PRINCIPIA 26(1): 95–111 (2022) doi: 10.5007/1808-1711.2022.e84679 Published by NEL — Epistemology and Logic Research Group, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. COMPATIBILIZANDO AUTOPOIESE E A TRIBUIÇÕES FUNCIONAIS MAKING AUTOPOIESIS AND FUNCTIONAL ATTRIBUTIONS COMPATIBLE JOÃO WILLIAN STAKONSKI Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, BRASIL willianstakonski@hotmail.com Abstract. When structuring their comprehension about living beings as autopoietic ma- chines, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela repeatedly weave criticisms to the ap- plication of the notions of function and fitness then established in scientific theories. Such criticisms are presented in two main fronts: the authors say that functional attributions are causally inert, what reduces them to mere non-operational explanatory artifices; on the other hand, they defend that every organism, as long as it is not destroyed in its interactions with the medium, conserves its fitness, which is constitutive of living beings and, therefore, invariable. However, as Gustavo Caponi defends, we can understand that attributing functions means nothing more than highlighting causal roles they play in certain reference processes, so that the comparison between structures that perform the same function enable the measurement of different degrees of efficiency in its performance. In the field of biology, this conceptual structure is translated into the biological functions, performed by different organismic subsys- tems that relates to life cycle maintenance, as well as into fitness, understood as the efficiency in the operation of such functions and determinative of the evolutionary process. We argue that Caponi’s proposal is immune to both attacks made by the Chilean authors, as it incor- porates an operational and contextual content into functional attributions and enables the reference to fitness, whose evolutionary importance can be measured from time to time. Such an approach seems to be, moreover, a very opportune addition to the theory of autopoiesis, equipping it with a much pertinent conception of functional attributions. Keywords: Autopoiesis • functional attributions • causal roles • fitness • adaptation RECEIVED: 04/11/2021 REVISED: 18/03/2022 ACCEPTED: 01/04/2022 1. Introdução Em meados da década de 1970, dois neurobiólogos chilenos, Humberto Maturana e Francisco Varela, começam a estruturar o que seria futuramente conhecido como Teoria da Autopoiese. Tratava-se de uma nova interpretação dos fenômenos biológi- cos, em cuja base estava a ideia de que o que define a classe específica de entidades que são os seres vivos é que estes são formados por uma rede de processos de trans- formação e produção molecular cujo produto são os componentes necessários para © 2022 The author(s). Open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.