Topoi
DOI 10.1007/s11245-015-9355-y
The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its
Roots and Implications
Nathaniel F. Barrett1
 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract This paper traces the development of enactive
concepts of value and normativity from their roots in the
canonical work of Varela et al. (Embodied mind: cognitive
science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge,
1991) through more recent works of Ezequiel Di Paolo and
others. It aims to show the central importance of these
concepts for enactive theory while exposing a potentially
troublesome ambiguity in their definition. Most definitions
of enactive normativity are purely proscriptive, but it
seems that enactive theories of cognitive agency and
experience demand something more. On the other hand, it
is not clear that anything other than proscriptive norma-
tivity can be made compatible with the enactive tenet of
autonomy and the rejection of representations.
Keywords Enactive theory
Value
Normativity

Adaptivity
Cognition
1 Introduction
Inspired by the phenomenology of Hans Jonas (1966), a
number of leading interpreters of enactive theory have
recently turned their attention to value and normativity as
essential features of life and mind (see Weber and Varela
2002; Di Paolo 2005, 2009; Thompson 2007; McGann
2007; Colombetti 2007, Barandiaran et al. 2009; Rohde
2010; Stewart et al. 2010; Barandiaran and Egbert 2014; Di
Paolo and Thompson 2014; Cappuccio and Froese 2014).
The literature that constitutes this ‘‘normative turn’’
& Nathaniel F. Barrett
nbarrett@unav.es
1
Institute Culture and Society, Pamplona, Spain
promises to offer clarification and support for central tenets
of the enactivist agenda, including the sensorimotor basis
of cognition (O’Regan and Noë 2001) and the rejection of
representations (Hutto 2005), yet with this promise comes a
special set of challenges. In this paper I argue that enactive
concepts of value and normativity are beset by a persistent
ambiguity in their definition, and that this ambiguity points
to a problematic tension at the heart of the normative turn.
The ambiguity in question concerns whether enactive
normativity is constrained by the proscriptive logic estab-
lished by Varela et al. (1991) or, following Jonas (1966),
goes beyond this logic to include some kind of positive
self-interest or ‘‘concern,’’ as argued in the pivotal paper of
Weber and Varela (2002). In the enactive literature that
deals with normativity, there is a tendency to define value
and normativity in terms that are consistent with pro-
scriptive logic while, at the same time, adopting an ‘‘ex-
istential reading’’ (Villalobos and Ward 2014) that strongly
suggests a positive, intentional orientation toward persis-
tence. However, my purpose here is not simply to demand
greater consistency in the use of normative terminology.
Rather, I suggest that this ambiguity stems from a tension
between the enactive tenets of autonomy and the rejection
of rule-based representationalism, on the one hand, and the
centrality of experience, on the other.1 In short, it seems
that the special restrictions of enactive theory push toward
1
It should be noted that these tenets can be defined in various
ways—for instance, as representationalism is notoriously difficult to
pin down, so is its antithesis. Here the non-representational stance of
enactive theory is taken to mean the rejection of rule-based operations
on symbols (e.g. Hutto 2005). Also, while ‘‘the centrality experi-
ence’’—especially as articulated by the European phenomenological
tradition—is a fundamental constraint on enactive theory (Colombetti
2007; Froese 2011), its import for our understanding of normativity is
treated here as an open question.
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a proscriptive form of normativity that is in tension with
the phenomenological insights that first instigated the
normative turn.
To be clear, I do not mean to claim that the tension to be
examined here constitutes a full-blown dilemma. For the
time being, at least, it should be considered as two open
questions: On the one hand, given its theoretical commit-
ments, can enactive normativity be anything other than
proscriptive? On the other hand, given its phenomenolog-
ical goals, does enactive theory need more than just pro-
scriptive normativity? In this paper I am principally
concerned to clarify issues related to the first question, and
toward this end I will explore reasons for continued
adherence to proscriptive normativity as well as possible
reasons for the failure (so far) to acknowledge this adher-
ence and its phenomenological implications. The driving
question of the following analysis is this: what is the spe-
cial connection between enactive theory and proscriptive
normativity and why has it remained ambiguous?
To answer this question it is important to understand
how the picture of cognition as a kind of homeostatic
‘‘sense-making’’ elaborated by Ezequiel Di Paolo and
others (Di Paolo 2005, 2009; Thompson 2007; Stewart
et al. 2010; Cappuccio and Froese 2014) has its roots in
both the proscriptive logic of Varela et al. (1991) and the
Jonas-inspired teleology of Weber and Varela (2002).
Accordingly, most of this essay is devoted to tracing the
development of enactive concepts of value and normativity
so as to pinpoint possible causes for the current ambiguity.
While much of this analysis is critical, I hope not to detract
from the considerable promise of the normative turn for the
advancement of enactive theory and cognitive science in
general. The aim of this essay is not to undermine the
normative turn but rather to show that its special challenges
are worthy of more careful consideration.
The centrality of experience for enactivism must be kept
in mind as a critical constraint on the arguments to be
considered here. It is presumed that the picture of sense-
making described by the literature of the normative turn is
intended to ‘‘scale up’’ to apply the full range of cognitive
experience. However, while the question of adequacy to
experience will be raised at several points, the discussion
will not enter into detailed analyses of experience or
attempt to establish any firm standards of phenomenolog-
ical adequacy. In particular, I will not argue for the inad-
equacy of purely proscriptive normativity, although I
expect that many readers will take this point for granted.
Again, my primary goal is to clarify the proscriptive nature
of enactive normativity as it has developed so far and press
the question of whether it can be otherwise. If pressed, I
imagine that some enactive theorists will choose to bite the
phenomenological bullet and remain wedded to proscrip-
tive normativity, while others will take on the challenge of
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N. F. Barrett
developing a non-representational theory of normativity
that is more than proscriptive.
In any case, it is crucial to understand how value,
experience (or the roots thereof), and embodied cognition
are conceived within the normative turn as interrelated
aspects of the self-organized dynamics of living systems,
and for this it helps to understand how this approach
contrasts with the arbitrariness of value as conceived in
functionalist and representational terms. Let us begin, then,
with a brief comparison that sets the enactive approach to
value and normativity over and against the standard cog-
nitivist view.
2 Enactive Versus Cognitivist Normativity:
A Rough Comparison
This section seeks to bring into relief the distinctive virtues
of the enactive approach to value and normativity by
contrasting it with a rough characterization of the standard
cognitivist approach.2 First, however, a few remarks about
the terms value and normativity.
As applied to mind and life, value and normativity are
broad and overlapping terms that can be used almost
interchangeably to cover a wide range of phenomena,
including affectivity, emotion, motivation, attraction and
avoidance, pleasure and pain, as well as diverse notions of
teleology. For this discussion, however, we are principally
interested in basic distinctions of ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ and
their role in cognition. Insofar as value and normativity
differ, perhaps value is the more fundamental concept, but
in any case the guiding insight of the normative turn is that
both are necessary for cognition, especially cognition
understood non-representationally as embodied know-how.
