Sensing, Feeling, Affect, And The Origins Of Cognition In Biological Systems

Cognition is often modeled in terms of abstract reasoning and neural computation, yet biological evidence shows that the roots of cognition lie in far more fundamental processes. This article develops a theory of cognition grounded in sensing, feeling, and affect—capacities that precede nervous systems and are present even in the simplest forms of life. Drawing on the info-computational framework, we argue that cognition and proto-subjectivity co-emerge in biological systems: the embodied evaluation of internal and external conditions in terms of valence and the capacity to act accordingly are mutually constitutive dynamics. This concept reframes cognition not as disembodied information processing, but as embodied, value-sensitive information dynamics—self-regulating engagements with the environment, continuous across biological scales. In this view, information is physically instantiated, and computation is the dynamic, self-modifying process by which organisms regulate and reorganize themselves. Cognition thus emerges from the dynamic coupling of sensing, internal evaluation, and adaptive morphological activity.Grounded in findings from developmental biology, bioelectric signaling, morphological computation, and basal cognition, this account situates intelligence as an affectively regulated process intrinsic to life itself. While focused on biological systems, this framework may also offer conceptual insights for the development of more adaptive and embodied forms of artificial intelligence. Future experimental work in synthetic or minimal biological systems may help to operationalize and test the proposed mechanisms of proto-subjectivity and affective regulation.