Cognition and Agency Beyond Humans and Animals with Michael Abramson

Join us for the next installment of our Fragments to Agents series, featuring a presentation by Michael Abramson.

In this session, Michael will explore the concepts of cognition and agency extending far beyond the human and animal kingdoms.

The presentation will revolve around a review of several key academic papers:

• Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition
• Principles of Minimal Cognition: Casting Cognition as Sensorimotor Coordination
• Biological agency: a concept without a research program
• Updating Darwin: biologists are returning to an older theory to explain anomalies in evolution

Following the paper review, we will dive into an interactive group discussion covering:

• "Why" and "How": two sides of the same coin
• Selection and system dynamics
• Subjective experience, agency, and cognition
• The superpower of superhuman AI