The Evolution of Cognition

4E cognition provides a biologically grounded alternative to classic cognitivism, arguing that bodies evolved before brains and that cognition must be understood as the ability of organisms to coordinate and control action in a dynamic environment. The chapter introduces minimal criteria for cognition from a biogenic approach, links the origins of cognition to sensorimotor coordination via the skin-brain thesis (early nervous systems enabled coordinated contractions across myoepithelia), and discusses how radical enactivism offers a view of evolutionary continuity that resists anthropocentric tendencies in traditional cognitivism.

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Abstract

Abstract 4E cognition offers a viable alternative to the viewpoint of classic cognitivism, providing a coherent, biologically grounded theory of cognitive evolution, which recognizes that bodies evolved before brains, and argues that whatever cognition might be, it must be grounded in the ability of organisms to coordinate and control action in a dynamic environment. In this chapter, I first consider some ideas relating to the minimal criteria for cognition as a means to introduce this more “biogenic” approach. This notion of minimal cognition is then linked to a discussion of the origins of cognition in sensorimotor coordination, as articulated in the “skin-brain thesis,” which argues that early nervous systems enabled coordinated contractions across myoepithelia. Finally, I consider how one particular school of 4E thought, radical enactivism, offers a view of evolutionary continuity that seems well equipped to resist the anthropocentric impulses of traditional cognitivist views.