On the Prospects of Basal Cognition Research Becoming Fully Evolutionary: Promising Avenues and Cautionary Notes

Acknowledgements: We thank Carrie Figdor and Fred Keijzer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also acknowledge the feedback from attendees and participants at the BSPS 2024 Annual Conference’s symposium “The Many Implications of Basal Cognition for the Philosophy of Science” at the University of York (July 2024) and the CEFISES Seminar (MolDevBio series) at UCLouvain (December 2024). Likewise, we thank the two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful feedback. MS acknowledges the generous support from the VolkswagenStiftung. AFT is grateful to The Ramsey Lab at KU Leuven and to the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) for their financial support—in particular, for grant G070122N. MS is currently a part of the Major Transitions in Cognitive Evolution project, supported by grant no. TWCF-2020-20539 from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, awarded to A. B. Barron, M. Halina and C. Klein, all of whom he is incredibly grateful to.