---
title: "Cognition With and Beyond the Brain: Assemblages, Endosomatization, and AI-Driven Sensory Technologies"
description: "Daniele Cavalli argues that cognition should be understood as a property of a brain–body–environment system rather than of the brain alone, and that once this is accepted, technological augmentation of cognition need not stop at the skull."
type: "reading-notes"
authors:
  - "Daniele Cavalli"
published: "2025-05-10"
original_url: "https://coginfra.antikythera.org/"
doi: "10.1162/ANTI.5CZG"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra/cognition-with-and-beyond-the-brain"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/work/journal/coginfra/cognition-with-and-beyond-the-brain"
last_updated: "2026-08-23"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Cognition With and Beyond the Brain: Assemblages, Endosomatization, and AI-Driven Sensory Technologies

> Independent, unofficial reading notes from Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki). Written with AI from the published text, with citations; not by the work's author and not affiliated with Antikythera (https://antikythera.org). Read the original at the link below.

- **Authors:** Daniele Cavalli
- **Published:** 2025-05-10
- **Kind:** Studio projects · Journal article
- **DOI:** https://doi.org/10.1162/ANTI.5CZG
- **Original:** https://coginfra.antikythera.org/
- **Length:** 7.0k words
- **Part of:** [Cognitive Infrastructures](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra)
- **This page:** https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra/cognition-with-and-beyond-the-brain
- **Notes generated:** 2026-08-23

## Summary

[Daniele Cavalli](https://antikythera.wiki/people/daniele-cavalli) argues that cognition should be understood as a property of a brain–body–environment system rather than of the brain alone, and that once this is accepted, technological augmentation of cognition need not stop at the skull. The paper is a philosophical groundwork rather than an engineering proposal. It rejects both computationalist reductionism and the demand for an exhaustive definition of cognition, adopts a relational and process-oriented ontology, and brings together 4E cognition, Stiegler's account of exosomatization and Hayles's cognitive assemblages. Its speculative payoff is the idea of artificial endosomatization: AI-driven sensory technologies that, instead of extracting bodily data for analysis elsewhere, return what they learn into the body as personalised stimulation, so that somatic learning becomes a site of human–machine collaboration.

## The argument

The paper proceeds in four steps: a critique of brain-centred and computationalist views, a shift of ontological standpoint, an updating of 4E cognition with Stiegler and Hayles, and a speculation about sensory technology. The critical section makes two moves. The first separates thinking, a largely conscious and self-reflective process, from cognition, a broader phenomenon that includes unconscious operations. The mind is set aside as a "floating signifier", and consciousness is taken to be an attribute of thought and cognition, the state of being responsive to reasons. The second surveys the computational theory of mind from McCulloch and Pitts to connectionism and credits it with opening cognition to artificial instantiation while charging it with reductionism. Following Moreno and colleagues, Cavalli concludes that the productive question is not which definition of cognition is true but which is useful for framing a research project. He declines to offer an exhaustive definition and aims instead at a layered abstraction whose consequences can be examined.

The ontological section argues that ontologies are political, in Foucault's sense of how power and knowledge are organised, and therefore normative as well as descriptive. With Barad, this becomes an "ethico-onto-epistemology". The second step replaces substantialist ontologies, which begin from independent entities, with relational and processual ones in which relations differentiate the elements they connect. Bennett's vibrant matter is cited as the style of analysis that follows.

The fourth section traces cognition's departure from the skull. Maturana and Varela's autopoiesis makes cognition enacted through organism–environment coupling; Varela, Thompson and Rosch, Clark, Lakoff and Johnson, Damasio and Clark and Chalmers supply the embodied, embedded, enacted and extended strands. Cavalli then says the framework needs updating for an environment dense with AI. Stiegler's exosomatization, the externalisation of memory and knowledge into technical organs, is offered as a complementary account with different political aims, and Hayles's cognitive nonconscious and cognitive assemblages supply the unit in which humans and technical systems cognise together at planetary scale, a scale Cavalli aligns with Bratton's planetary-scale computation.

The fifth section draws the speculative consequence. If the human is a metastable entity in Simondon's sense, and the environment increasingly consists of interactive and affective artificial agents, then those agents are constitutive of conscious thought. Stiegler's distinction between endosomatic organs inside the body and exosomatic organs outside it then prompts the reversal: could technology transfer what it learns back into the body, an "onloading" rather than offloading? AI-driven sensory technologies are the test case, and somatic learning the capacity they might amplify. Cavalli disclaims transhumanist enhancement and ends by arguing that a less exceptionalist view of the human clarifies both the risks and the benefits of such technologies.

## Section by section

### 1 Introduction

Cavalli starts from metacognition, the human capacity to reflect on one's own thinking, and suggests that this capacity is what led us to make reality contingent on mental representation. Set Cartesian dualism aside and cognition becomes information processing grounded in a bodily substrate. The goal is framed as envisioning "potential evolutions in human–machine interaction" rather than settling the mind–body problem.

### 2 Cognition Beyond Reductionism (and Exhaustivity)

Cavalli opens with Morin's warning that complexity is a term so saturated it risks meaning nothing, then works through the Cartesian-Kantian inheritance that makes cognition a human mental process. The computational theory of mind is presented through Marr's definition of computation as rule-governed transformation of representations; connectionism is credited as the basis of modern deep learning and criticised for reductionism, and symbolic "good old-fashioned AI" is noted as having been dismissed since the 1980s. The section's resolution, borrowed from Moreno, Umerez and Ibáñez, is that one should seek a useful definition rather than a precise one, and Cavalli is explicit that he does not claim the definitive interpretation of human cognition.

