The prominent philosopher Jerry Fodor once said that every idea has two lives: the first, in philosophy, and the second, in cognitive science. To which I might add: the third, in biology. The third avatar is quite relevant for our investigation into unicellular cognition. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, there was a lot of debate over the substrate independence of intelligence, cognition and mind, with some people saying that you need a very specific kind of fleshy apparatus to be considered intelligent, while others saying that it doesn't matter what you're made of, as long as you're solving the same problem that a human being is, then you're as intelligent as a human in that respect.
Cellosophy Essay #1