Living systems exhibit goal-directed behavior at multiple scales simultaneously - from individual cells maintaining homeostasis and migrating toward targets, to tissues regenerating specific anatomical structures, to organisms pursuing survival and reproduction. This goal-directedness emerges from bioelectric networks that process information and coordinate collective decision-making across cellular communities, creating a form of embodied cognition that extends far beyond neural tissue. When cells form collectives, they don’t merely aggregate their individual behaviors; they generate higher-order cognitive processes where groups of cells can remember, learn, and problem-solve toward shared objectives like rebuilding a limb or maintaining organ function. This reveals that cognition and agency aren’t binary properties that suddenly appear with nervous systems, but exist on a spectrum throughout biology - meaning we can potentially communicate with and reprogram these cellular collectives by manipulating their bioelectric states. The implications are profound: regenerative medicine becomes a matter of providing the right informational inputs to convince cell populations to build desired structures, cancer might be understood as a breakdown in collective cellular cooperation and communication, and the hard problem of consciousness dissolves into questions about how information integration and goal-directed behavior scale across biological networks.