bordarretazos

“Starting from this foundation, I argued that all biological lifeforms have some cognitive capacities, even those without brains, such as nematode worms and plants. To reposition the terms meaning and interpretation, I drew from biosemiotics, a field that studies sign creation, interpretation, and dissemination among nonhuman species. For biosemioticians such as Jesper Hoffmeyer, Terrence Deacon, and Wendy Wheeler, meaning-making practices are essentially behaviors evoked by environmental changes, such as a deciduous tree losing its leaves in winter. In this minimal sense, all lifeforms perform interpretations on information coming from their environments (for multicellular organisms, also coming from their internal sensory systems), which are meaningful to them within their world horizons (or Umwelten, as Jacob von Uexküll puts it).

This framework radically shifts the position of humans in relation to other life-forms. Rather than emphasizing human uniqueness (along with the inevitable corresponding denigration of other species), it emphasizes continuities of cognition across the biological spectrum while still acknowledging the specificities of each species’ capacities. At the same time, it also recognizes humans’ special ability to take responsibility for those attributes associated with symbolic reasoning and higher consciousness, such as the ability to formulate complex plans, implement them, and recognize large-scale patterns and significances. Taking responsibility positions humans not as dominators of the planet but as caretakers of it for their own benefit, for other species, and for the planet-wide systems of material processes on which all life depends.

In addition to recontextualizing human cognition in relation to other life-forms, this approach also enables a different understanding of computational media relative to human cognition. Although many biosemioticians argue that computers cannot create meanings because they are not autonomous, this objection is an arbitrary limitation belied by what computers actually do. As far I know, no computational media are conscious. Nevertheless, like nonconscious organisms, computers have internal and external milieus: they process and interpret information, including information from sensors and actuators when these things are present, and they create meanings in the sense of performing behaviors that have efficacy within their environments. Because cognition is inherently embodied, making these claims does not obscure or avoid the fact that computational media have profoundly different instantiations—that is, bodies— than do biological organisms, nor does it imply that computers operate like brains or vice versa.

Thus repositioned, cognition spans all three domains— humans, nonhumans, and computational media—while foregrounding the importance of specific embodiments and embeddings across the domains.”

Katherine Hayles, Postprint,