Formal Theory

Abstract

Cognition is not consciousness. Most mental, and many physiological, functions, while cognitive in a formal sense, hardly ever become entrained into the Global Workspace of individual consciousness: one seldom is able to consciously regulate immune function, blood pressure, or the details of binocular tracking and bipedal motion, except to decide ’what shall I look at’, ’where shall I walk’. Nonetheless, many cognitive processes, conscious or unconscious, appear intimately related to language, broadly speaking. The construction is fairly straightforward (Wallace, 2000, 2005a, b).

Atlan and Cohen (1998) and Cohen (2000) argue, in the context of immune cognition, that the essence of cognitive function involves comparison of a perceived signal with an internal, learned picture of the world, and then, upon that comparison, choice of one response from a much larger repertoire of possible responses.

Cognitive pattern recognition-and-response proceeds by an algorithmic combination of an incoming external sensory signal with an internal ongoing activity –incorporating the learned picture of the world – and triggering an appropriate action based on a decision that the pattern of sensory activity requires a response.