Beyond the cellular cave: a teleodynamic reconsideration of the epistemic-closure thesis in cellular life.

Authors

Hangjun Chu, Tao Gong

Published in

Bio Systems. Pages 105955. Sep 23, 2026. Epub Sep 23, 2026.

Abstract

A recurrent thesis in theoretical biology holds that the self-referential, state-determined organisation of cellular life imposes an in-principle limit on what a cell can know about its external world, an epistemic closure that extends to all cell-based observers. Miller, Slijepčević and Baluška (2026; henceforth MSB) have recently advanced a forceful version of this argument, contending that three obligatory features of cellular life (signal ambiguity, infoautopoiesis, and membrane-enforced constraint closure) jointly preclude observer-independent knowledge. We accept the biology and contest the inference. Drawing on Terrence Deacon's teleodynamic framework, we show that the conclusion turns on a strong correspondence-theoretic premise about what knowledge requires, a premise that is dispensable. Once a weaker, constraint-theoretic notion of biological reference is admitted, the three premises stop entailing closure: signal ambiguity becomes compatible with reference, infoautopoiesis becomes the precondition of reference, and the membrane becomes the substrate of a perspective rather than the wall of a cave. The autogen, a proposed minimal model coupling reciprocal catalysis with self-assembly, makes the logic concrete. Such a system is checked by its environment at every cycle of disruption and repair; the validation MSB require is therefore stronger than biological information ever received. We observe that MSB's own broader programme (cognitive selection, cellular sentience) already presupposes a notion of cellular reference that the 2026 paper, read at full strength, would deny. The constraint-theoretic reading we propose preserves the substance of that programme while replacing its epistemic conclusion. The cell is closed but not isolated. Closure is the condition under which functional reference becomes possible. We locate this argument within the longer history of internalist-constructivist epistemologies in biology and acknowledge its limits: it does not yet generate a decisive experimental test, though it opens tractable empirical directions and clarifies what is at stake.

PMID:
42778043
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 24 Sep 2026.

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