Within the cognitive sciences, cognition tends to be interpreted from an anthropocentric perspective, involving a stringent set of human capabilities. Instead, we suggest that cognition is better explicated as a much more general biological phenomenon, allowing the lower bound of cognition to extend much further down the phylogenetic scale. We argue that elementary forms of cognition can already be witnessed in prokaryotes possessing a functional sensorimotor analogue of the nervous system. Building on a case-study of the Escherichia coli bacterium and its sensorimotor system, the TCST-system, we home in on the characteristics of minimal cognition, and distinguish it from more basic forms of ontogenetic adaptation. In our view, minimal cognition requires an embodiment consisting of a sensorimotor coupling mechanism that subsumes an autopoietic organization; this forms the basis of the growing consensus that the core of cognition revolves around sensorimotor coupling. We discuss the relevance of our interpretation of minimal cognition for the study of cognition in general
Alexandre, G. , & Zhulin, I. B. (2001). More than one way to sense chemicals . Journal of Bacteriology, 183, 4681-4686 .
2.
Allman, J. M. (1998). Evolving brains. New York: Scientific American Library/W. H. Freeman .
3.
Armitage, J. P. (1992). Bacterial motility and chemotaxis . Science Progress, 76, 451-477 .
4.
Armitage, J. P. (1999). Bacterial tactic responses . Advances in Microbial Physiology, 41, 229-289 .
5.
Barandiaran, X. & Moreno, A. (2006). On What Makes Certain Dynamical Systems Cognitive: A minimally cognitive organization program , Adaptive Behavior, 14, 157-171 .
6.
Beer, R. D. (2003). The dynamics of active categorical perception in an evolved model agent . Adaptive Behavior, 11, 209-243 .
7.
Beer, R. D. (2004). Autopoiesis and cognition in the game of life . Artificial Life, 10, 309-326 .
8.
Berg, H. C. (2000). Motile behavior of bacteria . Physics Today, 53, 24-24 .
9.
Bitboll, M. , & Luigi, P. L. (2004). Autopoiesis with or without cognition: Defining life at its edge . Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 1, 99-107 .
10.
Bonner, J. T. (2000). First signals. The evolution of multicellular development. Princeton: Princeton University Press .
11.
Bourret, R. B. , Charon, N. W. , Stock, A. M. , & West, A. H. (2002). Bright lights, abundant operons -fluorescence and genomic technologies advance studies of bacterial locomotion and signal transduction . Journal of Bacteriology, 184, 1-17 .
12.
Boyd, A. , & Simon, M. (1982). Bacterial chemotaxis . Annual Review of Physiology, 44, 501-517 .
13.
Braitenberg, V. (1984). Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets .
14.
Brooks, R. (1999). Cambrian intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
15.
Clark, A. (1997). Being there: putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
16.
Davidson, D. (1999). The emergence of thought . Erkenntnis, 51, 7-17 .
17.
Dennett, D. C. (1984). Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books .
18.
Dennett, D. C. (1996). Kinds of Minds. New York: Basic Books .
19.
di Primio, F. , Müller, B. S. , & Lengeler, J. W. (2000). Minimal cognition in unicellular organisms . In J. A. Meyer , A. Berthoz , D. Floreano , H. L. Roitblat & S. W. Wilson (Eds.), SAB2000 Proceedings, Supplement, (pp. 3-12 ), International Society for Adaptive Behavior. Honolulu: Hawaii International.
20.
Dusenbery, D. B. (1998). Fitness landscapes for effects of shape on chemotaxis and other behaviors of bacteria . Journal of Bacteriology, 180, 5978-5983 .
21.
Etxeberria, A. , Merelo, J. J. , & Moreno, A. (1994). Studying organisms with basic cognitive capacities in artificial worlds . Intellectia, 18, 45-69 .
22.
