You might enjoy anything written by Humberto Maturana. There are some sharp lines he draws in defining a living system—what he refers to as autopoietic (self-bu

You might enjoy anything written by Humberto Maturana. There are some sharp lines he draws in defining a living system—what he refers to as autopoietic (self-building) systems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana For Hofstadter consciousness requires some form of recursion—what he calls strange loops. Our brains are recursion machines “we” can partly control “ourselves”.