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Mazviita Chirimuuta
University of Edinburgh, UK
Title
A Mark of the Non-Cognitive
Abstract
Proponents of the idea of basal cognition clash with those seeking to restrict the term “cognitive” to systems showing human-like capacities. The impasse over the definition of cognition is unlikely to end soon but it will surely be helpful to get clearer on what it is about certain things that makes them indisputably non-cognitive. Do the arguments for basal cognition inevitably devolve into claims for a kind of pan-psychism, or is there a principled standard for what counts as indisputably non-cognitive that all parties will adhere to? This paper offers a mark of the non-cognitive — it characterises what it is about certain entities and processes that makes them paradigmatically non-cognitive. The characterisation is not a novel proposal but a clarification of a rare, though implicit, point of consensus in the cognition wars. I argue that opinion converges on the notion of non-cognitive processes being those that appear to be the result only of proximal, efficient physical-chemical causes. A system whose activity profile is of this sort will be a simple mechanism and have the passive and inflexible character that is paradigmatically non-cognitive. I end the paper with a discussion of the metaphysical background. On most understandings of physicalism, including one adhered to by proponents of basal cognition, all properties, processes and entities are fundamentally non-cognitive or non-mental. This means that the claims for basal cognition are less radical than those proponents typically promise. I discuss a neo-Aristotelian ontology which would enable such claims to become metaphysically substantive.
Biosketch
Trained in neuroscience, Mazviita Chirimuuta is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She specialises in philosophy of neuroscience and philosophy of perception. She also writes about the history of the mind/brain sciences and the history of philosophy of science. Her book The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience was published by MIT Press in 2024. It received the 2025 Lakatos Award for an outstanding contribution to philosophy of science and the 2024 Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize from The Royal Institute of Philosophy.