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The living organism: Strengthening the basis
Accepted Manuscript Title: The living organism: strengthening the basis Authors: Roland Cazalis, Timoteo Carletti, Ronald Cottam PII: DOI: Reference:
S0303-2647(17)30106-5 http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.04.007 BIO 3743
To appear in:
BioSystems
Received date: Accepted date:
25-4-2017 27-4-2017
Please cite this article as: Cazalis, Roland, Carletti, Timoteo, Cottam, Ronald, The living organism: strengthening the basis.BioSystems http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.04.007 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
The living organism: strengthening the basis
Roland Cazalis1, Timoteo Carletti2, Ronald Cottam3* . Department of ‘Sciences, Philosophies, Societies’, University of Namur, Belgium . Department of Mathematics and Namur Center for Complex Systems, naXys, University of Namur, Belgium 3 . ETRO-VUB Department of Electronics and Informatics, Contact author 1 2
Abstract
In spite of the considerable amount of literature dedicated to the living organism, the latter keeps its mysteries. One of the most discussed aspects nowadays is to know whether the term “cognition” can be attributed to all classes of organisms, or whether it rather refers to a metaphoric use of one human reality. Our approach consists in retaining the term "cognition" and making it a technical term, in order to propose a generic model. This way, cognition becomes what finally characterises an organism as an autonomous agent. This perspective eliminates some misplaced questions, and helps to reframe old ones. The cognitive dimension can be apprehended indirectly only through its appearances. The latter ones direct us towards a modular model of cognition and orientate the research towards the clarification of specific modules for every class of organisms.
Keywords: cognition, decision-making, learning, memory, organism, perception.
Introduction
The question of the nature of life, or more concretely, the nature of the living organism, was variously formulated, inter alia, by Alexander Oparin (1929) in his book Origin of Life, Erwin Schrödinger (1944) in his famous little book on precisely What is Life? and in Robert Rosen’s critical reading of Schrodinger's approach to Life itself (1991). This is still a very “hot topic” judging by the number of publications that it triggers. Through these publications, we notice that at least three obstacles slow down the progress towards the clarification of living
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organism. The first one relates to psychology, in other words to the anthropocentric vision of the living agent. The second is metaphysical, and refers to the persistency of dual-aspect monism in the imagination of researchers. The third is experimental, and evinces the difficulty in the re-creation of a living organism as it could be with in vitro or in silico approaches [5]. The latter would result in validating some hypotheses from theoretical biology. At any rate, an increasing number of scholars explores an approach which tries to overcome at least the first two obstacles by maintaining an open question, i.e. “what could an organism be” rather than restricting to the closed question ”what must an organism be".
In this line, many of the characteristics of the organism are brought to light, although none is enough to characterise it fully, such as transformation, autopoiesis, metabolism, homoeostasis, genome, reproduction, evolution, and interaction with the environment [12]. Other scholars propose some fundamental pillars to define it, as in Kosland’s seven proposals: program, improvisation, compartmentalisation, energy, representation, adaptability, and selection [22]. However, the sum of these traits is not sufficient to suggest the uniqueness of the organism.
Among the features, some are subject to debate, because of their status, and because of their definition or their situation in the history of evolution. Such is the case in the notion of cognition.
The definition of this term inevitably undergoes the influence of the ontological link that we establish between the brain and the mind. Secondarily, it alludes to the links between mental activity and decision-making, learning, memory, anticipation, mobility, etc. As such, human cognitive abilities constitute the standard template or the reference point for evaluating cognition in a non-human organism [39]. The collateral effect of this evidence is to leave the world of microorganisms and plants outside the cognitive paradigm. Their behaviours are quickly qualified as stereotyped and their capacities are pre-programmed. However, since “The Power of Movement of plants” (1880), published by Darwin together with his son Francis [11], and today with advances in plant biology, a growing body of publications tends to open the world of microorganisms and plants to a new view of sensory and communicative organisms [2, 47]. The “root-brain” hypothesis experiences a certain 2
revival, and is perceived as the “organ” of plant cognition, even if the specific cognitive mechanisms in plants remain to be identified. The vocabulary used to highlight the plant realm as a cognitive organism tends to follow methodological anthropocentrism, and views plants’ aptitudes in metaphoric terms.
In this work, we propose a generic approach to organism, i.e., which is applicable to the entire living world, from microorganisms to higher mammals, so as to refer to a conventional classification. The model is based on an approach to cognition that structures and specifies the nature of the organism. Accordingly, our proposal moves away from anthropocentrism to loosen the entangled relation between the term “cognition” and mental activity, by making cognition a universal technical term. As a result, to avoid any misunderstandings on the nature of the organism, our proposal takes places within a monistic framework, in which the various potentialities of the living world can express themselves.
1. Three core properties plus one
Despite the inevitable controversy about the notion of organism, there is a rough consensus about the three core properties that have heretofore characterised it. Every organism stands out from the environment by a boundary it autonomously (i) creates (ii) sustains through the synthesis of building blocks by harvesting energy and raw materials from the environment, and (iii) reproduces and evolves, through inheritance with a variation of reproducible internally stored information that can activate and control its crucial functions [36]. Other properties of the living system result from these three criteria. These are underlined by other authors of the same volume, and include autonomy, homoeostasis, robustness, adaptability and the ability to learn from the environment [6]. However, the three core properties constitute a minimal basis upon which we can develop an understanding of the living and try to complete it. Bedau et al. [6] assume that “something is alive only if it has all life’s core properties”. We notice that cognition is not part of other characteristics such as the capacity to learn or to adapt. It does not result from a secondary emergence from the three core properties’ orchestration, in particular in complex organisms. With this idea, we propose to define the living organism precisely as the manifestation of cognition. In other words, an entity endowed 3
with the three core properties is alive if cognition comes forward. If our approach to the living beings is fruitful, then cognition must apply to all organisms and become apparent in a specific way, according to the class and to the complexity of the living beings.
A first definition enables us to delimit the concept. Cognition is displayed by the way the organism experiences its environment. This definition triggers several remarks. In the first place, by experience, we should not only think that our sensory perception gives us only sensory data, but that it indicates also the real existence of tangible objects. By experience, we allude to the term “prehension”, a word used by the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1865-1947) to refer to a type of perception. This transcends classical perception, and raises questions such as belonging, feeling of self, meaning, etc. For Whitehead, sensory perceptions represent a secondary mode of perception derived from a non-sensory mode of perception called “prehension” [48]. Prehension enables Whitehead to affirm the expression of qualia and to conceptualise these in mathematical and logical forms. According to Whitehead’s apprehensive doctrine of perception, prehension is the most fundamental way of grasping things, by taking them in, by incorporating them, i.e. a nonsensory mode. It goes from the perception of an object, a quale, up to its physical incorporation (food) or its mental aspect (an internal motion). This is why we distinguish several types. There are physical prehensions, these are material things; abstract prehensions, i.e. possible entities; and propositional prehensions, etc. [48]. Prehension is a means of perception that is wide enough to embrace all types of organism in their mode of experiencing the environment. Consequently, according to the Whiteheadian view, all living beings have experiences because to be actual amounts to experience; therefore, the living world is composed of experiencing organisms. The notion of experience could also be retrieved from the enactive approach. In this paradigm, it is intertwined with being alive and immersed in a world of significance [13].
