COGNITION AND LIFE - THE AUTONOMY OF COGNITION

In this paper we propose a philosophical distinction between biologica l and cognitive domains based on two conditions that are postulated to obtain a useful characterization of cognition: biological grounding a nd explanatory sufficiency. According to this, we argue that the origi n of cognition in natural systems (cognition as we know it) is the res ult of the appearance of an autonomous system embedded into another mo re generic one: the whole organism. This basic idea is complemented by another one: the formation and development of this system, in the cou rse of evolution, cannot be understood bur as the outcome of a continu ous process of interaction between organisms and environment, between different organisms, and, specially, between the very cognitive organi sms. Finally, we address the problem of the generalization of a theory of cognition (cognition as it could be) and conclude that this work w ould imply a grounding work on the problem of the origins developed in the frame of a confluence between both Artificial Life and an embodie d Artificial Intelligence. (C) 1997 Academic Press.