The Diachronic Mind Institutionalized: On the Distributed Organization of Cognition and its Challenges

Recent developments from 4E approaches to cognition argue for variously distributed forms of life and cognition. But while these accounts assert the existence and predominance of distributed forms of organization, what is less clear is: what role does distributed organization play for life and cognition? This thesis seeks to explore, explain, and apply the active role that spatiotemporally distributed forms of organization play in facilitating the cognitive capacities of living systems. It will employ a broadly interdisciplinary synthetic philosophy in dialogue with 4E approaches to cognition. The thesis will thus address the material and organizational substrates of cognition while raising critical issues related to individualistic assumptions within cognitive science and psychiatry. The overall questions that this thesis seeks to address are: What are the organizational principles through which cognitive systems individuate themselves from their environment, and how do their cognitive capacities emerge? This thesis offers an answer to these questions by focusing on and exploring the active role of spatiotemporally distributed organization. The goal is thus to support and expand the theoretical and empirical resources for a cognitive science based within the concrete material and relational organization of living systems.