The second consequence of this approach to cognition is that the organism is normally adapted to its biotope, i.e. the environment is inherent in its mode of appearance. In other words, the relations between the constituent elements, cognition, and the manifestations as an organism are commutative (figure 1). The diagram shows that the organism is a new state of matter. By comparison, enactivism has also an embodied and situated approach to cognition. It relies on the Cartesian view of embodiment in its separation between mind and body, or the 4
former as the controller and the latter as controlled. The body is the ultimate source of significance, and not a puppet controlled by the brain [13]. In this light, many authors argue that cognition, according to its classical meaning, may no longer be seen as an exclusive property of the brain. It does not refer either to the functionalities traditionally attributed exclusively to the brain. These complex functions seem to be performed by other parts of the body as well [8]. However, there are two major aspects of our proposal. First, our notion of cognition, as a technical term, is not specifically related to the brain. Second, we do not use the terminology “body” which is traditionally opposed to “mind”; instead, we refer the word “organism” to a living system as a whole.
To better estimate this dynamic, we can find, by comparison, a parallel logic ceteris paribus in other paradigms. For instance, in linguistics, we can recall the following set: words, syntax, semantics. Here, the extrinsic environment involves the cultural and linguistic areas of the listener / reader, while the intrinsic environment refers to the way the subject integrates her culture and her language in such a way as to play with them as it pleases him/her. In this case, the meaning of a proposal emerges only in a precise cultural context (figure 1).
In the diagram (figure 1), cognition incorporates the notion of environment, this is the reason why it appears in the diagram. The second core property already incorporated a notion of environment, but a passive one in the constitution of the organism. In the framework of the notion of cognition, the environment fulfils an active role. The diagram reveals that the organism is both a new form of matter and a macroscopic process.
In the third place, these remarks now enable us to complete the understanding of our notion of cognition by giving the reliable interval between the definition of the concept and the choice of this term with regard to that of intelligence. The notion of intelligence is fairly associated with the human brain. According to the philosophy of mind, it is a strong emergent mental property from brain activity. By extension, it may be present, to a low degree, in all brainy animals, or at least in entities with a nervous system. The concept of intelligence is mainly used to indicate an aptitude for a particular skill. Intelligence and cognition are often used as synonyms. However, this terminology is highly polysomic and discards any easy definition. Our choice has been to retain the term “cognition” and to restrict its meaning to its use in our generic approach to organism. If this choice is fruitful, cognition could now be delimited by two additional definitions by way of a standard deviation. The intensive one is how an 5
organism prehends the world. The extensive one, inspired by Shettleworth [40], is the mechanism by which an organism perceives, learns, and memorises data from the environment to make decisions. With this in mind, an organism appears as an autonomous agent that can act on its own behalf [21]. From these definitions, cognition remains in the background and cannot be apprehended directly, but only through its appearances or phenomenalities. These appearances are precisely the expression of the organism as an autonomous agent. In the same paradigm, we view what is called intelligence as one among many of the manifestations of cognition. Consequently, cognition and intelligence cannot be synonymous in our proposal.
This approach to cognition entails two important remarks. First, it leaves the anthropocentric perspective aside in order to follow the so-called biogenic view [9, 24, 25, 46]. Second, cognition is not an optional property which appeared during the emergence of the last common ancestor. Instead, it is an intrinsic constituent of an entity called organism. In other words, the emergence of the organism is the emergence of cognition as we have defined it. To be an organism amounts to be cognitive. Other than this, there are many natural probiomachines like viruses, replicators of all types, modular pro-bionetworks like mammals’ immune system, including the animal’s brain. These are not autonomous agents.
2. Some consequences of a built-in approach to cognition
The organism is, first of all, an evolved entity whose belonging to a specific group is part of its identity. Then, it lives with and recognises kin from non-kin via specific signals. The first manifestation of cognition is found in a population, a flock, a colony, a school, a herd. What is indicated as “swarm intelligence” is just a consequence of the primary cognition, that allows each entity to be an individual.
Thus the notion of cognition becomes central in the definition of organism and redistributes the functions of the three initial core properties. In the same way, it integrates the other notions that traditionally result from three core properties, such as adaptability, ability to learn, memory, etc.
It may be surprising to observe memory, learning and anticipation in simple animal models such as bacteria [19, 26] and protozoan such as plasmodium [20], as well as decision-making 6
and information processing in a protozoan [37]. However, in our proposal, these are typical manifestations of an organism.
The diagram of figure 1 infers that the organism constantly modifies the proximal environment, which entails the continuous adjustment of cognition to find the organism/environment homoeostasis anew, that is to restore the original situation that corresponds to the ecological niche. We hypothesise, if the cognition does not succeed in reaching a new organism/environment homoeostasis, then the organism risks extinction. Such cognition highlights the erroneous nature of any dualistic view of the nature of the living. It recognises the contribution of enactivism with its notion of embodied cognition, by underlining that this concept is a tautology [13], while acknowledging its differences with this concept, because the organism is the manifestation of cognition. Furthermore, the expression “embodied cognition” carries out the stigmas of the metaphysical barrier, even if it tries to distance itself from the latter, as if we could conceive cognition in abstracto.
As organism could be a bacterium, a protist, an animal or a plant, cognition has the same function and it is in phase with the complexity of the living system and with the state of its environment. Thus, the more complex the body is, the more impoverished or deficient the environment is with regard to what is required for the organism to be sustainable. This imbalance is solved by strategies of compensation orchestrated by the convergent evolution and the trophic chain. Therefore, all the classes of organisms constitute a hierarchical system. For a given class of organism, the others are part of the environment, which is also a hierarchical system.
3. For a more adequate vocabulary. We used the term “cognition” to suggest what we usually understand as the capacity of sensing the environment, learning, assessment, memory, choice, etc. Nevertheless, this term is usually associated with organisms with a nervous system, a brain and even more, restricted to those organisms with large brains that can approach problem solving [44].
