I use autonomy, which means the state of self-governance, to distinguish the active independence of organisms and intellects from the passive independence of rocks and planets. There are autonomic artifacts and parts or products of biological systems, but the origin of their self-governance lies outside themselves. Autonomous systems are open, independent systems that both produce their own governance and use that governance to maintain themselves. A system is autonomous if an only if the organization of internal system processes is the dominant factor in the system’s self-preservation, making the processes that contribute to its autonomy functional, and the autonomous system an agent.

Autonomy has been neglected in much of the literature in biology and cognitive science until recently, with the notable exceptions of the autopoiesis of Maturana and Varela (Autopoiesis), and the closure to efficient causation of Robert Rosen (Life Itself). Both of these ideas emphasize closure, the first to information or control, and the second to a way of modeling causation. Both approaches ground individuation and functionality in a closure condition, and give some basis for a dynamical understanding of these central biological and cognitive concepts. In tension with this closure is the requirement that autonomous agents must interact with the world, and their fundamental closure must include some sort of interactive closure, or else they are not open to worldly influences. The problem is to give an adequate account of closure that still permits openness to the world, and which enables functionality and individuality.

These two problems, 1) grounding autonomy transparently in its infrastructure, and 2) allowing its agency while retaining a degree of openness, can be resolved with a dynamical open systems theory approach to autonomy that integrates information and energy processing into a common account, such as the one I and my colleagues have developed for a more general understanding of causation, organization, individuation, functionality and intentionality in dynamically emergent.