Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Authors' Abstract

• What counts as cognition, and how can it be studied in organisms without nervous systems?
• The emerging field of plant cognition confronts these questions by integrating philosophy, plant science and comparative psychology. This article provides a methodological primer on the field.
• We first survey major theoretical approaches — computationalist and representationalist, radical embodied, and behaviour‐first — and consider how they might be integrated.
• We then examine methodological strategies, from comparative experimental paradigms to the role of philosophy in clarifying concepts and guiding research design.
• Finally, we address key epistemic challenges, including replicability, anthropomorphism and confirmation bias.
• Taken together, these discussions establish a conceptual and methodological foundation for plant cognition research.
• A companion article, Plant Cognition — An Empirical Primer, complements this survey by reviewing the empirical evidence and its philosophical implications.