In the anthropocentric literature, we can find the following expressions: a plant sees, smells, feels, hears, knows, remembers, etc. [28, 17] Some microbiologists use an anthropomorphic terminology without caveats (decide, talk, listen, cheat, lure, etc.), to describe bacterial 7
behaviour [7, 4, 1, 49], or coin metaphors, such as “pro or nanobrain” [26, 41, 42], when talking about the complexity of bacterial signalling capabilities. Us, as humans, we experience what it is to smell a fragrance, to listen to music or to see a neighbour. However, we could hardly entirely communicate these personal feelings, let alone to apply them in a wider context. We do not have any access to what in that case a respective hypothetical “subjectivity” could be in non-human living beings. These examples enable us to specify what this alternative approach proposes, that is, the change of mentality and vocabulary. We keep using the word “cognition” because of its capacity of suggestion. However, to be properly used in our approach, it must be freed from the brain chauvinist paradigm. In addition, the terminology of this new paradigm of a generic approach to the living has to be as suitable as possible. Accordingly, when we try to describe the behaviours of bacteria and plants, it is necessary to abandon human and animal mimicry, i.e. we have to stop using terms adapted to the human being to prove that plants or bacteria have noble capacities, acknowledging that these terms are mere metaphors, or minimalist versions of the human reference. In other words, in order to reach a generic notion of the organism, it is necessary to suspend our habit of humanising other living systems in an effort to understand them, i.e. to endow them with human features when they exhibit human actions [18], or if we want to evaluate their aptitude when they are deprived of humanoid aspects. These attitudes are no longer necessary, because now cognition is an integral part of what an organism is. Along the same lines, we preserve the terminology “perception, learning, and memory” in correlation with enactivism, since these are not the only privileged terms of mental activity anymore. An immune system can perceive and learn from novelties, and subsequently memorise in a cell lines format. In other words, this clarification leads us to overcome the “mental connection” that we make between cognition and human behaviour, and to target research into the different ways in which other species impart their proper cognitive features.
With the aim of reaching a fully neutral vocabulary and to stop mimicking human standards, the first immediate metaphor to dismiss in the plant realm is Darwin’s root-brain terminology. Darwin wrote: “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed [with sensitivity] and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals; the brain being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements” [11]. Our remark does not concern Darwin’s pioneering work on plant’s movement nor the 8
root tip sensitivity to diverse stimuli that can elicit physiological responses. Rather, it focuses on a vocabulary that extrapolates too far a plant-animal analogy. In Darwin’s time, such comparison was not a serious problem. However, nowadays caution must be exercised as this language is not justified, contrary to what Barlow [3], Edelman and Roth [16], and others argue. We do not yet know all the internal biochemical mechanisms that sense different stimuli. The root tip is undeniably a key zone in soil perception. Nevertheless, the green part is sensitive as well, and has to make decisions with respect to predation or cooperation. Why would the “brain” analogy be restricted to the root tip alone? Our purpose is to provide a better research opportunity in grasping the true manifestations of cognition within the plant realm. Linguistic restriction would help in putting the excess of anthropocentric metaphors aside, whose use contributes to discrediting this research program. In the case of plants, we can simply speak about root sensors or about a root network, which corresponds to a first description, and then look for the full function and meaning of such an underground network.
In the same way, microorganisms and plants have sensors for volatile chemical, physical contact, vibration, different wavelengths, gravity, water potential, etc. stimuli. From these specific signals, they perceive their immediate or remote environment, and make appropriate decisions, such as to grow or to stop growing, to reproduce faster or slower, to differentiate, to move in some direction, etc. All organisms do this according to the state of their biotope. Consequently, instead of a sensationist terminology, there is an appropriate vocabulary ready to be used to designate how these organisms experience their environment.
More generally, there are similar functional modules and molecules found in different kinds of organisms, which underline a common origin. However, since then, with the evolution and the speciation, modules and molecules are now configured in specific pathways and in different classes of organism. Along these lines, one considers molecules such as acetylcholine, dopamine, glutamate, etc. found in plants, which are used as neurotransmitters in animals [43, 23, 35, 38]. Knowing that there are no neurons in plants, the role of these molecules is still far from being understood, even if some functions have already been found [15]. Within the same paradigm, the propagation of electrical events in non-nervous, and in non-muscular cells is found in protists and plants. This characteristic is also called “neuroid conditions” [27].
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This data provides an opportunity to discover the role of these molecules when they are involved in non-neuronal contexts. This participates in the originality of the expression of cognition in every class of organisms.
4. Reframing old questions
The structural and functional roles of cognition in our approach to organism eliminate some misplaced questions, such as those relating to the non-attribution of this property to plants and to microorganisms or to which degree. Our project of disentangling the notion of “cognition” from any mental state makes us think that even the expression “minimal cognition” [10, 14, 33, 45] always corresponds to metrics that use the human case as a standard. Cognition is related to organism, and this hinges on the complexity of its natural biotope. Organism enhances the perfect case of a situated complexity. Our approach helps in reframing old questions in critical new ways to progress in the understanding of what an organism is. As far as cognition is a complex reality, which can be indirectly apprehended only by its appearances, how can we decipher its process during the biological evolution?
With the advent of the multicellular living organism, exhibiting mobility together with the nervous system and the brain, it seems that there has been a migration and a grouping of what the cognition of microorganisms originally was. The management of mobility requires a lot of computational power. For is purpose, a brain seems necessary as the centre of the movement’s coordination. From this point of view, do mobility and its management have to be viewed as a new manifestation of cognition?
In organisms, the environment is no longer only external, but also internal, i.e. the so-called interiority. This is an abstracted environment that is specific to each individual. Data from the internal environment supports decision-making. Human beings experience both external and internal environments in interaction, and they inform complex decision-making. As a result, the advent of mammals, and even more with higher primates, reveals with more clarity the existence of the notion of internal environment. It is advisable to distinguish the ability to differentiate kin from non-kin, in a population that already exists in the microorganism realm, from the notion of interiority, which indicates some self-awareness. At any rate, does cognition evolve in a modular way? 10
If to perceive, to learn, and to memorise provide a common minimal core of the expression of cognition, then the relation between these capacities can be synthesised in a diagram (figure 2). To memorise appears to be a central capacity, i.e. as a place of convergence of information from the other functions. To memorise is at least one of the capacities which presents a dual relation with the others. Therefore, in return, the faculty to memorise empowers perception, decision, and learning in such a way that the organism could anticipate the effect of a decision. Along the same lines, the faculty to memorise informs perception, and this becomes sharper or biased. This ambivalence concerns decision-making and learning equally. These simple remarks show already the peculiarities of the logic of the organism, which is ambivalent and thrown into a trajectory that requires a certain standard deviation. Survival and evolution are nevertheless possible because the ambivalence is counterbalanced by risktaking. The organism is a risk-taker. This is probably one of the surprising expressions of cognition. Obviously, the three functions of cognition’s basic expression extend and branch out in the specific modules to every class of organism. The remaining questions are: what concretely are the meanings of perceiving, learning, and memorising for a microorganism or for a plant?
