Cognition Series

A series exploring interconnected definitions related to how we think, perceive, and experience the world, starting with the nature of consciousness itself.

• Our Brain Box Earth

  Cognition: the neurological causes of a conscious agent’s behavior

  What makes humans different from animals? A hypothetical scenario exploring the core of consciousness and what parts of our cognition truly define 'us'.

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• Physical and Mental

  Physical – relating to the set of all things that can interact with one another
  Mental – relating to neurological processes that we’re consciously aware of

  Are the mental and physical realms truly separate? Exploring why consciousness, though mysterious, must interact with and be part of the physical world.

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• Individual Consciousness

  Individual Consciousness - the ability to experience and remember pain and pleasure

  Focusing on the consciousness *we* experience. What core capabilities define our sense of self and give our experiences meaning?

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• General Consciousness

  Binding: All the information that's part of a conscious experience is experienced at once...
  Boundary: Any processing of the information is excluded...

  Defining consciousness by its structure, not its content (qualia). Exploring the Binding and Boundary problems as potential physical markers.

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• Meaning

  Meaning – Layers of association between experience and feedback from joy and suffering

  Where does meaning come from? It's not observed, but created through the unique conscious experiences of positive and negative feedback.

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• Learning

  Learning: Efficiently encoding responses to stimuli

  Distinguishing learning (implicit, automatic responses) from memory (explicit, conscious recall), drawing parallels to data compression.

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• Emotion

  Emotion: experience caused by a difference between observations and expectations

  Are emotions primitive leftovers or core cognitive tools? Defining them as reactions to shifts in our predictions about the world.

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• Intelligence

  Intelligence: a measure of the ability to compare concepts

  Moving beyond behavior to define intelligence as the underlying mechanism of comparison, the core of human problem-solving.

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• Concept

  Concept: a collection of indistinguishable minimum sufficient causes

  How do we form flexible mental categories? Defining concepts by their effects and the indistinguishable parts that cause them.

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• Beauty and Humor

  Beauty - the feeling when an experience is unexpectedly easy to understand or process
  Humor - the feeling of realizing that we're not going to have to learn from an experience

  Defining two unique emotional experiences based on changes in our processing expectations – finding unexpected simplicity or unexpected lack of consequence.

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