The Behavior Change Manifesto: Redefining Life and Cognition

We stand on the brink of a new understanding of life and cognition—a vision that transcends centuries of fragmented perspectives. For decades, the field of cognition has grappled with a perplexing reality: we lack a universal definition of cognition, an architecture to describe its structures, and a coherent methodology to study it.For too long, cognition has been constrained by narrow definitions, limited to brain-bearing organisms and hierarchical notions of intelligence.These gaps have been deftly avoided in many scientific disciplines, but the dawn of General and Human-Like Artificial Intelligence demands answers. The urgency has never been greater - without understanding cognition—its essence, architecture, and evolutionary trajectory—we cannot hope to replicate it on artificial carriers.