On the Extension of Autonomy

On the Extension of Autonomy | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article On the Extension of Autonomy Paulo Sayeg, Gabriel Moreira Francisco, Joao Eduardo Kogler Junior This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8437453/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide an account of extension that strictly follows from the organizational theory of autonomous systems, further developing recent enactive accounts of extension and incorporation. We examine Moreno and Mossio’s definition of an autonomous system, developed in Biological Autonomy . Then, we argue that their definition provides two different ways an autonomous system can extend its autonomy to external entities (extension by constraint surrogate and extension by constraint composition), together with a criterion for each case of extension. We also consider that each case can be characterized by transformations of the autonomous system’s viability space, normative field and topological unity. We discuss the consequences of our account for the recent enactive views on incorporation and extension, arguing that the notion of ‘extension’ does not necessarily require functionalism and that it can be usefully adopted by enactivism. Finally, we show that a productive tension is created between the extension cases developed here and the enactive accounts of incorporation. Philosophy Autonomous Systems Closure of Constraints Extension Incorporation Enactivism Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 1. Introduction The philosophical literature on autonomous systems has so far focused on giving an adequate and coherent definition of autonomy (Christensen & Hooker, 1999 ; Di Paolo et al., 2017 ; Moreno & Mossio, 2016 ), to naturalize notions such as agency, adaptation, normativity, function and teleology through the activity of this sort of systems (Barandiaran, 2008 ; Barandiaran et al., 2009 ; Barandiaran & Rama, 2025 ; Di Paolo, 2005 ; Moreno & Mossio, 2016 ), and to explore different types of autonomy other than the vital or biological autonomy (e.g., sensorimotor and personal autonomy) (Di Paolo et al., 2017 ; Pérez-Verdugo & Barandiaran, 2023 ; Varela, 1991 ). Although there are many topics remaining to be explored, the literature provides a robust and powerful framework to understand mental processes. In this sense, enactivism is often portrayed as a philosophical development upon this framework (Di Paolo, 2005 ; Di Paolo & Thompson, 2017 ; Thompson, 2007 ). One recent strand of development in enactivism concerns the topic of incorporation, the process of an object becoming part of someone’s body (Colombetti, 2023 ), and of extension of some autonomous systems’ features (e.g., affectivity, ). Specifically, Mojica and Di Paolo ( 2025 ) draws on the autonomous systems framework and proposes two desiderata for an account of incorporation. The topic of incorporation can be seen as an enactive version of the idea of an extended mind - first proposed by Clark and Chalmers ( 1998 ) under the banner of the extended cognition hypothesis - that is theoretically based and does not adopt the original functionalist standpoint (Di Paolo, 2009 ). However, even though enactive accounts of extension (Colombetti, 2017 ) and incorporation do justify the existence of those processes in an autonomous systems framework, they do not show how extension per se is implied by such a framework, nor do they relate the notion of extension with the notion of incorporation. This paper provides an account of extension that strictly follows from Moreno and Mossio’s ( 2016 ) organizational theory of autonomous systems. We will show that their organizational theory implies two ways an autonomous system can extend its autonomy to external entities. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the autonomous systems literature, where we review the notion of autopoiesis , its use by enactivism, the more recent formulations of enactivism in terms of autonomy, and the enactive account of incorporation. Section 3 argues for two cases of autonomy extension, showing that they follow from the organizational theory, which also implies a criterion for each case of extension, and showing the consequences of such extensions when deployed by some autonomous system. Section 4 discusses in more detail the relationship between the notions of extension and incorporation, and the consequences of our account for an enactive framework of incorporation or extension. 2. The organizational theory of autonomy This section presents the organizational theory of autonomous systems that grounds the rest of the paper. We first situate that account historically in the autopoietic theory (Maturana & Varela, 2006 ), then set out two contemporary formulations of autonomy - autonomy as a precarious closure of processes (Beer & Di Paolo, 2023) and autonomy as a closure of constraints (Moreno & Mossio, 2016 ) - and finally indicate how these formulations bear on debates about incorporation and extended cognition. 2.1. From autopoiesis to autonomy Maturana mentions in his preface to De Maquinas Y Seres Vivos that the autopoietic theory originated as an attempt to answer the question of what class of system is a living being (Maturana & Varela, 2006 , p. 11). Autopoietic theory states that what is common among all living beings is their organization , understood as an abstract, formal relation among entities. This organization, called autopoiesis (= ‘self-generation’), defines the specific way in which the organism’s molecular processes relate to one another, satisfying two properties. First, each molecular process in the organization has to generate, and be generated by, other molecular processes that are also part of the organization. Second, this organization demarcates a physical boundary essential to the system’s maintenance. Maturana and Varela considered that the structure of the living organism, understood as the material realization of its organization (Thompson, 2007 ), despite having a constant material and energetic flow, always maintains this formal relationship among molecular processes through this flow. By virtue of its very organization, autopoietic systems constantly generate its own borders, distinguishing itself from its environment. Moreover, these systems are operationally closed (Varela, 1991 ), the property that the system’s constitutive processes generate other processes that also constitute the system 1 . The autopoietic system’s self-distinction and operational closure characterize these kinds of systems as ones that, in a sense, maintain their own internal dynamics, or that establish their own rules of functioning and conditions for existence. This motivates a shift from autopoiesis to the more general concept of autonomy (from Greek auto - own - and nomos - law), which highlights the system’s capacity to determine and sustain its own norms of existence. Motivated by autopoietic theory, some contemporary formulations of autonomous systems often prefer the broader concept of autonomy over autopoiesis (see (Nave, 2025 )), as the organizational principles apply beyond the molecular domain. For instance, Beer and Di Paolo (2023) define an autonomous system as a precarious and operationally closed network of processes, where precariousness denotes an existential dependence among the network’s processes (Di Paolo, 2009 ). Nevertheless, in this paper we will primarily adopt the alternative definition from Moreno and Mossio ( 2016 ), that formulates autonomy in terms of a closure of constraints : an autonomous system is one whose functioning is underpinned by a set of mutually enabling constraints that together constitute a closure. It should be noted that both definitions, in terms of closure of constraints or of processes, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, here we are using Moreno and Mossio’s definition just for the sake of convenience 2 . Our analysis in section 3 equally applies to an autonomous system understood as a closure of processes. On Moreno and Mossio’s account, a constraint is an entity that acts upon processes but are not modified by them, with its characteristics remaining unchanged after the process. Catalyzers of biochemical processes are examples of constraints. Crucially, whether a given entity qualifies as a constraint depends on the level of analysis. What works as a constraint at one scale is a process at a lower scale. So, in a closure of constraints, each constraint both depends on, and enables other, constraints in the set, and together they establish the dependencies that sustain the organization. A system constituted by such a closure is inherently an interactive one. Much could be said about the interactive dimension of autonomous systems (see Moreno & Mossio, 2016 , Chap. 4). However, we will restrict ourselves to pin down three necessary properties of the system’s interaction with the environment, as developed by Barandiaran et al. ( 2009 ). First, interaction is asymmetrical : the environment can destroy the autonomous system, and it is the system that does something in the world to sustain itself, whereas the converse is not true. Second, the closure implies the existence of viability conditions for its maintenance. There are limited states that the closure can realize and limited interactions that the system can undertake without being destroyed. Because the viability conditions must be constantly met, they are characterized as normative . Considering that the autonomous system’s interactions must also satisfy the viability conditions, the interactions themselves are also normative. And third, the system’s interactions are teleological in the sense that they are fundamentally for the satisfaction of its norms (that is, for the satisfaction of its viability conditions) 3 . Systems that exhibit those three properties in its interactions are said to be adaptive agents , or simply agents. Important to our discussion is that the organizational theory of autonomous systems allows for another substrate other than molecular processes: all that is needed is for a set of entities to qualify as constraints (or processes) and to relate to each other in the manner characterized by the definition of closure, also satisfying the requirements for agency. For example, one can talk about vital autonomy when the substrates are biochemical processes and constraints (making this kind of autonomy analogous to autopoiesis ); or about sensorimotor autonomy, where the realizers are sensorimotor schemes (Di Paolo et al., 2017 ); or even personal autonomy (Pérez-Verdugo & Barandiaran, 2023 ). Moreover, the theory also allows a given system to have more than one autonomous organization, with each kind of autonomy pertaining to distinct levels that nevertheless influence each other (e.g., a human being, which realizes all the types of autonomy above). 