In short, if know-how is a sensorimotor skill that emerges
from the normative regulation of sensorimotor contingen-
cies (see Buhrmann et al. 2013), it seems to require at least
an implicit definition of values that anchor this normative
regulation. The key questions for cognitive science are:
what are these values, how are they defined, and how are
they embodied so as to constitute the basis for the nor-
mative regulation of behavior and—let us not forget—
experience?
As outlined here, the standard cognitivist approach to
these questions is functionalist and adaptationist. That is to
say, for most current scientific treatments, value and nor-
mativity are managed by special cognitive functions that
have arisen from processes of natural selection. Therefore
the most basic values of an organism are defined in relation
2
This characterization draws substantially from Rohde (2010) and Di
Paolo et al. (2010).
The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications
to survival and reproduction. Even in the case of humans,
the prevailing assumption is that our experience of value is
constructed by systems whose primary or original function
is the pursuit of values determined by selection pressures in
our evolutionary past (e.g. see Damasio 2005). The next
section discusses the enactive critique of adaptationism;
here let us focus on the cognitive-functional aspect.
A key implication of the adaptationist-functionalist
approach is that value is encoded by various structures of
the organism. For example, values are presumed to be
encoded by the genome, and in complex organisms these
‘‘genetically programmed’’ values are elaborated in rela-
tion to environmental input by the more flexible ‘‘value
systems’’ of the body (Rohde 2010), especially those of the
nervous system (e.g. emotion). Within this scheme, the role
of value within cognition is understood as the appraisal of
content, such that value is something ascribed to the inputs
of cognition, and this function is assigned to specific
structures, subsystems, or ‘‘tiers’’ within the cognitive
architecture (e.g. Grabenhorst and Rolls 2011). Thus,
according to this standard approach, value plays a special
role within the cognitive process that is separable from the
gathering of information, the assembling of content, and
the planning and execution of action. In short, ‘‘value
system architectures…presume an informationally encap-
sulated rigid structure in order to provide a meaningful
signal for an otherwise meaningless process’’ (Rohde 2010,
p. 99).3
The approach just described is evidently representa-
tional in the sense rejected by enactive theory, and might
be critiqued as such—e.g. for its reliance on unspecified
varieties of ‘‘mental gymnastics’’ (Chemero 2009). How-
ever, I would like to call attention to problems that arise
whenever value is treated as something ‘‘built in’’ to cog-
nition (Di Paolo et al. 2010)—that is, as a special function
assigned to a particular structure, mechanism, or routine.4
These problems are both phenomenological and cognitive,
but they share a common origin in the arbitrariness of
values that are reduced to functions.
On the phenomenological side, the problem is how to
relate mechanisms or subroutines of value ascription to our
3
For an excellent overview of the neuroscience of value, see Pessoa
(2013). While Pessoa clearly retains a representational concept of
value, his proposal for a more integrated (as opposed to modular)
understanding of emotion and cognition lends itself to a non-
representational approach.
4 Notice that, in this case, positive value (light = good) and
A parallel argument can be found in Colombetti’s enactive critique
of standard emotion theory (2007). The model of enactive value
presented in Di Paolo et al. (2010) and Rohde (2010) could be viewed
as a generalized version of Colombetti’s model of enactive emotion.
In both cases, the key point is that emotion/value is a property of the
entire system of organism-environment interaction rather than the
contribution of a special subsystem dedicated to the appraisal of
information.
experience of value. The idea of encoded values suggests
that value shows up as a special class of qualities that are
somehow intrinsically value-bearing and that attach
selectively to objects of experience so as to make these
objects appear as values or disvalues. This further implies
that value functions might be ‘‘turned off’’ so that we could
have experiences utterly devoid of value. However, as
encountered in experience, values seem to be enmeshed
with the meaningful discriminations that constitute expe-
rience as such. Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
imagine what it would be like to have a completely value-
free experience. These observations, while by no means
conclusive, suggest that value is not an object of experi-
ence—or not just an object—but a basic feature of expe-
rience per se.
On the cognitive side, the problem has to do with the
grounding of value, the problem of making sure that values
are rightly ascribed to ‘‘input’’ received from the environ-
ment. When value is conceived as something added to
input, the cognitive system as a whole only recognizes
values as they are encoded by mechanisms within its
architecture, and these mechanisms, whose functional
contribution is some kind of ‘‘value signal,’’ can be easily
corrupted (Rohde 2010). For example, because of the
encapsulation of value-related information, with a simple
flip of the switch something valued as ‘‘food’’ might just as
easily be valued as ‘‘poison’’ and vice versa (Di Paolo et al.
2010, p. 47). While it does seem possible to become
adapted to and even dependent on poisonous chemicals
(e.g. powerful drugs or medicines), such examples point to
a more deeply embodied notion of value: changes of
valence, at least in the case of chemical dependency, are
intimately related to changing conditions of bodily health
(p. 48). Again, while by no means conclusive, this rela-
tionship suggests that the embodiment of value is not
arbitrary in the manner of a binary code for ‘‘good’’ and
‘‘bad.’’ Rather, valence seems to manifest itself through the
very conditions that constitute systemic integrity or its
deterioration.
To sharpen these points, let us consider a simple
example: a light-sensing system that moves toward light or
away from darkness.5
From a cognitivist standpoint, it is fairly easy to imagine
a ‘‘rules and representation’’ model that measures light
levels and, according to some threshold of light/darkness,
regulates its behavior so as to move toward a light source.
normative regulation of behavior (moving toward light), on
the one hand, and negative value (darkness = bad) and
normative regulation (moving away from darkness), on the
other, are more or less functionally equivalent, arbitrarily
5
This example is inspired by arguments in Rohde 2010, pp. 85–108.
123

assigned features of a representational system that can be
reassigned without changing the underlying mechanisms.
In fact, the very notions of value and normativity are
extraneous in this case: value has no intrinsic meaning for
the system itself, and the behaviors of light-attraction or
darkness-avoidance do not require any reference to value.
Now, for the enactive standpoint, consider a very dif-
ferent model of phototaxis for which the system itself is
dependent on light for its very existence, i.e. as a source of
metabolic energy. In this case, we can imagine that the
system ‘‘experiences’’ its proximity to light directly
through the relative integrity of its identity as a dynami-
cally constituted system. Suppose that the system’s own
processes of dynamic constitution were adaptive—capable
of adjusting themselves to compensate for perturbations
that lead toward system disintegration. In this case, the
system’s very ‘‘mode of being’’ would therefore constitute
a direct form of regulated engagement with surrounding
light conditions, and would not require any specially ded-
icated subsystem for the valuation of light levels and nor-
mative regulation of behavior. Also, core values of system
integrity (good) and deterioration (bad) would be deter-
mined in a non-arbitrary manner from the system’s ‘‘point
of view’’—that is, in relation to the system’s formal
identity—and would not need to be encoded by any par-
ticular substructure.
