Workshop: Minimal Cognition: Brained or Brainless Biological Intelligence
June 9 - June 13
Workshop: Minimal Cognition: Brained or Brainless Biological Intelligence
June 9-13, 2024, Erice, Sicily, Italy
The purpose of the Workshop is to look at model organisms as diverse as possible with the aim of unveiling a more comprehensive meaning of the concept of «cognition». Our motivation for this workshop stems from the need to examine cognitive evidence devoid of anthropocentric biases. We aim to focus on compelling evidence of intelligent behavior in various organisms, ranging from insects to single-cell organisms, and extending to the potential for plant intelligence and cognition. Convincing evidence of intelligent behaviour is attested in a variety of organisms, from the pin-brained organisms provided by invertebrates such as insects to single celled organisms such as ciliate or protists up to the possibility of plant intelligence and cognition. Another focal point of the workshop is the role of synaptic plasticity in learning and memory, which is currently a prominent topic in neuroscience. We will revisit past studies on Pavlovian conditioning in organisms like Paramecium aurelia and planarians, reevaluating the association between nuclear mechanisms and long-term memory storage, which has implications for cognition in single-cell organisms. Studies of minimal cognition in brain and brainless organisms should be complemented by the study of the plasticity of dynamic morphogenesis of biological forms as revealed by regenerative biology and controlled chimerism. The development of synthetic living machines with behavioral capacity, offers new avenues for understanding the origins of cognition in all of possible forms of material implementations.
Paco Calvo
Lab Director
Paco is the Director of the MINT Lab and a Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Murcia, Spain.
MINT Lab Director Paco Calvo will be one of the workshop speakers, giving a talk titled: “Green Minds or Blind Spots? Exploring Plant Sentience Amidst Scientific Bias.”.
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Facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue is another main objective of the workshop. We aim to establish a common glossary and theoretical framework for the evidence of minimal cognition. Possibly times are mature enough to propose and agree on some shared statements about the newly defined understanding of cognition. In this workshop, we aim at fostering interdisciplinary exchanges between biologists, plant physiologists, neuroscientists, ethologists, and psychologists, in order to offer a comparative analysis of fundamental and minimal processes involved in cognition. By bringing together leading figures in science working with different species from invertebrates to single cell organisms, from plants to synthetic organisms, we will outline an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of basic mechanisms of organization and functioning of cognition in a comparative perspective. The workshop will pursue this overall goal by fostering discussion between scholars, students and researchers from different field of sciences.