spiders, webs & cognitive offloading | linear c
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The nature of the brain, consciousness & cognition are some of the most significant fields of study of our times. I have already examined an aspect of this field of study in a previous post. As we press ahead with advances in AI and neuroscience the definition and boundaries of these areas appear uncertain.
I came across an interesting study the other day by Hilton F. Japyass and Kevin N. Laland, in Animal Cognition. In it they posit that a spider’s web could be an extension of its cognitive system. That is, that a spider offloads some of its cognitive abilities to its web. If this is the case then this is nothing short of remarkable.
The idea that a spider extends its thoughts out into the world, that it outsources information processing to its web, might strike many as strange. This idea of extended cognition however is not a new one.
The Extended Mind Thesis, proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers posits that an agent’s consciousness and cognition are not necessarily bound to the body. An example they gave was that of humans extending their cognition through prosthetics. Consider the use of a pen and paper to perform long multiplication, for example. Most people would be unable to do this without these tools/ prosthetics. In this example the individual’s brain performs some operations, and others are delegated to external media/ objects. “If we remove the external component, the system’s behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain.” [1]
A related concept to that of EC is Embodied Cognition. This theory posits that cognition is not bound solely to the brain but is also present in the body. A notable example is octopi. 2/3 of an octopus’s roughly 500 million neurons are found in its arms, and research suggests that octopus’s arms are, if not completely, then at least partially, self-governing and cognisant. [2]
If extended cognition were at play, then both the spider and its web should affect one another. If they were connected, then anything affected upon the spider would be reflected in its web and vice versa. A number of experiments have actually proven this to be the case. [3] [4]
Fritz Vollrath at the Department of Zoology at Oxford university, however believes webs to be more akin to tools used by a spider than an actual extension of its cognition. “The web is actually a computer, as it were… It processes information and simplifies it.”
I found the idea of a spider’s web being an extension of its cognition truly fascinating. It seems inevitable that many more strange theories and discoveries will arise as we continue to study and unravel the mysteries of cognition and the mind.
Sources: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-thoughts-of-a-spiderweb-20170523/?platform=hootsuite [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23979453%20 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19812081 [4] http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/267/1443/565
Originally published at linearc.co on August 29, 2017.