The main role of the brain and the nervous system appears to be in managing mobility. In this line, we propose that typical sessile organisms do not need a brain. Generally speaking, mobility is primarily linked to food searching, prey escaping, and survival. Plant immobility is linked to photosynthesis and root absorption in acquiring primary elements for selfmaintenance and growth. Obviously there are some exceptions in biology. Sponge and coral, which live in water, are fixed in so far as the flow of food passes through them. If typical sessile organisms do not need a brain to manage mobility, then symbolically, cognition has to take a different path in managing interactions with other mobile organisms and with fixed neighbours that could be either allies or predators. The secondary metabolite pathway seems to be the module to counteract and to manage neighbours’ mobility. Another module linked to sessileness is diversity in the mode of propagation, such as seeds, shoot cuttings, root cuttings, etc. These plant’s properties exemplify new and specific aspects of cognition in typical sessile organisms. Research in artificial life can be used to validate the modular approach to cognition, and at the same time can help to evaluate its possible applications in robotics.
If our proposals are fruitful, cognition appears to be a modular system with some modules common to all organisms, and other specific ones related to the determinations of each class 11
of organism. A non-exhaustive schema of such a modular structure and of the evolution of cognition can be represented as in figure 3. This diagram highlights a tension between the evolving process and autonomy, in so far as animals depend on sessile organisms and microorganisms for food, because they have lost the ability to feed themselves from more basic elements. This gives bacteria the most successful lifestyle, since they can live everywhere on the planet [44].
Other old questions can be updated into new inquiries worth considering. This includes examining how our approach to cognition helps in understanding biological evolution. Is there an inevitability linking the environment and evolution, in that the bacterial realm seems to be the most adapted to all environments? At the same time, it seems that bacteria have had to preserve at least some of their original characteristics, so as to make the evolutionary process that we know possible. Lastly, because a single cell is an organism, how can cognition operate in a pluricellular one, such as a plant as a whole, and how can we prove it?
5. Discussion
Nakajima has developed a wider notion of cognition [34] that purports to contrast with our proposal. In the first place, Nakajima’s paradigm does not restrict cognition to living organisms. Rather, cognition is extended to abiotic entities, particles or electromagnetic fields. Secondly and more importantly, his theory requires, as Matsuno and others did, the existence of a meta-observer, located outside the system and endowed with a perfect knowledge of the whole system, and a cognizer which is inside the system and it is the one who experiences the system variations. Cognition is defined inter alia as the entity’s states that inhabit the environment or experience events that are occurring. Our paper is exclusively focused on the realm of living organism, and from the stance of the internal observer [29]. As such, it does not consider abiotic entities nor necessitates the existence of a meta-observer. Cognition is then apprehended indirectly through its appearances. It enables strengthening the realm of the living by endowing it with another essential common trait besides being an autonomous agent acting on its own behalf. Then, the meaning of a living organism that experiences the ecosystem is further developed in the Whiteheadian concept of prehension, which could either be positive or negative. In our perspective, experiencing thus does not encompass all of cognition’s existing appearances.
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Nakajima introduces two concepts, discrimination and selection, that both underline aspects of cognition mapping or experiencing the ecosystem. They determine inter alia the probability to survive a determined organism has, and thus in this respect they assume the meaning of “intelligence” or “understanding and computation”. The author rightly stresses that the last point involves many sub-processes at lower levels, in which discrimination and selection operate likewise. The common core (figure 2) that we propose enables to identify ceteris paribus some of the sub-processes in the case of a living organism. Furthermore, it helps to visualise how, in Nakajima’s words, discrimination and selection could modify the probability of occurring events. In this paradigm, we underline how memory could intervene in the prehension of some events, especially those related to survival. Along the same line, we note how the memory of past events is not an absolute weapon, because it can lead the organism to make erroneous decisions in the face of events that are similar to those of the past. Therefore, the act of prehension is not infallible. Identifying the subsystems of discrimination and selection helps to better understand biological probability. Let us also observe that in our framework it is always clear who is the entity experiencing the environment, while this is not the case for Nakajima, in his words “When the environment E is subdivided into n-1 cognizers, C2, C3, … , Cn, it is not easy to determine which cognizer C1 discriminates”; pushing even further the consequences of the last statement one could say that eventually“discrimination” is not a property of the cognizer. Different concepts, developed by Matsuno within the internalist perspective, raise additional discussion in relation to our proposal. The living organism, as a sentient entity, experiences neighbourhood events [29, 30]. The interaction’s dynamicity, by which the entity ensures its durability, is described as “internal measurement”. The author empowers the organism’s action with the ability “to transform itself from inconsistency-experiencing body into an inconsistency-free body” [31]. Aspects of what we mean by prehension could be understood as the act of measurement or as experiencing others. However, this action supposes at the same time an act of self-measurement that preserves the first value, which is the self, through its update or through the control over the neighbourhood events. It would be interesting to know how the notion of value intervenes in the identity, versus the durability dialectics that is found in Matsumo’s approach [32]. Analogically, the common core that is proposed could encompass the system of sub-processes behind the cycle of experiencing, transforming and expressing [31]. In this system, memory is characterised by a constant updating. However, updating does not guaranty the efficiency of
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its anticipatory function in light of unknown events. Matsumo proposes the notion of living memory as related to the actions of experiencing and transforming. The essential role that we give to memory raises the following question: how do active memories intervene in these actions in order to operate its anticipatory function, while minimising its collateral effects? All of these items emphasise the interest of going into the details of the subsystems that are at work in the interaction of the organism with its present ecosystem. This approach highlights these systems’ modularity alongside their hierarchical aspect. In this context, much work still remains to be done, in order to understand the role of memory and its functioning mechanism.
Conclusion
The object of this study was to complete the classical approach to the living organism by proposing a notion of cognition which is intrinsically structured in the living, and which defines it as such, with regard to other natural systems. In this approach, the term “cognition”, in spite of its etymological origin, becomes a technical term that no longer indicates properties bound to the brain and to animal mental activity. Any organism, by definition, is the manifestation of cognition, since this is the way by which it can be a social entity that can experience the environment. Our proposal of a generic model of the organism, along with an adequate terminology to identify it, clarifies the recurring question about the existence of cognitive behaviour in non-human and non-animal living systems. Furthermore, it explains its degree with regard to human reference. The proposal enables us to reframe certain former questions concerning the body and purports to bring new elements of answers in the future.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by ASBL Cotylens.
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Figure caption Figure 1 Diagrammatic approach to the organism from the cognitive perspective. The arrows a, and b map the three core properties [31] of the living. The object “matter” embodies the environment as the initial elements and its active role in the emergence of the living organism. The object “cognition” is acting inside the very process of appearance of the living, and not as a mere emergence after its final constitution. The arrow c is the result of the entire process leading to the object “phenomenalities” which is an autonomous agent, i.e. the expression of cognition.
Figure 2
Synthetic representation of the common core of cognition. Solid arrows draw the process from “perception”; dashed arrows indicate the dual aspect of the process. The diagram underlines the central role of “memory” over against other properties and its impact including upon “effect” i.e. the consequences of decision-making.
Figure 3 Simplified tree of the modular expression of cognition. The common core (figure 2) of cognition’s basic expression extend and branch out in the specific modules to every class of organism according to its autotrophy or heterotrophy status and cell dimension. This representation underlines the differentiated trajectory of cognition and its logical coherence in each case. From this platform, one can map new trajectories that can be useful in a research program in exobiology. In other words, from the common core: what can we add and in what directions?
