view of intrinsic purpose. In this account, Hans Jonas figures as a prominent theoretical locus, anchoring additional resources that represent historical precedents and current developments of the following common threads: (i) lifeâs self-constructing organization; (ii) biological form transcending mechanical accounts of efficient and material causation; (iii) the intrinsic telos and normativity of biological individuation and (iv) a distinction between machines and organisms. In the following chapter, I recapitulate these 65 principal ideas and consider in more detail how they inform views on teleology in physics, biology, and machines which diverge from those held by the cybernetic teleonomic perspective. 66 Chapter 4: Theoretical Divergences: Physics, Machines, Life Let us quickly restate the central features of the cybernetic and biocentric views of teleology highlighted thus far in the text. The contemporary bioengineering perspective, exemplified by the work of Michael Levin, draws directly from Rosenblueth et al.âs foundational cybernetic treatment of teleology. Such a framework can be construed as follows: Goal-directedness, purpose, and teleology more broadly, are to be regarded teleonomically as heuristics assisting the discovery of more fundamental explanations whose central mechanism is generally modelled on servomechanical negative feedbackâa substrate-independent procedure for error-minimization and control which underlies goal-oriented behaviour in a range of systems. Conversely, the biocentric perspective, associated with the ideas of Hans Jonas, informs and is informed by an intellectual lineage concerned with the intrinsic teleology of life. This outlook emphasizes the following core idea: Living systems are singularly purposeful owing to the intrinsic metabolic need to maintain their organizational formâa circular causal process of self-construction and self-determination that distinguishes life from systems whose existence does not serve as the goal of their operations (e.g., machines and abiotic physical systems). As indicated earlier, this chapter will concentrate on salient differences between the cybernetic and the biocentric frameworks and how they relate to (i) teleological explanations of living, machinic, and abiotic physicochemical systems and (ii) the ontological status of biological teleology. This analysis is motivated by a critical attitude towards the cybernetic bioengineering framework, particularly how it neglects important differences between the teleology of life, machines, and abiotic physical systems, and fails to account for the distinctive teleological characteristics of the very system whose purposive behaviour it seeks to explain. 67 Conversely, the biocentric account places these features at the center of its explorationânamely, the endogenous teleology that characterizes the self-construction and self-determination of living organization, and the self-concern at the heart of biological purposiveness that results from a system whose existence is the goal of its operations (Jonas, 1966/2001b; Mossio & Bich, 2017; Nave, 2022; Weber & Varela, 2002). This perspective introduces salient distinctions between teleological descriptions or explanations of phenomena across the domains of life, machines, and physics, and may contribute to deeper considerations of the ontological status of biological teleology. 4.1 Teleonomic Explanation and the Bioengineering Approach Following Rosenblueth et al., the teleonomic bioengineering framework largely inherits a conception of teleology synonymous with behaviour regulated by negative feedback. This âsufficiently restricted connotationâ (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 5) frames homeostatic error-minimization as the key explanatory principle for goal-directedness in both biological and technological systems. For instance, a teleological feedback mechanism common in Levinâs work is the TOTE (test-operate-test-exit) model (Levin, 2019, 2022; Pezzulo & Levin, 2015, 2016). Much like the operations of a closed-loop controller (Miller et al., 1960), the actions of this basic homeostatic cycle aim to reduce error between a systemâs present condition, or a regulated variable, and a set point or desired variable or state. The TOTE model formalizes the generic homeostatic circuit, or simplified behavioural control mechanism, that underlies cybernetic teleonomy, whose âunique architecture applies to many possible types of sensors and effectors at different scales of organizationâ (Levin, 2019, p. 3) and can thus be âextended to 68 more sophisticated aspects of teleology and goal achievementâ (Pezzulo & Levin, 2015, p. 1504). Levin often refers to this cybernetic mechanism as an atomic unit of goal-directedness, active at multiple scales of living and inorganic systems (Levin, 2019, 2022). Hence, this model pertains to the behaviour of simple systems like thermostats, cruise control, or subcellular chemical networks, as well as more complex phenomena like developmental morphology and regeneration, motor control, or cognitive processing. In each of these systems, actions are modelled in terms of adjustments made to minimize a discrepancy between a goal state and sensed or actual values, such as when thermostats maintain the desired temperature of a room, reaction-diffusion networks exhibit Bayesian learning (Baluška & Levin, 2016, p. 4), living systems pursue target somatic states during regeneration, embryogenesis, and metamorphosis (Levin, 2011, 2012, 2023a), or cognitive agents perform predictive action-perception loops (Pio-Lopez et al., 2025, pp. 4â5). In some cases, however, Levin expands this substrate independent goal-directedness to encompass end-directed systems in physics using a very broad conception of error-minimizing behaviour (Manicka & Levin, 2019, pp. 10â11; Pezzulo & Levin, 2016, p. 9). This explanatory strategy corresponds with the idea of a continuum of goal-directedness scaling up from systems that follow least-action principles, to more sophisticated examples found in living systems and machines (Levin, 2022, pp. 10, 30; Manicka & Levin, 2019, pp. 10â11). In the context of bioengineering, teleonomy is also regarded for its instrumental and heuristic utility in supporting a behaviouristic and mechanistic study of goal-directed behaviour. Thus, philosophical concerns for the ontological status of teleology are dismissed in favour of hard naturalistic explanations driving practical bioengineering research. For instance, in keeping with the study of goal-directedness in service of applied outcomes in synthetic biology, medicine 69 and robotics, Levin accentuates âthe need for pragmatic, observer centered formalisms â¦ thus avoiding the pseudo-question of whether systems âreallyâ have teleologic goals in favor of empirical research focused on understanding and exploiting the robust control provided by a teleonomic perspectiveâ (Levin, 2023a, p. 192). As Levin states elsewhere: âwe eschew questions of teleology (philosophical wrangling over real, objective purpose or agency) and focus on goal-seeking and problem solving behaviour that is apparent, or relative, to an observerâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470). Both the heuristic strategy and a focus on error-minimizing mechanisms allows the cybernetic approach to cast a wide net in terms of its ambition to study, explain, and engineer teleonomic systems. That is to say, any system can be treated as goal-directed insofar as its behaviour can be modelled in terms of mechanisms which minimize a discrepancy between its current state and a targetâa framing which, by extension, offers instrumental value to the practical ambitions of bioengineering research. In the following subsections I will explore some conceptual outcomes of this view where it concerns end-directedness in physics, and the relationship between teleology, biology, and machines, while offering contrasting perspectives throughout, many of which derive from the biocentric account of intrinsic purpose. 4.1.1 Physics and Teleomatic Processes The cybernetic bioengineering framework adopts the view of a unified teleonomic continuum comprising a wide range of material configurations, scaling up from basal forms of goal-directedness and agency ostensibly present in even the simplest physical systems, such as 70 particles following least action laws (Levin, 2022; Manicka & Levin, 2019).20 This framing of goal-directedness as continuous across life and nonlifeâsubstrate-independent and differing solely in terms of complexity and scaleâis at least partially motivated by a desire for congruity between naturalistic accounts of goal-directedness and the mechanistic law-governed frameworks of physics. In Levinâs own words: âwhatever true goals and preferences are, there must exist primitive, minimal versions from which they evolved and these are, in an important sense, substrate- and scale-independent â¦ Indeed, a kind of minimal goal-directedness permeates all of physics â¦ supporting a continuous climb of the scale and sophistication of goalsâ (2022, p. 10). A key theoretical connection between the physics of passive matter and cybernetic goal-directedness stems from a highly generalized model of error-minimization. This broadened conception includes any process whose path towards an end state is optimizedââselectingâ the most efficient path towards a âgoalâ despite perturbationsâsuch as when âthe course taken by a natural process is the one that globally minimizes âactionâ, mathematically defined as the integral of the âLagrangianâ of the system (e.g. the difference between kinetic and potential energies)â (Manicka & Levin, 2019, p. 10). Using this characterization, one could describe a ball rolling to the bottom of a frictionless plane, as well as cognitive functions such as learning and inference in neural networks, as equally goal-directed insofar as they can be formalized using Lagrangian 20 While Rosenblueth et al.âs diagrammatic classification of behaviour is often referenced by Levin as an exemplary model of gradational intelligence, cognition, or agency (Abramson & Levin, 2021; Baluška & Levin, 2016; Levin, 2022), itâs not exactly clear why this schema should motivate analogies between goal-directed behaviour instantiated by cybernetic control mechanisms and end-directed principles in physics which lack regulation via negative feedback. It therefore seems unlikely that a spectrum of goal-directedness beginning with inanimate matter, whose actions are brought about by external forces or natural laws, should derive from Rosenblueth et al.âs original theorization of teleology. 71 mechanics and modelled in terms of least action paths of varying quantities and complexity (Manicka & Levin, 2019). Philosopher Kathryn Nave has also noted a connection between models of end-directed physical systems and cybernetic conceptions of purposiveness, agency, and intelligence in present-day frameworks, such as predictive processing, active inference, and the free energy principleâall of which appear committed to unifying physics and the study of biological existence (2022). As Nave indicates, these approaches similarly inherit from cybernetic traditions of thought, particularly those developed by Ashby, which posit intelligent behaviour in terms of systems inclined towards stable states, and actions which return systems to equilibrium when perturbed (2022, pp. 10â12, 127â132). For Ashby, equilibrium-seeking systems include pendulums returning to vertical positions, watches running down, and cubes coming to rest on a surface (Ashby, 1962). Despite being largely âtrivial and uninterestingâ (Ashby, 1962, p. 70), such systems are nonetheless considered continuous with the appearance of goal-directed behaviour of living organisms, not to mention that of automatic pilots, businesses, economies and computersâdifferentiated simply by a matter of scale or degree. Much like the least-action framework mentioned above, Ashbyâs approach similarly provides the formal and conceptual resources for characterizing inanimate processes, whose end-directedness is a consequence of physical laws, as being minimally goal-directed, agential, proto-intelligent, or constituting lower levels of a spectrum of phenomena which scales into more complex organismal or machinic cognition and behaviour. As I have alluded to in Chapter 2, some of Levinâs earliest attempts to present a relationship between cybernetic teleonomy and morphological goal-directedness also draw from Ashby and the free energy principle framework (Friston et al., 2015; Pezzulo & Levin, 2015) and 72 Levin continues to integrate these ideas into many of his more recent publications. Although the topic warrants more detailed consideration, an extended analysis of these connections is unfortunately beyond the reach of this text. Suffice it to say that this flexible notion of goal-directednessâwhere inanimate physical processes are characterized in terms of their selection of optimal end-directed pathsâis active in Levinâs thought and works alongside feedback mechanisms to generalize a construct of teleonomy at play across the domains of life, machines, and physical mechanics. From the bioengineering perspective, the cybernetic heritage offers the explanatory toolsâi.e., Rosenblueth et al. on teleology and feedback, as well as the constellation of aforementioned ideas related to end-directedness, equilibrium systems, and least action lawsâto consolidate various technological, biological, and abiotic physical processes within a uniform continuum of teleonomic phenomena, differing only in degree and not kind. This generalizability is a major strength of the cybernetic approach to teleology, whose expansive view encompasses the study of broad and varied phenomena and permits a wide range of practical applications. Yet this strength is also a shortcoming, as the frameworkâs explanatory scope is so sweeping that it arguably evades important differences between qualitatively distinct teleological phenomena, especially the specificity of biological purposiveness which we find in the biocentric account. For starters, one could lean on Mayrâs classification of teleology (E. Mayr, 1974, 1992, 1998) to identify a rudimentary but critical distinction grouping certain end-directed processes into a class which he designates teleomatic. Teleomatic processes are defined as âthe simple consequences of natural lawsâ (E. Mayr, 1974, p. 97), inanimate natural occurrences âwhich reach an end stage determined by the universal laws [of] physicsâ (E. Mayr, 1998, p. 36), or âend-directed only in a passive, automatic way, regulated by external forces or conditionsâ (E. Mayr, 1974, p. 98, 1992, p. 125). Such phenomena are nonetheless capable of 73 persisting towards an endpoint under varying conditions, terminating once a potential is exhausted (e.g., thermodynamic gradients characterized by thermal, chemical, or mechanical differentials) or âwhen the process is stopped by encountering an external impediment (as when a falling object hits the groundâ (E. Mayr, 1992, p. 125). Explanations of teleomatic processes suffice by simply referring to how ânatural laws interact with the intrinsic properties of the material on which they actâ (E. Mayr, 1992, p. 126). In other words, mechanistic frameworks based solely on efficient and material causation adequately account for the tendency of abiotic physical systems to reach end states. Of course, many if not all proponents of a biocentric view of teleology advocate for naturalist explanations that do not violate the laws of physics. Being physical systems themselves, organisms are also undoubtably subject to the laws and forces which describe how physicochemical processes are governed. However, physicochemical principles alone are thought to underdetermine the distinctive attributes of biological purposiveness present in even the most minimal forms of unicellular life: qualities such as agency (Jaeger, 2023; Potter & Mitchell, 2022); sense-making (E. Thompson, 2010b); organizational autonomy (Moreno & Mossio, 2015; Mossio & Bich, 2017); and the transcendence of form over matter characteristic of metabolic self-construction (Jonas, 1951, 1966/2001b) and autopoietic identity (Weber & Varela, 2002). Firstly, mechanistic physicalist frameworks of this kind are prone to an explanatory asymmetry where an objectâs behavior is construed as being determined entirely by external principles or forces (Jaeger, 2023, pp. 177â178; Mossio & Bich, 2017). While this passive end-directedness is widespread in physics it differs considerably from lifeâs teleological ability to pursue goals for its own sake, manipulating the world on its own behalf (Kauffman, 2000) in a bid to maintain or improve the conditions of its flourishing. Life transcends the lawful necessity 74 of the physicochemical domain, for example, by transforming free energy into a self-organized identity that displaces thermodynamic entropy to remain out of equilibrium with its environment (Moreno & Mossio, 2015; Schrödinger, 2013).21 The observation that biological individuation requires metabolic work to continuously regenerate a holistic unity of locally ordered states and distinguish the organism from various terminal processes which tend towards thermodynamic equilibrium is by definition non-teleomatic (Deacon & García-Valdecasas, 2023; Dupré & Nicholson, 2018a, pp. 15â16; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine et al., 2022; Schrödinger, 2013). Not only do autopoietic living systems, in Kantian parlance, impart self-organizing dynamics to matter devoid of it, they also accomplish this feat of self-construction and self-differentiation through adaptive relations to their milieu (E. A. Di Paolo, 2005). That is to say, life organizes and regulates physical processes rather than being unilaterally determined by them. These idiosyncratic features are notably lacking from teleomatic processes and to collapse this distinction may entail a scientific interpretation of life as âbut a special case of the lifelessâ (Jonas, 1951, p. 41), where biological teleology is interpreted as commensurate with descriptions 21 Similar to life, some abiotic systems also exhibit characteristics of far-from-equilibrium spatiotemporal organization. In the 1960s, chemist Ilya Prigogine and his colleagues termed these entities dissipative structures: thermodynamically open systems that spontaneously organize into metastable states âformed and maintained through the effect of exchange of energy and matter in non-equilibrium conditionsâ (Glansdorff & Prigogine, 1971, p. xv). Such systems can be both naturally occurringâlike whirlpools, flames, tornados, or Jupiterâs Giant Red Spotâas well as artificially generated, as with lasers or convection cells (Dupré & Nicholson, 2018b; Sagan & Schneider, 2005; Swenson, 1997). Despite a continuity between life and dissipative structuresâas both are open systems operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium and maintaining organizational cohesion over timeâonly the former exhibits bounded individuation, organizational complexity, and functional differentiation (Mossio & Moreno, 2010). Moreover, the structural order of non-living dissipative systems can only persist in the direct presence of a thermodynamic gradient, ceasing as soon as this energy source is depleted. This has a self-undermining effect which reduces the long-term persistence and propagation of the systemâs identity, as the patterns of dynamic regularity which constitute such systems emerge as pathways to amplify the rate at which energy passes through them (Deacon & García-Valdecasas, 2023, p. 8). Life by contrast extends its self-organized identity over much greater timescales, both ontogeneticallyâover organismal growth, development, and life-cyclesâand phylogeneticallyâthrough reproduction and evolution. 