The point of this rough comparison is to distinguish the
enactive approach to value and also to indicate some of its
distinctive explanatory goals and criteria. Providing an
account of normatively guided behavior without represen-
tations is important, but it is not the only issue. Just as
important are criteria related to experience and embodi-
ment. Enactivists of the normative turn seek to understand
value and normativity as intrinsic features of the self-or-
ganized interactive dynamics of living systems, and thus as
intrinsic features of mind. Accordingly, they are also
seeking to account for our experience of value in terms of
systemic integrity and, moreover, to account for experience
itself as a process of valuation in these same terms. For
instance, when generalized in terms of systemic integrity,
the apparently self-generated value of ‘‘health’’ suggests
that our feelings of well-being (and lack thereof) can be
analyzed as manifestations of the relative coherence of a
self-organized form of identity (e.g. see Dibitonto 2014).
The question of whether the enactive approach can
‘‘scale up’’ to account for experience depends in part on
clarifying the kinds of normativity that can be embodied by
the self-organized dynamics of living systems. This is a
crucial constraint that is ignored by the functionalist
approach. Just because two different models of normative
self-regulation are functionally equivalent, as in the case of
the ‘‘positive’’ light-seeking and ‘‘negative’’ darkness-
avoiding versions of the cognitivist model, does not mean
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N. F. Barrett
that they are equivalent with respect to their implications
for experience. Moreover, even if we set experiential
considerations aside, we cannot presume that positive/
prescriptive and negative/proscriptive versions of values/
norms that seem equivalent when considered as abstract
imperatives—‘‘live’’ versus ‘‘don’t die’’; ‘‘seek safety’’
versus ‘‘avoid danger’’; etc.—really are equivalent
descriptors for embodied patterns of self-regulated behav-
ior.6 As we will see, some embodied forms of positive/
prescriptive normativity might be more specific and less
adaptable than their negative/proscriptive counterparts.
Also, for considerations of experience and embodiment,
we must take care to differentiate between explicit and
implicit values and norms: the relevant difference has to do
with discriminations that are possible from the perspective
of the system itself versus the general consequences of
these discriminations, which, however important to the
system, are discernable only by an outside observer (e.g.
discriminations of light levels vs. consequences of these
discriminations for the survival of the system). Once again,
from a functionalist standpoint it is easier to neglect this
distinction, but for the enactivist project the difference is
crucial: only explicit values and norms can be considered
as the basis for experience.
These questions about the kinds of normativity—pre-
scriptive or proscriptive, explicit or implicit—that can be
embodied by self-organized systems are at the heart of the
normative turn in its latest phase (i.e. after Di Paolo 2005),
and are therefore essential to understanding the apparent
inconsistency of enactivist descriptions of value and nor-
mativity. By tracing the development of enactive norma-
tivity from its roots, I wish to show that normativity of self-
regulation as described by this latest phase, while seeming
to support the positive, explicit normativity of self-interest
and concern espoused by Weber and Varela (2002), in fact
constitutes a proscriptive ‘‘double negative’’ (Di Paolo
2009) for which the persistence of the self is only an
implicit norm.
3 The Roots of Enactive Normativity in The
Embodied Mind (1991)
In the most important section of their landmark work
(1991, pp. 147–214), Varela et al. define the enactive view
of cognition in two stages corresponding to two levels—
cognitive and evolutionary—of the mainstream cognitivist
position that serves as their foil. The first stage addresses
the picture of cognition as problem-solving and its
6
Indeed, to consider normativity solely in abstract terms is to return
to the functionalist, rules-and-representations approach that is
explicitly rejected by enactive theory.
The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications
attendant assumption of a predefined set of problems that
must be successfully represented by a cognitive system
(e.g. Marr 1982). Against this view, the authors present
cognition as a process that draws forth relevant features of
the world through perceptually guided action. For example,
they argue that colors are neither ‘‘objective’’ features
which visual systems have evolved to detect, nor are they
‘‘subjective’’ feelings projected onto the world. Rather they
are ecologically meaningful contrasts enacted by organ-
isms embedded in a perceptually guided form of activity or
‘‘perceptual form of life’’ (Skarda 1999). Thus, enactive
mind is defined in terms of the structures that ‘‘emerge
from the recurrent sensorimotor patterns that enable action
to be perceptually guided’’ (Varela et al. 1991, p. 173).
However, while this emphasis on perceptually guided
activity has since become a hallmark of enactive theory
and embodied cognition more generally, it does not by
itself define enactivism over and against the cognitivist
stance. After all, perceptually guided activity is not aim-
less wandering. How and for what is it guided? Perhaps
perceptually guided activity is constrained in such a way
that its structures are adapted to serve as representations
of certain objectively real features of the world. While the
representational/computational theory of mind does not
derive from evolutionary theory, its picture of cognition
as problem solving is strongly reinforced by an evolu-
tionary framework within which cognitive capacities are
conceived as adaptations for a species-specific set of
problems. Insofar as this framework is taken for granted,
representational and computational capacities gain plau-
sibility as products of natural selection. Thus evolution
provides an implicit but crucial normative context which
grounds the representational, problem-solving picture of
cognition.
Accordingly, the second stage of Varela et al.’s argu-
ment brings this normative evolutionary background of
cognitivism into focus and lays out an alternative. The
authors claim that the representationalist stance of cogni-
tivism rests on the questionable (but widespread) adapta-
tionist view of evolution as a process driven by competition
and natural selection toward a well-defined peak of ‘‘op-
timal fitness’’—aka the ‘‘ascent of Mount Fitness’’ (p. 193).
Against this view, Varela et al. define enactive cognition
within a substantially revised, explicitly non-adaptationist
evolutionary framework based on the mutual specification
of organism and environment. Moreover, based in this
alternative framework, Varela et al. argue for groundless-
ness or self-grounding as a basic characteristic of life, and
this move reflects—or at least implies—an important shift
in the normative basis of cognition.
Varela et al. describe this shift as moving from ‘‘a
prescriptive logic to a proscriptive one,’’ or from ‘‘the idea
that what is not allowed is forbidden to the idea that what is
not forbidden is allowed’’ (p. 195). The full significance of
this somewhat enigmatic distinction is developed
throughout their entire discussion of evolution (Chapter 9,
pp. 185–204). For instance, it is reflected in the contrast
between the adaptationist view, for which natural selection
operates according to a standard of fitness measured by
reproductive abundance, and the authors’ view, for which
fitness is measured only by persistence or ‘‘the probability
of reproductive permanence over time’’ (p. 187). The for-
mer concept of fitness entails a concept of optimality,
whereas the latter rejects optimality in favor of ‘‘sufficing,’’
a constraint that simply ‘‘rules out’’ non-viable states and
leaves the rest open to ‘‘natural drift.’’ In other words, for
the proscriptive logic, ‘‘any action undertaken by the sys-
tem is permitted as long as it does not violate the constraint
of having to maintain the integrity of the system and/or its
lineage’’ (p. 205).
It is worth noting that the proscriptive logic established
by Varela et al. does not necessarily constitute a form of
normativity, and may not have been intended as such.