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S0303-2647(17)30106-5 http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.04.007 BIO 3743
To appear in:
BioSystems
Received date: Accepted date:
25-4-2017 27-4-2017
Please cite this article as: Cazalis, Roland, Carletti, Timoteo, Cottam, Ronald, The living organism: strengthening the basis.BioSystems http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.04.007 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
The living organism: strengthening the basis
Roland Cazalis1, Timoteo Carletti2, Ronald Cottam3* . Department of ‘Sciences, Philosophies, Societies’, University of Namur, Belgium . Department of Mathematics and Namur Center for Complex Systems, naXys, University of Namur, Belgium 3 . ETRO-VUB Department of Electronics and Informatics, Contact author 1 2
Abstract
In spite of the considerable amount of literature dedicated to the living organism, the latter keeps its mysteries. One of the most discussed aspects nowadays is to know whether the term “cognition” can be attributed to all classes of organisms, or whether it rather refers to a metaphoric use of one human reality. Our approach consists in retaining the term "cognition" and making it a technical term, in order to propose a generic model. This way, cognition becomes what finally characterises an organism as an autonomous agent. This perspective eliminates some misplaced questions, and helps to reframe old ones. The cognitive dimension can be apprehended indirectly only through its appearances. The latter ones direct us towards a modular model of cognition and orientate the research towards the clarification of specific modules for every class of organisms.
Keywords: cognition, decision-making, learning, memory, organism, perception.
Introduction
The question of the nature of life, or more concretely, the nature of the living organism, was variously formulated, inter alia, by Alexander Oparin (1929) in his book Origin of Life, Erwin Schrödinger (1944) in his famous little book on precisely What is Life? and in Robert Rosen’s critical reading of Schrodinger's approach to Life itself (1991). This is still a very “hot topic” judging by the number of publications that it triggers. Through these publications, we notice that at least three obstacles slow down the progress towards the clarification of living
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organism. The first one relates to psychology, in other words to the anthropocentric vision of the living agent. The second is metaphysical, and refers to the persistency of dual-aspect monism in the imagination of researchers. The third is experimental, and evinces the difficulty in the re-creation of a living organism as it could be with in vitro or in silico approaches [5]. The latter would result in validating some hypotheses from theoretical biology. At any rate, an increasing number of scholars explores an approach which tries to overcome at least the first two obstacles by maintaining an open question, i.e. “what could an organism be” rather than restricting to the closed question ”what must an organism be".
In this line, many of the characteristics of the organism are brought to light, although none is enough to characterise it fully, such as transformation, autopoiesis, metabolism, homoeostasis, genome, reproduction, evolution, and interaction with the environment [12]. Other scholars propose some fundamental pillars to define it, as in Kosland’s seven proposals: program, improvisation, compartmentalisation, energy, representation, adaptability, and selection [22]. However, the sum of these traits is not sufficient to suggest the uniqueness of the organism.
Among the features, some are subject to debate, because of their status, and because of their definition or their situation in the history of evolution. Such is the case in the notion of cognition.
The definition of this term inevitably undergoes the influence of the ontological link that we establish between the brain and the mind. Secondarily, it alludes to the links between mental activity and decision-making, learning, memory, anticipation, mobility, etc. As such, human cognitive abilities constitute the standard template or the reference point for evaluating cognition in a non-human organism [39]. The collateral effect of this evidence is to leave the world of microorganisms and plants outside the cognitive paradigm. Their behaviours are quickly qualified as stereotyped and their capacities are pre-programmed. However, since “The Power of Movement of plants” (1880), published by Darwin together with his son Francis [11], and today with advances in plant biology, a growing body of publications tends to open the world of microorganisms and plants to a new view of sensory and communicative organisms [2, 47]. The “root-brain” hypothesis experiences a certain 2
revival, and is perceived as the “organ” of plant cognition, even if the specific cognitive mechanisms in plants remain to be identified. The vocabulary used to highlight the plant realm as a cognitive organism tends to follow methodological anthropocentrism, and views plants’ aptitudes in metaphoric terms.
In this work, we propose a generic approach to organism, i.e., which is applicable to the entire living world, from microorganisms to higher mammals, so as to refer to a conventional classification. The model is based on an approach to cognition that structures and specifies the nature of the organism. Accordingly, our proposal moves away from anthropocentrism to loosen the entangled relation between the term “cognition” and mental activity, by making cognition a universal technical term. As a result, to avoid any misunderstandings on the nature of the organism, our proposal takes places within a monistic framework, in which the various potentialities of the living world can express themselves.
1. Three core properties plus one
Despite the inevitable controversy about the notion of organism, there is a rough consensus about the three core properties that have heretofore characterised it. Every organism stands out from the environment by a boundary it autonomously (i) creates (ii) sustains through the synthesis of building blocks by harvesting energy and raw materials from the environment, and (iii) reproduces and evolves, through inheritance with a variation of reproducible internally stored information that can activate and control its crucial functions [36]. Other properties of the living system result from these three criteria. These are underlined by other authors of the same volume, and include autonomy, homoeostasis, robustness, adaptability and the ability to learn from the environment [6]. However, the three core properties constitute a minimal basis upon which we can develop an understanding of the living and try to complete it. Bedau et al. [6] assume that “something is alive only if it has all life’s core properties”. We notice that cognition is not part of other characteristics such as the capacity to learn or to adapt. It does not result from a secondary emergence from the three core properties’ orchestration, in particular in complex organisms. With this idea, we propose to define the living organism precisely as the manifestation of cognition. In other words, an entity endowed 3
with the three core properties is alive if cognition comes forward. If our approach to the living beings is fruitful, then cognition must apply to all organisms and become apparent in a specific way, according to the class and to the complexity of the living beings.
A first definition enables us to delimit the concept. Cognition is displayed by the way the organism experiences its environment. This definition triggers several remarks. In the first place, by experience, we should not only think that our sensory perception gives us only sensory data, but that it indicates also the real existence of tangible objects. By experience, we allude to the term “prehension”, a word used by the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1865-1947) to refer to a type of perception. This transcends classical perception, and raises questions such as belonging, feeling of self, meaning, etc. For Whitehead, sensory perceptions represent a secondary mode of perception derived from a non-sensory mode of perception called “prehension” [48]. Prehension enables Whitehead to affirm the expression of qualia and to conceptualise these in mathematical and logical forms. According to Whitehead’s apprehensive doctrine of perception, prehension is the most fundamental way of grasping things, by taking them in, by incorporating them, i.e. a nonsensory mode. It goes from the perception of an object, a quale, up to its physical incorporation (food) or its mental aspect (an internal motion). This is why we distinguish several types. There are physical prehensions, these are material things; abstract prehensions, i.e. possible entities; and propositional prehensions, etc. [48]. Prehension is a means of perception that is wide enough to embrace all types of organism in their mode of experiencing the environment. Consequently, according to the Whiteheadian view, all living beings have experiences because to be actual amounts to experience; therefore, the living world is composed of experiencing organisms. The notion of experience could also be retrieved from the enactive approach. In this paradigm, it is intertwined with being alive and immersed in a world of significance [13].
