De-anthropomorphizing the mind: life as a cognitive spectrum in a unified framework for biological minds

Cognition is not limited to organisms with nervous systems but is an organizational property of all living systems, from single cells to complex animals. Living systems engage in learning, memory, and goal-directed behavior by transforming information embodied in their physical structures and interactions with the environment. This info-computational (ICON) framework views these processes as present from the start of life, becoming more integrated and temporally extended with increasing biological complexity. It explains how complex cognition, awareness, and mind arise from basic life-regulatory dynamics and generates testable implications for basal cognition, developmental biology, and embodied artificial systems.

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Abstract

Cognition, sentience, intelligence, awareness, and mind are often treated as distinct phenomena that emerge only at higher levels of biological organization, typically associated with nervous systems or human cognition. However, empirical research increasingly demonstrates learning, memory, adaptive behavior, and goal-directed regulation across a wide range of living systems, including single cells, tissues, and organisms without brains. This paper proposes a unifying framework in which cognition is understood as an organizational property of living systems, grounded in information embodied in their physical structures and in their ongoing interactions with the environment. Within this info-computational (ICON) perspective, living systems engage in behavior, learning, and anticipation by dynamically transforming embodied information through distributed, physically realized processes that support viability and self-maintenance. These processes are present from the onset of life and become progressively more integrated and temporally extended with increasing biological organization. The framework provides explanatory continuity across biological scales and clarifies how complex forms of cognition, awareness, and mind arise as elaborations of basic life-regulatory dynamics. It generates empirically grounded, testable implications for basal cognition, developmental biology, and embodied artificial systems, in the domains such as morphogenetic regulation, bioelectric control, and embodied physical architectures where its implications can be tested.