Looking forward to Varela’s last published thoughts on the
intrinsic teleology of autopoiesis (Weber and Varela 2002;
see below), it is hard not to see anticipations of this later,
explicitly normative turn. On the other hand, if we look
backward to the explicitly non-teleological autopoeitic
theory of Maturana and Varela, the use of normative lan-
guage seems unwarranted at this stage (Thompson 2007,
p. 141; see also Villalobos 2013; Villalobos and Ward
2014). Supposing, however, that we choose to describe
proscriptive logic as a form of normativity based on the
implicit value of ‘‘persistence’’ (Varela et al. 1991, p. 187),
it is important to emphasize just how minimal it is.
For instance, while Varela et al. imply that proscriptive
logic is operative in the regulation of the structural cou-
pling of a system and its environment (p. 205), they neglect
to clarify how this regulation is carried out. Moreover,
what they do say implies that while the system specifies the
constraints of viability, the environment is what enforces
those constraints in the manner of natural selection (p.
206). For it is the environment, not the system, that ‘‘dis-
cards what is not compatible with survival and reproduc-
tion’’ (p. 195) and ‘‘allows’’ everything else. Thus it seems
that while the canonical work of Varela et al. introduces
ideas that would later become the basic ingredients of
enactive value and normativity—the core value of persis-
tence and the proscription of non-viable conditions as
inherent features of a self-organized form of identity (cf. Di
Paolo et al. 2010, p. 48)—they do not show how the pro-
scriptive logic of viability constraints amounts to a nor-
matively self-regulated form of structural coupling.
And so, while we can appreciate the intention to use
systemic integrity and viability conditions as self-ground-
ing constraints of system behavior, insofar these constraints
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are enforced only by the environment, it remains unclear in
what sense a system can be said even to disvalue its own
disintegration (let alone value its own persistence). Just
because a system happens to persist thanks to favorable
environmental conditions does not mean that it has played
any intentional, self-directed role in this persistence (see Di
Paolo 2009, p. 17). Varela et al. clearly want to use self-
generated viability constraints to account for embodied
cognition as ‘‘directedness of action’’ (p. 206), but the only
possible trajectories for the system they describe are dead
ends and ‘‘natural drift.’’
Perhaps what we have in Varela et al., then, is not an
initial approximation of value and normativity, but only a
clarification of how an implicitly normative distinction
between viable and nonviable conditions arises with a
dynamic form of identity. This distinction exists for this
system only in the sense that it is brought forth by the
system. There are no grounds—at least not as established
by Varela et al.—to describe the system itself as acting on
the basis of this distinction, let alone as a experiencing
subject for which its own integrity is affirmed as a value.
Moreover, similar kinds of distinctions exist for certain
non-living systems (e.g. tornados, whirlpools, candle
flames) that we do not seek to explain with any notion of
value (Villalobos and Ward 2014). And this highlights an
important question: should any state or condition that is not
somehow ‘‘experienced’’ by a system as a value really
count as such in our explanations of system behavior?
While persistence—i.e. survival—may seem to us to con-
stitute a fundamental, non-arbitrary value for living sys-
tems, survival-based explanations in biology do not, in fact,
need to invoke the value of survival as a cause (Bedau
1998). Where norms of survival are enforced by natural
selection, the term ‘‘value’’ does not do any explanatory
work. Indeed, if anything, the superfluity of value for
survival-based biological explanation is underscored by
Varela et al.’s articulation of proscriptive logic.
4 Hans Jonas and the Normative Turn
Let us put an even finer point on the preceding analysis.
Because of their decisive rejection of the prescriptive
norms of optimality, it could be argued that Varela et al.
are less hospitable to value and teleology than their adap-
tationist, cognitivist rivals. As mentioned earlier, if we look
back to earlier statements of autopoietic theory by Matu-
rana and Varela, this anti-teleological stance is explicit
(Villalobos 2013). From that perspective, then, it is sur-
prising to find Weber and Varela arguing that a concept of
‘‘real teleology’’ is already ‘‘implied in the concept of
autopoiesis’’ so that it is possible to understand ‘‘value and
subjectivity as indispensable organic phenomena’’ (2002,
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N. F. Barrett
102). But even if we disregard the earlier, anti-teleological
stance of Maturana and Varela, Weber and Varela’s
embrace of teleology seems to mark a radical departure
from the proscriptive logic established by Varela et al.
(1991). How did this come about?
A complete answer to this question would require that
we enter into details of Varela’s gradual acceptance of
teleology in the last decade of his life (Villalobos and Ward
2014; Froese 2011). Here it will suffice to focus on the
influence of Hans Jonas, who played no role in Varela et al.
(1991) but is regarded by Weber and Varela as ‘‘the central
figure’’ (2002, p. 97) for their argument. The appearance of
a remarkable convergence between autopoietic theory and
Jonas’s phenomenology seems to have inspired Weber and
Varela—and others since—to understand autopoiesis as not
just the generation of an individual, but also the generation
of value and value-guided behavior (see Thompson 2007,
pp. 140–157; McGann 2007, p. 468).7
The pivotal move that initiates what I am calling the
‘‘normative turn’’ is the association of autopoiesis with a
positive form of normativity, summarized by the existen-
tialist concept of ‘‘concern.’’ By ‘‘positive’’ I mean a
behavioral orientation toward a state of affairs, rather than
a purely ‘‘negative’’ form of normatively regulated
behavior that only ‘‘backs away’’ from proscribed states or
conditions.8 Weber and Varela clearly embrace this posi-
tive orientation, and in doing so they evidently call for
something more than proscriptive logic. In the words of
Evan Thompson: ‘‘Concern, want, need, appetition,
desire—these are essentially affective and protentional or
forward-looking’’ (p. 156). Nevertheless, insofar as this
positive orientation is still self-created and self-directed, it
is not necessarily ‘‘prescriptive’’ in the sense rejected by
Varela et al. (1991)—that is, predefined and imposed from
outside. Thus, with the help of Jonas, Weber and Varela
seem to have opened the door to a much richer notion of
value and normativity while preserving the enactivist tenet
of autonomy.
However, behind this marriage of value and autopoiesis
hides an inferential leap which demands careful examina-
tion. Since we do not have any first-hand experience of
autopoietic process per se, Weber and Varela’s argument
seems to rest on a basic experience of value that, when
viewed in a certain light, seems so closely to resemble
autopoiesis that it suggests their identification. And this is
7
Thompson writes, ‘‘As a result of phenomenological philosophy
after Kant, particularly the writings of Hans Jonas, we now have a
philosophical account that can bridge the gap between autopoietic
biology and phenomenology’’ (p. 149).
8
As noted above, the proscriptive logic of Varela et al. (1991) may
not even count as a form of normativity. This is related to the problem
of ‘‘all-or-nothing’’ viability constraints taken up by Di Paolo (2005).