The second consequence of this approach to cognition is that the organism is normally adapted to its biotope, i.e. the environment is inherent in its mode of appearance. In other words, the relations between the constituent elements, cognition, and the manifestations as an organism are commutative (figure 1). The diagram shows that the organism is a new state of matter. By comparison, enactivism has also an embodied and situated approach to cognition. It relies on the Cartesian view of embodiment in its separation between mind and body, or the 4
former as the controller and the latter as controlled. The body is the ultimate source of significance, and not a puppet controlled by the brain [13]. In this light, many authors argue that cognition, according to its classical meaning, may no longer be seen as an exclusive property of the brain. It does not refer either to the functionalities traditionally attributed exclusively to the brain. These complex functions seem to be performed by other parts of the body as well [8]. However, there are two major aspects of our proposal. First, our notion of cognition, as a technical term, is not specifically related to the brain. Second, we do not use the terminology “body” which is traditionally opposed to “mind”; instead, we refer the word “organism” to a living system as a whole.
To better estimate this dynamic, we can find, by comparison, a parallel logic ceteris paribus in other paradigms. For instance, in linguistics, we can recall the following set: words, syntax, semantics. Here, the extrinsic environment involves the cultural and linguistic areas of the listener / reader, while the intrinsic environment refers to the way the subject integrates her culture and her language in such a way as to play with them as it pleases him/her. In this case, the meaning of a proposal emerges only in a precise cultural context (figure 1).
In the diagram (figure 1), cognition incorporates the notion of environment, this is the reason why it appears in the diagram. The second core property already incorporated a notion of environment, but a passive one in the constitution of the organism. In the framework of the notion of cognition, the environment fulfils an active role. The diagram reveals that the organism is both a new form of matter and a macroscopic process.
In the third place, these remarks now enable us to complete the understanding of our notion of cognition by giving the reliable interval between the definition of the concept and the choice of this term with regard to that of intelligence. The notion of intelligence is fairly associated with the human brain. According to the philosophy of mind, it is a strong emergent mental property from brain activity. By extension, it may be present, to a low degree, in all brainy animals, or at least in entities with a nervous system. The concept of intelligence is mainly used to indicate an aptitude for a particular skill. Intelligence and cognition are often used as synonyms. However, this terminology is highly polysomic and discards any easy definition. Our choice has been to retain the term “cognition” and to restrict its meaning to its use in our generic approach to organism. If this choice is fruitful, cognition could now be delimited by two additional definitions by way of a standard deviation. The intensive one is how an 5
organism prehends the world. The extensive one, inspired by Shettleworth [40], is the mechanism by which an organism perceives, learns, and memorises data from the environment to make decisions. With this in mind, an organism appears as an autonomous agent that can act on its own behalf [21]. From these definitions, cognition remains in the background and cannot be apprehended directly, but only through its appearances or phenomenalities. These appearances are precisely the expression of the organism as an autonomous agent. In the same paradigm, we view what is called intelligence as one among many of the manifestations of cognition. Consequently, cognition and intelligence cannot be synonymous in our proposal.
This approach to cognition entails two important remarks. First, it leaves the anthropocentric perspective aside in order to follow the so-called biogenic view [9, 24, 25, 46]. Second, cognition is not an optional property which appeared during the emergence of the last common ancestor. Instead, it is an intrinsic constituent of an entity called organism. In other words, the emergence of the organism is the emergence of cognition as we have defined it. To be an organism amounts to be cognitive. Other than this, there are many natural probiomachines like viruses, replicators of all types, modular pro-bionetworks like mammals’ immune system, including the animal’s brain. These are not autonomous agents.
2. Some consequences of a built-in approach to cognition
The organism is, first of all, an evolved entity whose belonging to a specific group is part of its identity. Then, it lives with and recognises kin from non-kin via specific signals. The first manifestation of cognition is found in a population, a flock, a colony, a school, a herd. What is indicated as “swarm intelligence” is just a consequence of the primary cognition, that allows each entity to be an individual.
Thus the notion of cognition becomes central in the definition of organism and redistributes the functions of the three initial core properties. In the same way, it integrates the other notions that traditionally result from three core properties, such as adaptability, ability to learn, memory, etc.
It may be surprising to observe memory, learning and anticipation in simple animal models such as bacteria [19, 26] and protozoan such as plasmodium [20], as well as decision-making 6
and information processing in a protozoan [37]. However, in our proposal, these are typical manifestations of an organism.
The diagram of figure 1 infers that the organism constantly modifies the proximal environment, which entails the continuous adjustment of cognition to find the organism/environment homoeostasis anew, that is to restore the original situation that corresponds to the ecological niche. We hypothesise, if the cognition does not succeed in reaching a new organism/environment homoeostasis, then the organism risks extinction. Such cognition highlights the erroneous nature of any dualistic view of the nature of the living. It recognises the contribution of enactivism with its notion of embodied cognition, by underlining that this concept is a tautology [13], while acknowledging its differences with this concept, because the organism is the manifestation of cognition. Furthermore, the expression “embodied cognition” carries out the stigmas of the metaphysical barrier, even if it tries to distance itself from the latter, as if we could conceive cognition in abstracto.
As organism could be a bacterium, a protist, an animal or a plant, cognition has the same function and it is in phase with the complexity of the living system and with the state of its environment. Thus, the more complex the body is, the more impoverished or deficient the environment is with regard to what is required for the organism to be sustainable. This imbalance is solved by strategies of compensation orchestrated by the convergent evolution and the trophic chain. Therefore, all the classes of organisms constitute a hierarchical system. For a given class of organism, the others are part of the environment, which is also a hierarchical system.
3. For a more adequate vocabulary. We used the term “cognition” to suggest what we usually understand as the capacity of sensing the environment, learning, assessment, memory, choice, etc. Nevertheless, this term is usually associated with organisms with a nervous system, a brain and even more, restricted to those organisms with large brains that can approach problem solving [44].