75 of abiotic phenomena guided towards ends by external forces. From the biocentric perspective, treating the difference between teleomatic and intrinsically purposive phenomena as merely a matter of degree does more to marginalize the teleological characteristics of life than explain them, conflating biological goal-directedness with the externally determined directionality of processes which merely terminate in a final condition.22 Life is not simply an aggregate of matter and motion, the mere accident of a more fundamental underlying causal concurrence of physical elements and forces, but an integrated system with agency and concern for its own being (Jonas, 1966/2001a). A second closely related point, and alternative way to frame the distinction between explanation in physics and biology, lies in the concept of biological normativity. Physico-chemical explanations alone do not require normative conceptsâthere is no absolute sense in which operations in the domain of physics are inherently preferrable, displeasing, correct or erring. Our modern understanding of abiotic entities, such as electrons or chemical gradients, sees their activity in terms of the universal and impersonal laws of physics.23 Consequently, the dynamics of abiotic systems are taken to be intrinsically value-neutral in the following sense: changes in the position or velocity of a particle, or in the gradation of chemical concentrations in 22 As Mayr notes, teleomatic processes were differentiated from the teleology of life as far back as Aristotle, who characterized the former as being caused by necessityâa distinction which Mayr reinforces by emphasizing that such processes âmay have an end point but they never have a goal â¦ One cannot ask for what purpose lightning had struck a particular treeâ (E. Mayr, 1992, pp. 125â126). Jonas makes a similar claim in his text A Critique of Cybernetics (1953), writing that âAristotle could distinguish the mere ending and the intrinsic âendâ of a motion, a distinction without which, as he points out, death would have to be considered the aim of human lifeâ (Jonas, 1953, pp. 177â178). 23 This may also be the case, to some extent, with quantum mechanics: The laws of physics determine the probabilities of a microphysical systemâs outcomes, while the observational act of technical measurement discloses one possible and definite classical state of said system. Thus, while an observer plays a key role in generating knowledge about such systems, normativity is not inscribed into the physical processes themselvesâelectrons are not governed by human values nor their own preferences, rather their behavior is a result of the physical interactions between a macroscopic technical apparatus and a quantum system. 76 a solution, are no more erroneous than they are desirable, 24 as any and all physical events are equally dictated by the necessity of ineluctable laws (Oderberg, 2024; Oderberg et al., 2023). Living systems on the other hand, when understood in terms of teleological organization, can be said to endogenously generate their own norms relative to how the physical and chemical processes which they organize internally, and interact with dialectically, support or undermine their existence. As philosophers Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio note: âThe activity of a self- maintaining system has an intrinsic relevance for itself, to the extent that its very existence depends on the constraints exerted through its own activity. Such intrinsic relevance generates a naturalised criterion for determining what norms the system is supposed to follow: the system must behave in a specific way, otherwise it would cease to exist.â (2015, pp. 70â71). Moreover, Thompson writes: âBeing a nutrient is not intrinsic to the physicochemical structure of [a] sucrose molecule; it is a relational feature, linked to [an organismâs] metabolism â¦ the status of sucrose as food â¦ is enacted or brought forth by the way the organism, given its autonomy and the norms its autonomy brings about, couples with the environment. Sucrose belongs to the physical order; sucrose-as-nutrient belongs to the living orderâ (2010b, p. 74). In other words, there is a normative dimension to, say, the operations of an electron transport chain generating cellular energy (Oderberg, 2024) or a microorganismâs movement up a nutrient gradient (E. Thompson, 2004) that cannot be derived from explanations involving the laws of 24 Physical and chemical phenomena may also be understood in terms of their formal expression within the symbolic articulations of a scientific framework and, therefore, possessing value relative to the aims of a community of observers and the tradition of knowledge production which said agents propound. In this framing, electrons or chemical gradients as we understand them are simply models whose independent reality we may or may not have access to. Thus, as models, theories, or concepts, natural phenomena can be good, bad, desirable, mistaken, or any other number of normative concepts which they acquire relative to the interests of those involved in their construction and the downstream uses or applications which they yield. 77 physics alone. One requires an understanding of how a metabolic autopoietic system, and the domain of interactions it enacts, discloses the meaning of physicochemical events relative to its concern for continual self-affirmation in the face of imminent demise. To reiterate, from the biocentric standpoint living systems are âsubjects having purposes according to values encountered in the making of their livingâ (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 102). Thus, biological purposiveness arguably entails normativity in the form of mistakes, (dis)function, behavioural standards of correctness, (un)favourable outcomes, preferential aims, and so onâboth in terms of the living system and its intrinsic needs, as well as our efforts to explain living organization, self-production and maintenance, adaptive goal-seeking, and other related teleological characteristics. All of that is to say, mechanistic and physicalist frameworks shed light on simple teleomatic processes, but their elucidation of biological teleology is limited. While parsimonious, the suggestion that physical particles following least action laws are comparable to, or should be treated uniformly with, the purposive character of life (Levin, 2022; Manicka & Levin, 2019) does not seem to adequately reflect the full range and complexity of the latter. The same might be said of simple equilibrium-seeking systemsâsuch as pendulums returning to vertical positions or watches running downâwhich likewise fall under teleomatic categorization but are nonetheless treated, in the cybernetic tradition of Ashby, as continuous with adaptive and cognitive biological phenomena (Ashby, 1962). Instead of providing insight into lifeâs 78 purposiveness, overgeneralized approaches to rendering living and abiotic systems equivalent in kind seem liable to eliminate the distinctiveness of biological teleology altogether.25 4.1.2 Teleology, Life and Machines Drawing parallels between abiotic systems and biological purposiveness also evokes the long-held analogy between life and machines which, in the modern period, tends to be associated with reductionist perspectives informed by the terms and methods of physics and engineering (Nicholson, 2014). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Levin and his collaborators embrace a treatment of life and its properties as machine-like (Bongard & Levin, 2021, 2023; Ebrahimkhani & Levin, 2021), an inclination closely tied to the substrate independent and heuristic interpretation of teleology which prioritizes engineering research focused on prediction and control (Levin, 2023a; Levin & Dennett, 2020). The view that life and machines are functionally equivalent in their goal-directedness is a hallmark of the cybernetic perspective and most apparent in how it posits negative feedback as a generalized teleological mechanism in both domains. This substrate-agnostic teleology, and its connection with an engineering outlook on life, is rooted in the very inception of cybernetic thought. After all, this model of error-correcting behaviour originates from a history of control engineering and the development of feedback technologies such as float valves, centrifugal governors, thermostats, and self-propelled missiles (Bennett, 1979; O. Mayr, 1975; Wiener, 25 In fact, this is precisely what Ashby hoped to do in his account of the continuity between adaptive, biological self-organization and inorganic or abiotic systems. As Nave notes, Ashby âsaw his program as the elimination of teleological attitudes from the scientific explanation of intelligent behaviour, biological or otherwiseâ (2022, p. 13) and took âthere to be no difference in kind between the existential status of an organism and any other physical system, and thus no basis for attributing intentionality or intrinsic purposiveness as a real property that is uniquely possessed by the latterâ (2022, p. 51). 79 1948/1985). The principles of feedback governing the operation of these automata were only later imported into biology and other fields by the transdisciplinary efforts of Wiener and his colleagues as they laid the groundwork for cybernetics (Pias, 2016). An emphasis on feedback control in both technological and biological systems was indispensable to the formation and development of the field, and equating the actions of life and machines is abundant in Wienerâs writing (1948/1985), where recurrent comparisons are made between the goal-directed behaviour of automatic control machines, animals, and brains. Naturally, one of the central aims of Rosenblueth et al.âs seminal text is to demonstrate that their definition of teleology âreveals that a uniform behavioristic analysis is applicable to both machines and living organisms, regardless of the complexity of the behaviorâ (1943, p. 4)âan objective which the authors illustrate with their unified characterization of purposeful behaviour (behaviour controlled by feedback) in both servomechanical machines and human subjects. We neednât belabor the point that cybernetics takes as its subject control mechanisms in both living systems and machines. It is instructive, however, to see the extent to which the cybernetic conception of teleology lends itself to Levinâs bioengineering research and its view of teleonomy in both technological and living systems. Generally speaking, the cybernetic heritage is apparent in Levinâs heuristic treatment of technological systems as goal-directed in fundamentally the same manner as life. For instance, in a co-authored 2023 paper titled Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms, Levin discusses how the cybernetic teleonomic framework informs bioengineering research into the study and design of goal-directedness in hybrid bio-technological systems (Levin & Clawson, 2023). Drawing from Rosenblueth et al. (1943), Wiener (1948/1985), and Ashby (1960), Levin writes that âTeleonomy 80 here is proposed as a conceptual tool to drive the creation and analysis of novel synthetic beings. Rather than (as is sometimes claimed) being a tool to distinguish living beings from âmere machinesâ, it provides a unifying framework to understand the whole multidimensional spectrum of possible agentsâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470).26 Teleonomy thus serves to drive bioengineering research by way of its uniform behaviouristic analysis of goal-directedness in both organisms and machinesâan approach carried forth from pioneering cybernetic frameworks. Similar to his intellectual predecessors, Levin views teleonomic behaviour as a âpowerful invariant across possible beings regardless of composition or originâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 457). Consequently, bioengineers can leverage this model to extend feedback control and error-minimization mechanisms beyond their artifactual origins to the study of life and âgeneralize the idea of goal-directed activity beyond the function of complex brainsâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 460). This allows researchers to use tools from cybernetics, control engineering, neuroscience, and behavioural science to study teleonomic behaviour across a spectrum of materially and organizationally diverse systemsâwhether organismal, machinic, cytoplasmic, electronic, natural, artificial, or any arbitrary combination of these (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 474). By extension, this research method furnishes bioengineers with the ambition to design a continuum of systems composed of interoperable living and inorganic partsâdescribed as âan immense option space of hybrots, chimaeras, cyborgsâ and other âunconventional novel agentsâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 462) âformed [from] any 26 The novel beings and possible agents in question are described earlier in the text as follows: âThese novel life forms result from the recombination of existing evolved components at multiple scales (DNA, cells, tissues and organs) (Nanos & Levin, 2022) and the incorporation of designed components, such as nanomaterials, electronic/chemical/optical interfaces and software algorithms; replacements can be made at every level of organization, with parts that occupy some position with respect to functional sophistication and originâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 461). 81 combination of evolved materials, designed (engineered) material, and softwareâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 463). Once more, the cybernetic view of teleonomy is expansive and its generalizability is advantageous in certain research contexts, such as bioengineering. Yet, as a machine theory concerned with goal-directedness and purpose in living systems, which aspects of said phenomena can it elucidate, and what does it fail to account for? Whatâs more, how does the biocentric view speak to the cybernetic analogy between biological and machine teleology and does it shed light on its strengths and shortcomings? The cybernetic approach has faced various criticism as far back as its first formulation in Rosenblueth et al.âs formative paper. Here I will look at a few overlapping perspectives, largely within the tradition of biocentric teleology, which reflect or stem from a critical perspective put forth by Hans Jonas (1966/2001b): the specificity of lifeâs teleology resides within its intrinsic and constitutive organizational characteristicsâi.e., life has its own existence as the purpose of its operations. For Jonas, this dynamic was best exemplified by metabolism, while others have used terms like natural purposiveness, autopoiesis, biological organization or autonomy to characterize this distinguishing quality. Together these views support the idea that living systems are distinctly purposeful owing to the self-determination involved in maintaining their own organization through self-construction and normatively valenced environmental coupling. On this account, lifeâs telos, or final cause, corresponds with its existence, the conditions of which are established and maintained by the effects of its behaviour. Thus, there is an inherent teleological dimension to explanations concerned with the organized metabolic relations of living systems and the purposiveness which stems from the intrinsic concern to perpetuate a dynamic and precarious identity through ceaseless self-renewal. These properties differentiate 82 teleological accounts of life from the technological processes of artifacts and machines, as the purposiveness of the latter does not arise from self-construction, nor an intrinsic concern for its own existence. Rather, teleological explanations of machines are determined relative to the interests and activity of external agents, understood in one or more of the following terms: (i) satisfying exogenous functions, purposes or ends; (ii) requiring external design, creation and maintenance; (iii) having the effects of its actions correspond with the production of something other than itself (E. Di Paolo, 2010, pp. 68â69; Jonas, 1953, p. 176; H. Maturana & Varela, 1980, pp. 80â81; Mossio, 2022; Nicholson, 2013, pp. 3â4).27 The cybernetic framework for investigating purposive behaviour in the biological domain fails to sufficiently account for the distinctive teleological characteristics of life outlined above. Much like the conflation of teleomatic processes and lifeâs purposiveness, homogenizing the teleological features of life and machines seems equally prone to obfuscate the singular characteristics of living systems which make them both teleological and notably dissimilar to cybernetic artifacts. An ensuing consequence of this outlook, for both cybernetics in general, and the teleonomic bioengineering perspective in particular, is a misleading equivalence of the teleological dimensions of machines and life. 27 Of course, one can instrumentalize living systems, treating them in a manner which we can loosely define as âtechnologicalâ: e.g., beasts of burden, animal husbandry or breeding, bioengineering, forms of niche construction and mutualism (such as fungal farming ants, brood parasitism, or the inducement of gall formation by wasps), and slavery, can be broadly interpreted as the manipulation or exploitation of living systems to satisfy external functions or ends. Some of these phenomena can be described by what Maturana and Varela refer to as heteropoietic (occurring in the space of design) and allopoietic (systems whose product of their operation differs from themselves) (1980, pp. 135â136). Importantly, the allopoietic or heteropoietic treatment of autopoietic systems is thought to pertain only to the domain of observation, and thus has no bearing on the self-determination and intrinsic organizational identity of life (H. Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 81). According to the biocentric view presented here, lifeâs organization should be understood first as intrinsically purposive and only secondarily as means used by other living agents to serve their goal-oriented interests. The existence and purpose of machines on the other hand primarily serve exogenous ends. This is a critical point which we will return to shortly in relation to the observer-relative approach taken to teleonomy in the domain of bioengineering. 83 First, letâs begin by returning to the holistic composition and metabolic organization of living systems. The biocentric view offers an organizational account of life which posits a global whole that serves as a natural purpose relative to which its parts owe their form, existence, and organizational relations. To some degree, this description overlaps with an understanding of machines, as components of both machines and living systems are made possible by their functional relation to the whole. Yet in spite of this similarity, it is critical to note that only organic systems construct themselves, their components, and the relations among them in a perpetual process which sustains their unified identity in a far-from-equilibrium, metastable flux of matter and energy (Dupré & Nicholson, 2018a, pp. 15â18). This precarious and dynamic stability is a fundamental defining characteristic of life and is conspicuously absent from any and all technological systems (Nicholson, 2013, p. 4). As Jonas and others have emphasized, life can be distinguished by the self-production of an organizational form whose constituent materials are being continually transformed and replaced by metabolism (Jonas, 1966/2001a; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; Nicholson, 2013; Schrödinger, 2013). Organic wholes and their parts are both causes and effects, both means and ends, that owe their very identity and existence to an ongoing mutual instantiation of the conditions of material and energetic transformation which facilitate their reciprocal construction. Unlike the metabolic transformations of biological systems, machines and their components are not produced, replaced, nor repaired as a result of the material and energetic flows which traverse them. By contrast, the physical identity and structural unity of a machine remains largely constant whether or not matter and energy are flowing through the system. Recalling Jonas once again: âthe machine persists as a self-identical inert system over against the changing identity of the matter with which it is "fed"; and, we may add, it exists as just the same when there is no 84 feeding at all: it is then the same machine at a standstillâ (1966/2001a, p. 76). That is to say, despite undergoing motional changes as a result of the energetic and material transformations they facilitate, the resilience and functionality of machines and their components rely predominantly on material permanence and stability. Users depend on the structural consistency that enables a machineâs reliable functioning, and its parts must be durable enough to retain the distinctive properties they were designed to exhibit. This is the case when components are isolatedâas with their production and existence prior to and independent of the machine with which they will later be integratedâas well as when they undergo wear and tear from the physical and energetic processes related to their use as modules in a machine system. Relatedly, by centering the self-producing organization of life, the biocentric framework differentiates machines and living systems in terms of what historian and philosopher of biology Daniel Nicholson refers to as the âontogenic priority of parts and wholesâ (2013, p. 4): âIn a machine, the whole only comes into existence after all the parts have been â¦ assembled by its maker. In an organism, the existence of the parts does not precede that of the whole â¦ the parts only acquire their respective identities â¦ as the whole progressively develops from an originally undifferentiated yet already integrated system â¦ an organismâs physiological activities must already be taking place while growth is in progress, whereas a machine cannot perform its intended functions while it is still in the process of constructionâ (2013, p. 4). In his discussion of Kantian natural purposes, Thompson similarly writes that a machineâs parts are âlogically independent of and temporally antecedent to the whole they determineâ, whereas an organismâs âare determined by their presence in the whole and have properties they would not have independently of the wholeâ (2010b, pp. 135â136). This view emphasizes the organizational unity of living systems, whose parts are continually constructed through dynamic and interdependent metabolic processes occurring simultaneous to the ongoing maintenance and 85 reproduction of the whole. In fact, it is a virtue of machines that they lack such features, allowing them to operate intermittently at the userâs discretion, or be turned on and off at will, without compromising their identity and functioning or that of their components. Life on the other hand ceases without the perpetual metabolic transformations of matter and energy which prevent the system from reaching equilibrium with its environment or, in other words, dying (Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 191; Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 76; Schrödinger, 2013, pp. 71, 73).28 As Nicholson and philosopher John Dupré have noted, âYou can leave your typewriter in an empty loft and return a decade later and start using it againâ (2018a, p. 15). By the same token, while âa car cannot function without fuel, its existence (i.e. its structural integrity) is not compromised when it is deprived of fuel. An organism, by contrast, is always acting (or working, in the thermodynamic sense), as it must remain permanently displaced from equilibrium if it is to stay aliveâ (Dupré & Nicholson, 2018a, p. 15). Put differently, metabolic cessation is incompatible with lifeâinterrupting its self-assembling operations for arbitrarily long periods of time jeopardizes its existence. Whereas machines and their components do not produce nor maintain themselves through such ongoing energetic and material fluctuations, nor is their existence and functioning contingent on such dynamics. Some authors, including Levin himself, increasingly endorse novel unconventional approaches to engineering technological systems, embracing properties like embodiment, 28 In Jonasâ words: âif any two "time slices" of [the organism] become, as to their individual contents, identical with each other and with the slices between themâit ceases to liveâ (1966/2001a, p. 76). Itâs relevant to note that the sentence which this quote is drawn from is annotated by Jonasâ remarks on lifeâs pervasive metabolic mode of self-continuation and his refusal, on this basis, to liken living beings to machines. Bertalanffy also stresses a similar point using thermodynamic nomenclature, writing that âlife is not maintenance or restoration of equilibrium but is essentially maintenance of disequilibria, as the doctrine of the organism as open system reveals. Reaching equilibrium means death and consequent decayâ (1968, p. 191). Even during extreme physiological states such as hibernation, this biological dynamism still holds as metabolic operations continue despite their dramatically reduced rates. 86 plasticity, adaptivity, stochasticity, limited self-organization, and the use of living components (Bongard & Levin, 2021; Levin & Clawson, 2023; Tripaldi, 2025). Levin and his colleagues in particular have pointed to these advances in the field in an effort to argue for a more expansive definition of machines, one that extends beyond reductionist models based on mechanical artifacts to even encompass living systems and their dynamic goal-directed properties (Bongard & Levin, 2021). However, these attitudes still generally neglect holistic self-construction and self-determination, emphasizing instead attributes such as the functional interchangeability and substrate independence of goal-directed mechanisms; synthetic abiotic materials that mimic biological properties; and composite systems with arbitrary combinations of living and machine elements. Even in light of these developments, all known machinesâincluding abiotic components integrated into hybrid systemsâare largely unfettered from, or in a state of disjunction with, the holistic metabolic regime of biological organization.29 That is to say, machine elements do not participate in the mutual generation, construction, maintenance, repair, or determination of an organized system, nor are they realized by the continuous material and energetic flows which living systems organize for the sake of their own persistence.30 Thus, their 29 An instructive example is the use of stem cell-derived neural organoids in various biocomputing applications. These systems interface human brain cell cultures with machine hardware in an effort to study the cellular mechanisms of cognition and recapitulate neural form and function for computational purposes. In a recent review of the state of the field, researchers noted that one of the current limitations to âimproving biological complexity and in vivo-like functionalityâ was that âmost brain organoid models so far are still avascular and rely on passive diffusion to deliver nutrientsâ (Smirnova et al., 2023, p. 7). Therefore, in order to support organoid viability, âMicrofluidic systems that substitute for vasculature â allowing controlled perfusion of oxygen, nutrients, and growth factors and the removal of waste products â will be critical to the scalable and durable culturing of brain organoidsâ (Smirnova et al., 2023, p. 7). In other words, biocomputing systems contain a tension between their living and nonliving components, where the latter must compensate, in a less-than-optimal manner, for the metabolic needs of the former, as neither element of the hybrid system participates in an integrated autopoietic whole capable of generating and maintaining the native organization or full complexity of the biological operations that researchers wish to reproduce. 30 As philosophers and cognitive scientists Ezequiel Di Paolo, Marieke Rohde, and Hanne De Jaegher write: âA system â¦ which cannot, by means of its own actions, regenerate its own constitution, can only follow the 87 identity and function still rely for the most part on extrinsic design and production, part/whole independence, and some degree of material inertness and structural consistency. By contrast, the metabolic organization and dynamic stability of living systems highlighted by the biocentric view demands that we attend to their thoroughgoing restlessness and that of their components; the reciprocal construction and mutual determination of parts and whole; and the material and energetic exchange with an environment from which such systems work to differentiate themselves (E. Di Paolo, 2010, p. 68; Jonas, 1966/2001a, p. 76; Nicholson, 2013, pp. 3â6). In this respect, the premise that machines are anything like life, or that an adequate explanation of biological phenomena is provided by an analogy to machines, seems riddled with inconsistencies and faulty from the get-go. Secondly, and following from the first point: differences in system organization and composition may also play a key role in distinguishing purposiveness in the domains of machines and biology. As weâve seen in subsections 3.1 and 4.1.2, the precarious metastability and thermodynamic flux characteristic of metabolic self-production and biological organization are deeply linked to many of the teleological explanations of life put forth by the biocentric perspective. To reiterate, the biocentric view generally holds that the specificity of living teleology is grounded in its constitutive organization, the ongoing replenishment of its material basis, and a corresponding need to produce and maintain itself for its own sake. As a concrete realization of autopoietic unity, instantiated through a metabolic regime of continuous self-construction and self-determination, life is intrinsically purposeful in the sense that âthe effects laws contained in its design, no matter how plastic, adaptive, or lifelike its performance â¦ If a system âhas no sayâ in defining its own organization, then it is condemned to follow an externally given designâ (2010, p. 37). 88 of its activity contribute to establish and maintain its own conditions of existenceâ (Mossio & Bich, 2017, p. 1090). Living systems are both cause and effect of themselvesâtheir self-organized operations contribute to maintaining said organization amid dynamic material turnover and constitute an endogenous purposiveness arising from the self-producing dynamics of their precarious existence. Living organization not only generates and sustains its identity through continuous internal (re)construction but further entails an external, interactive dimension oriented towards promoting the conditions which make its mode of individuation possible. A critical aspect of such activity is an organismâs energetic and material coupling with its environment. This interplay is both necessary and normative: to endure as an individual, a living system needs to harness, regulate, modify and control thermodynamic exchanges with its surroundings in a manner conducive to reproducing its autopoietic organization (Deacon & García-Valdecasas, 2023; Moreno & Mossio, 2015, pp. 6â9; Ruiz-Mirazo & Moreno, 2004; E. Thompson, 2010b, pp. 44â46). That is to say, the internal telos of a living systemâgrounded in the basic purpose of producing and maintaining its own organizational identityâis complemented by a sense-creation purpose whereby life constructs a relationally meaningful world through its activities, generating behavioural norms that regulate its interactions with external conditions in support of its survival. Thus, from the biocentric point of view, living organization and the dynamics of its material and energetic composition are the natural loci for the origins of a point-of-viewâthe âsubject-poleâ of organismal autonomy (Weber & Varela, 2002, p. 113). The organismâs self-centered concern for existence brings forth an evaluative perspective, or a world of significance, that imbues its environmental interplay with existential meaning and normative value relative to its ongoing 89 viability (E. Di Paolo & Thompson, 2010; Jonas, 1966/2001b; E. Thompson, 2010a; Weber & Varela, 2002). These interrelated throughlines of thermodynamics, metabolism, intrinsic purposiveness, and sense-making cast further doubt on the pertinence of analogizing life and machines. Once more, the metabolic and thermodynamic processes implicated in biological organization are nonexistent in any machines known to humankind. Life needs to keep remaking itself to survive and its behaviour can either serve this end or undermine it. By contrast, machines do not satisfy this existential condition of living systems: a machineâs operations neednât correspond with the conditions of its existence, and the viability of machine systems is not determined by the continuous regeneration of material components and organizational form, nor the necessity to do so as a means of sustaining a self-organized identity in far-from-equilibrium, metastable conditions. In other words, within the biocentric framework, life has âskin in the gameâ owing to the thermodynamic, metabolic, and organizational properties of its individuation. With its very existence at stake, evaluating and responding to environmental circumstances is seen as inseparable from an organismâs need to continuously reconstruct its material basis and the adaptive requirements that this imposes on its survival. For this reason, one tends to find life and mind considered coterminously in a number of biocentric frameworks, where cognition and phenomenological interiority coincide with dynamic and adaptive interactions between a self-individuating, sensorimotor agent and its environment (E. Di Paolo & Thompson, 2010; F. J. Varela et al., 1993). Indeed, there is increasing discussion of the evidence that autopoietic processes of metabolic self-production, maintenance, and regulation are inextricably linked to conceptions of consciousness (Aru et al., 2023; Cao, 2022; Meincke, 2023; Seth, 2025; Signorelli & Meling, 90 2021; E. Thompson & Cosmelli, 2011), cognition (Lyon, 2006; Lyon & Opie, 2008; Shapiro, 2021), and minimal forms of experience, sensing, and affect (Baluška & Reber, 2019; Jaeger, 2024; E. Thompson, 2010b). To maintain that sentience, cognition, and mind are inseparable from the specific material and organizational basis of living teleology is to suggest that instantiating such phenomena in machines would prove highly challenging, if not unfeasible. Both cybernetics and bioengineering, however, take a contrary stance. Rosenblueth et al. (1943; 1950) provided a mechanistic framework for understanding teleology and cognition functionally and behaviourally, in terms of control processes producing observable goal-directed actions. This approach is intended to be substrate-independent and thus its analysis of purposeful behaviour âeliminates any incongruity in [its] application â¦ to non-living machines â¦ when they show the same observable traits of behaviourâ (Rosenblueth & Wiener, 1950, p. 323). The cybernetic position is explicit in its rejection of differences between the goal-directedness of life and machines (Rosenblueth et al., 1943, p. 2,4; Rosenblueth & Wiener, 1950, pp. 323, 326), deeming such a question âirrelevant for scientific objectivesâ (Rosenblueth & Wiener, 1950, p. 323) related to the study of teleology. Expanding on this cybernetic model of cognition, the bioengineering account treats cognition, mind, consciousness, and sentience as radically substrate-independent capacities (Levin, 2022, 2024; Rouleau & Levin, 2023). Consequently, Levin and his colleagues question whether âtrueâ minds are exclusive to biological media and argue that cognition in life and machines is not a fundamental distinction (Bongard & Levin, 2021, p. 9; Levin, 2022, pp. 4, 7â10, 30; Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 474). Claims about the inseparability of cognitive properties and the thermodynamic, metabolic, and teleological specificity of biological organization are, however, not outside the scope of scientific or empirical analysis, and they too may inform naturalistic frameworks for 91 exploring the distinguishing aspects of living cognition and its intrinsic purposiveness, as well as efforts to implement comparable phenomena in machine systems. In fact, many have argued that if machines are to replicate the purposive behaviours associated with life, including cognition, such systems ought to be constituted in a wholly, or almost entirely, biological manner (i.e., metabolic, self-constructing, possessing intrinsic concern for existence and survival) (Damasio, 2021; Harrison et al., 2022; Lee & Calvo, 2022; Man & Damasio, 2019; Seth, 2025; Smirnova et al., 2023). Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, for instance, has written extensively on the notion that human minds are grounded in biological survival strategies for managing metabolic homeostasis and staving off thermodynamic decay, arguing that phenomenological experience of physiological states guides self-regulation and serves as the source of consciousness (Damasio, 2000, 2021; Damasio & Damasio, 2023). Likewise, neuroscientist Anil Seth (2025) reasons that there is a deep dependency between consciousness and a biological systemâs need to maintain autopoietic individuation out of thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment, challenging substrate neutrality and functionalist assumptions about machine instantiations of cognition and experience. Cognitive scientist Paco Calvo and philosopher Jonny Lee (2022) have also noted that a consideration for the self-producing organization of lifeâwhose ongoing and precarious individuation grounds a domain of interactions that ensure its viabilityâmay serve in the development of machines that embody features of biological intelligence, such as genuine agency, metabolism, self-regulation, and repair. In the absence of specific characteristics tied to a biocentric understanding of intrinsic purposeâi.e., continuous material turnover, autopoietic organization, metabolic self-construction, self-regulation and concern for survivalâit seems insufficient to posit a resemblance between machines and the teleological properties of life. In other words, while 92 machines might display purposive or goal-directed actions, including operations resembling cognition and other mind-like processes, they lack the distinctive, constitutive features of intrinsic purposiveness that serve as a precondition for the teleological characteristics observed in living systemsâincluding behaviour related to cognition and intelligence, adaptive sense-making, and the felt-inwardness of phenomenal experience. A third idea to consider in our evaluation of the differences in machine and living teleology is the biocentric notion of autonomy: a conceptual and explanatory framework in theoretical biology meant to convey lifeâs self-determination, âas distinguished from a system determined from the outside or a heteronomous systemâ (E. Thompson, 2010b, p. 37). One of its earliest and most focused treatments can be found in Varelaâs aptly titled Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979), where he developed the idea in relation to the autopoietic conception of life put forth some years earlier by Maturana and himself. In his words, âAutonomy means, literally, self-lawâ and it ârepresents generation, internal regulation, assertion of oneâs own identity: definition from the insideâ (F. J. Varela, 1979, p. xii). For Varela, autonomy is continuously revealed in the âself-asserting capacity of living systems to maintain their identityâ and is rooted in an understanding of the very ânature of the organization of the living unityâ (1979, pp. 3â6). While the purview of autonomy is always relative to the maintenance of a systemâs identityâor the causal circularity of metabolic self-production and organizationâit is equally concerned with the adaptive, agential, interactive dimensions of a systemâs requisite environmental coupling (Moreno & Mossio, 2015), what Jonas refers to as âfreedom â¦ dialectically balanced by necessityâ or âautonomy by dependenceâ (1966/2001b, p. 106). Autonomous self-determination thus underscores how both living organization, and the dynamic interplay between a living unity 93 and its environment, always refers back to the âdistinct and irreducible domainâ that is âthe maintenance of a systemâs identityâ (F. J. Varela, 1979, p. xvi). Others in the biocentric tradition describe autonomous systems along similar linesâe.g., in terms of biological organization, metabolic closure, and regulation; an interactive dimension of agency and adaptivity; the teleology of acting on oneâs own behalf and towards oneâs own endsâwhile also highlighting lifeâs thermodynamic grounding as a dissipative system orchestrating a constant throughput of material and energetic transformations (Kauffman, 2000; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; E. Thompson, 2010b). While defining biological autonomy with precision and rigor is still an ongoing effort for scientists and philosophers alike, for our purposes Iâd like to briefly address the relationship between this concept and the complementary notions of allonomy, heteronomy, and control. Varelaâs opening remarks in Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) serve as a useful point of departure. In his preface, titled Information and Control Revisited, Varela contrasts autonomous systems with input-output systems, or entities defined from outside, which are said to belong to the realm of allonomy (or heteronomy), external law, or control (1979, pp. xiâxii). Machines like computers are taken to be exemplary of how a heteronomous control framework of information technology and engineering has been so effectively formalized in the present period. These kinds of machines result from an approach to the interpretation and treatment of complex systems in terms of informational instruction and processing, external control, and exogenously specified components and functioning. By contrast, and as mentioned above, an autonomous framework represents the distinct and irreducible domain of intrinsic regulation, self-determination, and the maintenance of a systemâs identity (F. J. Varela, 1979, pp. xii, xvi). 94 The allonomy/heteronomy perspective resonates with the bioengineering framework and its central interest in driving research focused on optimizing prediction and control of the behaviour and morphogenic properties of living or hybrid âmachinesâ (Bongard & Levin, 2021; Levin, 2012, 2023a; Levin & Clawson, 2023; Levin & Dennett, 2020). Much like cybernetics, the teleonomic bioengineering approach shows little concern for whether entities can be understood as intrinsically teleological in the manner described in the biocentric accountâi.e., with an internal telos arising from the unitary and holistic character of living organization; metabolic self-construction and thermodynamic flow; concern for the continuity of oneâs own existence; enactive sensorimotor environmental coupling; and the autonomous assertion of identity and self-law. Rather, the bioengineer treats life predominantly through the lens of allonomy or heteronomy, to the extent that its teleonomic formalisms are chiefly instrumental in conferring causal control of goal-directed processes in the design and engineering of biological or hybrid systems. By tying its conception of teleology to an instrumental approach to the rational design of biological systems, the bioengineering outlook overemphasizes the control view and facilitates a treatment of life and its purposiveness as though it were machine-like (Bongard & Levin, 2021). Yet as Varela writes, âthe control view, if taken alone, leads to inadequacies in our understanding of natural systems, and to important epistemological â¦ difficultiesâ (1979, p. xvi). The control view can offer us only so much insight into autonomous systems whose âbehavioural regularities â¦ always refer back to the unitary character of the system at handâ and âits own ongoing maintenance of identityâ (F. J. Varela, 1979, p. xiv). Thus, according to Varela, adopting an allonomous or heteronomous outlook on the analysis and explanation of living systems and their intrinsic self-determining operations can be âincredibly limitingâ, âone-sided 95 and incompleteâ, and âworkable only in situations of restricted autonomyâ (1979, pp. xivâxvi). Insofar as an autonomous view of living systems coincides with the biocentric account of intrinsic teleology, a manifest incongruity arises between an appreciation of the internal purposiveness of living organization and the instrumental heuristics of bioengineering and its corresponding cybernetic machine theory of life. Despite certain practical advantages, the control account of life is impoverished by its lack of consideration for what an autonomous perspective might reveal in tandem with a biocentric perspective of teleology: a self-determining system acting on its own behalf, with an intrinsic telos arising from the production, regulation, and maintenance of its identity, whose organization specifies its own domain of operations and shapes the normative conditions of its livelihood. Machines, on the other hand, have none of these attributes. Accordingly, they lend themselves best to allonomous or heteronomous treatment according to the aims of design and engineering, as systems whose operations satisfy external functions, purposes, or ends, and require external regulation or maintenance. To treat biological phenomena in terms of extrinsically specified teleonomic heuristics crafted to serve prediction, control, and externally imposed ends is to obscure an understanding of life as irreducibly autonomous, intrinsically purposeful, self-asserting, and defined from the inside. Autonomy is therefore arguably a requisite perspective for any adequate framework that seeks to investigate and explain the purposiveness of living systems (Moreno & Mossio, 2015; E. Thompson, 2010b, pp. 43â50) and presents a considerable challenge to the adequacy of the machine analogy of life. At the very least, the image of autonomy might redress an imbalance brought about by the allonomous perspective of biological systems, supplementing this approach with a âconstructive interplay 96 between two interdependent visions that raises oneâs â¦ understanding to a new levelâ (F. J. Varela, 1979, p. xvi). The autonomous perspective is not a prominent feature of cybernetics nor bioengineering, and neither framework pays much attention to the core tenets of the biocentric perspective and the non-machine-like aspects of life that it highlights. As mentioned above, the cybernetic bioengineering view downplays the autonomous characteristic of biological systems and accentuates their heteronomous or allonomous treatment as machine-like entities subjected disproportionately to control descriptions. Moreover, in their attempts to equate life and machines, Levin and his colleagues also tend to overlook or dismiss foundational ideas in the biocentric tradition of thought, such as those which draw connections between metabolic self-construction, autopoietic organization, intrinsic teleology, biological autonomy, and enactive sense-making. To some extent, this omission is reflected in their claims that core features of biological purposivenessâsuch as adaptivity, intelligence, memory, cognition, allostasis, sentience, and goal-directed behaviourâare radically substrate independent, and in some cases already present in existing machine systems (Bongard & Levin, 2021, 2023; Levin & Clawson, 2023; Rouleau & Levin, 2023). Accordingly, on the basis of a uniform behavioural treatment of life and machines, the bioengineering perspective does not view the teleological behaviour exhibited by life as distinctive or exclusive to the metabolic, organizational, far-from-equilibrium, or self-constructing profile of organic systems. Informed by this fundamentally cybernetic idea, Levin and others implicitly reject the biocentric position on the specificity of lifeâs intrinsic purposiveness and, by extension, its use as a metric for delineating living and machine systems. Thus, throughout this literature one finds: doubts about whether ââtrueâ preferences, motivations, goal-directedness â¦ and understanding 97 are somehow only possible in biological mediaâ (Bongard & Levin, 2021, p. 9); belief in âa continuum of â¦ agency that can be instantiated in a myriad of novel implementations, not segregating neatly into categories based on composition (protoplasm vs. silicon)â (Bongard & Levin, 2021, p. 2); claims that âsynthetic morphology [is] erasing the artificial lines that used to exist between evolved, living forms and engineered machines with teleonomic capacityâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 463); and assertions that the âlife vs. machine distinction is relevant only to the lowest class of machines available in prior decades and is not fundamentalâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 474). A fourth and final point to stress about the bioengineering conception of teleology and its uniform treatment of machines and life is that, in this framework, teleonomy emphasizes a recognition of goal-directedness relative to the aims of an observer. More specifically, the bioengineering account dismisses the question of whether a system is âtrulyâ teleological, preferring instead to treat actions as purposeful insofar as modelling them as such provides researchers with heuristic, instrumental, and/or predictive benefits. Rather than being used as âa tool to distinguish living beings from âmere machinesââ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470), teleonomy refers to a way of modelling a spectrum of living and nonliving systems under a unified framework that affords an observer prediction and control of goal-directed behaviour (Levin, 2023a, p. 176). Thus, unencumbered by a concern for the ontological status of teleology, goal-directedness may be freely attributed to any kind of action or system modelled in terms of bioengineering research criteria. Levin will often contextualize this claim in terms of scientists manipulating living systems for bioengineering, synthetic morphological, or biomedical purposes, and the practical or instrumental effectiveness offered by this teleonomic lens. Other times Levin broadens his view of teleonomy as âan engineering claimâ about purposiveness in 98 complex systems to include how âcreatures see each other, and parts of living systems model other parts and themselves to gain optimal causal controlâ (2023a, p. 176). Perhaps the most important drawback to viewing teleonomy as an observer-relative engineering heuristic, and of readily dismissing the question of whether a system is genuinely teleological, is that this approach precludes an analysis of the very system presupposed by the goal-directed behaviour which it seeks to explain. That is to say, the cybernetic-bioengineering view of teleology does not account for the distinctive source of biological purposiveness which precedes, or is the precondition for, the teleonomic behaviour of machines and organisms. A number of philosophers and scientists have offered relatively unique but equally critical perspectives of this problem (Bedau, 1992; Bertalanffy, 1951; Jonas, 1953; E. Mayr, 1974, p. 100; Mossio & Bich, 2017, pp. 1095â1096). For example, in spite of praising cybernetics for introducing heuristically valuable concepts and terminology into the scientific treatment of teleology, Mayr also notes a crucial point missing from its account of biological teleology. Namely, actions that improve the precision of goal-directedness are secondary to that which initiates or determines goal-seeking behaviour to begin with: âIt is not the thermostat which determines the temperature of a house, but the person who sets the thermostat. It is not the torpedo which determines toward what ship it will be shot and at what time, but the naval officer who releases the torpedoâ (E. Mayr, 1974, p. 100). Feedback mechanisms are merely mediators for a more primary teleonomic system which precedes and determines them, which for Mayr was best represented by the constitutive operations of a genetic programâshaped by natural selection, encoding and controlling the organismâs goal-directed activitiesâor, in the case of 99 humans, and certain warm blooded vertebrates, through purposive cognition (1998, p. 37, 2004, p. 57).31 While Mayr was not necessarily opposed to the compatibility of teleonomic explanations for both organisms and man-made machines, others who offered similar critiques of the cybernetic model of teleology did so in a manner which complicates this affinity. In a 1951 text titled Towards a Physical Theory of Organic Teleology, Bertalanffy argued that cybernetic feedback is an inadequate explanation of biological teleology, one unable to account for the organic wholeness and primary regulatory activities of the organism. For Bertalanffy, to view life through the lens of his general systems theory is to conceive of the organism as a thoroughly dynamic and open systemâa âcontinuous fluxâ (1951, p. 348) whose teleological behaviour results from maintaining its unity through a flow of integrated and dynamic material transformations. Bertalanffy held that modelling teleology in terms of communication engineering and a machine theory of life mistakenly foregrounds the static structural arrangements characteristic of the servomechanical feedback scheme, and obscures the thermodynamic properties and holistic dynamism of living organization which he took to be the primordial source of teleological phenomena such as metabolic regulation, embryonic development, regeneration, and gestalt-perception: âThere is a simple reason for the primacy, in the organism, of dynamical as against structural order. In contrast to a machine which consists of lasting parts, all organic 31 Mayr revised his classification of teleology throughout his career. Towards the end of his life he added a category for purposive behaviour in thinking animals (E. Mayr, 1998, 2004) to reflect his changing views on concepts initially reserved for human psychology which he had initially excluded from his analysis. Convinced of his mistake by emerging research in animal behavior, Mayr held that âPurposive behavior that is clearly goal-directed is widespread among animals, particularly among mammals and birds, and fully qualifies to be called teleological â¦ [and for which] there is in principle no difference between humans and thinking animals.