domains of cognition
Did you know that emotions correspond to certain bodily states which precede the actual experience of emotions? (Read this interview with Lisa Feldman Barrett)
Similarly, the instructions we send back to the body upon feeling a certain emotion embark on their journey before we become conscious of them.
The complete correspondence between physical phenomena and cognitive models is as follows:
- Environment <-> Perceptions
- Body <-> Emotions
- Brain <-> Consciousness
By definition, modelling involves reduction in information content. Just like we can not perceive our environment at its entirety, we can not be conscious of every single activity going on inside our brains. (Remember that evolution optimises for survival, not understanding.)
The discovery of the unconscious was traumatic. Similarly, we resisted the idea that there could be stuff out there that lie beyond our perceptions. (e.g. micro organisms, atomic particles, electromagnetic waves) Each such traumatic cultural acceptance process was followed by an outburst of mesmerisation and imagination. A grand belief in mystery reemerged and many speculative phenomena got ascribed to the newly discovered inaccessible realms.
The cognitive models exhibit nestedness, just like the physical phenomena they model. But the order of nestedness is inverted and the relationships are mediated via causality rather than spatiality.
- Environment > Body > Brain
- Perceptions <- Emotions <- Consciousness
Perceptions are affected by emotions. The domain of attention changes as the emotional state does.
Both emotions and perceptions are affected by the states of consciousness. For instance, you experience a lot more stuff when you are awake than when you are deep asleep.
You may be wondering how a brain can model itself. Would that not amount to creating a recursive loop? The model of the brain is part of the brain and therefore it too needs to be inside the model. But how can a model be inside itself?
In the timeless world of mathematics, recursions instantly turn into monstrous creatures. But in the world of physics, recursions take place in time and their behaviour get tamed.
A model of the brain at time t contains a model of the brain from time t-1. In other words, consciousness is like a Russian matryoshka doll which has (due to the enormous information loss happening at each step of modelling) a very small number of nested units.