2.2. Extended cognition and sensorimotor incorporation A key implication of defining autonomous systems by a closure of constraints is that it allows the system to encompass external entities within its constitution, which then becomes part of the system’s closure. This “built-in” feature of the theory is what provides the theoretical foundation for enactive accounts of extension of affectivity (Colombetti, 2017 ) and of incorporation , the process of an object becoming part of someone’s body (Colombetti, 2023 , Mojica & Di Paolo, 2025 ). The work on incorporation may be understood as the enactive version of work on the extended cognition hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers, 1998 ), given that enactivists rejects the latter's reliance on functionalism and its use of a pre-theoretical and intuitive notion of cognition (Di Paolo 2009 ). However, while the enactive literature has fruitfully explored the phenomenology of incorporation and the possibility of extending affectivity, more can be said about extension if we closely follow the organizational theory of autonomous systems. In this way, our thesis is the following: the organizational theory of autonomous systems implies two ways for an autonomous system to extend its autonomy (or, it implies two cases of extension). As we discuss in section 4 , if we are correct that the theory implies only two cases of extension, this creates some tension with incorporation accounts that claims for three kinds of incorporation (Colombetti, 2023 ). Thus, our objective in further analysing what the organizational theory implies for extension is to refine the existing discussion on this theme, aiming at a complete and coherent enactive account of extension. 3. Developing the two cases of extension In this section, we will argue that the organizational theory of autonomous systems implies two cases for an autonomous system to extend its autonomy. By ‘extension’ we mean the inclusion of an external entity in the set of constraints that constitutes the autonomous system. It should be mentioned that although we are following Moreno and Mossio’s definition of an autonomous system, these extension cases would also follow if we defined it as a closure of processes. In this way, our analysis is entirely conceptual, and therefore these cases are in principle applicable to any type of autonomy (vital, sensorimotor, personal). 3.1. First case: extension by constraint surrogate The first case of extension, which we term extension by constraint surrogate (ECS), can be characterized as follows. An autonomous system extends its autonomy through ECS when it loses a set of constraints and an external entity is exploited to substitute for the missing constraints. In this situation, the external entity acts as a surrogate constraint. The cause for a system’s loss of constraints cannot be determined a priori. It may result from a malfunction that prevents a structure from acting as a constraint (as in the following example), or it might stem, at least in principle, from a deliberate substitution of those constraints. As an illustration of ECS, consider the example of a person suffering from Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disorder of the gastrointestinal system that causes inflammation and damage to the intestines or in other parts of the digestive tract. The disease may destroy or halt the production of some set of constraints, such as the intestine’s surface, crucial enzymes for digestion, or even disrupt the microbiota, thereby disabling the digestive processes. Moreover, in some severe cases of the disease, the destruction of this set of constraints cannot be solved by local or global regulatory mechanisms. As a result, the absorption of nutrients becomes impossible without medical intervention, threatening the person’s survival. Suppose that the person’s illness is so severe that no medication or immunobiological therapy can recover its missing constraints: the patient might then rely on a hypothetical device — call it an artificial intestine — that digests food and enables nutrient absorption 4 . Once coupled to the body, this device would act upon the digestive processes as the original biological constraints once did, restoring the mutual dependencies that sustain the closure of constraints, maintaining the system’s autonomy. According to the definition of closure of constraints, this artificial intestine, upon integration, becomes part of the system’s closure: the autonomous system now comprises both the patient and the artificial device. The organizational theory of autonomous systems implies ECS. If an autonomous system is defined as an agent composed of a closure of constraints that maintains its own interactions with the environment, then any new (external) entity that becomes integrated into that closure thereby becomes part of the system. The system’s topological boundary thus expands to include the assimilated entity. ECS determines the general reasoning behind this process: a system extends its boundary when an external entity replaces a destroyed set of constraints and reproduces its relations within the closure. The organizational theory also implies a criterion for ECS, that enables an observer of the system to establish when an external entity acquires its status of constraint surrogate: formally, an entity qualifies as a surrogate constraint if it establishes the same mutual dependencies of the constraint that it is replacing (see Fig. 1 ). To better grasp ECS, it is useful to examine its effects on three operational concepts central to the theory of autonomous systems: topological boundary , normative field , and viability space (Barandiaran & Egbert, 2014 ). The viability space is a mathematical construct that represents the relationship between the system’s essential variables and the relevant environmental parameters. In turn, the normative field is a set of vectors on the viability space that indicate, at each point on the viability space, the path the system must take in order to stay viable (alive, in the case of organisms) 5 . The topological boundary refers to the spatial relationships among the constraints that distinguish the system and the environment, which is not necessarily a physical or material boundary. In our analysis, these concepts help specify how the system changes when extension is realized by comparing, for instance, the system’s viability space before and after extension. In the case of ECS, because the external entity replicates the missing constraint’s dependencies, the topological boundary of the set of constraints remains conserved. From an organizational perspective, the closure’s structure is restored rather than transformed. Consequently, the system’s normative field and viability space are also conserved—the system continues to interact with the environment under the same conditions and norms as before. For this reason, ECS can be characterized as a conservative extension , preserving the closure’s topology despite substituting one of its components. The conservative character of ECS, and in fact all of the discussion above, is valid for all types of autonomy (vital, sensorimotor, or personal). Nevertheless, if one wants to have a theoretically grounded account of extension, it is necessary to see what the theory’s limits are: how much the organizational theory allows for a pure conceptualization of extension. At this stage, deepening the analysis requires specifying the type of autonomy and the conditions for extension. If ECS is realized in vital autonomy, some conditions for ECS can be identified: (i) a malfunctioning constraint; (ii) the impossibility of restoring it through local or global regulation 6 ; and (iii) a consequent threat to the closure’s maintenance. Note that those conditions are not arbitrary. The first is a restatement of ECS, but instead of using the term ‘destruction’ we are specifying it to a context of vital autonomy, using instead the term ‘malfunctioning’. Furthermore, if the second condition were not there, then it would be possible to compensate for the malfunctioning constraint by regulatory mechanisms and ECS would not be necessary. Thus, the second condition is necessary for ECS at vital autonomy. The third is also a necessary condition because it ensures, given (i) and (ii), that ECS will be realized if the system is able to do so. From the perspective of the viability space, then, the system undergoing ECS operates in the precarious region , where its existence is endangered but not yet terminated. In some other instances, the extension may take place even when the system has lost adaptivity but remains alive — as in the situation, for example, when another agent (such as a physician) performs the coupling in some autonomous system (such as the patient) necessary to restore closure. Finally, it should be noted that despite being theoretically well-grounded and possible in principle, ECS may be rare or even infeasible in most biological systems. The reason lies in the heavy requirements an external entity must meet to qualify as a surrogate constraint. The intricate dependencies and precarious dynamics of biological systems make it extraordinarily difficult for any external structure to replicate a lost constraint with enough adequacy. In practice, only artificial expedients may fulfill such a role, where the external entity is an artifact. This limitation reinforces the exceptional character of ECS and distinguishes it sharply from the second case - extension by constraint composition - which exhibits a more widespread nature, as follows. 