The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications

precisely what Jonas offers: an account of our most basic In wishing itself to continue it declares itself as a
bodily experience of value as a ‘‘concern’’ for our precar- value… May we thus say that mortality is the narrow
ious existence, which seems to coincide with just those door through which value—the thing addressed by
characteristics of autopoiesis that mark a ‘‘radical transi- ‘‘yes’’ entered the otherwise indifferent universe? (p.
tion’’ to a new, dynamic form of existence (2002, p. 116). 118, italics added)
Thus, it seems, the very same process of self-organization
But on what grounds can we claim that the most prim-
that creates a dynamic mode of existence also creates a
itive forms of life really affirm themselves (Thompson,
subjective point of view with a genuine teleology.
p. 154) simply by continuing to persist? What explanatory
Let us clarify what is meant in this context by a ‘‘gen-
traction do we gain by ascribing normative and experiential
uine teleology.’’ In fact, two senses of teleology are
terms like self-interest and concern to processes of self-
claimed by Weber and Varela (see Di Paolo 2005, p. 433).
maintenance? But most importantly, what are we to make
The first is the Kantian sense of teleology, pertaining to the
of the apparent inconsistency of such ascriptions with the
whole-part relation for which the whole exists for the sake
proscriptive logic established by Varela et al. as the basis
of the parts while the parts exist for the sake of the whole
of life? Either proscriptive logic has been rejected as
(Weber and Varela 2002, p. 106). This kind of teleology
insufficient to describe living processes or the ascription of
seems to map fairly well on to autopoiesis as a self-con-
‘‘concern’’ and other positive value terms amounts to a
stituting network, but given the possibility of a purely
euphemistic and highly misleading reading of what is
operational description of this network, we should be
really a purely proscriptive form of normativity (if it is
cautious about how we interpret ‘‘for the sake of’’ in the
normative at all). But none of the publications that carry
Kantian whole-part relation. Defining autopoiesis in terms
forward the project of Weber and Varela (e.g. Di Paolo
of ‘‘operational closure’’ or ‘‘organizational closure’’ does
2005; Thompson 2007; McGann 2007; Di Paolo et al.
not seem to resolve Kantian ‘‘agnosticism’’ (pp. 99, 108)
2010; Barandiaran and Egbert 2014) have clarified which is
with regard to teleology. The more important sense of
the case.
teleology claimed by Weber and Varela, therefore, is the
If I am right, this is a major theoretical oversight that
one that comes from Jonas: the sense of teleology associ-
needs clarification. I suggest that the central intuition that
ated with ‘‘concern’’ (pp. 113, 116). This sense of concern
guides the normative turn, for better and for worse, comes
connotes ‘‘absolute interest in continued existence’’ (p.
from Jonas’s observations about the precariousness of life.
119) as well as the effort, impulse, or drive to persist in the
According to Jonas, with the emergence of life, existence
face of material conditions that constantly threaten the
takes on a fundamentally different character—the character
dissolution of identity.9 With concern, therefore, we cross
of the normative—precisely because it must be actively
an important threshold, entering the world of subjectivity
maintained.
and intentionality. The teleology that Weber and Varela
attribute to autopoietic systems is more than goal-directed Teleology comes in where the continuous identity of
behavior: it is the experience and intentional pursuit of being is not assured by mere inertial persistence of a
value. substance, but is continually executed by something
At the end of the previous section we considered the done, and by something which has to be done in order
possibility that at least some kinds of value distinctions and to stay on at all: it is a matter of to-be-or-not-to-be
teleological-like behaviors can be accounted for by a whether what is to be done is done (cited in Baran-
purely proscriptive logic and without any such subjectivity. diaran and Egbert 2014).
Weber and Varela clearly endorse a form of normativity
It is precariousness, then, that closes the gap between
that goes beyond this: ‘‘if we follow the conclusions from
autopoiesis and experience, or at least makes it easier for a
autopoietic biology, we find an absoluteness of self-interest
vague notion of ‘‘concern’’ to bridge the gap. Jonas
emerging immediately as a kind of intrinsic or endogenous
describes the precariousness of metabolism so that it stands
ontological teleology’’ (p. 120). In other words, whereas
out from the rest of nature as a distinct form of existence
the original formulation of enactive theory posited only the
and also, at the same time, so that it resonates with our
proscriptive ‘‘No!’’ of viability constraints enforced by
basic experience of life as freely chosen and yet bound to
natural selection, Weber and Varela affirm that ‘‘life says
certain material conditions and therefore fraught with
‘Yes!’ to itself.’’
concern. The problem is that precariousness applies to lots
of systems, including systems whose behavioral orientation
toward persistence is governed only by proscriptive nor-
9
This concept of striving for existence is closely related the concept mativity. And in fact, as we will see in the next section, the
of conatus in Spinoza; see Jonas 1965. See also Thompson 2007, most detailed descriptions of sense-making qua
pp. 154–157.

123

normatively regulated structural coupling invoke nothing
more than proscriptive norms, and yet the phenomeno-
logical implications of this apparent commitment to pro-
scriptive logic are not recognized.
This, then, is the problematic ambiguity that haunts the
normative turn: after Weber and Varela, the clearest
statements of enactive value and normativity can still be
reduced to the loose constraints of proscriptive logic (see
especially Di Paolo et al. 2010, p. 48; Barandiaran and
Egbert 2014), and yet the expanded terminology of enac-
tive normativity—‘‘self-affirming’’ (Thompson 2007,
p. 147), ‘‘striving’’ (Colombetti 2007, p. 542), ‘‘enriching’’
(McGann 2007, p. 469), ‘‘improving’’ and ‘‘flourish-
ing’’ (Di Paolo and Thompson 2014, p. 74)—strongly
suggests the embrace of explicitly realized, positive values
that have no clear basis in proscriptive logic and its implicit
norms of persistence and satisficing.
Before proceeding to the next section, it is important to
take note of the overlap between the current critique and
recently published work of Villalobos and Ward (2014; see
also Villalobos 2013). They too find reason to doubt that
invocations of teleology and other value-related concepts
are ‘‘legitimated by the appeal to the dynamics of organ-
ism/environment interactions in the way that enactivists
have claimed’’ (p. 2). However, for their understanding of
these dynamics, Villalobos and Ward rely exclusively on
the autopoietic theory of Maturana, disregarding the revi-
sions to autopoetic theory urged by Di Paolo and others
(see next section). In particular, Villalobos and Ward retain
the premise that the structural coupling of organism and
environment is ‘‘strictly symmetric’’ (p. 12), while propo-
nents of the normative view explicitly argue for asym-
metric structural coupling as a definitive characteristic of
living systems qua cognitive agents (Barandiaran et al.
2009, pp. 370–372). Indeed, one could say that a central
question of the normative turn is how best to understand
the embodied basis of this asymmetry in living systems.
