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Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences

Synthese 198 (Suppl 1):137-157 (2020)

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  1. The Principle of Dynamic Holism: Guiding Methodology for Investigating Cognition in Nonneuronal Organisms.Matthew Sims - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 91 (2):430 - 448.
    Basal cognition investigates cognition working upward from nonneuronal organisms. Because basal cognition is committed to empirically testable hypotheses, a methodological challenge arises: how can experiments avoid using zoocentric assumptions that ignore the ecological contexts that might elicit cognitively driven behavior in nonneuronal organisms? To meet this challenge, I articulate the principle of dynamic holism (PDH), a methodological principle for guiding research on nonneuronal cognition. I describe PDH’s relation to holistic research programs in human-focused cognitive science and psychology then present an (...)
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  • Why can’t we say what cognition is (at least for the time being).Marco Facchin - 2023 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 4.
    Some philosophers search for the mark of the cognitive: a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions identifying all instances of cognition. They claim that the mark of the cognitive is needed to steer the development of cognitive science on the right path. Here, I argue that, at least at present, it cannot be provided. First (§2), I identify some of the factors motivating the search for a mark of the cognitive, each yielding a desideratum the mark is supposed (...)
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  • An instrumentalist take on the models of the Free-Energy Principle.Niccolò Aimone Pisano - 2023 - Synthese 201 (4):1-27.
    In this paper, by means of a novel use of insights from the literature on scientific modelling, I will argue in favour of an instrumentalist approach to the models that are crucially involved in the study of adaptive systems within the Free-Energy Principle (FEP) framework. I will begin (§2) by offering a general, informal characterisation of FEP. Then (§3), I will argue that the models involved in FEP-theorising are plausibly intended to be isomorphic to their targets. This will allow (§4) (...)
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  • Why studying plant cognition is valuable, even if plants aren’t cognitive.David Colaço - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-18.
    Philosophers and scientists propose the idea that plants are cognitive, which has been met with criticisms. These criticisms focus on the fact that plants do not possess the properties traditionally associated with cognition. By contrast, several proponents introduce novel ways to conceptualize cognition. How should we make sense of this debate? In this paper, I argue that the plant cognition debate is not about whether plants meet a set of well-delineated and agreed-upon criteria according to which they count as cognitive. (...)
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  • Is free-energy minimisation the mark of the cognitive?Matt Sims & Julian Kiverstein - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (2):1-27.
    A mark of the cognitive should allow us to specify theoretical principles for demarcating cognitive from non-cognitive causes of behaviour in organisms. Specific criteria are required to settle the question of when in the evolution of life cognition first emerged. An answer to this question should however avoid two pitfalls. It should avoid overintellectualising the minds of other organisms, ascribing to them cognitive capacities for which they have no need given the lives they lead within the niches they inhabit. But (...)
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  • Cognitive science meets the mark of the cognitive: putting the horse before the cart.Joe Gough - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 38 (1):1-24.
    Among those living systems, which are cognizers? Among the behaviours of, and causes of behaviour in, living systems, which are cognitive? Such questions sit at the heart of a sophisticated, ongoing debate, of which the recent papers by Corcoran et al. ( 2020 ) and Sims and Kiverstein ( 2021 ) serve as excellent examples. I argue that despite their virtues, both papers suffer from flawed conceptions of the point of the debate. This leaves their proposals ill-motivated—good answers to the (...)
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  • Attributing Psychological Predicates to Non-human Animals: Literalism and its Limits.Andrés Crelier - 2023 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (4):1309-1328.
    In this essay, I deal with the problem of the attribution of psychological predicates to non-human animals. The first section illustrates three research topics where it has become scientifically legitimate to explain the conduct of non-human animals by means of the attribution of psychological predicates. The second section discusses several philosophical objections to the legitimacy of such attributions provided by central thinkers from the last decades. I try to show that these objections —which are related among other questions to the (...)
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