Returning to Life Itself: A Biological Antidote to “Cognition” and “Consciousness”
March 20, 2026 DOI: 10.24108/preprints-3114733 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that disputes over whether plants, slime molds, and bacteria possess cognition or consciousness are conceptual rather than empirical, stemming from a Cartesian separation of sensation from knowing that later computational views perpetuated. Proposes recovering Robert Whytt's 1751 principle — that living frames sense disturbing conditions and are driven toward their resolution — as a "Sentient Principle" spanning all scales of living organization, and advocates a methodological inversion that begins with phenomena and their functional structure rather than with terminological verdicts. |
Abstract
Contemporary debates over plant cognition, slime mold learning, and bacterial behavior share a common dysfunction: biological observations are held hostage to terminological verdict. Before a phenomenon can be understood, it must first be judged — does it qualify as cognition? Does it rise to the threshold of consciousness? This paper argues that the dysfunction is not empirical but conceptual, and that its roots lie in a three-century philosophical inheritance that severed sensation from knowing. Tracing the genealogy of both cognition and consciousness from their sensory origins through Cartesian bifurcation to the computational turn, the paper shows that both concepts have been progressively abstracted until the living organism that originally grounded them became invisible. What replaced it — first the rational soul, then the information-processing machine — shares a single structural feature: the elimination of sensation as constitutive of understanding. Against this inheritance, the paper recovers a principle articulated by the Scottish physician Robert Whytt in 1751: that the original constitution of living frames is to sense disturbing conditions and be driven toward their resolution. This functional description — here termed the Sentient Principle — holds at every scale of living organization, from bacterial chemotaxis through slime mold habituation and plant systemic signaling to the reflexive self-awareness of vertebrate consciousness. It does not require terminological authorization at any level. It requires only careful functional observation of what living systems actually do. The paper proposes a methodological inversion: rather than defining concepts and judging whether phenomena qualify, begin with the phenomenon, characterize its functional structure, and locate it within the continuum of sentient organization. This inversion dissolves the standard debates without dismissing the observations that generated them — and opens a path toward comparative biology that is genuinely descriptive rather than terminologically gatekeeping.