â (2004, p. 57). 100 structures are maintained in a continuous process, in perpetual breaking down and regeneration. The only thing which is really permanent in the organism is the order of processesâ (1951, p. 360). Although this does not entail âa sharp borderline between âdynamicsâ and âmachinesââ (Bertalanffy, 1951, p. 360), Bertalanffy nonetheless argues that cyberneticsâ particular âmachine-theory of the organismâ (1951, p. 354), with its focus on modelling teleology in terms of feedback regulation governed by pre-established structural arrangements or conditions, cannot explain the ceaseless dynamism of the primary teleological system which its goal-directed mechanisms presuppose. If, as Bertalanffy suggests, cybernetics claims to offer the framework for a new understanding of the organism (1951, p. 346) and an explanatory model of biological teleology (1951, p. 350), one way in which it fails to do so is by neglecting the very nature of the system which precedes structural feedback. Namely, a conception of the organism as an open system with âdynamically interacting elementsâ (Bertalanffy, 1951, p. 352), exchanging matter and energy with its environment, whose teleological principles of regulation and organization are irreducible to feedback and machine-like properties (Bertalanffy, 1951; Jonas, 1966/2001a; Mossio & Bich, 2017). Along similar lines, Mossio and Bich (2017) identify the constitutive organization of living systems as the crucial dimension of biological teleology missing from the cybernetic view, whose existence it presupposes nonetheless as that which error-correcting behaviour serves to maintain stable. Drawing on Piagetâs (1971) integration of thermodynamic openness with the causal circularity of living organization, the authors argue that cybernetic âhomeostatic mechanisms express biological teleology only to the extent that they are inherently linked to the underlying self-determining organisation: the goal states of living systems â¦ are therefore those 101 determined by organisational closure, the causal regime which continuously produces and maintains the organismâ (Mossio & Bich, 2017, p. 1098). Thus, the cybernetic model of teleology âdoes not capture the most distinctive generative dimension of biological organisation, i.e. the fact that the components involved in feedback loops are not only stabilised, but produced and maintained by the very organisation to which they belongâ (Mossio & Bich, 2017, p. 1096). From the biocentric standpoint, this generative dimension is both intrinsically teleological and serves to distinguish our respective understanding of life and machines insofar as the latterâs existence does not depend on metabolic self-construction and renewal, nor is it the goal of its operations. In other words, homeostatic mechanisms owe their goal-directedness to the teleology of biological organization which establishes a normative orientation to the operations of living systemsâa perspective absent from cybernetic and bioengineering models which narrowly focus on apparent behaviour and control system heuristics. Jonas also observes this disregard for biological self-determination in A Critique of Cybernetics (1953), later republished as Cybernetics and Purpose: A Critique, the fifth essay in his book The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology (1966/2001b). Here Jonas critiques Rosenblueth et al.âs foundational paper on teleology, its efforts to reduce life and mind to cybernetic principles, and its resultant inability to account for the intrinsic value-laden purposiveness of life. In his estimation, accounting for teleology in terms of cybernetic behavioural analysis neglects the fact that âOnly living things have needs and act on needs â¦ based both on the necessity for the continuous self-renewal of the organism by the metabolic process, and on the organism's elemental urge thus precariously to continue itselfâ (Jonas, 1953, pp. 90â91). In other words, the mechanical dimensions of error-correction alone do not determine the value of the goal, only the additional interest or concern, introduced by the 102 biological agent, makes such action purposive (Jonas, 1953, p. 185)âa factor which cybernetics sidesteps in its model of teleology. For Jonas, and the biocentric framework more generally, the âconcernedness of all life with itselfâ is the prerequisite basis upon which â"feedback" [can] operate in the control of purposive actionâ (1953, p. 186). Put otherwise by enactivist proponents of the Jonasian view: âvalue is simply an aspect of all sense-making, as sense-making is, at its root, the evaluation of the consequences of interaction for the conservation of an identityâ (E. A. Di Paolo et al., 2010, p. 45). According to Jonas, cybernetic descriptions fall short of considering the nature of the system that underlies goal-directed behaviourânamely, a self-organizing, self-producing, and self-maintaining system capable of generating the existential concern, interest, meaning, or value that would qualify error-minimizing behaviour as purposive to begin with. Moreover, formulating an account of teleological behaviour that is heedless of whether the system in question is intrinsically purposeful in the biocentric senseâi.e., one possessing internally-generated interests which motivate its goal-seeking operationsâcan lead to difficulties in delineating external and internal teleology (Mossio, 2022). This is especially pertinent in terms of the role that teleological explanations may play in demarcating life and machines, as only living systems possess intrinsic needs and a concern for their existence, whereby norms, purposes, and goals arise from within, irrespective of external forces or the contrivances of an observer or outside agent. That is to say, behind any goal-directed action we always find an agent, fulfilling some value-laden criteria: either by generating its own constitutive or interactive teleological operations or attributing purpose to an external system on the basis of its own preferences or design. Thus, one of the principal conclusions Jonas arrives at in his critical 103 analysis of cybernetics is that âthe whole cybernetic doctrine of teleological behavior is reducible to a confusion of "serving a purpose" with "having purpose"â (1953, pp. 187â188). By the same token, philosopher Mark Bedau finds the central shortcoming of cybernetic teleonomy in its attempt to account for goal-directedness in fully quantitative and value-free terms. Following Nagel (1979), Bedau characterizes the cybernetic conception of teleology in terms of plastic and persistent behaviour resulting in the production of a goal state, where some variables deflect a system from its goal and others contribute to restoring its goal-directedness (1992, p. 35). Bedau notes, however, that this account falls short of distinguishing genuinely teleological systems from ones which merely tend toward equilibrium. Equilibrium systems, such as a pendulum coming to rest in a vertical position or a marble reaching the bottom of a bowl, cannot be ruled out by the cybernetic error-minimizing scheme aloneânor can they be eliminated by embellishing this basic model with greater quantitative degrees of complexity added to the relations between its variables (Bedau, 1992, pp. 35â43). On the contrary, Bedau holds that the difference between such systems is qualitative: genuine goal-directedness necessitates a need for its effects to be of value for something, such as when âthe grub-seeking behavior of a woodpecker benefits the woodpecker, the self-regulation of a steam engine with a governor benefits the people using the engine, or the mammal's temperature regulation system benefits the organismâ (1992, p. 43). By eschewing consideration for the uniquely value-laden qualities of biological systems, cybernetic explanation cannot account for the teleological systems it presupposesâi.e., the kind of system that has intrinsic interests, independent of externally determined values, which goal-directed behaviours can promote or contribute to (Bedau, 1992, p. 45). 104 The primary aim of Bedauâs discussion of value is to account for the difference between equilibrium systems and the distinctive teleological feature of activities which produce value or a benefit for genuinely goal-directed systems. There is no explicit argument for demarcating life from machines, per se. However, we nonetheless find a critique of cybernetics analogous to those put forth by the authors previously mentioned: that the cybernetic account of teleology fails to meaningfully explicate a fundamental teleological precondition of goal-directed activity. In other words, cybernetics is limited by its inadequate concern for the intrinsic value-centered nature of the system necessitated by purposive or goal-directed behaviourâa blind-spot which troubles its ability to grasp categorical differences between teleological phenomena in the domains of physics, machines, and life. Moreover, much if not all of Bedauâs characterization of such a value-laden teleological system is in essence biological. For instance, Bedau echoes the biocentric emphasis on the purposiveness of âbiological creaturesâ with âintrinsic interestsâ (1992, p. 46), foregrounding the connection between goodness as suchâ"the idea that certain kinds of entities have interests (independently of any interests of third-parties) that are promoted by certain kinds of states of affairsâ (1992, p. 47)âand lifeâs teleological orientation towards its own welfare, survival, and flourishing. Even when Bedau discusses the imputation of instrumental or external purpose, he does so in a manner which always refers back to the biological basis of intrinsic needs and interests, such as when he speculates about how a âmarble-plus-bowl [equilibrium] system could benefit either an organism containing the system or a person using the systemâ (1992, p. 43). In each case, the non-purposive system becomes teleologicalâi.e., functional, purposeful, or existing for the sake of somethingâonce value is added by either its status as an organ contributing to the good of an organismâs survival, or its use as an instrument that contributes to 105 realizing an agentâs goals. By showing that value must play a role in genuinely goal-directed systems, and that this element is missing from the cybernetic framework, we are led to consider how cybernetics fails to account for how the goal-directed behaviour it seeks to explain can only be made sense of when embedded within, or contributing to, the aims of a system with intrinsic needs, intentions, interests, and the like. To some extent, this shortcoming carries over into teleonomic bioengineering, with its emphasis on substrate-agnostic error correction mechanisms and an observer-relative heuristic perspective on teleology. With respect to the former, surmising that âthe technical condition for purposive action can itself constitute purposeâ (Jonas, 1953, p. 182) falls short of explaining the precondition for teleological behaviourânamely, the internal telos of living organization articulated by the biocentric framework (Mossio & Bich, 2017) which serves as the basis for intrinsic needs and interest. As we have seen throughout Chapters 3 and 4, many of the paradigmatic features of biological purposivenessâself-production, living organization, biological normativity, enactive sense-making, environmental coupling and thermodynamic exchangeâcomplicate the utility of the substrate-independent perspective and point to a richer, more comprehensive account of the distinctive teleology of living systems which grounds their purposive actions. Simply elaborating on the mechanisms of error-minimization, abstracted from the needs, norms, and value-laden properties of life, omits something fundamental about teleological explanation in the biological realm. As for the latter, thereâs something peculiar and almost paradoxical about a bioengineering explanatory strategy that yokes teleology to purposive agents seeking optimal prediction of, and causal control over, other systemsâboth in terms of scientists relating to their objects of study as well as the more general case of living systems modelling the behaviour of 106 other systems (Levin, 2023a, p. 176). Despite acknowledging the purposive system and intentional disposition implied by the pursuit of optimal prediction and control, the bioengineering perspective does not develop this intuition toward a naturalistic account of intrinsic teleology. Instead, it emphasizes a teleonomic heuristic approach to making predictions about, or obtaining control over, a systemâs behaviourâemploying pragmatic, instrumental, engineering formalisms to model the mere appearance of goal-directedness without making ontological claims about the relationship between teleology and the system being observed (Levin, 2023a; Levin & Dennett, 2020). This approach implicitly downplays the notion of a genuine telos arising from the intrinsic constitution of a natural system, favouring instead a view where purpose does not originate in the system being explained but is rather imputed, determined, or exploited by something external to the explanandum itself. It also circumvents the link between teleology and valueâwhich is nonetheless presupposed by the concept of an agent seeking prediction and controlâby ruling out the idea that teleology coincides with the genuinely purposive disposition of systems possessing intrinsic needs or interests, such as survival or flourishing. As a consequence, this aspect of the bioengineering perspective sits somewhere between teleology as mere metaphor or fiction in the mind of an observer, and a machine-like externalist conception of purpose imposed from outside. In both cases, the question of whether a system is truly teleological on its own terms, or whether it is possible for it to possess a good of its own, independent of the value a third-party might place on it, remains underexamined. 107 4.2 The Metaphysics of Nature These last points about observer-relative behaviouristic analysis leads us to some brief closing remarks about biological purposiveness and ontology. By contrasting some prominent features of the cybernetic and biocentric accounts of teleology I have tried to show how their varying approaches to teleological explanation shape distinct understandings of life, machines, and physics. I also intimated that the latter of the two frameworks might be interpreted through the lens of metaphysics in service of furnishing an ontology of teleology in nature. Naturally, neither cybernetics nor the teleonomic bioengineering perspective engage in metaphysical speculation about teleology, life, or nature more broadly. Skepticism of such an undertaking is expressed early on by Rosenblueth et al.âs efforts to overcome the âvague concept of a final causeâ (1943, p. 5) which characterized previous interpretations of teleology and led to its opposition with determinism. For Rosenblueth and Wiener, purpose could only be treated scientifically if it referred to external interpretations of observed behaviour, not from âthe study of or â¦ any speculation on the structure and nature of the acting objectâ (1950, p. 323). Subsequent teleonomic approaches also adopted the view that teleological notions ought to be stripped of metaphysical implications and used instrumentally or heuristically to get at more fundamental naturalistic and mechanistic explanations (Pittendrigh, 1958). The bioengineering perspective, personified here by the work of Levin and colleagues, expresses a variety of this hard naturalistic approachâstressing a practical science of goal-directedness where teleology is construed as an engineering claim about a systemâs behaviour and the degree of explanation, prediction, and control it affords an observer. Thus, âphilosophical wrangling over real, objective purpose or agencyâ (Levin & Clawson, 2023, p. 470) is viewed as a hinderance to productive inquiry on the grounds that formulating âa scientific theory without necessarily committing to 108 the ontological status of its entities has contributed to the success of mature sciencesâ (Pezzulo & Levin, 2016, p. 4). In the biocentric tradition we find a more permissive view of the ontological implications of biological teleology, particularly for authors drawing from Jonasâ legacy, some of whom I have highlighted in this text (Jonas, 1966/2001b; Meincke, 2023; Moreno & Mossio, 2015; E. Thompson, 2010a; Weber & Varela, 2002). These metaphysically adjacent considerations take varying forms, although they roughly converge on the idea that the teleological characteristics of living organization are ontologically distinct from that of machines and irreducibly emergent with respect to the causal properties of physics alone. For Jonas in particular, the intrinsic teleology of biological self-determination fundamentally distinguishes the nature of living systems from that of all known man-made machines, and challenges an implicit cybernetic ontology which considers organisms to be âmachines of natureâ (Gambarotto, 2020, pp. 254â255; Jonas, 1966/2001b). This view of lifeâs unique ontological status in nature bears on range of metaphysical topics related to identity, mind, causality, and being. While a sufficient discussion of these philosophical matters is beyond the scope of this text, it is worth briefly noting two things. First, we can consider the biocentric and cybernetic frameworks in terms of the relation between their approach to teleological explanation and the tacit ontological commitments that each theory makes about biological teleology. To this end, the tradition of biocentric teleology offers, in my estimation, a richer naturalistic explanation of lifeâs purposiveness than that of cybernetic bioengineering, and its theoretical resources lend themselves to a more instructive and fine-grained ontology of teleological phenomena in nature. That is to say, the biocentric account of intrinsic purpose generates a set of ontological criteria which allows for a clearer distinction between the singularity of biological teleologyâand the 109 distinctive features of life