Do you need a brain to have a mind?
For decades, cognitive science held a stubborn myth: intelligence requires a brain.
Thought was treated as symbolic computation locked inside a specialised nervous system. But peer into microscopic ecosystems, and that architecture starts to crack.
This talk explores unicellular cognition where metabolism and mind blur. From slime molds that effortlessly optimise vast transport networks to single-celled Stentor ciliates making calculated decisions to evade threats, bacteria and protists exhibit profound capacities for memory, learning, and sense-making.
Not automatons but active agents negotiating with their environments.
When we reframe cognition as a fundamental property of life itself, we unlock the evolutionary roots of intelligence.
Join us in reimagining the mind, starting with its smallest practitioners.
About the speaker:
Rajesh Kasturirangan is a mathematician and cognitive scientist by training and a philosopher by inclination.
He has worked on cognition in humans and other species, and is deeply interested in the origins of cognition and consciousness. He's the founder of Socratus, an organisation working on solving wicked problems such as climate change and planetary governance.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranganaut/
Sriram is a faculty member in the Information Sciences group at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.
He has research experience in bacterial genetics and microbial ecology and has worked with undergraduate students on Physarum polycephalum, an organism without a nervous system that shows "smart" problem-solving abilities.
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Add to calendar: https://shorturl.at/M7woU
Gmeet link: meet.google.com/wyc-jrbz-crs
Look forward to seeing you!