Conclusion: Organism-Oriented Ontology
Audronė Ž Žukauskaitė · Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2023
The final chapter summarises all of the threads coming from these different theories and argues that the concept of an organism-oriented ontology allows us to rethink the differences between living and non-living systems; to explain the tension between the self-referential, homeostatic nature of the organism and its continuous capacity of change and development; and, finally, to reconceptualise the notion of cognition by taking into account the multiplicity of organic processes defining human and non-human living beings. The notion of an organism-oriented ontology helps to reflect different modalities of life, especially the continuity between biological processes taking place in the body and those taking place in the mind. Maturana and Varela’s idea that living systems are cognitive systems, and that a living process is nothing other than a process of cognition, radically changes our understanding of cognition. This means that the brain is not the centre of control and that cognitive processes can take place at different levels of organic organisation. Cognition can be attributed not only to humans but also to micro-organisms, animals, technological systems and the planet.