Cognition, collective behavious and conciousness

Abstract

Few things fascinate us as much as understanding human cognition. We owe it our ability to adapt to a complex environment in continuous change; it ensures that decisions are made on the basis of knowledge, previously acquired through experience or transmitted from generation to generation in human culture. It is also the cognitive capacities that allow us to imagine the future in order to anticipate it, being creative in problem-solving, but also identifying beauty in our perceptions and reproducing it in art pieces. Our cognitive capacities make us humans. Looking for a comprehensive theory of cognition implies first recognizing that many of the key dynamics that enable information processing can, in fact, be implemented by different biological hardware, not only brains, and that this has been widely exploited by evolution. Therefore, future research plans need to study cognition as the total set of mechanisms and processes that underlie information acquisition, storage, processing, and use. This has to be done across organizational levels and biological systems connected to each other and with the environment. In short, the path that cognitive science needs to take, represents the refounding of a discipline of knowledge. We identify three pillars: (1) to focus in organisms (not only organs) and collectives of organisms, (2) to put forward the ecological dimension of cognitive behaviour and (3) to consider an evolutionary, cultural, and historical perspective. Cognitive science can no longer run on parallel paths of science, but must converge and define a new holistic direction that will bring about new understanding.