associated with itâand teleology in the realms of machines and abiotic physicochemical processes. Whereas cybernetic and bioengineering accounts of teleology smooth over considerable qualitative differences in how teleology is manifested for teleomatic or equilibrium processes, living systems, and machines or artifacts. Whether the categories which emerge from such a formulation track with the fundamental nature of reality is debatable and, in some sense, is underdetermined by the ontological structure of a theory. However, a naturalistic ontology that supports a more instructive and detailed classification of numerous kinds of teleology may sharpen our awareness and understanding of this multifaceted object of inquiry, and reduce ambiguity and confusion in our scientific study and philosophical discussions of biological teleology, more specifically (E. Mayr, 1998, 2004). Indeed, expansive forms of cybernetic thinking may render the ontology of teleological phenomena so broadly that it risks becoming vacuous and indiscriminate, losing explanatory utility by applying the same scheme to many things in general but clarifying nothing in particular (Nave, 2022, pp. 13, 325). Lastly, there is an important sense in which biological teleology, as it is construed in the biocentric account, is considered to be independent of both external forces and observation. That is to say, lifeâs intrinsic purposiveness is foremostly established by and subordinate to its own organizational unity, which it asserts autonomously through its operations in physical space. The holistic identity of a biological system is self-determiningâit is not a product of the perceptions or actions of others nor is it specified by the efficient causal relations of physical forces alone. In other words, the existence of an intrinsic biological telos is not contingent on whether an external agent takes an interest in its goal-directedness (Bedau, 1992; Jonas, 1966/2001b), nor is its purposiveness imputed to it by an artificer, and lifeâs autonomous form is considered a novel 110 causal property of nature (Moreno & Mossio, 2015, p. 197), not the indifferent effect of material dynamics but a self-determining system which organizes or constrains such processes for its own sake. Weber and Varela speak to this ontological split between matter and life when they write: â[A] living system is â¦ an ontological center â¦ it is able to organize itself into a form that is not explainable by the features of the underlying matter (the pure necessity) alone â¦ This [teleological] autonomy has to do with the ever existing gap between the realization of the living and its underlying matterâ (2002, p. 119). In the same vein, Jonas argues that life brings forth an irreducible ontological identity rooted in self-determination and intrinsic autonomy: âin living things, nature springs an ontological surprise in which the world-accident of terrestrial conditions brings to light an entirely new possibility of being: systems of matter that are unities of a manifold, not in virtue of a synthesizing perception whose object they happen to be, nor by the mere concurrence of the forces that bind their parts together, but in virtue of themselves, for the sake of themselves, and continually sustained by themselves â¦ It is only with life that the difference of matter and form, in respect to lifeless things an abstract distinction, emerges as a concrete reality. And the ontological relationship is reversed: form becomes the essence, matter the accidentâ (1966/2001a, pp. 79â80) Biocentric accounts of biological individualityâparticularly those in the Jonasian veinâthus invite us to contemplate an ontological dimension of living organization and intrinsic teleology that exceeds the dictates of abiotic physicochemical processes; the external imposition of artifactual purpose; and the attribution of unified identity, or the heuristic imputation of a telos, to the living system by another agent or entity. To some extent, the last two of these conditions relate to the heuristic instrumentalism of the teleonomic bioengineering framework discussed here. Recall that adherents of this perspective are prone to conceive of biological teleology in terms of: (1) behavior whose apparent purposiveness is relative to the validation of an observer or (2) a property of a system to 111 be exploited, regulated, or controlled in service of an observerâs external goal-oriented ends. Moreover, treating living systems as entities with innate attributesâi.e., as objects of an ontologyâis averse to the bioengineer who purportedly concerns himself solely with a modelâs efficacy in driving research and enhancing prediction and control. To reiterate, these theoretical tendencies work against a conception of a telos arising from the intrinsic constitution of a natural system in favor of a view where purpose is construed relative to external interests. Conversely, a firmer ontological commitment to the biological nature of intrinsic purposiveness and self-determination reveals the limitations of interpreting living teleology through the lens of external validation, determination, or control, while offering a naturalistic account of genuine teleology grounded in living organization. If we take life, and only life, to be the kind of system which has its own existence as the purpose of its operations, it seems reasonable to highlight this singular property of its being and partition such systems ontologically from those which lack this distinctive teleological characteristic. From this point of view, living systems can nonetheless be treated technologically, or as machine-like (as a means to an end, or in terms of extrinsically imputed purpose or objective control), as can all systems belonging to an agentâs surroundings whose properties might serve to promote the agentâs intrinsic needs and interests. But a strong biocentric position might nonetheless hold that a living system is firstly and fundamentally an autonomous system whose teleological existence, unitary character, or ontological identity, is self-produced and self-determined, and thus prior to and independent of the perceptions, interests, or contrivances of any observer external to it. This position leans towards a kind of metaphysical realism about the teleological nature of a living entityâi.e., biological systems and their teleological organization 112 are natural entities that exist regardless of whether anyone is interacting with, thinking about, or experiencing them. Adopting a biocentric view of the nature of living teleology, particularly through a reading of Hans Jonas, may also lead us to contemplate an alternate and more nuanced premise which Jonas expresses through the lens of phenomenology: that because the fundamental reality of biological purposiveness arises from within the living system, it can thus only be made intelligible through the lived experience of being alive, or the internal perspective generated by the subject-pole of autonomy. The autonomous nature of a biological telos not only resists explication in externalist termsâi.e., as a result of extrinsic causal forces, or from being the object of an external agentâs synthesizing perceptions or allonomous instrumental interestsâits elucidation also requires our own internal, experiential awareness of the intrinsic purposiveness which all life is endowed with. Every living system thus possesses some degree of phenomenological intimacy with the primordial continuity of teleology, metabolism, need, appetition, feeling, sensing, and mind. In Jonasâ words: âthere is no organism without teleology; there is no teleology without inwardness; and: life can be known only by lifeâ (1966/2001a, p. 91). Should these aspects of the biocentric view of intrinsic purposive and biological autonomy encroach further into the domain of metaphysics and phenomenology, they may ultimately run up against the prevailing tenets of hard naturalism and scientific validity where it concerns an investigation and understanding of biological goal-directedness, purpose, agency, or other teleological notions (Gambarotto, 2020; Sachs, 2023). However, it may be worth contemplating whether it is possible to discuss the relationship between teleology and life with the depth and rigor it warrants without speaking in terms of ontology, nature, being, or 113 experienceâthat is to say, in terms of the intrinsic nature of organic teleology, the relationship between life, sentience, and mind, or the entities and phenomena which populate the domain of life and their general qualities, attributes, or features. While it has become increasing evident that teleology plays an integral role in a naturalistic understanding of life, nevertheless, these broader philosophical questions continue to haunt its exploration. 114 Chapter 5: Conclusion In this thesis I have sought to explore some key issues involved in recent efforts to understand the connection between teleology and life. Following a brief historical overview, I have reviewed two intellectual traditions concerned with biological teleologyâthe cybernetic bioengineering outlook and a biocentric understanding of intrinsic purposeâand considered how conceptual and methodological differences underlie their distinct understandings of and approaches to the subject. By unpacking core features of each view, and underscoring notable divergences, I have argued that while the cybernetic-bioengineering framework offers flexible instrumental interpretations of goal-directed mechanisms in diverse systems, it remains conceptually incomplete. Building on ideas first introduced by Rosenblueth, Bigelow, and Wiener (1943), the contemporary bioengineering perspective embraces a heuristic model of teleonomy and a behavioristic analysis of error-minimizing mechanisms (Levin, 2022, 2023a; Levin & Clawson, 2023; Levin & Dennett, 2020), eschewing discussion of the intrinsic telos of living organization which grounds purposive behaviour. As a result, this expansive and unifying framework conceals the distinctive source of living teleology which it presupposes but does not explain and renders the cybernetic-bioengineering perspective insensible to critical differences in the forms of teleology found in physics, machines, and lifeâabove all the self-producing organization, existential concern, and normativity at the core of biological purposiveness. It is my view that contemporary efforts to naturalize biological teleology must go beyond this particular tradition of cybernetic thinking and take seriously the singular form of teleology rooted in lifeâs constitutive organization and existential need to produce and maintain itself for its own sake. The biocentric lineage of thought provides ample resources to address this 115 shortcoming, placing the characteristics of autonomous living systems at the center of its exploration of biological teleology. By grounding teleology in the constitutive features of biological organization and self-construction (Jonas, 1966/2001b; Mossio & Bich, 2017), the biocentric framework offers a naturalistic conception of living systems as those which have their very existence as the purpose of their operations. The telos of biological organization is thus closely entangled with the goal-directedness of its behaviourâactions which acquire intrinsic purpose and normative status for living systems relative to the ongoing viability of their metabolically self-produced identity (Mossio & Bich, 2017; Weber & Varela, 2002). On this basis, one can begin to distinguish lifeâs teleological existence from the teleology of machinesâwhose purpose is externally imposed and whose goal-directed operations do not coincide with a self-generated identityâand that of abiotic physical processesâthe teleomatic dynamics of which cannot explain the novel organizational regime of autonomous living form. The biocentric view offers a chiefly naturalistic account of the intrinsic purposiveness of living systems, a teleological dimension neglected but presupposed by the cybernetic bioengineering framework. However, in some cases, it also invites deeper questions related to the ontology, metaphysics, and phenomenology of life which modern science may not be equipped to address. In terms of further directions for my research, one pressing question concerns which elements of the intellectual heritage of biocentric teleology contribute to, or impede on, a scientifically viable theory of lifeâs purposiveness. Jonasâ legacy is of central interest to this issue, as his philosophical treatment of the phenomenon of life is suffused with both phenomenological description and metaphysical speculation. Philosophical elements such as these are often taken to be inconsistent with the norms of scientific observation, measurement, and experiment, and the ability to model and explain phenomena without resorting to the 116 subjective factors or private facts associated with phenomenological experience and interiority. Weber and Varela also inherit aspects of Jonasâ thinking in their call for a fuller empirical understanding of organismal teleologyâone premised on integrating Jonasian ideas about the felt inwardness of the living body with a renewed theory of Kantian natural purposes informed by an autopoietic conception of biological organization. Indeed, the tension between scientific naturalism and a Jonasian philosophy of biology has figured prominently in discourse surrounding the central role of phenomenology in enactivist cognitive science and the merits of Jonasâ contribution to a scientific elaboration of the life-mind continuity thesis. Philosophers such as Carl Sachs and Andrea Gambarotto are among those who have addressed this topic critically, characterizing Jonasâ conception of organic subjectivity as antithetical to naturalist inquiry (Gambarotto, 2020) and judging his view of teleology to be inconsistent with the tenets of modern science (Sachs, 2023). However, as Sachs has noted, the controversial âJonasian turnâ in enactivism only complicates its standing as a research program in cognitive science, not its viability as a philosophy of nature (2023, pp. 788â790). This framing could inform future research efforts of mine to explore in more detail to what extent Jonasâ ideas offer fruitful contributions to a naturalist account of biological teleology, and address broader questions about whether metaphysics, ontology and/or phenomenology are relevant to our scientific investigations of teleology in nature. For example, following Sachs, one might ask whether a biocentric view of intrinsic purpose with both metaphysical and phenomenological trappings simply provides a philosophy of nature comprehensive enough to cast a critical light on cybernetics, or if it is also equipped to support a scientific research program of biological teleology. An exploration of this kind also raises questions about whether biological teleology ought to be construed in terms of 117 instrumentalism or realism. That is to say: to what extent is a scientific understanding of the teleology of life simply about workable models rather than a need to depict the metaphysical characteristics of biology? In this thesis, a central focus of mine has been how a recognition of lifeâs intrinsic purposiveness serves as an indispensable and enriching feature of any robust framework that seeks to investigate the telos of living systems. Insufficiently clarifying the implications of such a view is, however, a limitation of this text. For instance, it isnât evident whether I take the view that biocentric thinking provides more instructive naturalistic models than cybernetics but ought to remain metaphysically neutral, or whether the biocentric account discloses the need for a philosophy of nature to make a science of biological teleology intelligible. Both the cybernetic and bioengineering perspectives on the question of biological teleology are largely transparent about their instrumentalismâthat is to say, both seek to avoid philosophical disputes about the nature of teleology and operate with a preference for workable heuristic models for the unified interpretation and study of goal-directedness. On the other hand, while the thinkers I group under a biocentric view on intrinsic teleology make similar claims about the internal telos of a living system, they may differ in their views on the relation between scientific knowledge and metaphysics, or in their commitment to scientific realism or instrumentalism. This tension between realism and instrumentalism thus applies directly to the claim that biological teleology is categorically distinct from abiotic physical systems and machines. Once again, it is not obvious whether this sentiment reflects a concern for developing more comprehensive models of biological teleology to serve a practical research goal, or a need for theories to capture true aspects of the world as it concerns the telos of life. In other words, should a richer ontology of the distinctive teleological characteristics at play across physics, machines, 118 and lifeâone which I claim the biocentric view allows forâaim to reflect an accurate account of how reality is structured with respect to teleological phenomena; provide a general and instructive, albeit provisional, framework for clarifying our understanding of the natural principles of biological teleology; or simply offer another descriptive tool for carving nature at the joints relative to the aims of a specific research program or philosophical project? In future research, I might seek to address these distinctions and how they relate specifically to debates concerned with the machine conception of life. Some guiding questions might include: How, if at all, does endorsing or rejecting a machine theory of life align with the objectives of the scientific or philosophical programs of those who take a position on this topic? If evidence accumulates in support of one or the other view, does this indicate a closer approximation to an accurate description of the nature of life and machines, or simply demonstrate the pragmatic utility of certain models? Can a biocentric theory of intrinsic teleology conclusively show that the autonomous organization and existential self-concern associated with life is fundamentally unreproducible in machine systems? Or would a greater focus on the idiosyncrasies of biological purpose assist the ambitions of a research program seeking to develop autonomous living machines? A final avenue for future research might be to build on prior attempts to classify various meanings of teleology in the natural sciences, notably Mayrâs efforts to clarify several kinds of teleological phenomena and explanations (1974, 1992, 1998, 2004). This would serve as an opportunity to pursue the following two developments in my work: (1) to explore how both the cybernetic machine model of goal-directedness and the biocentric account of intrinsic purpose might contribute to or assist in revising Mayrâs 5 categories of teleologyâteleomatic processes; teleonomic processes; purposive behavior; adapted features; and cosmic teleologyâand (2) to 119 clarify how traditional evolutionary understandings of purpose and functionâhitherto the main concern of 20th century philosophers and historians of biologyârelate to my views on the distinct forms of teleology examined in this text. The biocentric-organicist view, for instance, offers fresh perspectives on teleology beyond the scope of both Mayrâs categories and the outsized focus in recent philosophical literature on selectionist accounts of purposive functionality. For example, the Jonasian idea that intrinsic teleology is grounded in living organization and self-concern does not fit comfortably into Mayrâs framework. Along the same lines, Varela has also remarked on how âteleonomic and evolutionary considerations leave the question of the nature of the organization of the living unity untouchedâ (1979, p. 5). Others in the biocentric tradition similarly claim that teleological organization is a necessary precursor to evolution and its functional adaptations, since âevolution as an explanatory mechanism actually presupposes the existence of organismsâ (Moreno & Mossio, 2015, p. xxii). Even the famed closing line of Charles Darwinâs The Origin of Species leaves the question of the origins of living individuation, at least provisionally, outside the purview of evolutionary explanation: âThere is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few things or into oneâ (1969, pp. 484â485). Moreover, various novel frameworks (Babcock & McShea, 2024; Friston et al., 2023; Krakauer et al., 2020; Levin, 2025) at the intersection of cybernetics, mathematics, physics, complexity science, computational thinking, and even Platonic philosophy, invite us to recalibrate our understanding of the range of existing treatments of teleological ideas related to agency, goal-directedness, self-organization, autonomy, adaptivity, sentience, intelligence, and mind. As scientific and philosophical debates of biological teleology move beyond Mayrâs 120 classification and a once-dominant focus on evolutionary accounts of purpose and function, we may require new efforts to organize and assess our ever-changing views on a question as old as philosophy itself. 