Mental Structures as Biosemiotic Constraints on the Functions of Non-human (Neuro)Cognitive Systems
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Mental Structures as Biosemiotic Constraints on the Functions of Non-human (Neuro)Cognitive Systems Prakash Mondal 1 Received: 21 November 2019 / Accepted: 5 August 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This paper approaches the question of how to describe the higher-level internal structures and representations of cognitive systems across various kinds of nonhuman (neuro)cognitive systems. While much research in cognitive (neuro)science and comparative cognition is dedicated to the exploration of the (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes with a focus on brain-behavior relations across different non-human species, not much has been done to connect (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes and the associated behaviors to plausible higher-level structures and representations of distinct kinds of cognitive systems in non-humans. Although the study of (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes can certainly be revealing, (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes are underspecified with respect to internal structures and representations of non-human cognitive systems because multiple such mechanisms can target, or be mapped onto, the same internal structure or vice versa. This paper outlines a biosemiotic approach to this linking problem in order to bridge the gap between functions of (neuro)cognitive systems in different species and the higher-level cognitive structures and representations. It is contended that the higherlevel internal structures and representations of various cognitive systems are biosemiotic constraints on the (biological) functions of (neuro)cognitive systems that serve to restrict the range of functions (neuro)cognitive systems have or are selected for. This turns out to have implications for issues on the convergent evolution of cognitive traits. Keywords Biosemiotics . Mental structures . Non-human cognition . Representational
structures . Sign relations . (Neuro)cognitive mechanisms
* Prakash Mondal [email protected]
1
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy, Telangana 502285, India
Mondal P.
Introduction Cognitive systems in virtue of making various cognitive processes viable do not attach to any unique form of the biological substrate because their presence can be discerned and inferred through convergent and divergent operations of cognitive processes and mechanisms across the biological spectrum encompassing both humans and non-human species and taxa. Various cognitive capacities and/or processes seem to demarcate cognitive systems just in the same way as biological processes demarcate (the boundaries of) life. Taken in this sense, cognitive systems are ways of speaking of certain entities and processes just like life is a way or mode of speaking of biological processes (Mayr 1982). On the one hand, the idea that the boundaries of life are identical to the boundaries of cognitive systems appears to trivialize the notion of what these systems really are or do because the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive systems becomes very coarse-grai
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