Cognition spaces: natural, artificial, and hybrid

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified framework called cognition spaces to compare natural, artificial, and hybrid cognitive systems based on organizational and informational dimensions, revealing their diversity and potential for hybrid cognition.

Contribution

It proposes a novel, substrate-independent approach to analyze and visualize cognitive systems within a common conceptual landscape, emphasizing hybrid cognition as a frontier.

Findings

Cognition spaces reveal uneven occupation with clusters of realized systems.

Void regions in the space reflect evolutionary, physical, and design constraints.

Hybrid cognition offers promising new forms of complexity beyond biological evolution.

Abstract

Cognitive processes are realized across an extraordinary range of natural, artificial, and hybrid systems, yet there is no unified framework for comparing their forms, limits, and unrealized possibilities. Here, we propose a cognition space approach that replaces narrow, substrate-dependent definitions with a comparative representation based on organizational and informational dimensions. Within this framework, cognition is treated as a graded capacity to sense, process, and act upon information, allowing systems as diverse as cells, brains, artificial agents, and human-AI collectives to be analyzed within a common conceptual landscape. We introduce and examine three cognition spaces -- basal aneural, neural, and human-AI hybrid -- and show that their occupation is highly uneven, with clusters of realized systems separated by large unoccupied regions. We argue that these voids are not accidental but reflect evolutionary contingencies, physical constraints, and design limitations. By focusing on the structure of cognition spaces rather than on categorical definitions, this approach clarifies the diversity of existing cognitive systems and highlights hybrid cognition as a promising frontier for exploring novel forms of complexity beyond those produced by biological evolution.