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Cognition as a Property of Life

Biology’s reading of the word: cognition is not fenced to minds but is a property of life — perhaps of any system that maintains itself against its surroundings. Each position forces the definitional question — if a cell or a colony does this, is it cognition or metaphor? — and the field has no agreed answer. The reading runs on into enactivism and biosemiotics.

• Von Uexküll gave every animal its own Umwelt — a world of significance built by its own sensory and motor repertoire, as many worlds as kinds of subject.
• Maturana and Varela stated the widest position in the literature with the Santiago theory, grown from their autopoiesis: living as a process is a process of cognition — a living system, by maintaining itself, already knows its world, nervous system or none.
• Piaget’s genetic epistemology made knowledge a biological achievement: assimilation and accommodation as the organism’s adaptation carried into thought.