Falke, J. J. , Bass, R. B. , Butler, S. L. , Chervitz, S. A. , & Danielson, M. A. (1997). The two-component signaling pathway of bacterial chemotaxis: A molecular view of signal transduction by receptors, kinases, and adaptation . Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, 13, 457-512 .
23.
Garrity, L. F. , & Ordal, G. W. (1995). Chemotaxis in Bacillus subtilis: How bacteria monitor environmental signals . Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 68, 87-104 .
24.
Godfrey-Smith, P. (1996). Complexity and the Function of Mind in nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
25.
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2001). Environmental Complexity and the evolution of cognition. In R. Sternberg & J. Kaufman (Eds.), The evolution of intelligence (pp. 233-249). London: Lawrence Elrbaum Associates .
26.
Gould, J. L. , & Gould, C. G. (1998). Reasoning in animals . Scientific American Presents, 9, 52-59 .
27.
Greenspan, R. J. , & van Swinderen, B. (2004). Cognitive consonance: Complex brain functions in the fruit fly and its relatives , Trends in Neurosciences, 27, 707-711 .
28.
Heinrich, B. (2000). Testing insight in ravens. In C. Heyes & L. Huber (Eds.), The evolution of cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
29.
Heschl, A. (1990). L = C: A simple equation with astonishing consequences . Journal of Theoretical Biology, 145, 13-40 .
30.
Hofstadter, D. R. (1985). On the seeming paradox of mechanizing creativity. In D. R. Hofstadter Metamagical themas: Questing for the essence of mind and pattern (pp. 526-546). London: Penguin .
31.
Jonker, C. M. , Snoep, J. L. , Treur, J. , Westerhoff, H. V. , & Wijngaards, W. C. A. (2001). Embodied intentional dynamics of bacterial behaviour . In R. Pfeifer & M. Lungarella (Eds.), Proceedings of the international workshop on emergence and development of embodied cognition (pp. 465-466 ). New York: ACM Press.
32.
Keijzer, F. A. (2001). Representation and Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
33.
Keijzer, F. A. (2003). Making Decisions does not suffice for Minimal Cognition . Adaptive Behavior, 11, 266-269 .
34.
Koretke, K. K. , Lupas, A. N. , Warren, P. V. , Rosenberg, M. , & Brown, J. R. (2000). Evolution of Two-Component Signal transduction . Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17, 1956-1970 .
35.
Koshland, D. E. (1980). A response regulator model in a simple sensory system . Science, 196, 1055-1063 .
36.
Lengeler, J. W. (2000). Metabolic networks: A signal-oriented approach to cellular models . Biological Chemistry, 381, 911-920 .
37.
Lengeler, J. W., Müller, B. S., & di Primio, F. (2000). Neubewertung kognitiver Leistungen im Lichte der Fähigkeiten einzelliger Lebewesen. Kognitionswissenschaft, 8, 160-178.
38.
Lengeler, J. W. , & Postma, P. W. (1999). Global networks and signal transduction pathways. In J. W. Lengeler , G. Drews , & H. G. Schlegel (Eds.). Biology of the Prokaryotes. London: Blackwell Science .
39.
Luisi, P. L. (2003). Autopoiesis: a review and a reappraisal . Naturwissenschaften, 90, 49-59 .
40.
Lyon, P. (2004). Autopoiesis and knowing: Reflections on Maturana’s Biogenic Explanation of Cognition . Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 11(4), 21-46 .
41.
Lyon, P. (2006). The biogenic approach to cognition . Cognitive processes, 7, 11-29 .
42.
Manson, M. D. , Armitage, J. P. , Hoch, J. A. , & Macnab, R. M. (1998). Bacterial locomotion and signal transduction . Journal of Bacteriology, 180(5), 1009-1022 .
43.
Maturana, H. R. (2002). Autopoiesis, structural coupling and cognition: A history of these and other notions in the biology of cognition . Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 9, 5-34 .
44.
Maturana, H. R. , & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Boston: D. Reidel .
45.
