The cognition research stream brings the APS framework into dialogue with contemporary cognitive science, particularly the enactivist and embodied cognition traditions. If agency is grounded in the self-maintaining organisation of living systems, what does this imply for our understanding of cognition?

Key Questions

  • How did cognition become a biological problem?
  • What distinguishes cognitive organisation from sophisticated biological regulation?
  • How should proposed cases of cognition be compared with adequate non-cognitive explanations?
  • How do embodied, ecological, enactive, distributed, and other contemporary approaches contribute to biological explanation of cognition?
  • How are cognitive processes materially organised across spatial and temporal extents?

The historical and conceptual orientation is developed in How Did Cognition Become a Biological Problem?. The core APS account of cognitive organisation is developed in The Cognitive Organisation of Life, while Cognition — Where Does It Belong in Biology? situates cognition within the wider biological architecture. The cognition–regulation boundary is investigated through the APS work on minimal cognition.