5 Adaptivity and Sense-Making Through
Continual Self-Making
In this third part we focus on the contributions of Ezequiel
Di Paolo and his colleagues, who over the last decade have
converted the Jonas-inspired vision of Weber and Varela
(2002) into a vibrant and growing branch of research
within enactive theory (e.g. see Cappuccio and Froese
2014). The key development in this phase is greater
appreciation for the importance of adaptivity for life and
mind. Once adaptivity is taken into account, life emerges as
more than just a process of self-production and self-
maintenance: it is an open-ended process of continual
‘‘self-making’’—my term for what Di Paolo calls
123
N. F. Barrett
‘‘autonomous identity generation’’ (2009, p. 9). The adap-
tive process of self-making constitutes the basis for ‘‘sense-
making,’’ a non-representational form of cognitive agency
based in the normative self-regulation of a system’s
structural coupling with its environment.10
The crucial role of adaptivity is first articulated in an
influential paper by Di Paolo (2005) that takes Weber and
Varela’s (2002) paper as its starting point. There Di Paolo
argues that, as defined by Weber and Varela, the ‘‘mother
value’’ of persistence is inadequate to serve as the basis for
cognitive agency. As long as this basic value is defined in
all-or-nothing terms, there is no room for normative self-
regulation: within the conditions of viability, no normative
distinctions can be made, and outside these conditions the
system no longer exists. So, while the basic normative
distinction between viable and non-viable conditions may
be determined ipso facto by the emergence of an autopoi-
etic system, it does not exist for the system in any mean-
ingful sense unless it can be somehow registered and
responded to by the system from within the limits of
viability.
In fact, as pointed out above, the problem of all-or-
nothing viability constraints is already implicit in the
original statement of Varela et al. (1991). Their presenta-
tion of proscriptive logic seems to allow for only two kinds
of system trajectory—dead ends and natural drift—neither
of which is regulated by the system itself (even if the
system defines their distinction). The problem of all-or-
nothing viability constraints becomes more explicit when
the system is actually claimed to be self-regulating with
respect to these constraints, and Varela et al. are not
entirely clear on this point (pp. 205–206). Accordingly, one
might say that the real contribution of Weber and Varela
(2002) as initiators of the normative turn is to make the
claim of self-regulation explicit through their argument for
a positive orientation toward persistence on the part of the
living system itself.
When viewed in this light, we see that Di Paolo’s efforts
to improve on the position of Weber and Varela (2002)
focus on adaptivity as a condition for normative self-reg-
ulation rather than the precise nature of self-generated
normativity per se. Indeed, at first it seems that Di Paolo
simply disregards the question of positive normativity
raised by terms like ‘‘concern’’ and ‘‘self-interest,’’ but
closer examination reveals a more complicated stance.
Although Di Paolo does not disavow the teleological
claims of Weber and Varela, he reformulates these claims
in terms that are consistent with a modified form of
10
Accordingly, as a self-regulatory capacity, adaptivity is not to be
confused with adaptation by natural selection over random variation:
rather it describes something that the organism itself does in response
to perturbations of the environment.
The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications
proscriptive logic, thus saving the appearance of positive
normativity and the connection with Jonasian
phenomenology.
Di Paolo’s reworking of enactive normativity is most
apparent in his interpretation of the Jonasian theme of
‘‘precariousness.’’ The previous section suggested that
precariousness by itself is not enough to warrant an exis-
tential reading of self-maintaining systems. At the time that
he published his most influential writings on the phe-
nomenology of life (1966), Jonas was likely unaware of the
fact that precariousness can apply to a wide range of living
and non-living ‘‘dissipative structures’’ (Nicols and Pri-
gongine 1977). Yet this fact does not necessarily discount
the value of Jonas’s insight: as argued by Di Paolo, what
distinguishes a bacterium from a whirlpool is the way in
which the former continually modulates its constituent
dissipative structures so as to maintain its integrity, thereby
effectively using dissipation against itself (cf. Deacon
2012). To emphasize that this adaptive capacity is really an
elaboration of dissipation rather than its prevention, we
might call it ‘‘adaptive dissipation.’’ This shift of emphasis
clarifies that precariousness is not just an external threat to
the integrity of a living system: it is also a necessary
enabling condition of life (Di Paolo 2009, p. 16) and
therefore of cognitive agency as well. Thus perhaps we
should say that living things are distinguished by the way
in which they exploit their own precariousness: through
adaptivity, living things prolong their distinctive form of
dissipation in a more or less skillfully controlled and self-
directed manner.
Viewing precariousness as both the ‘‘engine’’ and the
‘‘enemy’’ of life’s characteristic adaptivity helps to clarify
how primitive living systems might be capable of
responding to non-viable conditions from within the limits
of viability without resorting to representational mecha-
nisms. Di Paolo claims that a viability-based form of
normativity can exist for the system itself if an unsta-
ble ‘‘precarious region’’ is opened up within system
dynamics between a stable, ‘‘safe region’’ of viable states
and the limits of viability (2005, pp. 436–437; see also
Barandiaran and Egbert 2014). This intermediate region
allows for ‘‘partial breakdowns’’ of autonomous identity
that can be discriminated and responded to by the system as
a whole as gradations of value—or, to be more precise,
disvalue—without representing them as such.11
In summary, a system is capable of cognitive agency if it
has the capacity to discriminate and respond to partial
break-downs or instabilities of systemic identity through
11
The distinction of ‘‘precarious’’ and ‘‘safe’’ regions within the
limits of viability is therefore somewhat confusing, as both regions
entail the fundamental non-equilibrium condition of material precar-
iousness, and the system’s ability to move from one region to the
other is based on this condition.
the compensatory regulation of its constitutive form of
(dissipative) structural coupling with the environment. This
perspective retains the classic features of enactivism, as it
affirms that cognitive agency is rooted in the very same
mechanisms that constitute living processes as such (cf.
Thompson 2007): cognition is the discrimination of value
(or disvalue) and normative regulation of behavior as
performed by the system as a self-maintaining whole rather
than a specially dedicated subsystem (cf. Colombetti
2007). What kinds of regulation can and cannot be
achieved by a self-organized system as whole is therefore a
critical constraint on enactive normativity. Even if we still
do not have the clearest picture of exactly how this vaguely
homeostatic form of self-regulation actually works (but see
Barandiaran and Egbert 2014), we can see that it is dif-
ferent from most ways of understanding normative regu-
lation that rely, at least implicitly, on rules and
representations. Crucially, for a system to maintain itself in
response to perturbations, it does not need to know that
some formal identity should be maintained, it only needs to
know how to compensate for instabilities in a way that
leads to the maintenance of systemic integrity.
What kind of normativity is entailed by this know-how?
In effect, Di Paolo replaces the positive normativity of self-
affirmation introduced by Weber and Varela (2002) with a
kind of ‘‘(double) self-negation’’ (2009, p. 16; see also Di
Paolo and Thompson 2014): a living system regulates itself
by thwarting the tendency of its own material substrate
toward disintegration. Thus Di Paolo suggests that we think
of the process of life as a sort of ‘‘frustrated suicide’’ (2009,
p. 16). Or, to rephrase the claim of Hans Jonas (see above),
rather than saying ‘‘Yes!’’ to itself, a living system says
‘‘No!’’ to the ‘‘No!’’ entailed by the continual dissipation of
its material constituents.