In the anthropocentric literature, we can find the following expressions: a plant sees, smells, feels, hears, knows, remembers, etc. [28, 17] Some microbiologists use an anthropomorphic terminology without caveats (decide, talk, listen, cheat, lure, etc.), to describe bacterial 7
behaviour [7, 4, 1, 49], or coin metaphors, such as “pro or nanobrain” [26, 41, 42], when talking about the complexity of bacterial signalling capabilities. Us, as humans, we experience what it is to smell a fragrance, to listen to music or to see a neighbour. However, we could hardly entirely communicate these personal feelings, let alone to apply them in a wider context. We do not have any access to what in that case a respective hypothetical “subjectivity” could be in non-human living beings. These examples enable us to specify what this alternative approach proposes, that is, the change of mentality and vocabulary. We keep using the word “cognition” because of its capacity of suggestion. However, to be properly used in our approach, it must be freed from the brain chauvinist paradigm. In addition, the terminology of this new paradigm of a generic approach to the living has to be as suitable as possible. Accordingly, when we try to describe the behaviours of bacteria and plants, it is necessary to abandon human and animal mimicry, i.e. we have to stop using terms adapted to the human being to prove that plants or bacteria have noble capacities, acknowledging that these terms are mere metaphors, or minimalist versions of the human reference. In other words, in order to reach a generic notion of the organism, it is necessary to suspend our habit of humanising other living systems in an effort to understand them, i.e. to endow them with human features when they exhibit human actions [18], or if we want to evaluate their aptitude when they are deprived of humanoid aspects. These attitudes are no longer necessary, because now cognition is an integral part of what an organism is. Along the same lines, we preserve the terminology “perception, learning, and memory” in correlation with enactivism, since these are not the only privileged terms of mental activity anymore. An immune system can perceive and learn from novelties, and subsequently memorise in a cell lines format. In other words, this clarification leads us to overcome the “mental connection” that we make between cognition and human behaviour, and to target research into the different ways in which other species impart their proper cognitive features.
With the aim of reaching a fully neutral vocabulary and to stop mimicking human standards, the first immediate metaphor to dismiss in the plant realm is Darwin’s root-brain terminology. Darwin wrote: “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed [with sensitivity] and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals; the brain being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements” [11]. Our remark does not concern Darwin’s pioneering work on plant’s movement nor the 8
root tip sensitivity to diverse stimuli that can elicit physiological responses. Rather, it focuses on a vocabulary that extrapolates too far a plant-animal analogy. In Darwin’s time, such comparison was not a serious problem. However, nowadays caution must be exercised as this language is not justified, contrary to what Barlow [3], Edelman and Roth [16], and others argue. We do not yet know all the internal biochemical mechanisms that sense different stimuli. The root tip is undeniably a key zone in soil perception. Nevertheless, the green part is sensitive as well, and has to make decisions with respect to predation or cooperation. Why would the “brain” analogy be restricted to the root tip alone? Our purpose is to provide a better research opportunity in grasping the true manifestations of cognition within the plant realm. Linguistic restriction would help in putting the excess of anthropocentric metaphors aside, whose use contributes to discrediting this research program. In the case of plants, we can simply speak about root sensors or about a root network, which corresponds to a first description, and then look for the full function and meaning of such an underground network.
In the same way, microorganisms and plants have sensors for volatile chemical, physical contact, vibration, different wavelengths, gravity, water potential, etc. stimuli. From these specific signals, they perceive their immediate or remote environment, and make appropriate decisions, such as to grow or to stop growing, to reproduce faster or slower, to differentiate, to move in some direction, etc. All organisms do this according to the state of their biotope. Consequently, instead of a sensationist terminology, there is an appropriate vocabulary ready to be used to designate how these organisms experience their environment.
More generally, there are similar functional modules and molecules found in different kinds of organisms, which underline a common origin. However, since then, with the evolution and the speciation, modules and molecules are now configured in specific pathways and in different classes of organism. Along these lines, one considers molecules such as acetylcholine, dopamine, glutamate, etc. found in plants, which are used as neurotransmitters in animals [43, 23, 35, 38]. Knowing that there are no neurons in plants, the role of these molecules is still far from being understood, even if some functions have already been found [15]. Within the same paradigm, the propagation of electrical events in non-nervous, and in non-muscular cells is found in protists and plants. This characteristic is also called “neuroid conditions” [27].
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This data provides an opportunity to discover the role of these molecules when they are involved in non-neuronal contexts. This participates in the originality of the expression of cognition in every class of organisms.
4. Reframing old questions
The structural and functional roles of cognition in our approach to organism eliminate some misplaced questions, such as those relating to the non-attribution of this property to plants and to microorganisms or to which degree. Our project of disentangling the notion of “cognition” from any mental state makes us think that even the expression “minimal cognition” [10, 14, 33, 45] always corresponds to metrics that use the human case as a standard. Cognition is related to organism, and this hinges on the complexity of its natural biotope. Organism enhances the perfect case of a situated complexity. Our approach helps in reframing old questions in critical new ways to progress in the understanding of what an organism is. As far as cognition is a complex reality, which can be indirectly apprehended only by its appearances, how can we decipher its process during the biological evolution?
With the advent of the multicellular living organism, exhibiting mobility together with the nervous system and the brain, it seems that there has been a migration and a grouping of what the cognition of microorganisms originally was. The management of mobility requires a lot of computational power. For is purpose, a brain seems necessary as the centre of the movement’s coordination. From this point of view, do mobility and its management have to be viewed as a new manifestation of cognition?
In organisms, the environment is no longer only external, but also internal, i.e. the so-called interiority. This is an abstracted environment that is specific to each individual. Data from the internal environment supports decision-making. Human beings experience both external and internal environments in interaction, and they inform complex decision-making. As a result, the advent of mammals, and even more with higher primates, reveals with more clarity the existence of the notion of internal environment. It is advisable to distinguish the ability to differentiate kin from non-kin, in a population that already exists in the microorganism realm, from the notion of interiority, which indicates some self-awareness. At any rate, does cognition evolve in a modular way? 10
If to perceive, to learn, and to memorise provide a common minimal core of the expression of cognition, then the relation between these capacities can be synthesised in a diagram (figure 2). To memorise appears to be a central capacity, i.e. as a place of convergence of information from the other functions. To memorise is at least one of the capacities which presents a dual relation with the others. Therefore, in return, the faculty to memorise empowers perception, decision, and learning in such a way that the organism could anticipate the effect of a decision. Along the same lines, the faculty to memorise informs perception, and this becomes sharper or biased. This ambivalence concerns decision-making and learning equally. These simple remarks show already the peculiarities of the logic of the organism, which is ambivalent and thrown into a trajectory that requires a certain standard deviation. Survival and evolution are nevertheless possible because the ambivalence is counterbalanced by risktaking. The organism is a risk-taker. This is probably one of the surprising expressions of cognition. Obviously, the three functions of cognition’s basic expression extend and branch out in the specific modules to every class of organism. The remaining questions are: what concretely are the meanings of perceiving, learning, and memorising for a microorganism or for a plant?
The main role of the brain and the nervous system appears to be in managing mobility. In this line, we propose that typical sessile organisms do not need a brain. Generally speaking, mobility is primarily linked to food searching, prey escaping, and survival. Plant immobility is linked to photosynthesis and root absorption in acquiring primary elements for selfmaintenance and growth. Obviously there are some exceptions in biology. Sponge and coral, which live in water, are fixed in so far as the flow of food passes through them. If typical sessile organisms do not need a brain to manage mobility, then symbolically, cognition has to take a different path in managing interactions with other mobile organisms and with fixed neighbours that could be either allies or predators. The secondary metabolite pathway seems to be the module to counteract and to manage neighbours’ mobility. Another module linked to sessileness is diversity in the mode of propagation, such as seeds, shoot cuttings, root cuttings, etc. These plant’s properties exemplify new and specific aspects of cognition in typical sessile organisms. Research in artificial life can be used to validate the modular approach to cognition, and at the same time can help to evaluate its possible applications in robotics.
