Cognition With and Beyond the Brain: Assemblages, Endosomatization, and AI-Driven Sensory Technologies
Antikythera Digital Journal May 10, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1162/anti.5czn via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Cognition is not confined to the brain or to humans but emerges from entangled relationships among bodies, environments, and technologies. Rejecting computationalist and reductionist views, the author adopts a relational, process-oriented ontology to describe cognition as a multilayered process shaped by cognitive assemblages. Drawing on the 4E cognition framework and Hayles's theory of cognitive assemblages, the paper argues that nonhuman agents and technical objects dynamically extend cognition.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Cognition is a relational, entangled process shaped by interactions with nonhuman agents and technical objects, and AI-driven sensory technologies could reintegrate extracted cognitive processes into human thought. |
Abstract
This paper explores the potential for reconceptualizing cognition beyond brain-centered and anthropocentric readings, highlighting the entanglement between the body, the environment, and emerging technologies. Critiquing the limitations of computationalist and reductionist perspectives as well as rejecting any possible unifying definition of the phenomenon of cognition, I advocate for a relational, entangled, and process-oriented ontological standpoint to examine cognition as a multilayered process dependent on complex cognitive assemblages. Drawing on the 4E cognition framework (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended), I integrate insights from Hayles’s theory of cognitive assemblages to emphasize how cognition is dynamically shaped and extended through interactions with nonhuman agents and technical objects. Further, building on Stiegler’s reflection on human technogenesis and the relationship between exosomatic organisms and endosomatic processes, I propose a speculative framework to envision forms of artificial endosomatization. Specifically, I discuss the case of AI-driven sensory technologies, imagining how some cognitive processes are not merely extracted but reintegrated into human thought through advanced sensory feedback systems.