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Sociality and the life–mind continuity thesis

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Abstract

The life–mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to life. The biggest challenge faced by proponents of this thesis is to show how an explanatory framework that accounts for basic biological processes can be systematically extended to incorporate the highest reaches of human cognition. We suggest that this apparent ‘cognitive gap’ between minimal and human forms of life appears insurmountable largely because of the methodological individualism that is prevalent in cognitive science. Accordingly, a twofold strategy is used to show how a consideration of sociality can address both sides of the cognitive gap: (1) it is argued from a systemic perspective that inter-agent interactions can extend the behavioral domain of even the simplest agents and (2) it is argued from a phenomenological perspective that the cognitive attitude characteristic of adult human beings is essentially intersubjectively constituted, in particular with respect to the possibility of perceiving objects as detached from our own immediate concerns. These two complementary considerations of the constitutive role of inter-agent interactions for mind and cognition indicate that sociality is an indispensable element of the life–mind continuity thesis and of cognitive science more generally.

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Notes

  1. Of course, strictly speaking phenomenology is concerned with one’s own lived experience, so it might appear strange that we want to generalize some of its insights to life as such. It is beyond the scope of this paper to argue for this claim more fully, except to point out that we do have second-person access to the experience of others (cf. Phenomenology of intersubjectivity), and that this can evidently include some other forms of life. Moreover, we can correlate our experience with our biological conditions and this enables us to justify from the third-person perspective that other organisms are likely to undergo similar experiences.

  2. “The ipseity is, of course, never reached: each aspect of the thing which falls to our perception is still only an invitation to perceive beyond it, still only a momentary halt in the perceptual process. […] What makes the ‘reality’ of the thing is therefore precisely what snatches it from our grasp. The aseity of the thing, its unchallengeable presence and the perpetual absence into which it withdraws, are two inseparable aspects of transcendence” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 271).

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  1. Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR), Centre for Research in Cognitive Science (COGS), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Tom Froese & Ezequiel A. Di Paolo

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  1. Tom Froese
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  2. Ezequiel A. Di Paolo
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Correspondence to Tom Froese.

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Froese, T., Di Paolo, E.A. Sociality and the life–mind continuity thesis. Phenom Cogn Sci 8, 439–463 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9140-8

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