121 Bibliography Abramson, C. I., & Levin, M. (2021). Behaviorist approaches to investigating memory and learning: A primer for synthetic biology and bioengineering. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 14(1), 230â247. https://doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2021.2005863 Allen, C., & Neal, J. (2020). Teleological Notions in Biology. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entrieseleology-biology/ Aristotle. (2011). De Anima (Mark Shiffman, Trans.). Focus Publishing. (Original work published 350 B.C.E.) Aru, J., Larkum, M. E., & Shine, J. M. (2023). The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of neuroscience. Trends in Neurosciences, 46(12), 1008â1017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2023.09.009 Ashby, W. R. (1960). Design for a Brain: The origin of adaptive behaviour. Chapman & Hall. Ashby, W. R. (1962). Principles of the self-organizing system. In H. Von Foerster & G. W. Zopf, Jr. (Eds.), Principles of Self-Organization: Transactions of the University of Illinois Symposium. Pergamon Press. Babcock, G., & McShea, D. W. (2024). Goal Directedness and the Field Concept. Philosophy of Science, 91(5), 1435â1444. https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.121 Bacon, F. (1857). De Augmentis Scientiarum. In D. D. Heath, F. Bacon, J. Spedding, & R. L. Ellis (Eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon: Volume 1: Philosophical Works 1 (Vol. 1, pp. 413â414). Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/works-of-francis-bacon/de-augmentis-scientiarum/C0EFE38448B64D055B3574DDF8F739D7 122 Baedke, J., & Fábregas-Tejeda, A. (2023). The Organism in Evolutionary Explanation: From Early Twentieth Century to the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. In T. E. Dickins & B. J. A. Dickins (Eds.), Evolutionary Biology: Contemporary and Historical Reflections Upon Core Theory (pp. 121â150). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22028-9_8 Ball, P. (2023a). Organisms as Agents of Evolution. John Templeton Foundation. https://www.templeton.org/news/organisms-as-agents-of-evolution-new-research-review Ball, P. (2023b). Synthetic Morphology Lets Scientists Create New Life-Forms. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/synthetic-morphology-lets-scientists-create-new-life-forms/ Baluška, F., & Levin, M. (2016). On Having No Head: Cognition throughout Biological Systems. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00902 Baluška, F., & Reber, A. (2019). Sentience and Consciousness in Single Cells: How the First Minds Emerged in Unicellular Species. BioEssays, 41(3), 1800229. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201800229 Beatty, J. (1990). Teleology and the Relationship Between Biology and the Physical Sciences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In F. Durham & R. D. Purrington (Eds.), Some Truer Method: Reflections on the Heritage of Newton (pp. 113â144). Columbia University Press. Bechtel, W., & Bich, L. (2023). Using neurons to maintain autonomy: Learning from C. elegans. Biosystems, 232, 105017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2023.105017 123 Bechtel, W., & Bich, L. (2024). Eating and Cognition in Two Animals without Neurons: Sponges and Trichoplax. Biological Theory. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-024-00464-6 Bedau, M. (1992). Goal-Directed Systems and The Good. The Monist, 75(1), 34â51. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist19927516 Bennett, S. (1979). A History of Control Engineering 1800-1930. The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Bertalanffy, L. von. (1951). Towards a Physical Theory of Organic Teleology. Human Biology, 23(4). Bertalanffy, L. von. (1968). General Systems Theory. Georges Braziller. Bessonov, N., Levin, M., Morozova, N., Reinberg, N., Tosenberger, A., & Volpert, V. (2015). Target morphology and cell memory: A model of regenerative pattern formation. Neural Regeneration Research, 10(12), 1901â1905. https://doi.org/10.4103/1673-5374.165216 Bich, L., Mossio, M., & Soto, A. M. (2020). Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure. Frontiers in Physiology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2020.00069 Bongard, J., & Levin, M. (2021). Living Things Are Not (20th Century) Machines: Updating Mechanism Metaphors in Light of the Modern Science of Machine Behavior. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9, 650726. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.650726 Bongard, J., & Levin, M. (2023). Thereâs Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-Scale Machines. Biomimetics, 8(1), 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics8010110 Bowler, P. J. (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea (3rd ed.). University of California Press. 124 Boylan, M. (2024). Aristotle: Biology. In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/aristotle-biology/ Boyle, R. (1688). A disquisition about the final causes of natural things wherein it is inquirâd, whether, and (if at all) with what cautions, a naturalist should admit them? By T.H. R.B. Fellow of the Royal Society. To which are subjoynâd, by way of appendix some uncommon observations about vitiated sight. By the same author. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A77179.0001.001 Broad, C. D. (1925). Mechanism and Its Alternatives. In Mind and Its Place In Nature. Kegan Paul, Trench, Tubner & Co., Ltd. Cao, R. (2022). Multiple realizability and the spirit of functionalism. Synthese, 200(6), 506. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03524-1 Chene, D. D. (2001). Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes. Cornell University Press. Chiu, L. (2022). Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. John Templeton Foundation. https://www.templeton.org/discoveries/extended-evolutionary-synthesis Clericuzio, A. (2011). God and the Physical World in Boyleâs Thought. In H. Busche (Ed.), Departure for Modern Europe: A Handbook of Early Modern Philosophy (1400â1700) (pp. 1033â1047). Felix Meiner Verlag. Corcilius, K. (2021). Aristotleâs Theory of Animal Agency and the Problem of Self-Motion. In S. M. Connell (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotleâs Biology (pp. 176â194). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108181792.012 Corning, P. A., Kauffman, S. A., Noble, D., Shapiro, J. A., Vane-Wright, R. I., & Pross, A. (Eds.). (2023). Evolution âOn Purposeâ: Teleonomy in Living Systems. The MIT Press. 125 Cragg, D. A. (1997). The Meditations of René Descartes and the legitimation of the project of mechanism [University of Toronto]. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq25198.pdf D. Barrow, J., & J. Tipler, F. (1988). The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford University Press. Damasio, A. (2000). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (First Edition). Harcourt, Inc. Damasio, A. (2021). Feeling Machines and Conscious Machines. In Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious (1st ed., pp. 179â183). Pantheon Books. Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (2023). Feelings Are the Source of Consciousness. Neural Computation, 35(3), 277â286. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco_a_01521 Darwin, C. (1969). The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Fifth Printing). Collier Books. Davies, J. A. (2008). Synthetic morphology: Prospects for engineered, self-constructing anatomies. Journal of Anatomy, 212(6), 707â719. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2008.00896.x Davies, J., & Levin, M. (2023). Synthetic morphology with agential materials. Nature Reviews Bioengineering, 1(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-022-00001-9 Dawkins, R. (1996). The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. W. W. Norton & Company. Dawkins, R. (2006). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press. De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. (2008). Making Sense in Participation: An Enactive Approach to Social Cognition. University of Sussex. 126 https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/chapter/Making_Sense_in_Participation_An_Enactive_Approach_to_Social_Cognition/23381741/1 Deacon, T. W. (2011). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. Deacon, T. W., & García-Valdecasas, M. (2023). A thermodynamic basis for teleological causality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 381(2252), 20220282. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2022.0282 Dennett, D. (1989). The Intentional Stance. The MIT Press. Denyse, O. (2002). Intelligent Design: Beyond Creation vs. Evolution. Digory Publishing. Descartes, R. (1637). Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences. Di Paolo, E. (2009). Extended Life. Topoi, 28(1), 9â21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-008-9042-3 Di Paolo, E. (2010). Living Technology. In M. Bedau, P. G. Hansen, E. Parke, & S. Rasmussen (Eds.), Living Technology: 5 Questions (pp. 67â76). Automatic Press/VIP. Di Paolo, E. A. (2005). Autopoiesis, Adaptivity, Teleology, Agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429â452. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-005-9002-y Di Paolo, E. A., Buhrmann, T., & Barandiaran, X. E. (2017). Sensorimotor Life: An Enactive Proposal. Oxford University Press. Di Paolo, E. A., Rohde, M., & De Jaegher, H. (2010). Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, & E. A. Di Paolo (Eds.), Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (pp. 33â97). The MIT Press. 127 Di Paolo, E., & Thompson, E. (2010). The Enactive Approach. The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition. https://www.academia.edu/4993032/The_Enactive_Approach Doctor, T., Witkowski, O., Solomonova, E., Duane, B., & Levin, M. (2022). Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence. Entropy, 24(5), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24050710 Dresow, M., & Love, A. C. (2023). Teleonomy: Revisiting a Proposed Conceptual Replacement for Teleology. Biological Theory, 18(2), 101â113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-022-00424-y Dupré, J., & Nicholson, D. J. (2018a). A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology. In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (pp. 3â45). Oxford University Press. Dupré, J., & Nicholson, D. J. (2018b). Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford University Press. Ebrahimkhani, M. R., & Levin, M. (2021). Synthetic living machines: A new window on life. iScience, 24(5), 102505. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102505 England, J. (2020). Every Life Is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things. Basic Books. Ernest Nagel. (1979). Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science. Columbia University Press. Falcon, A. (2023). Aristotle on Causality. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/aristotle-causality/ 128 Faye, J. (2024). Backward Causation. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/causation-backwards/ Fields, C., & Levin, M. (2020). How Do Living Systems Create Meaning? Philosophies, 5(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies5040036 Fields, C., & Levin, M. (2022). Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments. Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 24(6), 819. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24060819 Fox Keller, E. (2002). The Century of the Gene. Harvard University Press. Fox Keller, E. (2008). Organisms, Machines, and Thunderstorms: A History of Self-Organization, Part One. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 38(1), 45â75. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2008.38.1.45 Friston, K., Da Costa, L., Sajid, N., Heins, C., Ueltzhöffer, K., Pavliotis, G. A., & Parr, T. (2023). The free energy principle made simpler but not too simple. Physics Reports, 1024, 1â29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2023.07.001 Friston, K., Levin, M., Sengupta, B., & Pezzulo, G. (2015). Knowing oneâs place: A free-energy approach to pattern regulation. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 12(105), 20141383. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.1383 G. Lennox, J. (1994). Teleology. In E. Fox Keller & E. A. Lloyd (Eds.), Keywords in Evolutionary Biology. Harvard University Press. Gambarotto, A. (2019). Teleology: A case study in iHPS. In The Past, Present, and Future of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science. Routledge. 129 Gambarotto, A. (2020). Teleology, Life, and Cognition: Reconsidering Jonasâ Legacy for a Theory of the Organism. In A. Altobrando & P. Biasetti (Eds.), Natural Born Monads: On the Metaphysics of Organisms and Human Individuals (pp. 243â264). De Gruyter. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110604665-012/html?lang=en Gambarotto, A., & Nahas, A. (2022). Teleology and the organism: Kantâs controversial legacy for contemporary biology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 93, 47â56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2022.02.005 Glansdorff, P., & Prigogine, I. (1971). Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability and Fluctuations. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Glasgow, R. D. V. (2020). Minimal selfhood. Journal of Neurogenetics, 34(1), 198â202. https://doi.org/10.1080/01677063.2019.1672680 Gregory, T. R. (2009). Understanding Natural Selection: Essential Concepts and Common Misconceptions. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-009-0128-1 Haraway, D. J. (1976). Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology. Yale University Press. Harrison, D., Rorot, W., & Laukaityte, U. (2022). Mind the matter: Active matter, soft robotics, and the making of bio-inspired artificial intelligence. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2022.880724 Henderson, L. J. (1916). The Teleology of Inorganic Nature. The Philosophical Review, 25(3), 265â281. https://doi.org/10.2307/2178263 130 Heylighen, F. (2022). The meaning and origin of goal-directedness: A dynamical systems perspective. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, blac060. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blac060 Huxley, J. S. (2009). Evolution, The Modern Synthesis (M. Pigliucci & G. B. Müller, Eds.). MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513661/evolution/ Jaeger, J. (2023). The Fourth Perspective: Evolution and Organismal Agency. In Organization in Biology (1st ed., p. 329). Springer. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/2g7fh Jaeger, J. (2024). Artificial intelligence is algorithmic mimicry: Why artificial âagentsâ are not (and wonât be) proper agents. Neurons, Behavior, Data Analysis, and Theory. https://doi.org/10.51628/001c.94404 Jonas, H. (1951). Materialism and the Theory of Organism. University of Toronto Quarterly, 21(1), 39â52. Jonas, H. (1953). A Critique of Cybernetics. Social Research, 20(2), 172â192. Jonas, H. (2001a). Is God a Mathematician? The Meaning of Metabolism. In The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology (pp. 64â98). Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 1966) Jonas, H. (2001b). The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 1966) Jorati, J. (2019). Teleology in Early Modern Philosophy and Science. In D. Jalobeanu & C. T. Wolfe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (pp. 1â12). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_546-1 Kant, I. (2007). Critique of Judgement (N. Walker, Ed.; J. C. Meredith, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1790) 131 Kauffman, S. (2000). Investigations. Oxford University Press. Kauffman, S., & Clayton, P. (2006). On emergence, agency, and organization. Biology and Philosophy, 21(4), 501â521. