Cognition as Embodied Morphological Computation

Book chapter, 2018

Cognitive science is considered to be the study of mind (consciousness and thought) and intelligence in humans. Under such definition variety of unsolved/unsolvable problems appear. This article argues for a broad understanding of cognition based on empirical results from i.a. natural sciences, self-organization, artificial intelligence and artificial life, network science and neuroscience, that apart from the high level mental activities in humans, includes sub-symbolic and sub-conscious processes, such as emotions, recognizes cognition in other living beings as well as extended and distributed/social cognition. The new idea of cognition as complex multiscale phenomenon evolved in living organisms based on bodily structures that process information, linking cognitivists and EEEE (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) cognition approaches with the idea of morphological computation (info-computational self-organisation) in cognizing agents, emerging in evolution through interactions of a (living/cognizing) agent with the environment.