Integrating Multicellular Systems: Physiological Control and Degrees of Biological Individuality.

This paper focuses on physiological integration in multicellular systems, a notion often associated with biological individuality, but which has not received enough attention and needs a thorough theoretical treatment. Broadly speaking, physiological integration consists in how different components come together into a cohesive unit in which they are dependent on one another for their existence and activity. This paper argues that physiological integration can be understood by considering how the components of a biological multicellular system are controlled and coordinated in such a way that their activities can contribute to the maintenance of the system.

Using neurons to maintain autonomy: Learning from C. elegans.

Understanding how biological organisms are autonomous-maintain themselves far from equilibrium through their own activities-requires understanding how they regulate those activities. In multicellular animals, such control can be exercised either via endocrine signaling through the vasculature or via neurons. In C.

Health and environment from adaptation to adaptivity: a situated relational account.

The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.

Organization needs organization: Understanding integrated control in living organisms.

Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance of the organisms that produce them.

Grounding cognition: heterarchical control mechanisms in biology.

We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable-controlling their production mechanisms. Production mechanisms, as we characterize them, perform activities such as procuring resources from their environment, putting these resources to use to construct and repair the organism's body and moving through the environment. Given the variable nature of the environment and the continual degradation of the organism, these production mechanisms must be regulated by control mechanisms that select when a production is required and how it should be carried out.

Functional Integration and Individuality in Prokaryotic Collective Organisations.

Both physiological and evolutionary criteria of biological individuality are underpinned by the idea that an individual is a functionally integrated whole. However, a precise account of functional integration has not been provided so far, and current notions are not developed in the details, especially in the case of composite systems. To address this issue, this paper focuses on the organisational dimension of two representative associations of prokaryotes: biofilms and the endosymbiosis between prokaryotes.

Interactive Models in Synthetic Biology: Exploring Biological and Cognitive Inter-Identities.

The aim of this article is to investigate the relevance and implications of synthetic models for the study of the interactive dimension of minimal life and cognition, by taking into consideration how the use of artificial systems may contribute to an understanding of the way in which interactions may affect or even contribute to shape biological identities. To do so, this article analyzes experimental work in synthetic biology on different types of interactions between artificial and natural systems, more specifically: between protocells and between biological living cells and protocells. It discusses how concepts such as control, cognition, communication can be used to characterize these interactions from a theoretical point of view, which criteria of relevance and evaluation of synthetic models can be applied to these cases, and what are their limits.

Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure.

Endocrinologists apply the idea of feedback loops to explain how hormones regulate certain bodily functions such as glucose metabolism. In particular, feedback loops focus on the maintenance of the plasma concentrations of glucose within a narrow range. Here, we put forward a different, organicist perspective on the endocrine regulation of glycaemia, by relying on the pivotal concept of closure of constraints.

Understanding Multicellularity: The Functional Organization of the Intercellular Space.

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework to understand how multicellular systems realize functionally integrated physiological entities by organizing their intercellular space. From a perspective centered on physiology and integration, biological systems are often characterized as organized in such a way that they realize metabolic self-production and self-maintenance. The existence and activity of their components rely on the network they realize and on the continuous management of the exchange of matter and energy with their environment.

An Organisational Approach to Biological Communication.

This paper aims to provide a philosophical and theoretical account of biological communication grounded in the notion of organisation. The organisational approach characterises living systems as organised in such a way that they are capable to self-produce and self-maintain while in constant interaction with the environment. To apply this theoretical framework to the study of biological communication, we focus on a specific approach, based on the notion of influence, according to which communication takes place when a signal emitted by a sender triggers a change in the behaviour of the receiver that is functional for the sender itself.

The role of regulation in the origin and synthetic modelling of minimal cognition.

In this paper we address the question of minimal cognition by investigating the origin of some crucial cognitive properties from the very basic organisation of biological systems. More specifically, we propose a theoretical model of how a system can distinguish between specific features of its interaction with the environment, which is a fundamental requirement for the emergence of minimal forms of cognition. We argue that the appearance of this capacity is grounded in the molecular domain, and originates from basic mechanisms of biological regulation.

On the emergence of biology from chemistry: a discontinuist perspective from the point of view of stability and regulation.

In this paper we argue that molecular evolution, and the evolution of prebiotic and early biological systems are qualitatively different processes, in which a crucial role is played respectively by structural stability and by dynamical mechanisms of regulation and integration. These different features entail also distinct modalities of interaction between system and environment that need to be taken into consideration when discussing molecular and biological evolution and selection.

Life, autonomy and cognition: an organizational approach to the definition of the universal properties of life.

This article addresses the issue of defining the universal properties of living systems through an organizational approach, according to which the distinctive properties of life lie in the functional organization which correlates its physicochemical components in living systems, and not in these components taken separately. Drawing on arguments grounded in this approach, this article identifies autonomy, with a set of related organizational properties, as universal properties of life, and includes cognition within this set.

Question 9: theoretical and artificial construction of the living: redefining the approach from an autopoietic point of view.

In this article, we would like to discuss some aspects of a theoretical framework for Artificial Life, focusing on the problem of an explicit definition of living systems useful for an effective artificial construction of them. The limits of a descriptive approach will be critically discussed, and a constructive (synthetic) approach will be proposed on the basis of the autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela.