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VI. Life’s Cerebral Cognizance Becomes More Complex, Smarter, Informed, Proactive, Self-Aware

1. Animal Intelligence, Persona and Sociality

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 1997. By means of coordinating an array of innate, dedicated, information processing modules, which are vestiges from hunter-gatherer days.

The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life….The mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it expert in one area of interaction with the world. (21)

Plotnik, Jousha and Nicola Clayton. Convergent Cognitive Evolution across Animal Taxa: Comparisons of Chimpanzees, Corvids, and Elephants. Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence, eds. The Conceptual Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015. This large edition considers in dedicated sections the nature of knowledge representations across animal, cerebral, evolutionary, perceptive, language, cultural, formative, contextual, and individual domains. Cambridge University psychologists can then confirm, after some decades of diverse field and laboratory research, that human-like personal and communal intelligence and behavior does extend throughout the creaturely kingdoms and deeply into life’s evolution. A chapter by Anna Wierzbicka on common languages is reviewed separately.

Regolin, Lucia and Giorgia Vallortigara. Rethinking Cognition: From Animal to Minimal. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. Volume 564, 2021. We are pleased to see this innovative entry for it has previously occurred to us that a whole scale reconception of the evolutionary presence of aware, intelligent behavior was overdue. Here University of Padua psychologists (search GV) introduce a special issue with this broad intent, scope and content. This will be an umbrella review to cover several papers with their Abstracts such as Cephalopods: Ambassadors for Rethinking Cognition by Alexandria Schnell and Nicola Clayton, Learning in Single Cell Organisms by Audrey Dussutour, Life, Death and Self by Michael Levin, All Living Cells are Cognitive by James Shapiro, and The Brain as a Dynamically Active Organ by Bjorn Brembs.

It is said that the historic import of these wide and deep studies from bacterial invertebrates onto every creaturely class can replace the olden temporal scale of mental qualities from first rudiments to human faculties. Into the 21st century and these 2020s, a profusion of research studies well attests to the actual presence of an independent, common, ecognitive behavioral repertoire which seems fully accessible to every diverse organic class and form, regardless of their neural anatomy. Even botanical plant flora are now being found to possess and exhibit their own intelligence, see S. Simard, et al in this Natural AI section. We also note two special issues this year in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (1820, 1821) all about deep intelligence.

In 1980s Humberto Maturana suggested that: “Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition”, extending this statement to all organisms“ with or without a nervous system.” This was of course anticipated by the famous statement by Konrad Lorenz according to whom “Life itself is a process of acquiring knowledge.” (LR & GV)

Learning is a basic way to acquire information about the environment so to adapt to changing conditions. Learning has long been acknowledged in animals from vertebrates to invertebrates but remains a subject of debate in a plants and single cell organisms. Here I discuss the concept of learning and argue that this ability to acquire and store information is pervasive and found in single cell organisms. I review experiments showing that single cell organisms such as slime molds and ciliates display habituation (become familiar with where they are). I suggest that single cell organisms might also undergo engage in associative learning. (Dussutour excerpt)

All living cells sense and respond to changes in external or internal conditions. Without that cognitive capacity, they could not obtain nutrition essential for growth, survive inevitable ecological changes, or correct accidents in the complex processes of reproduction. Wherever examined, even the smallest living cells (prokaryotes) display sophisticated regulatory networks establishing appropriate adaptations to stress conditions that maximize the probability of survival. Supposedly “simple” prokaryotic organisms also display remarkable capabilities for intercellular signalling and multicellular coordination. (Shapiro Abstract)

Traditional approaches in comparative cognition have a history of focusing on a narrow range of vertebrate species. However, in recent years the range of model species has much expanded. In this review, we contend that cephalopods are good exemplars for rethinking basal cognition. Cephalopods have large complex brains, sophisticated behavioral traits, and possess complex cognitive abilities once thought unique to brainy vertebrates. These large-brained molluscs can engender an inclusive understanding to cognitive evolution all the way to earlier, simpler occasions. (Schnell excerpt)

Reiss, Diana and Lori Marino. Mirror Self-Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 98/5937, 2001. Intelligent cetaceans are found to have the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror, an achievement which is seen as an example of how evolution converges on similar cognitive capacities in a much different kingdom from human beings.

Rendell, Luke and Hal Whitehead. Culture in Whales and Dolphins. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 24/2, 2001. A research report about the realization that language and cultural behavior is not the sole province of humans but occurs throughout the animal kingdom, in this case with cetaceans.

Reznikova, Zhanna. Animal Intelligence: From Individual to Social Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Zhanna Reznikova is a behavioural ecologist and cognitive ethologist, Head of the Department of Comparative Psychology, Novosibirsk State University, Siberia, and one of the most experienced field, laboratory, and theoretical researcher in a non-Western setting. As a result, the large volume offers extensive practice and insights into how to study and appreciate species-specific, information-based, creaturely learning and cognition across the Metazoan kingdom from insects to primates.

Rowlands, Mark. Can Animals Be Persons? New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. The University of Miami philosopher provides a long argument that after decades of study, and common knowledge, our creaturely co-inhabitants of all kinds are indeed as integrally personal, aware, sensitive, communicative and social as our human selves.

Shanker, Stuart and Barbara King. The Emergence of a New Paradigm in Ape Language Research. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 25/2, 2002. In place of the old encode and send, receive and decode approach, a better model of communication is to perceive how an aggregate pattern emerges during the mutual co-action between entities, whether cells, mammals, apes or humans. An example is the field of primate discourse which is seen as a dance activity in terms of engagement and disengagement, synchrony and discord. In the peer review sections, Alan Fogel, et al agree and see the paper as a contribution to the growing sense of a “fundamental relatedness at the heart of the universe.” (623) Tim Ingold likewise finds it to support new understandings in his field of social anthropology. The authors conclude:

The shift from the transmission metaphor to a dance metaphor represents, we believe, a fundamental shift in communications theory from an information-processing to a dynamic systems paradigm…..The shift…represents an important transformation…from looking at communication as an encryption process, to seeing communication as a co-regulated activity. (607)

Shettleworth, Sara. Cognition, Evolution and Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. A fully revised second edition of the University of Toronto psychologist’s 1998 volume of the same title. Its three main parts are: Fundamental Mechanisms (perception, concepts, memory), Physical Cognition (space, time, numeration), and Social Cognition (intelligence, learning, communication). A summary article The Evolution of Comparative Cognition appears in the journal Behavioural Processes (80/2, 2007). I was fortunate to hear Dr. Shettleworth speak on November 18, 2009 at the University of Massachusetts on her work, new book, and past decades of animal intelligence research. From incipient founders such as Nikolas Tinbergen and B. F. Skinner, and a few primate, pigeon or mouse subjects, within a dismissive mindset, the field has reinvented itself to admit a wide repertoire of cerebral capabilities spread across Metazoan kingdoms to an extent that, as we indeed know, it is difficult not to “anthropomorphize” our companion creatures.

Siebert, Charles. The Animal Self. New York Times Sunday Magazine. January 22, 2006. As every pet owner of any kind knows, animals have complex, interactive personalities. This extensive article reports how such creaturely psychologies have at last become an academic field of study and quantification. Initiated much by Samuel Gosling at the University of Texas at Austin, and other colleagues nationwide, the recognition of human-like qualities such as aggression, deception or shyness are being noted from higher mammals to stickleback fish and even water strider insects. The same personality tests developed for humans are found to work throughout the animal kingdom. By these admissions and lights, we add, might life’s evolution be seen as the embryonic emergence of a single, cosmic personal self in its myriad forms trying to reach the composite human phenomenon and its own recognition?

Simard, Suzanne. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. New York: Knopf, 2021. The University of British Columbia forest ecologist (search) provides a memoir of her field and theoretic studies among the ancient verdant arbors of the Pacific Northwest along with a luminous vision of how these flora and fauna ecosystems are actually suffused, and sustained by whole scale organismic networks. A further insight, which is dawning across this field, is the presence of an aware intelligent cognizance. We refer to a good book review It Takes a Wood to Raise a Tree (akin to a faunal village) by Emma Morris in Nature (594/171, 2021), and The Social Life of Forests by Ferris Jabr in the New York Times (December 2, 2020) for growing appreciations of her historic perception.

Skipper, Robert. Perspectives on the Animal Mind. Biology and Philosophy. 19/4, 2004. An Introduction for a special issue on how the field of cognitive ethology lately affirms Charles Darwin’s thesis of a continuity between animal and human intelligence and consciousness. Major players such as Mark Bekoff, Colin Allen, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Paul Griffiths provide cogent articles.

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