### 3 Reframing the Ontological Standpoint

The only broad agreement available, Cavalli says, is that cognition involves information processing, and what information is, measurable data or embodied stimuli, is left out of scope. The better question is how humans process information in relation to their environment, which even brain-centred and phenomenological accounts treat as dynamic. Ontologies are political, with Butler, Connolly and White cited for ontology as a modality of the political, and substantialist ontologies give way to relational ones, with Barad's entangled phenomena, new materialism and object-oriented ontology listed as allies. The section closes on Bennett's three-part programme: a positive ontology of vibrant matter, the dissolution of life/matter and organic/inorganic binaries, and a style of analysis that credits non-human actants.

### 4 Entangling Cognition: From the 4E to Cognitive Assemblages

The section moves from autopoiesis, where living systems produce and maintain their own boundaries, to the enactive claim that cognition is "the enactment of a world and a mind" on the basis of a history of action, and from there to the 4E slogan that cognition does not occur exclusively inside the head. Cavalli credits Gallagher, Clark and Thompson with popularising the framework, then asks how it can accommodate non-human distributed agencies now that the environment is populated by AI-driven technologies. Stiegler enters here: human evolution is inseparable from external tools, from writing to biotechnology, and the history of humanity is a history of technogenesis. Hayles follows with the cognitive nonconscious, cognition that runs below awareness in humans and technical systems alike, and the cognitive assemblage, which "operates at multiple levels and sites, transforming and mutating as conditions and contexts change". A footnote explains her preference for assemblage over Latour's network: networks are sparse nodes and edges, assemblages are fleshy and contiguous. The resulting planetary cognitive ecology is said to align with Bratton's planetary-scale computation.

### 5 Speculating on Extension: Artificializing Endosomatics and Sensory Technologies

Stiegler's organology distinguishes endosomatic from exosomatic organs and poses the regulation of relations between exosomatic organisms as "the question of law"; Cavalli quotes Stiegler's inclusion of Bratton's Users among simple exorganisms, with platforms as complex ones. The reversal is then proposed: artificial endosomatization, in which technology autonomously transfers the knowledge it gains from humans back into human cognitive processes. AI-driven sensory technologies, including haptic feedback, immersive devices and wearable health sensors, are the scenario. Cavalli notes Lazega's warning that such sensors belong to a new behaviourism that guides human judgement, and sets against it a design goal: systems that remain within the body, delivering personalised stimulation that amplifies somatic learning rather than extracting data for purposes remote from the user. He leaves open how much autonomy such systems should have and explicitly declines the "transhumanist dystopias of mental enhancement".

### 6 Conclusion

The conclusion restates the shift from an anthropocentric to a relational view, and names artificial endosomatization and AI-driven sensory technologies as the cases most deserving further work, on the ground that the somatic dimension of learning remains underestimated.

## Key concepts

- **[Cognitive assemblage](https://antikythera.wiki/terms/cognitive-assemblage)** — Hayles's unit for cognition distributed across humans and technical systems, chosen over "network" for its sense of contiguous, mutating materiality.
- **[Cognitive nonconscious](https://antikythera.wiki/terms/cognitive-nonconscious)** — Hayles's term for cognition that operates below conscious oversight in humans, animals and technical systems, synthesising information and supporting perception, emotion and inference.
- **4E cognition** — The framework in which cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted and extended; Cavalli argues it must be updated for an environment populated by artificial agents.
- **Exosomatization and technogenesis** — Stiegler's account of the human as a species that externalises memory, knowledge and agency into technical organs, so that its history is the history of its technics.
- **[Artificial endosomatization, or onloading](https://antikythera.wiki/terms/artificial-endosomatization-onloading)** — Cavalli's speculative reversal: AI-driven sensory technologies that return what they learn into the body as stimulation, rather than extracting bodily data for external analysis.
- **Somatic learning** — The integration of bodily sensation into learning, the underestimated capacity that onloading is meant to amplify.

## Connections

- [Cognitive Infrastructures](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra) places the paper under "Organs Without Bodies" and glosses it as drawing on Stiegler's endosomatization, "or, as adapted here, intrasomatization"; the paper itself uses endosomatization throughout and does not use the latter term. The theme's claim that thinking is tied to sensing is the premise Cavalli's sensory-technology scenario depends on.
- [Organoid Array Computing](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra/organoid-array-computing), its sibling in the theme, runs the opposite way: it builds computation out of neural tissue, whereas Cavalli decentres neural tissue. They agree that cognition is plural and embodied, and disagree, or at least diverge, on whether the brain's substrate or the body's surface is the site of interest.
- [Xenophylum](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra/xenophylum), with Cavalli as lead author, rests on the same Stieglerian exorganismic humanity but runs exosomatization outward into new bodies rather than inward into the existing one.
- [Mutual Prediction in Human–AI Coevolution](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra/mutual-prediction-in-human-ai-coevolution) describes humans becoming "prostheticized by our technologies". Cavalli's onloading is a deliberate, empowering version of the same inversion, which makes the two papers complementary and slightly at odds in tone.
- [Modes of Cognition](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/modesofcognition) is Hayles's own Antikythera statement of the cognitive nonconscious and the extension of cognition to non-neural and synthetic systems; Cavalli builds directly on it, and Hayles's symposium remarks in [Planetary Sapience Symposium](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/planetarysapience) cover the same ground.
- [The Stack](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/the-stack) supplies the planetary-scale computation to which Cavalli aligns the planetary cognitive ecology, and its User is cited, via Stiegler, as a simple exorganism. The alignment is asserted rather than worked out.


## Terms used

- [Artificial Endosomatization / Onloading](https://antikythera.wiki/terms/artificial-endosomatization-onloading)
- [Cognitive Assemblage](https://antikythera.wiki/terms/cognitive-assemblage)
- [Cognitive Nonconscious](https://antikythera.wiki/terms/cognitive-nonconscious)