If our proposals are fruitful, cognition appears to be a modular system with some modules common to all organisms, and other specific ones related to the determinations of each class 11
of organism. A non-exhaustive schema of such a modular structure and of the evolution of cognition can be represented as in figure 3. This diagram highlights a tension between the evolving process and autonomy, in so far as animals depend on sessile organisms and microorganisms for food, because they have lost the ability to feed themselves from more basic elements. This gives bacteria the most successful lifestyle, since they can live everywhere on the planet [44].
Other old questions can be updated into new inquiries worth considering. This includes examining how our approach to cognition helps in understanding biological evolution. Is there an inevitability linking the environment and evolution, in that the bacterial realm seems to be the most adapted to all environments? At the same time, it seems that bacteria have had to preserve at least some of their original characteristics, so as to make the evolutionary process that we know possible. Lastly, because a single cell is an organism, how can cognition operate in a pluricellular one, such as a plant as a whole, and how can we prove it?
5. Discussion
Nakajima has developed a wider notion of cognition [34] that purports to contrast with our proposal. In the first place, Nakajima’s paradigm does not restrict cognition to living organisms. Rather, cognition is extended to abiotic entities, particles or electromagnetic fields. Secondly and more importantly, his theory requires, as Matsuno and others did, the existence of a meta-observer, located outside the system and endowed with a perfect knowledge of the whole system, and a cognizer which is inside the system and it is the one who experiences the system variations. Cognition is defined inter alia as the entity’s states that inhabit the environment or experience events that are occurring. Our paper is exclusively focused on the realm of living organism, and from the stance of the internal observer [29]. As such, it does not consider abiotic entities nor necessitates the existence of a meta-observer. Cognition is then apprehended indirectly through its appearances. It enables strengthening the realm of the living by endowing it with another essential common trait besides being an autonomous agent acting on its own behalf. Then, the meaning of a living organism that experiences the ecosystem is further developed in the Whiteheadian concept of prehension, which could either be positive or negative. In our perspective, experiencing thus does not encompass all of cognition’s existing appearances.
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Nakajima introduces two concepts, discrimination and selection, that both underline aspects of cognition mapping or experiencing the ecosystem. They determine inter alia the probability to survive a determined organism has, and thus in this respect they assume the meaning of “intelligence” or “understanding and computation”. The author rightly stresses that the last point involves many sub-processes at lower levels, in which discrimination and selection operate likewise. The common core (figure 2) that we propose enables to identify ceteris paribus some of the sub-processes in the case of a living organism. Furthermore, it helps to visualise how, in Nakajima’s words, discrimination and selection could modify the probability of occurring events. In this paradigm, we underline how memory could intervene in the prehension of some events, especially those related to survival. Along the same line, we note how the memory of past events is not an absolute weapon, because it can lead the organism to make erroneous decisions in the face of events that are similar to those of the past. Therefore, the act of prehension is not infallible. Identifying the subsystems of discrimination and selection helps to better understand biological probability. Let us also observe that in our framework it is always clear who is the entity experiencing the environment, while this is not the case for Nakajima, in his words “When the environment E is subdivided into n-1 cognizers, C2, C3, … , Cn, it is not easy to determine which cognizer C1 discriminates”; pushing even further the consequences of the last statement one could say that eventually“discrimination” is not a property of the cognizer. Different concepts, developed by Matsuno within the internalist perspective, raise additional discussion in relation to our proposal. The living organism, as a sentient entity, experiences neighbourhood events [29, 30]. The interaction’s dynamicity, by which the entity ensures its durability, is described as “internal measurement”. The author empowers the organism’s action with the ability “to transform itself from inconsistency-experiencing body into an inconsistency-free body” [31]. Aspects of what we mean by prehension could be understood as the act of measurement or as experiencing others. However, this action supposes at the same time an act of self-measurement that preserves the first value, which is the self, through its update or through the control over the neighbourhood events. It would be interesting to know how the notion of value intervenes in the identity, versus the durability dialectics that is found in Matsumo’s approach [32]. Analogically, the common core that is proposed could encompass the system of sub-processes behind the cycle of experiencing, transforming and expressing [31]. In this system, memory is characterised by a constant updating. However, updating does not guaranty the efficiency of
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its anticipatory function in light of unknown events. Matsumo proposes the notion of living memory as related to the actions of experiencing and transforming. The essential role that we give to memory raises the following question: how do active memories intervene in these actions in order to operate its anticipatory function, while minimising its collateral effects? All of these items emphasise the interest of going into the details of the subsystems that are at work in the interaction of the organism with its present ecosystem. This approach highlights these systems’ modularity alongside their hierarchical aspect. In this context, much work still remains to be done, in order to understand the role of memory and its functioning mechanism.
Conclusion
The object of this study was to complete the classical approach to the living organism by proposing a notion of cognition which is intrinsically structured in the living, and which defines it as such, with regard to other natural systems. In this approach, the term “cognition”, in spite of its etymological origin, becomes a technical term that no longer indicates properties bound to the brain and to animal mental activity. Any organism, by definition, is the manifestation of cognition, since this is the way by which it can be a social entity that can experience the environment. Our proposal of a generic model of the organism, along with an adequate terminology to identify it, clarifies the recurring question about the existence of cognitive behaviour in non-human and non-animal living systems. Furthermore, it explains its degree with regard to human reference. The proposal enables us to reframe certain former questions concerning the body and purports to bring new elements of answers in the future.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by ASBL Cotylens.
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Figure caption Figure 1 Diagrammatic approach to the organism from the cognitive perspective. The arrows a, and b map the three core properties [31] of the living. The object “matter” embodies the environment as the initial elements and its active role in the emergence of the living organism. The object “cognition” is acting inside the very process of appearance of the living, and not as a mere emergence after its final constitution. The arrow c is the result of the entire process leading to the object “phenomenalities” which is an autonomous agent, i.e. the expression of cognition.
Figure 2
Synthetic representation of the common core of cognition. Solid arrows draw the process from “perception”; dashed arrows indicate the dual aspect of the process. The diagram underlines the central role of “memory” over against other properties and its impact including upon “effect” i.e. the consequences of decision-making.
Figure 3 Simplified tree of the modular expression of cognition. The common core (figure 2) of cognition’s basic expression extend and branch out in the specific modules to every class of organism according to its autotrophy or heterotrophy status and cell dimension. This representation underlines the differentiated trajectory of cognition and its logical coherence in each case. From this platform, one can map new trajectories that can be useful in a research program in exobiology. In other words, from the common core: what can we add and in what directions?
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