Extending cognition: a vegetal rejoinder to extensionless thought and to extended cognition.
Plant Signaling & Behavior December 31, 2024 Michael Marder, André Geremia Parise
Plants actively extend their cognition when growing new tissues or organs, so their cognitive capacity expands with their body. Growth, biochemical exudates, and moving away from obstacles or stress are building blocks of this extending cognition, which applies to any organism with an open-ended body plan. The theory reframes plant behavior as a form of embodied, extended cognition and suggests new directions for research.