Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Etxeberria.
This paper compares two different accounts of closure to explain biological organization: as an organization enabled by an informational control on dynamics (Pattee) and as an internal closure of a dynamic nature (Varela). The two of them adopt different versions of a principle of complementarity to relate symbolic and dynamic explanations.
This paper reviews Pattee's ideas about the symbolic domain as a phenomenon related to the self-simplifying processes of certain hierarchical systems, such as the living. We distinguish the concepts of constraint, record, and symbol to explain how the Semantic Closure Principle, that is to say, the view that symbols are self-interpreted by the cell, emerges. Related to this, the notion of complementarity is discussed both as an epistemological and as an ontological principle. In the final discussion we consider whether autonomous systems can exist in which constraints are not symbolically preserved, and if biological symbols can be considered to have a descriptive nature.