Lessons from a virtual slime: marginal mechanisms, minimal cognition and radical enactivism. (December 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Walmsley, Lachlan Douglas
• Other Names: Brancazio Nick guest-editor.; Segundo-Ortin Miguel guest-editor.; McGivern Patrick guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Adaptive behavior. Volume 28:Number 6(2020)
• Page Start: 453
• Page End: 464
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Subjects: Minimal cognition -- radical enactivism -- mechanistic explanation; Animal behavior -- Periodicals; Animals -- Adaptation -- Periodicals; Adaptability (Psychology) -- Periodicals; Adaptation, Psychological -- Periodicals; Artificial intelligence -- Periodicals; 591.5
• DOI: 10.1177/1059712318824544
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1741-2633

Abstract

Radical enactivism (REC) and similar embodied and enactive approaches to the mind deny that cognition is fundamentally representational, skull-bound and mechanistic in its organisation. In this article, I argue that modellers may still adopt a mechanistic strategy to produce explanations that are compatible with REC. This argument is scaffolded by a multi-agent model of the true slime mould Physarum polycephalum .