3.2. Second case: extension by constraint composition The first case of autonomy extension discussed above involved the substitution of a missing constraint by an external entity. However, the definition of an autonomous system as a closure of constraints also admits another form of extension, one that does not depend on replacement. This second case occurs when an external entity functions as an additional constraint rather than as a surrogate. In this situation, the external entity becomes part of the closure by generating new dependency relations among the system’s constraints. We will call this case extension by constraint composition (ECC). To illustrate this form of extension, consider the diving beetle ( Dytiscidae family). These predatory insects dive underwater to hunt fish, tadpoles, and other aquatic prey. They trap bubbles of air at the water's surface and hold them between the elytra (their hardened fore wings) and the abdomen. This trapped air bubble acts as an oxygen reservoir during submersion. Because the beetle’s tracheal system is equipped with pores (called spiracles ) beneath the elytra, oxygen diffuses from the bubble into the tracheal system. As the beetle consumes oxygen, its partial pressure within the bubble decreases, creating a pressure gradient that draws additional oxygen from the surrounding water. The continuous oxygen diffusion effectively recharges the bubble, allowing the beetle to remain underwater for weeks (Jones & Seymour, 2021 ; Seymour & Matthews, 2013 ; Kehl & Dettner, 2009 ). The beetle thus integrates the air bubble as a new constraint within its closure, thereby extending its autonomy. Colombetti ( 2017 ), drawing from Di Paolo ( 2009 ), uses the diving beetles and other aquatic insects to exemplify the extension of affectivity. According to her, the beetle forms a system with the bubble (the bubble-beetle system) that is distinct from the beetle in its terrestrial life. Because the bubble-beetle has a different niche from that of the beetle alone, a new set of possible behaviors, objects, events and valences arises, which lead Colombetti to argue that the bubble-beetle system is a new form of life. In this way, affectivity itself becomes extended through the inclusion of intermediate structures. Although Colombetti ( 2017 ) and Di Paolo ( 2009 ) support the possibility of autonomy extension, they do not show how extension of autonomy as such is derived from an organizational theory of autonomous systems. Nevertheless, we agree with Colombetti’s and Di Paolo’s general account. Here, the beetle-bubble composite represents one of the two possible cases of autonomy extension, corresponding to ECC. The organizational theory of autonomous systems implies ECC because the external entity is integrated into the closure as a new constraint. The criterion of ECC is the following: an autonomous system extends its autonomy by constraint composition to an external entity when the entity establishes a new set of dependency relations with the closure of constraints , where the entity enables, and is enabled by, other constraints (see Fig. 2 ). Importantly, ECC allows not only the creation of new dependencies involving just the added constraint, but also the transformation of pre-existing dependencies within the system. With a number of constraints bigger than the original, the system after extension may become more complex. In section 3.1 , we said that ECS has a conservative character because it preserves the closure’s topology, its normative field and the viability space. Now we will apply the same concepts to further analyse ECC. The establishment of new dependencies among constraints, including those coming from an external entity, produces a new closure and, therefore, a new autonomous system. Consequently, the closure’s topological boundary, viability space, and normative field are all redefined. This conclusion aligns with Colombetti’s ( 2017 ) account: the formation of a new form of life through extension, with changes in the system’s affordances, affections and environment, corresponds precisely to a transformation in these spaces. Therefore, ECC may be characterized as non-conservative 7 . As with ECS, the analysis of ECC gains depth when the type of autonomy is specified and some conditions for its realization are identified. The case of the diving beetle suggests that ECC occurs when (i) an essential resource becomes inaccessible in the current environment (e.g., food), (ii) the resource is available in a different environment, and (iii) an external entity can mediate access to that new environment. Thus, one main reason for a system to engage in ECC is to access new environments. From the viability space perspective, ECC can occur either in a precarious region, when there is a threat to the system maintenance, or in a viable region, when the extension simply opens up new possibilities without immediate threat. For instance, the beetle might dive to avoid starvation (precarious region) or simply to exploit a new food source (viable region). Although this example pertains to vital autonomy, the same class (to access new environments) can be found in other types of autonomy. Although this example pertains to vital autonomy, sensorimotor agents also can realize ECC to access new environments. For instance, a tool can be incorporated to grant access to new domains of action. Furthermore, external media such as pen and paper can function as constraints that enable novel forms of reasoning or abstraction. Cognitive scaffolding, as discussed in the extended cognition literature (Clark, 2006 ; Sterelny, 2004 , 2010 ), can thus be viewed as an instance of ECC where the reason for its deployment is also to access new environments, albeit an abstract one. The pen and paper allows the person to analyse and understand complicated mathematical structures which would not be possible to be done without the use of a recording method. It is possible that there are other classes for ECC in vital or other types of autonomy. But an exploration of other classes will remain as an open topic. Nevertheless, the general pattern is clear: ECC represents an expansion of autonomy through the assimilation of external entities that alter the system’s closure, transforming its boundaries, norms, and viability space. We have seen two cases in which an autonomous system has its autonomy extended to another entity. We argued that those cases follow from the definition of autonomous system and, more specifically, from the definition of closure of constraint. Although the organizational theory implies ECS and ECC, it does not exclude the possibility of those extensions occurring together. At least, some examples point to that possibility, as we will discuss now. 4. Discussion Having established the two cases of autonomy extension (ECS and ECC) implied by the organizational theory, we now turn to the broader implications of our account. This section situates our proposal within the enactive literature, particularly concerning the concept of incorporation and its relationship with the extended cognition hypothesis. Within the enactive literature, the concept of incorporation is pointed out by some authors as more preferable than the concept of extension. This preference would rest on two reasons. The first reason comes from objections against the extended cognition hypothesis articulated by Di Paolo ( 2009 ), which rejects the hypothesis reliance on functionalism and on a pre-theoretical notion of cognition. The second reason is one of redundancy: the organizational theory of autonomous systems can provide an understanding of cognition and already implies the possibility for an autonomous system to encompass external entities in its constitution - and this is the essence of the idea of extended cognition. As Di Paolo et al. ( 2017 , p. 153) note regarding sensorimotor agents: “boundaries of individuation are often actively and selectively created through specific actions or inhibition of actions ... These are functional boundaries, manifested at the level of relations between sensorimotor schemes”. In this way, given that enactivism possesses the notion of boundary individuation in the organizational theory, its primary task in developing an incorporation account is to characterize how and why external entities become part of the system’s constitution. Then, from the perspective of an enactive account of incorporation, the notion of extension appears either incoherent with enactivism or simply superfluous, without being able to contribute with anything. We argue, however, that the term ‘extension’ remains crucial, provided it is conceptually distinguished from ‘incorporation’. If we strip the functionalist premises from the notion of extension, we can repurpose it to denote a specific, formal-level concept: a change in the abstract, organizational boundary of the autonomous system. ‘Incorporation’, then, can be understood as the concrete, phenomenological, and affective process instantiating such an abstract extension. If this distinction between extension and incorporation holds, then our analysis provides some conditions for incorporation to happen. That is, every instance of incorporation must be a case of ECS or ECC and follow the corresponding character of those cases (be non-conservative or conservative). Thus, our account provides a conceptual-organizational grounding for the phenomenological analysis of incorporation. Our position aligns with De Preester and Tsakiris ( 2009 ) in maintaining that extension and incorporation are distinct processes, but we arrive at this conclusion on different grounds 8 . Whereas their argument was largely a critique of the functionalist-inspired 'extension' of the extended cognition literature, our distinction follows naturally from the organizational theory itself. Furthermore, our account also complements the phenomenological work on incorporation (e.g., Colombetti, 2023 ; Mojica & Di Paolo, 2025 ) by providing the formal-conceptual foundations. This complementarity, however, also reveals a productive tension. Our conceptual analysis yields two formal-organizational cases of extension, whereas Colombetti’s ( 2023 ) phenomenological analysis identifies three distinct notions of incorporation. Although resolving this tension is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth highlighting that it points toward a more complete characterization of the phenomenon - one that would successfully integrate the formal-organizational extension with the rich, phenomenological-affective concreteness of lived incorporation. Conclusions We argued that two elementary cases of extension are implied by the organizational theory of autonomous systems. ‘Extension’ was understood as the inclusion of an external entity in the system's closure of constraints. The first extension case was characterized by the destruction of some set of constraints, where the external entity acts as a constraint to replace them. We called this case ‘extension by constraint surrogate’. Our second extension case was characterized by a set of external entities that were added to the system’s closure. This case was called ‘extension by constraint composition’. For each case, we analysed what happens to the autonomous system’s topological unity, normative field and viability space. We further analysed those cases by showing that the specification of the type of autonomy is required to explain why some instance of extension occurs. Moreover, we suggested the possibility of mixed cases of extension that involves both the constraint composition with the constraint surrogate. Finally, we argued that both cases of extension are constraints to the enactive debate on incorporation, identifying a productive tension between our conceptual account of extension with phenomenological accounts of incorporation. Figure 1 . Extension by constraint surrogate: (a) the image shows an autonomous system (full circle) defined by a closure of constraint (C1 through C5), the dependencies among them (full arrows), and external constraints that do not constitute the system (EC1 and EC2); (b) extension by constraint surrogate occurs when some external entity (EE) is used as a surrogate for a destroyed constraint (C4). The surrogate entity has to establish the same dependencies that the original one (dotted arrows), conserving the viability of the autonomous system (dotted circle), now extended to the surrogate constraint. Figure 2 . Extension by constraint composition: (a) the autonomous system before extension is defined by a closure (full circle) composed by a set of constraints (C1 through C5) that are mutually dependent (full arrows) and interact with external constraints (EC1 and EC2); (b) extension by constraint composition occurs when some external entity (EE) is added to the system’s closure, establishing new dependencies relations (dotted arrows). References Barandiaran XE (2008) Mental life: A naturalized approach to the autonomy of cognitive agents. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=H4RGbI 0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra Barandiaran XE, Di Paolo E, Rohde M (2009) Defining agency: Individuality, normativity, asymmetry, and spatio-temporality in action. Adapt Behav 17(5):367–386. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059712309343819 Barandiaran XE, Egbert MD (2014) Norm-establishing and norm-following in autonomous agency. 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Tauber (Ed.), Organism and the Origins of Self (pp. 79–107). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3406-4_5 Colombetti G (2023) Varieties of incorporation: Beyond the blind man’s cane. In Contributions to Phenomenology (pp. 65–84). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_4 Footnotes Despite being thermodynamically open, as is the case with living beings. To be more precise, we understand - and will adopt as a hypothesis - that both formulations of autonomous systems are mathematically equivalent in a sense of duality and the decision of which one to use is thus a matter of convenience. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss this equivalence. For a more detailed treatment of minimal teleology in autonomous systems, see Barandiaran and Rama ( 2025 ). It should be noted that parenteral nutrition can be a treatment for patients that are unable to digest food. Nevertheless, we will stick to our hypothetical example for the sake of simplicity. That is not to say that the system will necessarily follow this path. Following Sterling and Eyer ( 1988 ), and Moreno and Mossio ( 2016 ), local regulation is a homeostatic response to compensate for variation in some constraint. In turn, global regulation is an allostatic response that modulates constitutive constraints. Extension by constraint composition admits the theoretical possibility of extending one’s autonomy to more than one entity. Moreover, it admits the possibility of extending one’s autonomy to another autonomous system. Here, we could ask if ECC can result in a higher-order autonomous system. Are multicellular organisms the product of single-celled beings extending their autonomy with one another? If we follow Moreno and Mossio ( 2016 , Chap. 6), functional differentiation and integration in ontogenesis are necessary processes to produce higher-order autonomous systems. Thus ECC cannot produce these kinds of systems. De Preester and Tsakiris ( 2009 ) justify the distinction between ‘incorporation’ and ‘extension’ through transformations of one’s body-model. For the authors, incorporation involves changes on a person’s body-model and in the consequent change of body-ownership, which phenomenologically includes the incorporated object as one’s body part. ‘Extension’, on the other hand, does not involve transformations in the body-model nor in the sense of body-ownership. Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. 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09:14:45","extension":"png","order_by":6,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":122043,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8437453/v1/01e242280dc002eb7b810f2b.png"},{"id":99509262,"identity":"7f6c36e2-e6b1-40eb-b26c-04ed776237e6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-05 09:14:45","extension":"xml","order_by":7,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":72034,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"rs84374530structuring.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8437453/v1/caec4d37007b9ffdd3f7a1f3.xml"},{"id":99509261,"identity":"d55a0118-6141-470e-94fe-80c99f9736ec","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-05 09:14:45","extension":"html","order_by":8,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":78500,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8437453/v1/472152522890eecde2ecb976.html"},{"id":99790948,"identity":"83ae2125-f96b-4646-85c6-625a4df9c533","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-08 12:58:54","extension":"jpeg","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":42318,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eExtension by constraint surrogate: (a) the image shows an autonomous system (full circle) defined by a closure of constraint (C1 through C5), the dependencies among them (full arrows), and external constraints that do not constitute the system (EC1 and EC2); (b) extension by constraint surrogate occurs when some external entity (EE) is used as a surrogate for a destroyed constraint (C4). The surrogate entity has to establish the same dependencies that the original one (dotted arrows), conserving the viability of the autonomous system (dotted circle), now extended to the surrogate constraint.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage1.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8437453/v1/d96db1eb100e602c78476168.jpeg"},{"id":99509257,"identity":"51246a72-164f-41a7-b8bf-3a5c41e36d2c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-05 09:14:45","extension":"jpeg","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":94348,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eExtension by constraint composition: (a) the autonomous system before extension is defined by a closure (full circle) composed by a set of constraints (C1 through C5) that are mutually dependent (full arrows) and interact with external constraints (EC1 and EC2); (b) extension by constraint composition occurs when some external entity (EE) is added to the system’s closure, establishing new dependencies relations (dotted arrows).\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage2.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8437453/v1/abd0e138ddcb2b3005a64ba9.jpeg"},{"id":99802891,"identity":"ec687c48-62f7-4d47-967f-6ca23ce44864","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-08 14:08:57","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":565150,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8437453/v1/2ede6608-1d8d-4731-884a-707268a1d76d.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn the Extension of Autonomy\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"1. Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe philosophical literature on autonomous systems has so far focused on giving an adequate and coherent definition of autonomy (Christensen \u0026amp; Hooker, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1999\u003c/span\u003e; Di Paolo et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Moreno \u0026amp; Mossio, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), to naturalize notions such as agency, adaptation, normativity, function and teleology through the activity of this sort of systems (Barandiaran, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e; Barandiaran et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e; Barandiaran \u0026amp; Rama, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Di Paolo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Moreno \u0026amp; Mossio, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), and to explore different types of autonomy other than the vital or biological autonomy (e.g., sensorimotor and personal autonomy) (Di Paolo et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; P\u0026eacute;rez-Verdugo \u0026amp; Barandiaran, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Varela, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e). Although there are many topics remaining to be explored, the literature provides a robust and powerful framework to understand mental processes. In this sense, enactivism is often portrayed as a philosophical development upon this framework (Di Paolo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Di Paolo \u0026amp; Thompson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Thompson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOne recent strand of development in enactivism concerns the topic of incorporation, the process of an object becoming part of someone\u0026rsquo;s body (Colombetti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e), and of extension of some autonomous systems\u0026rsquo; features (e.g., affectivity, ). Specifically, Mojica and Di Paolo (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e) draws on the autonomous systems framework and proposes two desiderata for an account of incorporation. The topic of incorporation can be seen as an enactive version of the idea of an extended mind - first proposed by Clark and Chalmers (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1998\u003c/span\u003e) under the banner of the extended cognition hypothesis - that is theoretically based and does not adopt the original functionalist standpoint (Di Paolo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). However, even though enactive accounts of extension (Colombetti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) and incorporation do justify the existence of those processes in an autonomous systems framework, they do not show how extension \u003cem\u003eper se\u003c/em\u003e is implied by such a framework, nor do they relate the notion of extension with the notion of incorporation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis paper provides an account of extension that strictly follows from Moreno and Mossio\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) organizational theory of autonomous systems. We will show that their organizational theory implies two ways an autonomous system can extend its autonomy to external entities. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e gives a brief overview of the autonomous systems literature, where we review the notion of \u003cem\u003eautopoiesis\u003c/em\u003e, its use by enactivism, the more recent formulations of enactivism in terms of autonomy, and the enactive account of incorporation. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e argues for two cases of autonomy extension, showing that they follow from the organizational theory, which also implies a criterion for each case of extension, and showing the consequences of such extensions when deployed by some autonomous system. Section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec8\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e discusses in more detail the relationship between the notions of extension and incorporation, and the consequences of our account for an enactive framework of incorporation or extension.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"2. The organizational theory of autonomy","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis section presents the organizational theory of autonomous systems that grounds the rest of the paper. We first situate that account historically in the autopoietic theory (Maturana \u0026amp; Varela, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e), then set out two contemporary formulations of autonomy - autonomy as a precarious closure of processes (Beer \u0026amp; Di Paolo, 2023) and autonomy as a closure of constraints (Moreno \u0026amp; Mossio, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) - and finally indicate how these formulations bear on debates about incorporation and extended cognition.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.1. From autopoiesis to autonomy\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eMaturana mentions in his preface to \u003cem\u003eDe Maquinas Y Seres Vivos\u003c/em\u003e that the autopoietic theory originated as an attempt to answer the question of what class of system is a living being (Maturana \u0026amp; Varela, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e, p. 11). Autopoietic theory states that what is common among all living beings is their \u003cem\u003eorganization\u003c/em\u003e, understood as an abstract, formal relation among entities. This organization, called \u003cem\u003eautopoiesis\u003c/em\u003e (= \u0026lsquo;self-generation\u0026rsquo;), defines the specific way in which the organism\u0026rsquo;s molecular processes relate to one another, satisfying two properties. First, each molecular process in the organization has to generate, and be generated by, other molecular processes that are also part of the organization. Second, this organization demarcates a physical boundary essential to the system\u0026rsquo;s maintenance. Maturana and Varela considered that the \u003cem\u003estructure\u003c/em\u003e of the living organism, understood as the material realization of its organization (Thompson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e), despite having a constant material and energetic flow, always maintains this formal relationship among molecular processes through this flow.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBy virtue of its very organization, autopoietic systems constantly generate its own borders, distinguishing itself from its environment. Moreover, these systems are \u003cem\u003eoperationally closed\u003c/em\u003e (Varela, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e), the property that the system\u0026rsquo;s constitutive processes generate other processes that also constitute the system\u003csup\u003e1\u003c/sup\u003e. The autopoietic system\u0026rsquo;s self-distinction and operational closure characterize these kinds of systems as ones that, in a sense, maintain their own internal dynamics, or that establish their own rules of functioning and conditions for existence. This motivates a shift from autopoiesis to the more general concept of autonomy (from Greek \u003cem\u003eauto\u003c/em\u003e - own - and \u003cem\u003enomos\u003c/em\u003e - law), which highlights the system\u0026rsquo;s capacity to determine and sustain its own norms of existence.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMotivated by autopoietic theory, some contemporary formulations of autonomous systems often prefer the broader concept of autonomy over autopoiesis (see (Nave, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e)), as the organizational principles apply beyond the molecular domain. For instance, Beer and Di Paolo (2023) define an autonomous system as a precarious and operationally closed network of processes, where precariousness denotes an existential dependence among the network\u0026rsquo;s processes (Di Paolo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). Nevertheless, in this paper we will primarily adopt the alternative definition from Moreno and Mossio (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), that formulates autonomy in terms of a \u003cem\u003eclosure of constraints\u003c/em\u003e: an autonomous system is one whose functioning is underpinned by a set of mutually enabling constraints that together constitute a closure. It should be noted that both definitions, in terms of closure of constraints or of processes, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, here we are using Moreno and Mossio\u0026rsquo;s definition just for the sake of convenience\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e. Our analysis in section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e equally applies to an autonomous system understood as a closure of processes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOn Moreno and Mossio\u0026rsquo;s account, a constraint is an entity that acts upon processes but are not modified by them, with its characteristics remaining unchanged after the process. Catalyzers of biochemical processes are examples of constraints. Crucially, whether a given entity qualifies as a constraint depends on the level of analysis. What works as a constraint at one scale is a process at a lower scale. So, in a closure of constraints, each constraint both depends on, and enables other, constraints in the set, and together they establish the dependencies that sustain the organization.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA system constituted by such a closure is inherently an interactive one. Much could be said about the interactive dimension of autonomous systems (see Moreno \u0026amp; Mossio, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e, Chap.\u0026nbsp;4). However, we will restrict ourselves to pin down three necessary properties of the system\u0026rsquo;s interaction with the environment, as developed by Barandiaran et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). First, interaction is \u003cem\u003easymmetrical\u003c/em\u003e: the environment can destroy the autonomous system, and it is the system that does something in the world to sustain itself, whereas the converse is not true. Second, the closure implies the existence of \u003cem\u003eviability conditions\u003c/em\u003e for its maintenance. There are limited states that the closure can realize and limited interactions that the system can undertake without being destroyed. Because the viability conditions must be constantly met, they are characterized as \u003cem\u003enormative\u003c/em\u003e. Considering that the autonomous system\u0026rsquo;s interactions must also satisfy the viability conditions, the interactions themselves are also normative. And third, the system\u0026rsquo;s interactions are \u003cem\u003eteleological\u003c/em\u003e in the sense that they are fundamentally \u003cem\u003efor\u003c/em\u003e the satisfaction of its norms (that is, for the satisfaction of its viability conditions)\u003csup\u003e3\u003c/sup\u003e. Systems that exhibit those three properties in its interactions are said to be \u003cem\u003eadaptive agents\u003c/em\u003e, or simply agents.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eImportant to our discussion is that the organizational theory of autonomous systems allows for another substrate other than molecular processes: all that is needed is for a set of entities to qualify as constraints (or processes) and to relate to each other in the manner characterized by the definition of closure, also satisfying the requirements for agency. For example, one can talk about \u003cem\u003evital\u003c/em\u003e autonomy when the substrates are biochemical processes and constraints (making this kind of autonomy analogous to \u003cem\u003eautopoiesis\u003c/em\u003e); or about \u003cem\u003esensorimotor\u003c/em\u003e autonomy, where the realizers are sensorimotor schemes (Di Paolo et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e); or even \u003cem\u003epersonal\u003c/em\u003e autonomy (P\u0026eacute;rez-Verdugo \u0026amp; Barandiaran, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Moreover, the theory also allows a given system to have more than one autonomous organization, with each kind of autonomy pertaining to distinct levels that nevertheless influence each other (e.g., a human being, which realizes all the types of autonomy above).\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec4\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.2. Extended cognition and sensorimotor incorporation\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eA key implication of defining autonomous systems by a closure of constraints is that it allows the system to encompass external entities within its constitution, which then becomes part of the system\u0026rsquo;s closure. This \u0026ldquo;built-in\u0026rdquo; feature of the theory is what provides the theoretical foundation for enactive accounts of \u003cem\u003eextension of affectivity\u003c/em\u003e (Colombetti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) and of \u003cem\u003eincorporation\u003c/em\u003e, the process of an object becoming part of someone\u0026rsquo;s body (Colombetti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e, Mojica \u0026amp; Di Paolo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). The work on incorporation may be understood as the enactive version of work on the extended cognition hypothesis (Clark \u0026amp; Chalmers, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1998\u003c/span\u003e), given that enactivists rejects the latter's reliance on functionalism and its use of a pre-theoretical and intuitive notion of cognition (Di Paolo \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHowever, while the enactive literature has fruitfully explored the phenomenology of incorporation and the possibility of extending affectivity, more can be said about extension if we closely follow the organizational theory of autonomous systems. In this way, our thesis is the following: \u003cem\u003ethe organizational theory of autonomous systems implies two ways for an autonomous system to extend its autonomy\u003c/em\u003e (or, it implies two cases of extension). As we discuss in section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec8\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e, if we are correct that the theory implies only two cases of extension, this creates some tension with incorporation accounts that claims for three kinds of incorporation (Colombetti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Thus, our objective in further analysing what the organizational theory implies for extension is to refine the existing discussion on this theme, aiming at a complete and coherent enactive account of extension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"3. Developing the two cases of extension","content":"\u003cp\u003eIn this section, we will argue that the organizational theory of autonomous systems implies two cases for an autonomous system to extend its autonomy. By \u0026lsquo;extension\u0026rsquo; we mean the inclusion of an external entity in the set of constraints that constitutes the autonomous system. It should be mentioned that although we are following Moreno and Mossio\u0026rsquo;s definition of an autonomous system, these extension cases would also follow if we defined it as a closure of processes. In this way, our analysis is entirely conceptual, and therefore these cases are in principle applicable to any type of autonomy (vital, sensorimotor, personal).