Maturana, H. R. , & Varela, F. J. (1988). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston: Shambhala Publications .
46.
Menzel, R. , Giurfa, M. , & Brembs, B. (unpublished paper). Cognition in Invertebrates. In N. J. Strausfeld & T. H. Bullock (Eds.), The evolution of nervous systems, Vol II: Evolution of nervous systems in invertebrates. Amsterdam: Elsevier Life Sciences .
47.
Moreno, A. , & Etxeberria, A. (2005). Agency in natural and artificial systems . Artificial Life, 11, 161-176 .
48.
Moreno, A. , Merelo, J. J. , & Etxeberria, A. (1992). Perception, adaptation and learning . In B. Mc Mullin and N. Murphy (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Autopoiesis and Perception, (pp. 65-70 ). Dublin: Dublin City University.
49.
Moreno, A. , Umerez, J. , & Ibañez, J. (1997). Cognition and life. The autonomy of cognition . Brain & Cognition, 34, 107-129 .
50.
Müller, B. S. , di Primio, F. , & Lengeler, J. W. (2001). Contributions of minimal cognition to Flexibility . In N. Callaos , W. Badawy & S. Bozinovski (Eds.), SCI 2001 Proceedings of the5th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Volume XV, Industrial Systems: Part II, by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, (pp. 93-98 ). Orlando: IIS.
51.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts .
52.
O’Regan, J. K. , & Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness . Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 939-1031 .
53.
Port, R. F. , & van Gelder, T. (1995). Mind as motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
54.
Prescott, T. J. , Redgrave, P. , & Gurney, K. (1999). Layered control architectures in robots and vertebrates . Adaptive Behavior, 7, 99-127 .
55.
Roth, G. , & Wullimann, M. F. (Eds.) (2001). Brain evolution and cognition. New York: John Wiley & Sons .
56.
Shettleworth, S. J. (1998). Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press .
57.
Sourjik, V. (2004). Receptor clustering and signal processing in E. coli chemotaxis . Trends in Microbiology, 12, 569-576 .
58.
Smirnova, A. A. , Lazareva, O. F. , & Zorina, Z. A. (2003). Prototype symbolization in hooded crows . Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, 33, 335-348 .
59.
Staddon, J. E. R. (2001). Adaptive dynamics: The theoretical analysis of behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Brad-ford Book .
60.
Sterelny, K. (2001). The evolution of agency and other essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
61.
Stewart, J. (1996). Cognition = Life: Implications for higher-level cognition . Behavioural Processes, 35, 311-326 .
62.
Taylor, B. L. (2004). An alternative strategy for adaptation in Bacterial Behavior . Journal of Bacteriology, 186, 3671-3673 .
63.
Taylor, B. L. , & Zhulin, I. B. (1998). In search of higher energy: Metabolism-dependent behaviour in bacteria . Molecular Microbiology, 28, 683-690 .
64.
Thelen, E. , & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
65.
Todar, K. (2004). Todar’s online textbook of bacteriology. University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Bacteriology . Retrieved September 27, 2005, from http://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/
66.
Tyson, J. J. , Chen, K. C. , & Novak, B. (2003). Sniffers, buzzers, toggles and blinkers: dynamics of regulatory and signaling pathways in the cell . Current Opinion in Cell Biology, 15, 221-231 .
67.
von Uexküll, J. (1937). Die neue Umweltlehre: Ein Bindeglied zwischen Natur- und Kulturwissenschaften. Die Erziehung, 13, 185-199.
68.
Varela, F. J. (1992). Autopoiesis and a biology of intentionality . In B. Mc Mullin and N. Murphy (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Autopoiesis and Perception, (pp. 4-14 ). Dublin: Dublin City University.
69.
Yi, T. , Huang, Y. , Simon, M. I. , & Doyle, J. (2000). Robust perfect adaptation in bacterial chemotaxis through integral feedback control . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97, 4649-4653 .
