TADEAS:

(PDF) Neanderthals and us: owards a philosophy of deep history Paleo-archaeology and philosophical anthropology
https://www.academia.edu/150280643/Neanderthals_and_us_owards_a_philosophy_of_deep_history_Paleo_archaeology_and_philosophical_anthropology

How did Neanderthals experience their world, compared to their Sapiens contemporaries, who entered what is now Europe more than 40,000 years ago? Was their way of thinking, their "manner of being in the world", as archaeologist Ludovic Slimak (2023) phrases it, comparable, or significantly different? And why would we want to reconstruct how Neanderthals experienced the world in the deep past? Is it to compare "us" with "them", or is it to better understand our complex deep history? Is it to draw comparisons and contemplate on what sets "us" apart, adopting an essentialist approach? Or is it rather to document and enhance our understanding of the intricate narrative of our ancient origins, without the necessity of measuring ourselves against our forebears? Such questions seem difficult to answer, but against the backdrop of three decades of highly productive Neanderthal research they do emerge, both among philosophers and among paleo-archaeologists. One of our arguments will be that these questions can best be addressed in dialogue, so that paleo-archaeologists and philosophers join forces and work together. In this contribution we will outline some ideas which philosophy has to offer to the debate, while drawing attention to current paleo-archaeological discussions and the type of data archaeologists may provide. Finally, we will elaborate on the strengths and benefits of a philosophy paleo-archaeology dialogue.

Cognition spaces: natural, artificial, and hybrid
https://arxiv.org/html/2601.12837v1

Cognitive processes are realized across an extraordinary range of natural, artificial, and hybrid systems, yet there is no unified framework for comparing their forms, limits, and unrealized possibilities. Here, we propose a cognition space approach that replaces narrow, substrate-dependent definitions with a comparative representation based on organizational and informational dimensions. Within this framework, cognition is treated as a graded capacity to sense, process, and act upon information, allowing systems as diverse as cells, brains, artificial agents, and human-AI collectives to be analyzed within a common conceptual landscape.

We introduce and examine three cognition spaces -- basal aneural, neural, and human-AI hybrid -- and show that their occupation is highly uneven, with clusters of realized systems separated by large unoccupied regions. We argue that these voids are not accidental but reflect evolutionary contingencies, physical constraints, and design limitations. By focusing on the structure of cognition spaces rather than on categorical definitions, this approach clarifies the diversity of existing cognitive systems and highlights hybrid cognition as a promising frontier for exploring novel forms of complexity beyond those produced by biological evolution.