“Autopoietic approach” and “capability approach” in the educational process of the young generation

Abstract

We are witnessing today an intense debate on the issue of innovative processes in education and a lively dialectic on the foundations of knowledge and its structural, social and cultural dynamics.
Autopoiesis theory applied to educational processes, on the one hand, and the capability approach, from another perspective, could open up new horizons of theorizing; it comes, in short, to consider learning in enactive and generative terms, emphasizing the role of creativity, of planning and of innovation capacity of the mind (revisiting the developments of constructivist thought: from the “personal constructs” – Kelly 2004 – to the “theory of radical constructivism” – von Glasersfeeld – from the “autopoietic approach” – Maturana and Varela – to the theory of “radical embodiment” – Thompson and Varela – ) and as the capability approach (revisiting the issues of the human dignity, of
the social justice and of the substantial freedom of Martha Nussbaum).
In this perspective, it is interesting the hypothesis of the existence of three different expressions of the Human Mind, enclosed in a single procedural dimension, that is the element of unity/distinction of cognitive processes: a Fhenomenological Mind, a Computational Mind and a Biohysiological Mind as reference to a “semantics of knowledge”, to a “logical syntax of knowing” and a “grammar of knowing”.