In logic, a double negative may be equivalent to a
positive, but for the issues at stake here, it is crucial to note
how the subtle shift from self-affirmation to double self-
negation changes the basis for claims about how value and
normativity are embodied so as to lay the groundwork for
cognition and experience. Strictly speaking, the self-regu-
lated system described by Di Paolo does not aim at the
stabilization of its formal identity so much as back away
from instabilities which threaten its formal identity. Even if
these two forms of normative regulation—backing away
from instability and aiming toward stabilization of an
identity—often lead to the same result, they are not
equivalent in terms of their implications for experience
and, depending on how they are embodied, they can lead to
diverging kinds of cognitive behavior as well.12 So,
12
The issue here is the degree of specificity with which embodied
normativity is tied to the identity of the system, which might be
different in cases of positive and proscriptive normativity. In
123

contrary to what Di Paolo and others have claimed, we are
not justified in saying that the former system is ‘‘self-
positing’’ (2009, p. 16) or that it is concerned to preserve its
identity, or ‘‘to affirm and reaffirm itself in the face of
imminent non-being’’ (Thompson 2007, p. 153).
I suggest, therefore, that ‘‘backing away from instabil-
ity’’ is the best way to clarify the nature of enactive nor-
mativity as it stands. Nothing more should be added—even
the ‘‘mother value’’ of persistence remains implicit. Pre-
sumably the instabilities proscribed by the system are
determined by the system in relation to its viability con-
ditions so that avoidance of these instabilities amounts to
persistence (or at least continuity) of formal identity.
Nevertheless the system itself need not realize persistence
as a goal or its identity as a value in any way. Indeed, this
implicitness is a crucial advantage of proscriptive norma-
tivity, as it facilitates normative regulation without repre-
sentations. The downside, however, is that if a self-
regulating system does not somehow realize its identity as
a value, it is hard to see how its self-maintaining behavior
could support phenomenological claims related to striving,
self-interest, and concern, especially insofar as these con-
note positive, subjectively entertained values. On the other
hand, while a more explicit aim toward the stabilization of
particular identity would seem better suited to these phe-
nomenological claims, it is hard to see how it could be
embodied without representing this identity to itself. Here
is the underlying tension of the normative turn: depending
on what constraints hold sway—the tenets of autonomy and
anti-representationalism or the centrality of experience—
enactive normativity is pulled toward proscriptive or pos-
itive formulations, respectively.
On the side of proscriptive normativity, another attrac-
tive feature is that it remains open-ended in the manner of
‘‘satisficing’’: any compensatory adjustment that preserves
some version of formal identity is allowed; the system has
no preference for one version over another. This open-
endedness seems to be crucial for the way in which
adaptivity contributes to sense-making as an ongoing pro-
cess through which new meanings are continually dis-
criminated. Insofar as compensations for instability involve
the ‘‘re-structuring of the system’’ (Di Paolo 2005, p. 438),
responses to a partial breakdown of system identity do not
just remake but also re-define system identity and its cor-
responding normativity (p. 440). The value distinctions
involved in sense-making through adaptivity, therefore, are
clearly not just the labeling of the world in reference to the
Footnote 12 continued
principle, a positive aim toward stabilization could be equivalent to
the backing away from instabilities. But it should be noted that this
positive version of proscriptive normativity also fails to support
phenomenological claims for self-interest and concern, which in the
enactive literature is always tied to a ‘‘self’’ or formal identity.
123
N. F. Barrett
viability conditions of a single, unequivocally defined self.
Rather, sense-making opens up a ‘‘historical dimension’’
whereby the cognitive agent is continually changed by its
encounters with the environment (p. 444) and, as a result,
the meanings of such encounters are also continually
revised. Thus sense-making occurs through a continual
process of self-making.
As elaborated in subsequent papers (Di Paolo et al.
2010; Froese and Di Paolo 2011), this model of sense-
making as self-making can apply to any form of self-or-
ganized and self-regulated activity, including even inter-
personal activity (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007; Froese
and Di Paolo 2011). So, if we understand complex forms of
life as constituted by multiple levels of self-organized
behavior (Thompson 2007, p. 49), each corresponding to
an autonomous ‘‘identity’’ or ‘‘self,’’ then these complex
life forms can also be said to generate and inhabit multiple
realms of value. Each form of self-organized identity cor-
responds to a distinct cognitive realm governed by norms
tied to the preservation of this identity. Furthermore, if
these multiple realms are not strictly hierarchical and can
compete or combine with one another, this multiplicity of
values opens up vast combinatorial possibilities for value-
directed cognitive activity. For realms of value that are not
directly tied to metabolic or bodily ‘‘selves,’’ basic viability
or survival no longer serves as the ‘‘mother-value.’’ How-
ever, insofar as a particular form of identity or ‘‘self’’
determines the adaptive landscape of any domain of
interaction, something analogous to viability still serves as
the core value. As pointed out by Di Paolo, habits are not
autonomous individuals in the same sense as their meta-
bolic substrate, but their tendency toward self-preservation
is analogous, and presumably functions according to the
same pattern (2009, p. 18).13
For instance, Di Paolo et al. (2010) consider play as the
‘‘pinnacle’’ of enactive mind qua value generation (pp.
72–78). Here Di Paolo et al. are explicitly interested in the
‘‘experiential dimension of value’’ (p. 76) and are con-
cerned to account for play as an intrinsically motivated
activity. Because their version of enactive theory makes the
generation of value intrinsic to all cognitive activity, Di
Paolo et al. have a leg up on cognitivist theories that must
introduce specialized mechanisms to account for the values
generated by play. Indeed, the theory of sense-making as
self-making is perfectly suited to the kinds of role-playing
which are so characteristic of play. However, it is not clear
13
This is a crucial point, as Di Paolo, quoting Jonas, claims that ‘‘the
survival standard is inadequate for an evaluation of life’’ (2009,
p. 17). Nevertheless, it seems to me that enactive normativity (and
perhaps Jonas as well) does not offer any other ‘‘standard’’ than
preservation—e.g. of the animal qua ‘‘perceiving entity’’—which is
just another form of survival. See the entire quoted passage (ibid.;
Jonas 1966, p. 106).
The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications
that the teleology of play, which seems to involve the
pursuit of novel self-making for its own sake, is really
consistent with the proscriptive concept of normativity
defined elsewhere in the same paper. As defined by the
authors, value is ‘‘the extent to which a situation affects the
viability of a self-sustaining and precarious network of
processes that generates an identity’’ (p. 48, italics added).
In light of the preceding analysis, this definition should be
clarified to emphasize that only perturbations that consti-
tute threats to viability are registered cognitively as dis-
values. How do we derive the intrinsic motivation of play
from this concept of value? That is, how do we account for
activity that aims at self-making for its own sake?
Turning back to Di Paolo’s view of sense-making qua
self-making (2005, p. 438; 2009), we find that it is, at best,
ambiguous on this point, as it seems only to allow for
accidental kinds of change whose benefits are purely for-
tuitous. Strictly speaking, for this view, a trajectory of
adaptive self-making is not value-driven because a cogni-
tive agent cannot aim at a new version of itself. At best, it
aims only at the restoration of an underdetermined and
therefore somewhat open form of identity, and by chance
this restoration involves a restructuring that constitutes a
favorable alteration of identity. This is just proscriptive
normativity plus fortuitous change. We do not find any
precedent for systems that realize the value of novel self-
constitution, or for a teleology that aims at new identity.
