On Minimal Cognition

“Cognition isn’t reserved only to vertebrates with language, reason, or self-awareness. There are more primitive cognitive subsystems within us, around us, and all along the ladder of evolutionary time. Studying them is the purview of an emerging interdisciplinary field in biology: ‘minimal cognition’ or ‘basal cognition’... That is to say, in order to get useful answers, it helps to meet the slime mold where it’s at. Other organisms may help us to answer different questions. And if we align our questions with the inherent capabilities of the organisms we employ in our computational experiments, we can yoke together our interests, too. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in minimal cognition. Not only because it opens up the definition of what a brain can be, but because it binds us to the world, drawing our brains into a broader phenomenon that touches life at every level. We’re nothing special. As Reid said to me, laughing, ‘in some ways, it’s information processing all the way down.’”

Claire Lewis, “What's a Brain? On Bacterial, Cellular, and Other Minimal Minds” - https://clairelevans.substack.com/p/whats-a-brain. Interesting brief summary of minimal cognition. My view is increasingly similar, but if this is the case, it means there are hermeneutic and semiotic interests here.