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec6\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e3.1. First case: extension by constraint surrogate\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe first case of extension, which we term \u003cem\u003eextension by constraint surrogate\u003c/em\u003e (ECS), can be characterized as follows. An autonomous system extends its autonomy through ECS when it loses a set of constraints and an external entity is exploited to substitute for the missing constraints. In this situation, the external entity acts as a surrogate constraint. The cause for a system\u0026rsquo;s loss of constraints cannot be determined a priori. It may result from a malfunction that prevents a structure from acting as a constraint (as in the following example), or it might stem, at least in principle, from a deliberate substitution of those constraints.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAs an illustration of ECS, consider the example of a person suffering from Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disorder of the gastrointestinal system that causes inflammation and damage to the intestines or in other parts of the digestive tract. The disease may destroy or halt the production of some set of constraints, such as the intestine\u0026rsquo;s surface, crucial enzymes for digestion, or even disrupt the microbiota, thereby disabling the digestive processes. Moreover, in some severe cases of the disease, the destruction of this set of constraints cannot be solved by local or global regulatory mechanisms. As a result, the absorption of nutrients becomes impossible without medical intervention, threatening the person\u0026rsquo;s survival. Suppose that the person\u0026rsquo;s illness is so severe that no medication or immunobiological therapy can recover its missing constraints: the patient might then rely on a hypothetical device \u0026mdash; call it an artificial intestine \u0026mdash; that digests food and enables nutrient absorption\u003csup\u003e4\u003c/sup\u003e. Once coupled to the body, this device would act upon the digestive processes as the original biological constraints once did, restoring the mutual dependencies that sustain the closure of constraints, maintaining the system\u0026rsquo;s autonomy. According to the definition of closure of constraints, this artificial intestine, upon integration, becomes part of the system\u0026rsquo;s closure: the autonomous system now comprises both the patient and the artificial device.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe organizational theory of autonomous systems implies ECS. If an autonomous system is defined as an agent composed of a closure of constraints that maintains its own interactions with the environment, then any new (external) entity that becomes integrated into that closure thereby becomes part of the system. The system\u0026rsquo;s topological boundary thus expands to include the assimilated entity. ECS determines the general reasoning behind this process: a system extends its boundary when an external entity replaces a destroyed set of constraints and reproduces its relations within the closure. The organizational theory also implies a \u003cem\u003ecriterion\u003c/em\u003e for ECS, that enables an observer of the system to establish when an external entity acquires its status of constraint surrogate: formally, an entity qualifies as a surrogate constraint if it \u003cem\u003eestablishes the same mutual dependencies of the constraint that it is replacing\u003c/em\u003e (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo better grasp ECS, it is useful to examine its effects on three operational concepts central to the theory of autonomous systems: \u003cem\u003etopological boundary\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003enormative field\u003c/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eviability space\u003c/em\u003e (Barandiaran \u0026amp; Egbert, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e). The viability space is a mathematical construct that represents the relationship between the system\u0026rsquo;s essential variables and the relevant environmental parameters. In turn, the normative field is a set of vectors on the viability space that indicate, at each point on the viability space, the path the system must take in order to stay viable (alive, in the case of organisms)\u003csup\u003e5\u003c/sup\u003e. The topological boundary refers to the spatial relationships among the constraints that distinguish the system and the environment, which is not necessarily a physical or material boundary.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn our analysis, these concepts help specify how the system changes when extension is realized by comparing, for instance, the system\u0026rsquo;s viability space before and after extension. In the case of ECS, because the external entity replicates the missing constraint\u0026rsquo;s dependencies, the topological boundary of the set of constraints remains conserved. From an organizational perspective, the closure\u0026rsquo;s structure is restored rather than transformed. Consequently, the system\u0026rsquo;s normative field and viability space are also conserved\u0026mdash;the system continues to interact with the environment under the same conditions and norms as before. For this reason, ECS can be characterized as a \u003cem\u003econservative extension\u003c/em\u003e, preserving the closure\u0026rsquo;s topology despite substituting one of its components.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe conservative character of ECS, and in fact all of the discussion above, is valid for all types of autonomy (vital, sensorimotor, or personal). Nevertheless, if one wants to have a theoretically grounded account of extension, it is necessary to see what the theory\u0026rsquo;s limits are: how much the organizational theory allows for a pure conceptualization of extension. At this stage, deepening the analysis requires specifying the type of autonomy and the conditions for extension. If ECS is realized in vital autonomy, some conditions for ECS can be identified: (i) a malfunctioning constraint; (ii) the impossibility of restoring it through local or global regulation\u003csup\u003e6\u003c/sup\u003e; and (iii) a consequent threat to the closure\u0026rsquo;s maintenance. Note that those conditions are not arbitrary. The first is a restatement of ECS, but instead of using the term \u0026lsquo;destruction\u0026rsquo; we are specifying it to a context of vital autonomy, using instead the term \u0026lsquo;malfunctioning\u0026rsquo;. Furthermore, if the second condition were not there, then it would be possible to compensate for the malfunctioning constraint by regulatory mechanisms and ECS would not be necessary. Thus, the second condition is necessary for ECS at vital autonomy. The third is also a necessary condition because it ensures, given (i) and (ii), that ECS will be realized if the system is able to do so.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom the perspective of the viability space, then, the system undergoing ECS operates in the \u003cem\u003eprecarious region\u003c/em\u003e, where its existence is endangered but not yet terminated. In some other instances, the extension may take place even when the system has lost adaptivity but remains alive \u0026mdash; as in the situation, for example, when another agent (such as a physician) performs the coupling in some autonomous system (such as the patient) necessary to restore closure.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, it should be noted that despite being theoretically well-grounded and possible in principle, ECS may be rare or even infeasible in most biological systems. The reason lies in the heavy requirements an external entity must meet to qualify as a surrogate constraint. The intricate dependencies and precarious dynamics of biological systems make it extraordinarily difficult for any external structure to replicate a lost constraint with enough adequacy. In practice, only artificial expedients may fulfill such a role, where the external entity is an artifact. This limitation reinforces the exceptional character of ECS and distinguishes it sharply from the second case - \u003cem\u003eextension by constraint composition\u003c/em\u003e - which exhibits a more widespread nature, as follows.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec7\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e3.2. Second case: extension by constraint composition\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe first case of autonomy extension discussed above involved the substitution of a missing constraint by an external entity. However, the definition of an autonomous system as a closure of constraints also admits another form of extension, one that does not depend on replacement. This second case occurs when an external entity functions as an \u003cem\u003eadditional\u003c/em\u003e constraint rather than as a surrogate. In this situation, the external entity becomes part of the closure by generating new dependency relations among the system\u0026rsquo;s constraints. We will call this case \u003cem\u003eextension by constraint composition\u003c/em\u003e (ECC).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo illustrate this form of extension, consider the diving beetle (\u003cem\u003eDytiscidae\u003c/em\u003e family). These predatory insects dive underwater to hunt fish, tadpoles, and other aquatic prey. They trap bubbles of air at the water's surface and hold them between the \u003cem\u003eelytra\u003c/em\u003e (their hardened fore wings) and the abdomen. This trapped air bubble acts as an oxygen reservoir during submersion. Because the beetle\u0026rsquo;s tracheal system is equipped with pores (called \u003cem\u003espiracles\u003c/em\u003e) beneath the elytra, oxygen diffuses from the bubble into the tracheal system. As the beetle consumes oxygen, its partial pressure within the bubble decreases, creating a pressure gradient that draws additional oxygen from the surrounding water. The continuous oxygen diffusion effectively recharges the bubble, allowing the beetle to remain underwater for weeks (Jones \u0026amp; Seymour, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Seymour \u0026amp; Matthews, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Kehl \u0026amp; Dettner, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). The beetle thus integrates the air bubble as a new constraint within its closure, thereby extending its autonomy.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eColombetti (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e), drawing from Di Paolo (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e), uses the diving beetles and other aquatic insects to exemplify the extension of affectivity. According to her, the beetle forms a system with the bubble (the bubble-beetle system) that is distinct from the beetle in its terrestrial life. Because the bubble-beetle has a different niche from that of the beetle alone, a new set of possible behaviors, objects, events and valences arises, which lead Colombetti to argue that the bubble-beetle system is a new form of life. In this way, affectivity itself becomes extended through the inclusion of intermediate structures. Although Colombetti (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) and Di Paolo (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) support the possibility of autonomy extension, they do not show how extension of autonomy as such is derived from an organizational theory of autonomous systems. Nevertheless, we agree with Colombetti\u0026rsquo;s and Di Paolo\u0026rsquo;s general account. Here, the beetle-bubble composite represents one of the two possible cases of autonomy extension, corresponding to ECC.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe organizational theory of autonomous systems implies ECC because the external entity is integrated into the closure as a new constraint. The criterion of ECC is the following: an autonomous system extends its autonomy by constraint composition to an external entity when the entity \u003cem\u003eestablishes a new set of dependency relations with the closure of constraints\u003c/em\u003e, where the entity enables, and is enabled by, other constraints (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e). Importantly, ECC allows not only the creation of new dependencies involving just the added constraint, but also the transformation of pre-existing dependencies within the system. With a number of constraints bigger than the original, the system after extension may become more complex.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec6\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3.1\u003c/span\u003e, we said that ECS has a conservative character because it preserves the closure\u0026rsquo;s topology, its normative field and the viability space. Now we will apply the same concepts to further analyse ECC. The establishment of new dependencies among constraints, including those coming from an external entity, produces a new closure and, therefore, a new autonomous system. Consequently, the closure\u0026rsquo;s topological boundary, viability space, and normative field are all redefined. This conclusion aligns with Colombetti\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) account: the formation of a new form of life through extension, with changes in the system\u0026rsquo;s affordances, affections and environment, corresponds precisely to a transformation in these spaces. Therefore, ECC may be characterized as non-conservative\u003csup\u003e7\u003c/sup\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAs with ECS, the analysis of ECC gains depth when the type of autonomy is specified and some conditions for its realization are identified. The case of the diving beetle suggests that ECC occurs when (i) an essential resource becomes inaccessible in the current environment (e.g., food), (ii) the resource is available in a different environment, and (iii) an external entity can mediate access to that new environment. Thus, one main reason for a system to engage in ECC is to access new environments. From the viability space perspective, ECC can occur either in a precarious region, when there is a threat to the system maintenance, or in a viable region, when the extension simply opens up new possibilities without immediate threat. For instance, the beetle might dive to avoid starvation (precarious region) or simply to exploit a new food source (viable region).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough this example pertains to vital autonomy, the same class (to access new environments) can be found in other types of autonomy.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough this example pertains to vital autonomy, sensorimotor agents also can realize ECC to access new environments. For instance, a tool can be incorporated to grant access to new domains of action. Furthermore, external media such as pen and paper can function as constraints that enable novel forms of reasoning or abstraction. Cognitive scaffolding, as discussed in the extended cognition literature (Clark, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e; Sterelny, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e), can thus be viewed as an instance of ECC where the reason for its deployment is also to access new environments, albeit an abstract one. The pen and paper allows the person to analyse and understand complicated mathematical structures which would not be possible to be done without the use of a recording method. It is possible that there are other classes for ECC in vital or other types of autonomy. But an exploration of other classes will remain as an open topic. Nevertheless, the general pattern is clear: ECC represents an expansion of autonomy through the assimilation of external entities that alter the system\u0026rsquo;s closure, transforming its boundaries, norms, and viability space.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe have seen two cases in which an autonomous system has its autonomy extended to another entity. We argued that those cases follow from the definition of autonomous system and, more specifically, from the definition of closure of constraint. Although the organizational theory implies ECS and ECC, it does not exclude the possibility of those extensions occurring together. At least, some examples point to that possibility, as we will discuss now.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"4. Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eHaving established the two cases of autonomy extension (ECS and ECC) implied by the organizational theory, we now turn to the broader implications of our account. This section situates our proposal within the enactive literature, particularly concerning the concept of incorporation and its relationship with the extended cognition hypothesis.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWithin the enactive literature, the concept of incorporation is pointed out by some authors as more preferable than the concept of extension. This preference would rest on two reasons. The first reason comes from objections against the extended cognition hypothesis articulated by Di Paolo (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e), which rejects the hypothesis reliance on functionalism and on a pre-theoretical notion of cognition. The second reason is one of redundancy: the organizational theory of autonomous systems can provide an understanding of cognition and already implies the possibility for an autonomous system to encompass external entities in its constitution - and this is the essence of the idea of extended cognition. As Di Paolo et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e, p. 153) note regarding sensorimotor agents: \u0026ldquo;boundaries of individuation are often actively and selectively created through specific actions or inhibition of actions ... These are functional boundaries, manifested at the level of relations between sensorimotor schemes\u0026rdquo;. In this way, given that enactivism possesses the notion of boundary individuation in the organizational theory, its primary task in developing an incorporation account is to characterize \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ewhy\u003c/em\u003e external entities become part of the system\u0026rsquo;s constitution. Then, from the perspective of an enactive account of incorporation, the notion of extension appears either incoherent with enactivism or simply superfluous, without being able to contribute with anything.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe argue, however, that the term \u0026lsquo;extension\u0026rsquo; remains crucial, provided it is conceptually distinguished from \u0026lsquo;incorporation\u0026rsquo;. If we strip the functionalist premises from the notion of extension, we can repurpose it to denote a specific, formal-level concept: a change in the abstract, organizational boundary of the autonomous system. \u0026lsquo;Incorporation\u0026rsquo;, then, can be understood as the concrete, phenomenological, and affective process instantiating such an abstract extension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIf this distinction between extension and incorporation holds, then our analysis provides some conditions for incorporation to happen. That is, every instance of incorporation must be a case of ECS or ECC and follow the corresponding character of those cases (be non-conservative or conservative). Thus, our account provides a conceptual-organizational grounding for the phenomenological analysis of incorporation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOur position aligns with De Preester and Tsakiris (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) in maintaining that extension and incorporation are distinct processes, but we arrive at this conclusion on different grounds\u003csup\u003e8\u003c/sup\u003e. Whereas their argument was largely a critique of the functionalist-inspired 'extension' of the extended cognition literature, our distinction follows naturally from the organizational theory itself. Furthermore, our account also complements the phenomenological work on incorporation (e.g., Colombetti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Mojica \u0026amp; Di Paolo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e) by providing the formal-conceptual foundations.