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-005-9003-9 Kodaj, D., Bernáth, L., & Pickup, M. (2025). Teleology for the twenty-first century: Editorial introduction. Synthese, 205(2), 78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-04926-7 Krakauer, D., Bertschinger, N., Olbrich, E., Flack, J. C., & Ay, N. (2020). The information theory of individuality. Theory in Biosciences = Theorie in Den Biowissenschaften, 139(2), 209â223. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-020-00313-7 Kriegman, S., Blackiston, D., Levin, M., & Bongard, J. (2020). A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(4), 1853â1859. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910837117 Kyselo, M. (2014). The body social: An enactive approach to the self. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00986 Lee, J., & Calvo, P. (2022). Enacting Plant-Inspired Robotics. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 15. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2021.772012 Lennox, J. (2010). Bios and Explanatory Unity in Aristotleâs Biology. In D. Charles (Ed.), Definition in Greek philosophy. Oxford University Press. Lennox, J. (2017). An Aristotelian philosophy of biology: Form, function and development. Acta Philosophica, 26(1), 33â52. https://doi.org/10.19272/201700701003 Lenoir, T. (1989). The Strategy of Life. University of Chicago Press. Levin, M. (2011). The Wisdom of the Body: Future Techniques and Approaches to Morphogenetic Fields in Regenerative Medicine, Developmental Biology and Cancer. Regenerative Medicine, 6(6), 667â673. https://doi.org/10.2217/rme.11.69 132 Levin, M. (2012). Morphogenetic fields in embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer: Non-local control of complex patterning. Bio Systems, 109(3), 243â261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2012.04.005 Levin, M. (2019). The Computational Boundary of a âSelfâ: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2688. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02688 Levin, M. (2022). Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201 Levin, M. (2023a). Collective Intelligence of Morphogenesis as a Teleonomic Process. In P. A. Corning, S. A. Kauffman, D. Noble, & J. A. Shapiro (Eds.), Evolution âOn Purposeâ: Teleonomy in Living Systems (pp. 175â197). The MIT Press. Levin, M. (2023b). Darwinâs agential materials: Evolutionary implications of multiscale competency in developmental biology. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences: CMLS, 80(6), 142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-023-04790-z Levin, M. (2024, September 3). Why We Fear Diverse Intelligence Like AI. Noema. https://www.noemamag.com/why-we-fear-diverse-intelligence-like-ai Levin, M. (2025). Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments. OSF. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5g2xj_v3 Levin, M., & Clawson, W. P. (2023). Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: Teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 139(4), 457â486. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blac073 133 Levin, M., & Dennett, D. (2020, October). How to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-understand-cells-tissues-and-organisms-as-agents-with-agendas Levin, M., & Martyniuk, C. J. (2018). The bioelectric code: An ancient computational medium for dynamic control of growth and form. Biosystems, 164, 76â93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.08.009 Loewi, O. (1953). From the Workshop of Discoveries. University of Kansas Press. Lyon, P. (2006). The Agent in the Organism: Towards a Biogenic Theory of Cognition [PhD, Australian National University]. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/4c5cfbe1-83ef-4dfa-a8a4-e891e1f0f77c Lyon, P., & Opie, J. (2008). Prolegomena for a Cognitive Biology. Man, K., & Damasio, A. (2019). Homeostasis and soft robotics in the design of feeling machines. Nature Machine Intelligence, 1(10), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-019-0103-7 Manicka, S., & Levin, M. (2019). The Cognitive Lens: A primer on conceptual tools for analysing information processing in developmental and regenerative morphogenesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 374(1774), 20180369. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0369 Maturana, H. R. (1970). Biology of Cognition (p. 27) [Biological Computer Laboratory Research Report]. University of Illinois. Maturana, H., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Vol. 42). D. Reidel Publishing Company. Mayr, E. (1961). Cause and Effect in Biology. Science, 134(3489), 1501â1506. 134 Mayr, E. (1974). Teleological and Teleonomic, a New Analysis. In R. S. Cohen & M. W. Wartofsky (Eds.), Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences (pp. 91â117). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2128-9_6 Mayr, E. (1982). The Growth of Biological Thought. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Mayr, E. (1988). Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Mayr, E. (1992). The Idea of Teleology. Journal of the History of Ideas, 53(1), 117. https://doi.org/10.2307/2709913 Mayr, E. (1998). The Multiple Meanings of âTeleological.â History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 20(1), 35â40. Mayr, E. (2004). Teleology. In What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the autonomy of a scientific discipline. Harvard University Press. Mayr, O. (1975). The Origins Of Feedback Control. The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262630566/the-origins-of-feedback-control/ McLaughlin, P. (1990). Kantâs Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antimony and Teleology (Vol. 16). Edwin Mellen Press. McMillen, P., & Levin, M. (2024). Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates. Communications Biology, 7(1), 1â17. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06037-4 135 Meincke, A. S. (2023). The Metaphysics of Living Consciousness: Metabolism, Agency and Purposiveness. Biosemiotics, 16(2), 281â290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-023-09531-0 Mettrie, J. O. de L. (1996). La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings (A. Thompson, Ed.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1747) Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. A. (1960). Plans and the Structure of Behaviour. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Mitchell, K. J. (2023). Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. Princeton University Press. Monod, J. (1972). Chance and Necessity. Vintage Books. Moreno, A., & Mossio, M. (2015). Biological Autonomy: A Philosophical and Theoretical Enquiry (Vol. 12). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Moss, L. (2024). Concepts of Agency: Introduction to the Thematic Section. Biological Theory. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-023-00454-0 Mossio, M. (2022, February 3). Purposiveness, directionality and circularity. Workshop on Goal-Directedness, Free University of Brussels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7YZmNPnxPY Mossio, M., & Bich, L. (2017). What makes biological organisation teleological? Synthese, 194(4), 1089â1114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0594-z Mossio, M., & Moreno, A. (2010). Organisational closure in biological organisms. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 32(2â3), 269â288. Nagel, E. (1961). The Structure of Science. Harcourt, Brace and World. 136 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Division on Earth and Life Studies, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, Board on Life Sciences, Board on Physics and Astronomy, & Committee on Biological Physics/Physics of Living Systems: A Decadal Survey. (2022). What Physics Problems Do Organisms Need to Solve? In Physics of Life. National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK588370/ Nave, K. (2022). Every bodyâs gotta eat: Why autonomous systems canât live on prediction-error minimization alone [Doctoral Thesis]. University of Edinburgh. Nicholson, D. J. (2013). Organisms â Machines. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(4 Pt B), 669â678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.05.014 Nicholson, D. J. (2014). The machine conception of the organism in development and evolution: A critical analysis. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 48 Pt B, 162â174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.08.003 Nicholson, D. J., & Gawne, R. (2015). Neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but organicism: What the philosophy of biology was. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 37(4), 345â381. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-015-0085-7 Oderberg, D. S. (2024, October 22). Life makes mistakes. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/a-new-theory-suggests-mistakes-are-an-essential-part-of-being-alive Oderberg, D. S., Hill, J., Austin, C., Bojak, I., Gibbins, J. M., & Cinotti, F. (2023). Biological Mistakes: What They Are and What They Mean for the Experimental Biologist. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/724444 Okasha, S. (2018). Agents and Goals in Evolution. Oxford University Press. 137 Paley, W. (2008). Natural Theology. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1802) Peterson, E. L. (2016). The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics. University of Pittsburgh Press. Pezzulo, G., & Levin, M. (2015). Re-Membering the Body: Applications of computational neuroscience to the top-down control of regeneration of limbs and other complex organs. Integrative Biologyâ: Quantitative Biosciences from Nano to Macro, 7(12), 1487â1517. https://doi.org/10.1039/c5ib00221d Pezzulo, G., & Levin, M. (2016). Top-down models in biology: Explanation and control of complex living systems above the molecular level. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 13(124), 20160555. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2016.0555 Piaget, J. (1971). Biology and Knowledge: An Essay on the Relations Between Organic Regulations and Cognitive Processes. The University of Chicago Press, Edinburgh University Press. Pias, C. (Ed.). (2016). Cybernetics The Macy Conferences 1946-1953. The Complete Transactions (Revised Edition). Diaphanes. Pio-Lopez, L., Pezzulo, G., & Levin, M. (2025). Scale-free Niche Construction: Expanding agent-microenvironment co-development to unconventional substrates. OSF. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/ytg35_v1 Pittendrigh, C. S. (1958). Adaptation, natural selection, and behaviour. In G. G. Simpson & A. Roe (Eds.), Behaviour and Evolution (pp. 390â416). Yale University Press. https://archive.org/details/behaviorevolutio00roearich Potter, H. D., & Mitchell, K. J. (2022). Naturalising Agent Causation. Entropy, 24(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24040472 138 Riskin, J. (2020). Biologyâs mistress, a brief history. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 45(3), 268â298. https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2020.1794388 Rosenblueth, A., & Wiener, N. (1950). Purposeful and Non-Purposeful Behavior. Philosophy of Science, 17(4), 318â326. Rosenblueth, A., Wiener, N., & Bigelow, J. (1943). Behavior, Purpose and Teleology. Philosophy of Science, 10(1), 18â24. https://doi.org/10.1086/286788 Rouleau, N., & Levin, M. (2023). Multiple ways to implement and infer sentience. Animal Sentience, 8(33). https://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1817 Ruiz-Mirazo, K., & Moreno, A. (2004). Basic autonomy as a fundamental step in the synthesis of life. Artificial Life, 10(3), 235â259. https://doi.org/10.1162/1064546041255584 Ruse, M. (2002). Robert Boyle and the Machine Metaphor. Zygon®, 37(3), 581â596. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9744.00438 Ruse, M. (2017). On Purpose. Princeton University Press. Sachs, C. (2023). Naturalized Teleology: Cybernetics, Organization, Purpose. Topoi, 42(3), 781â791. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09851-9 Sagan, D., & Schneider, E. D. (2005). Into the Cool Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life. University of Chicago Press. Schrödinger, E. (2013). What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell with Mind and Matter & Autobiographical Sketches. Cambridge University Press. Seth, A. K. (2025). Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1â42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25000032 Shambaugh, C. (2024, May). Could All Life Be Agential?â. Dialectical Systems. https://www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contributions/could-all-life-be-agential/ 139 Shapiro, J. A. (2021). All living cells are cognitive. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 564, 134â149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2020.08.120 Shiffman, M. (2011a). Glossary. In Aristotle, De Anima. Focus Publishing. Shiffman, M. (2011b). Introduction. In Aristotle, De Anima. Focus Publishing. Signorelli, C. M., & Meling, D. (2021). Towards new concepts for a biological neuroscience of consciousness. Cognitive Neurodynamics, 15(5), 783â804. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-020-09658-7 Smirnova, L., Caffo, B. S., Gracias, D. H., Huang, Q., Morales Pantoja, I. E., Tang, B., Zack, D. J., Berlinicke, C. A., Boyd, J. L., Harris, T. D., Johnson, E. C., Kagan, B. J., Kahn, J., Muotri, A. R., Paulhamus, B. L., Schwamborn, J. C., Plotkin, J., Szalay, A. S., Vogelstein, J. T., â¦ Hartung, T. (2023). Organoid intelligence (OI): The new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish. Frontiers in Science, 0. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsci.2023.1017235 Sober, E. (1993). The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. University of Chicago Press. Sulloway, F. J. (2009). Why Darwin rejected intelligent design. Journal of Biosciences, 34(2), 173â183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-009-0020-8 Swenson, R. (1997). Autocatakinetics, Evolution, And the Law of Maximum Entropy Production: A Principled Foundation Toward The Study of Human Ecology. Advances in Human Ecology, 6, 1â47. Teilhard De Chardin, P. (2008). The Phenomenon of Man. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. (Original work published 1955) 140 Thompson, E. (2004). Life and mind: From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. A tribute to Francisco Varela. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3(4), 381â398. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:PHEN.0000048936.73339.dd Thompson, E. (2010a). Life in Mind. In Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Thompson, E. (2010b). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press. Thompson, E., & Cosmelli, D. (2011). Brain in a Vat or Body in a World? Brainbound versus Enactive Views of Experience. Philosophical Topics, 39(1), 163â180. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics201139119 Tomasello, M. (2022). The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans. The MIT Press. Tosenberger, A., Bessonov, N., Levin, M., Reinberg, N., Volpert, V., & Morozova, N. (2015). A conceptual model of morphogenesis and regeneration. Acta Biotheoretica, 63(3), 283â294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-015-9249-9 Tripaldi, L. (2025). Softness: An Ecological Paradigm for Embodied Technological Intelligence. Social Epistemology, 39(3), 322â331. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2025.2449607 Tugby, M. (2024). Teleology. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/teleology/87D92768A124CBE24AC03AE4410269BA Varela, F. J. (1979). Principles of Biological Autonomy. Elsevier North Holland, Inc. 141 Varela, F. J. (1996). The early days of autopoiesis: Heinz and Chile. Systems Research, 13(3), 407â416. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1735(199609)13:3%253C407::AID-SRES100%253E3.0.CO;2-1 Varela, F. J. (1997). Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition. Brain and Cognition, 34(1), 72â87. https://doi.org/10.1006/brcg.1997.0907 Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1993). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. The MIT Press. Varela, F., & Maturana, H. (1972). Mechanism and Biological Explanation. Philosophy of Science, 39(3), 378â382. https://doi.org/10.1086/288458 Vitale, F. (2022). The Teleological Program. Ernst Mayrâs Teleonomy from Philosophy to Cybernetics (or Kantâs Revenge). Aisthesis, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.36253/Aisthesis-12754 Waddington, C. H. (1961). The Nature of Life. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Walsh, D. (2021). Aristotle and Contemporary Biology. In S. M. Connell (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotleâs Biology (pp. 280â297). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108181792.018 Walsh, D. M. (2008). Teleology. In M. Ruse (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195182057.003.0006 Walsh, D. M. (2015). Organisms, Agency, and Evolution. Cambridge University Press. Walsh, D. M. (2017). âChance Caught on the Wingâ: Metaphysical Commitment or Methodological Artifact? In P. Huneman & D. Walsh (Eds.), Challenging the Modern 142 Synthesis: Adaptation, Development, and Inheritance (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199377176.003.0008 Walsh, D. M. (2021). Teleology in Evo-Devo. In L. Nuño de la Rosa & G. B. Müller (Eds.), Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide (pp. 495â508). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32979-6_98 Weber, A. (2021, October 20). Life and Work of Francisco Varela: Andreas Weber [Lecture]. Ouroboros Seminars. Weber, A., & Varela, F. J. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1(2), 97â125. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020368120174 Wiener, N. (1985). Cybernetics or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (4th ed.). The MIT Press. (Original work published 1948) Wolff, C. (1732). Philosophia rationalis sive logica, methodo scientifica pertractata et ad usum scietiarum atque vitæ aptata Præmittitur discursus præliminaris de philosophia in genere (Ed. 2. emendatior). Prostat in Officina Libraria Rengeriana. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/20730811.html Zumbach, C. (1984). The Transcendent Science: Kantâs Conception of Biological Methodology. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Science and Technology Studies
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Beatty, John
On metabolism and machines : two views of biological teleology
Text