This close adherence to a purely proscriptive form of
normativity is clarified in recent paper by Barandiaran and
Egbert (2014) that attempts to model a minimal version of
the enactive normativity sketched by Di Paolo and others.
The authors take up the basic Jonasian approach to nor-
mativity, linking norms with the precariousness of self-
organized forms of identity, but go one step further by
providing a simple model of a ‘‘protocell-like metabolism’’
that allows them to ‘‘illustrate norm-establishing as
emerging from metabolism’’ (p. 12). The proscriptive
nature of this model of normativity is made clear by the
fact that within regions of stability there are no differences
of value and therefore no normative bases for cognitive
agency—within the viability region, the ‘‘normative field is
null’’ (p. 22). The problem with such restricted normativity
is not just that it seems insufficient for ‘‘scaling up’’ to
human experience. It also seems to lead to a truncated
account of the most basic kinds of cognitive agency: note
that, according to the definition offered previously by Di
Paolo (2005, p. 442), whatever happens within this value-
neutral region of viability is not actually behavior, meaning
that it is not actually cognitive.
The way in which enactive normativity defines the
boundaries of cognition in relation to a form of identity
leads to a slew of problems recently taken up by a pub-
lished collection of essays (Cappuccio and Froese 2014). In
short, the theory of sense-making qua self-making entails
that these boundaries are constantly changing—in other
words, sense-making ‘‘subsists on a steady diet of non-
sense’’14 (Cuffari 2014, p. 219)—and yet has no clear way
of accounting for the transition from non-sense to sense as
a regulated activity (see Cappuccio and Froese 2014, p. 5;
Beaton 2014) because it has no way of accounting for the
transition from one form of identity to another. It should be
emphasized that this is a problem for any form of norma-
tivity—proscriptive or otherwise— that is anchored by
reference to the formal identity of a system (‘‘self’’). Sense-
making only applies to system dynamics that are norma-
tively regulated, and normative regulations are defined only
in relation to a system’s (current) formal identity. Outside
of a system’s self-defined sphere of normative self-regu-
lation there is only ‘‘natural drift’’ or death.
6 Conclusion
Let us summarize the main points of the preceding analy-
sis. Enactive normativity, at least where most clearly and
rigorously defined (Di Paolo 2009; Barandiaran et al. 2009;
Di Paolo et al. 2010), is purely proscriptive: it is the self-
regulatory capacity of a system to respond through
adjustments of its own constitutive dynamics to partial
breakdowns of its own formal identity. It follows that the
only normatively regulated states of the system as a whole
are these partial breakdowns, so that the only discrimina-
tions of value made by the system itself—the only
explicitly realized values—are actually just discriminations
of disvalue: ‘‘safe’’ states are not normatively regulated and
therefore cannot be discriminated as values from the sys-
tem’s perspective. The ‘‘mother value’’ of persistence is
therefore, at best, implicit: as the proscriptively regulated
system preserves itself by backing away from instabilities,
it does not need to realize its own persistence as a value.
And there is good reason for this, as it is not clear how a
system could realize its own persistence as a value without
resorting to some kind of representation.
If this analysis is accurate, enactive normativity as
currently defined clearly does not support Jonasian phe-
nomenological claims related to self-affirmation, ‘‘con-
cern,’’ ‘‘striving,’’ or any other kind of positive regard for
the formal identity of the system and/or its persistence. I
have suggested some reasons why this inconsistency may
have gone unnoticed. Most importantly, the Jonasian view
of life as characterized by persistence in the face of
14
In this context, ‘‘non-sense’’ is the term for whatever lies beyond
the cognitive realm, which for this branch of enactive theory is
defined as whatever threatens the persistence of a ‘‘self’’—the formal
identity of a self-generating and self-regulating system.
123

precariousness is vague with respect to the kind of nor-
mativity that is involved in this persistence, such that it is
possible to save the appearance of positive self-interest
with a kind of ‘‘double self-negation’’ based in the pro-
scriptive regulation of the system’s own dissipative ten-
dencies. The appearance of positive self-interest, however,
is not enough to support the phenomenological insights that
inspired the normative turn.
Still, just because proscriptive normativity does not
support the Jonasian view does not mean that enactive
theory must reject the latter. Where is it written in stone
that enactive normativity must be proscriptive? A more
fundamental question, therefore, has to do with the kinds of
normativity that are compatible with the theoretical com-
mitments of enactivism. Proscriptive normativity, I have
shown, is attractive to enactive theory insofar it succeeds in
providing a plausible description of the autonomous, open-
ended self-regulation of a system as a whole and does so
without recourse to representations. Any attempt to intro-
duce a different kind of normativity must meet these cri-
teria: it has to be a plausibly emergent feature of a self-
organized system that can serve as the basis for non-rep-
resentational self-regulation, and it needs to be open-ended
enough to allow for the formal identity of the system (the
‘‘self’’) to change in adaptive ways. While I have not
entered into the discussion of possible alternatives, it is
hard to see how any normativity that is based on the
explicit positive valuation of the ‘‘self’’ can meet these
criteria.
In addition, this analysis suggests wider problems with
any kind of normativity—positive or negative—that is tied
to the persistence of a formal identity or ‘‘self’’: namely,
such a system cannot aim at a new ‘‘self,’’ and therefore it
cannot regulate its growth and adaptation. When this
approach is extended to higher levels of cognitive behavior
involving multiple ‘‘selves,’’ the result is that transitions
between one form of self-organized dynamics and another
cannot be considered as moves within a cognitive realm.
Only actions taken to restore an already established form of
identity can be considered as cognitive. Perhaps a new
form of identity results from these compensatory actions,
but in that case the change is fortuitous and cannot be
considered as cognitive behavior. This effectively bars the
system from taking an intentional stance toward the
learning of new information, acquiring new kinds of cog-
nitive skills, or shifting from one form of cognitive agency
to another (see Cappuccio and Froese 2014).
However challenging, these difficulties should not
detract from the fact that the normative turn has broken
new ground for enactive theory and cognitive science in
general. Given the prevalence of value and normativity in
experience and the centrality of experience for enactive
theory, it is imperative that some kind of non-
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N. F. Barrett
representational approach to valuation develops within
enactive theory. Moreover, it should be noted that what the
normative turn offers is not just a non-representational
theory of value, but a theory of the central role of value in
non-representational cognition and experience. These are
major shifts of perspective and emphasis that warrant
careful consideration, even if current efforts to incorporate
value into basic processes of life and mind have fallen
short.
So what’s next? To meet its explanatory goals, I
believe that enactive theory should seek to develop a
theory of normative self-regulation that is not purely
proscriptive, and for this I believe it will have to abandon
the ‘‘mother value’’ of persistence, implicit or explicit,
and look instead to values related to energy use or ther-
modynamic flow. However, in this essay I have deliber-
ately refrained from venturing any suggestions toward this
end, deciding to focus entirely on articulating the chal-
lenges that confront enactive normativity as it stands. I
am optimistic that these challenges are surmountable,
provided we reach an agreement about what they are. The
purpose of this essay has been to take some clarifying
steps in that direction, or at least to prompt others to
further clarification.
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