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis complementarity, however, also reveals a productive tension. Our conceptual analysis yields two formal-organizational cases of extension, whereas Colombetti\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) phenomenological analysis identifies three distinct notions of incorporation. Although resolving this tension is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth highlighting that it points toward a more complete characterization of the phenomenon - one that would successfully integrate the formal-organizational extension with the rich, phenomenological-affective concreteness of lived incorporation.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusions","content":"\u003cp\u003eWe argued that two elementary cases of extension are implied by the organizational theory of autonomous systems. \u0026lsquo;Extension\u0026rsquo; was understood as the inclusion of an external entity in the system's closure of constraints. The first extension case was characterized by the destruction of some set of constraints, where the external entity acts as a constraint to replace them. We called this case \u0026lsquo;extension by constraint surrogate\u0026rsquo;. Our second extension case was characterized by a set of external entities that were added to the system\u0026rsquo;s closure. This case was called \u0026lsquo;extension by constraint composition\u0026rsquo;. For each case, we analysed what happens to the autonomous system\u0026rsquo;s topological unity, normative field and viability space. We further analysed those cases by showing that the specification of the type of autonomy is required to explain why some instance of extension occurs. Moreover, we suggested the possibility of mixed cases of extension that involves both the constraint composition with the constraint surrogate. Finally, we argued that both cases of extension are constraints to the enactive debate on incorporation, identifying a productive tension between our conceptual account of extension with phenomenological accounts of incorporation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFigure \u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e. Extension by constraint surrogate: (a) the image shows an autonomous system (full circle) defined by a closure of constraint (C1 through C5), the dependencies among them (full arrows), and external constraints that do not constitute the system (EC1 and EC2); (b) extension by constraint surrogate occurs when some external entity (EE) is used as a surrogate for a destroyed constraint (C4). The surrogate entity has to establish the same dependencies that the original one (dotted arrows), conserving the viability of the autonomous system (dotted circle), now extended to the surrogate constraint.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFigure \u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e. Extension by constraint composition: (a) the autonomous system before extension is defined by a closure (full circle) composed by a set of constraints (C1 through C5) that are mutually dependent (full arrows) and interact with external constraints (EC1 and EC2); (b) extension by constraint composition occurs when some external entity (EE) is added to the system\u0026rsquo;s closure, establishing new dependencies relations (dotted arrows).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBarandiaran XE (2008) Mental life: A naturalized approach to the autonomy of cognitive agents. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=H4RGbI\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=H4RGbI\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e0AAAAJ\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;oi=sra\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBarandiaran XE, Di Paolo E, Rohde M (2009) Defining agency: Individuality, normativity, asymmetry, and spatio-temporality in action. 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Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 9(4):465\u0026ndash;481. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-010-9174-y\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s11097-010-9174-y\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSterling P, Eyer J (1988) Allostasis: A New Paradigm to Explain Arousal Pathology. In: Fisher S, Reason J (eds) Handbook of Life Stress, Cognition and Health. Wiley, pp 629\u0026ndash;649. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://retina.anatomy.upenn.edu/pdfiles/5446.pdf\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://retina.anatomy.upenn.edu/pdfiles/5446.pdf\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThompson E (2007) Mind in life: biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Belknap Press of Harvard University\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVarela FJ (1991) Organism: A Meshwork of Selfless Selves. In A. I. Tauber (Ed.), Organism and the Origins of Self (pp. 79\u0026ndash;107). Springer Netherlands. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3406-4_5\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/978-94-011-3406-4_5\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eColombetti G (2023) Varieties of incorporation: Beyond the blind man\u0026rsquo;s cane. In \u003cem\u003eContributions to Phenomenology\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 65\u0026ndash;84). Springer International Publishing. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_4\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_4\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Footnotes","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Despite being thermodynamically open, as is the case with living beings.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e To be more precise, we understand - and will adopt as a hypothesis - that both formulations of autonomous systems are mathematically equivalent in a sense of duality and the decision of which one to use is thus a matter of convenience. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss this equivalence.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e For a more detailed treatment of minimal teleology in autonomous systems, see Barandiaran and Rama (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e It should be noted that parenteral nutrition can be a treatment for patients that are unable to digest food. Nevertheless, we will stick to our hypothetical example for the sake of simplicity.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e That is not to say that the system will necessarily follow this path.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Following Sterling and Eyer (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1988\u003c/span\u003e), and Moreno and Mossio (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e), local regulation is a homeostatic response to compensate for variation in some constraint. In turn, global regulation is an allostatic response that modulates constitutive constraints.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Extension by constraint composition admits the theoretical possibility of extending one\u0026rsquo;s autonomy to more than one entity. Moreover, it admits the possibility of extending one\u0026rsquo;s autonomy to another autonomous system. Here, we could ask if ECC can result in a higher-order autonomous system. Are multicellular organisms the product of single-celled beings extending their autonomy with one another? If we follow Moreno and Mossio (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e, Chap.\u0026nbsp;6), functional differentiation and integration in ontogenesis are necessary processes to produce higher-order autonomous systems. Thus ECC cannot produce these kinds of systems.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e De Preester and Tsakiris (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) justify the distinction between \u0026lsquo;incorporation\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;extension\u0026rsquo; through transformations of one\u0026rsquo;s body-model. For the authors, incorporation involves changes on a person\u0026rsquo;s body-model and in the consequent change of body-ownership, which phenomenologically includes the incorporated object as one\u0026rsquo;s body part. \u0026lsquo;Extension\u0026rsquo;, on the other hand, does not involve transformations in the body-model nor in the sense of body-ownership.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"Universidade de São Paulo","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":true,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Autonomous Systems, Closure of Constraints, Extension, Incorporation, Enactivism","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8437453/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8437453/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eThe aim of this paper is to provide an account of extension that strictly follows from the organizational theory of autonomous systems, further developing recent enactive accounts of extension and incorporation. We examine Moreno and Mossio\u0026rsquo;s definition of an autonomous system, developed in \u003cem\u003eBiological Autonomy\u003c/em\u003e. Then, we argue that their definition provides two different ways an autonomous system can extend its autonomy to external entities (extension by constraint surrogate and extension by constraint composition), together with a criterion for each case of extension. We also consider that each case can be characterized by transformations of the autonomous system\u0026rsquo;s viability space, normative field and topological unity. We discuss the consequences of our account for the recent enactive views on incorporation and extension, arguing that the notion of \u0026lsquo;extension\u0026rsquo; does not necessarily require functionalism and that it can be usefully adopted by enactivism. Finally, we show that a productive tension is created between the extension cases developed here and the enactive accounts of incorporation.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"On the Extension of Autonomy","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-01-05 09:14:40","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8437453/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"8b8b04fd-9ac3-4139-87ab-9f3bb5c7ecd2","owner":[],"postedDate":"January 5th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":60146336,"name":"Philosophy"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-01-05T09:14:40+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-01-05 09:14:40","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8437453","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8437453","identity":"rs-8437453","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}