Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences.

This paper criticizes the role of intuition-based ascriptions of cognition that are closely related to the ascription of mind. This practice hinders the explication of a clear and stable target domain for the cognitive sciences. To move forward, the proposal is to cut the notion of cognition free fr...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 198; pp. 137 - 158
Main Author: Keijzer, Fred
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jan2021 Supplement 1
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        10.1007/s11229-020-02797-8
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        atl: Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences.
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        au: Keijzer, Fred
        affil: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 52, 9712 GL, Groningen, The Netherlands
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        Cognitive science
        Cognition
        Life sciences
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        subj:
          Cognitive science
          Cognition
          Life sciences
      keyword:
        Biocognition
        Cognitive biology
        Cognitive domain
        Cognitive life sciences
        Mark of the cognitive
      ab: This paper criticizes the role of intuition-based ascriptions of cognition that are closely related to the ascription of mind. This practice hinders the explication of a clear and stable target domain for the cognitive sciences. To move forward, the proposal is to cut the notion of cognition free from such ascriptions and the intuition-based judgments that drive them. Instead, cognition is reinterpreted and developed as a scientific concept that is tied to a material domain of research. In this reading, cognition becomes a changeable theoretical concept that can and must be adapted to the findings within this target domain. Taking humans as the best-established existing example of the relevant material target domain, this central case is extended to include all living systems. To clarify what it is about living systems that warrants their role as cognitive target domain, the new concept of cobolism is introduced as a complement to metabolism. Cobolism refers to the systematic ways in which each living system encompasses structures, processes and external events that maintain the fundamental metabolic processes that constitute the core of each living system. Cobolism is perfectly general, applies to bacterial and human cases alike, and provides a general format to describe wildly different cognitive organizations. It provides a clear target for the cognitive sciences to work on, turning them into what we can call the cognitive life sciences.
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      src: R
    language: English
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