Conventional framing
Cognition is typically understood as information processing, representation, or mental activity, often associated with nervous systems, perception, and decision-making. It is frequently treated as requiring internal models, symbolic representation, or consciousness.
APS reframing
In APS, cognition is viability-oriented regulation with counterfactual depth. A system is cognitive when its evaluative activity extends beyond immediate conditions, such that present regulation is shaped by states that are not currently occurring but could occur, have occurred, or are otherwise relevant to future viability.
Counterfactual depth specifies this temporal reach: the capacity of evaluative modulation to operate with respect to absent, delayed, or possible conditions. Cognition therefore requires the stabilisation and integration of evaluative states across time, enabling regulation that is partially decoupled from immediate stimuli while remaining grounded in viability-oriented organisation.
Cognition is not identical with agency and is not required for life. All cognitive systems are agential, but many agential systems are non-cognitive. Cognition is a contingent elaboration of agency in which evaluative modulation acquires sufficient temporal scope to organise activity with respect to non-present conditions.
This distinction is empirically testable: a system is cognitive only when its current regulation is demonstrably shaped by temporally displaced evaluations rather than immediate conditions alone. Minimal organisms such as Escherichia coli exhibit agency but remain tightly coupled to present conditions, whereas many plants exhibit cognition through temporally integrated regulation of growth, defence, and development.
Cognition builds on semiosis—real-time evaluative sense-making—but extends it across temporal horizons, enabling regulation organised with respect to anticipated or delayed viability-relevant conditions.
Key Point
Cognition is not required for life: it arises when viability-oriented regulation becomes temporally extended beyond the present.