Fig. 1.

Cognitive scaling. A Rat learning to press a lever to get a reward illustrates the principle of cognitive scaling: the rat is a collective of cells, some of which interact with the lever (skin of the paws) and some of which get the nutrient reward (intestinal cells). However, no single cell has both experiences, and it’s the causal structure of the tissue network that enables credit assignment for behaviors, so that an associative memory between an action and a reward can form that belongs to the whole animal and none of its parts alone. B Simple homeostatic cycle (in this case, for pH control) indicative of the kinds of low-level goals that single cells can pursue. C Anatomical homeostasis, such as reliably regenerating toward a complete, correct salamander limb regardless of where it is cut, and stopping when that goal is achieved, is an example of large-scale (organ-level) collective behavior that emerges from the activity of a network of cells. D By merging together into computational networks, cells (neural or other) can increase the spatial scale of sensing, temporal memory and predictive power (sensing backward and forward in time, respectively). E Every agent has a “cognitive light cone” which demarcates the spatio-temporal scale of the goals toward which it can expend energy. This cone changes during evolution and during the lifetime of an animal from that of a single cell, with single-cell scale goals, to that of a morphogenetic system with organ-level goals and eventually a behavioral system with large-scale goals in 3D space. F This scaling of behavioral competencies and goal states in a given problem space can be implemented by gap junction (GJ) connections, which enable a connection of homeostats into a network that scales up the setpoint, measurement, and action steps of evolutionarily ancient homeostatic loops. All images created by Jeremy Guay of Peregrine Creative, used with permission. B-F taken with permission from (Levin 2022)