Why Life Is Not Enactivism

Abstract

Enactivism proposes that cognition arises through the dynamic interaction between organism and environment, emphasising embodiment, sense-making, and lived experience. While this approach captures important aspects of biological organisation, it does not fully explain the viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation that defines living systems. APS grounds cognition in viability-oriented organisation, showing that sense-making is an expression of evaluative activity, and that cognition arises only when this activity becomes sufficiently integrated and temporally extended.

Part of the series: APS and Contemporary Theories

This article examines enactivism (Varela et al. 1991, Thompson 2007) and shows why it does not by itself explain what distinguishes living systems as viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation. For the positive account, see What Is Life?.

The Appeal of Enactivism

Enactivism is a contemporary approach to cognition that emphasises embodiment, action, and organism–environment interaction. Rather than treating cognition as internal computation or representation, it proposes that cognition arises through the ongoing engagement of an organism with its world.

Central to this view is the idea of sense-making: the process by which an organism brings forth a meaningful environment through its activity. Meaning is not imposed from outside or constructed internally as a representation, but emerges through the dynamic relation between organism and environment.

Enactivism therefore rejects both strictly internalist and purely externalist accounts of cognition, locating mind within the activity of living systems.

APS accepts that this captures something real.

But it rejects the claim that life is enactivism.

APS Box — How APS Relates to Other Theoretical Frameworks

Contemporary frameworks such as control theory and nonlinear dynamical systems theory provide powerful and indispensable accounts of living systems. They explain how systems regulate their behaviour, maintain stability, and exhibit complex dynamics across time.

APS does not replace these approaches, nor does it reduce them to a single underlying model. Instead, it addresses a different question: what kind of organisation makes a system a living system in the first place.

Multiple theoretical frameworks can therefore apply to the same system, but they do so in different ways and address different explanatory questions. A dynamical systems description may characterise the system’s trajectories, and a control-theoretic model may describe its regulatory structure. These accounts are often non-reducible to one another, and each can be independently valid.

However, such accounts do not by themselves distinguish living systems from non-living systems. Many non-living systems also exhibit regulation, feedback, and complex dynamics.

APS contributes by specifying the organisational conditions under which a system must actively maintain its own viability. A system is viability-oriented when its processes are organised such that their effects contribute, directly or indirectly, to maintaining the conditions required for the system’s continued existence.

Importantly, in APS, viability is not defined by reference to life itself. It is specified in terms of the persistence of an organised system within a bounded region of possible states. A living system is therefore not defined in a circular sense as “that which maintains viability”, but as a system whose organisation is structured around maintaining these conditions.

In this sense, APS provides a way of identifying what makes a system a living system, rather than a general account of everything such a system does.

This does not mean that APS provides a complete or self-sufficient account of living systems. Describing how such systems behave, regulate, and evolve requires additional theoretical frameworks. APS specifies conditions that are necessary for identifying living systems, but it does not by itself exhaust the explanations required to understand them.

A complete scientific understanding of living systems therefore requires multiple forms of explanation. Dynamical and control-theoretic accounts explain how systems behave and regulate. APS clarifies the conditions under which such systems count as living systems at all.

Key Point:
Explaining regulation, dynamics, or behaviour is not the same as explaining what makes a system a living system. APS addresses this latter question by specifying the organisational conditions under which viability is maintained.

What It Explains Well

Enactivist accounts successfully explain:

the role of embodiment in cognition
the importance of organism–environment coupling
the emergence of meaning through activity
the continuity between life and mind

These are genuine features of biological systems.

Enactivist accounts capture important aspects of sense-making and organism–environment coupling, but they do not, by themselves, explain the viability-oriented organisation that grounds these processes in living systems.

The Explanatory Starting Point

Despite this convergence, APS and enactivism differ in their explanatory starting point.

Enactivist accounts often begin with cognition or sense-making as the primary phenomenon to be explained. From there, they extend the concept downward, identifying simpler forms of cognition in biological systems.

This approach dissolves sharp boundaries between mind and life, but it risks giving explanatory priority to cognition. Evaluation and basic organism–environment coupling may then be treated as already cognitive, obscuring the conditions under which cognition properly arises.

From an APS perspective, this introduces a different order of explanation.

APS: From Viability to Cognition

APS begins not with cognition but with viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.

Living systems are defined by their ability to sustain and regulate the conditions of their own persistence. This activity is biological agency: the ongoing, self-regulating maintenance of viability.

Evaluation is intrinsic to this organisation: activity is differentially modulated in relation to conditions that support or undermine persistence. This viability-oriented asymmetry grounds all biological differentiation and meaning.

Cognition, in this view, is not the basis of life but a development within it. It arises only when evaluative activity becomes sufficiently integrated and temporally extended that present regulation is structured in relation to conditions beyond the immediate present.

APS therefore adopts a different explanatory direction:

Enactivism often moves from cognition to life
APS moves from life to cognition

This shift ensures that cognition remains grounded in the organisational conditions that make it possible.

Sense-Making and Biological Normativity

Enactivism introduces the concept of sense-making to describe how organisms generate meaning through their interaction with the environment.

APS captures a closely related phenomenon but grounds it in biological normativity. What matters to a living system is determined by its own organisation: processes contribute to or undermine its continued viability. This viability-based normativity grounds biological function as the normatively structured contribution of processes to persistence.

In this sense, meaning is not an additional layer imposed on biological activity. It is intrinsic to the organisation of life itself.

What enactivism describes as sense-making corresponds to viability-oriented evaluation and semiosis: the modulation of activity and structuring of differences in relation to viability. However, not all such evaluation is cognitive: cognition arises only when this evaluative activity is organised with sufficient integration and temporal depth.

In this sense, purpose in living systems is not the representation or pursuit of externally defined goals, but the organisation of activity relative to viability.

Agency and the Organisation of Cognition

APS maintains a structured relation between key concepts.

Evaluation describes the differential modulation of activity relative to viability. Semiosis describes the structuring of differences as mattering for the system. This structuring builds directly on evaluation, specifying how differences are organised within the modulation of activity relative to viability. Cognitive Integration coordinates activity across processes, time, and scale.

Cognition is the structured and temporally extended organisation of evaluative activity, supported by but not reducible to these underlying processes.

These are not separate categories but interrelated aspects of biological organisation, each with distinct explanatory roles.

The APS Perspective

Enactivism provides a powerful account of how meaning and cognition arise through organism–environment interaction.

APS incorporates these insights while situating them within a broader explanatory framework. By grounding sense-making in viability-oriented organisation, APS ensures that cognition is understood as a structured development of evaluative activity rather than its foundation.

In this way, enactivism is not rejected but repositioned: it becomes a theory of cognition within a more general account of life.

Summary

Enactivism offers a compelling account of cognition as embodied, enacted, and continuous with life.

APS agrees with this continuity and incorporates its central insights.

However, enactivism does not, by itself, explain what distinguishes a system as a living system. The evaluative activity that underlies sense-making must first be grounded in viability-oriented organisation, and cognition arises only when this activity becomes sufficiently integrated and temporally extended.

Key Point

Enactivist accounts describe how organisms enact meaning, but life is defined by viability-oriented organisation, and cognition arises only as a structured, temporally extended development of evaluative activity.

Key Points