More Situated Cognition in Animals: Reply to Commentators

Abstract

The commentators added a number of strands of discussion that expanded on embodied, extended, enactive, and distributive cognition across the animal kingdom and indeed beyond. I thank all the authors and continue the discourse in this reply. Action routines in the form of movements might form a common part of information delivery in perceptual systems; this means that sensory organs do not have to be highly acute in their entirety. Sensory systems and matched filters, outside of the central brain, seem to carry on some computations, exemplifying embodied cognition including some morphological computation. In addition to ratbots, animals operating neuroprosthetic devices make another kind of cyborg exhibiting extended and distributed cognition. Further examples of distributed cognition in the form of collective intelligence are presented, in humans and other animals, including a looming brand of trans-kingdom distributed cognition revolving around the gut bacteria of animals, now known to affect cognition even though the cognitive mechanisms remain unclear. All in all, the topic of situated cognition in animals looks even richer, and further dialogue is welcome.