Cognitive science: a beginning without an end

Cognitive science:
a beginning without an end

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Cognitive science is a term explaining or revealing that the brain is not only or not so much a biological entity. The term “cognitive” was basically coined by scientists not satisfied with the answers that biology provided about how the brain works, and more specifically, about the problem of consciousness.

According to neuroscientists, the way the brain works may be based on an organic substructure. And that makes it a subject matter of biology and neurobiology of the brain, the study of the way genes and morphogenesis work or new brain connections and structures are built.

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Intuitively, the brain is seen as something unique and one-of-a-kind. But it is a scientific approach to understanding and studying it — with established rules — that we are talking about, not a common-sense view of it.

When we talk about genes and proteins, we refer to chemical processes and chemical compounds. They are macromolecules that consist of a large number of amino acids. But when neurons come together as a cognitive group, they start building an "entity" with fundamentally different properties.

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The connections in such networks are not established by contacts between cells, but by the cells themselves, which are part of multiple events, memories, and emotions. Connections in this case are not "wires" as in a neural network. They are constituted by the cognitive elements themselves.

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The structures of cell groups then become carriers for elements of psychological experience. This is a new structure — a network — with new properties, and it should no longer be studied either biologically or chemically.

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But even if we call the brain, figuratively, a "biological" computer with cells-connections inside, the question remains about what "computational" laws are at work there? How can these laws actually be discovered? What if it’s not biology (cells, synapses, mediators, heterochemistry, etc.) that should be studied to discover them?

It may well be the manifestations of brain function that we should turn to. Perhaps we should continue (start?) exploring the higher manifestations of brain function. That requires more than just brain scans, CAT scans, etc. and more than just studying manifestations of brain function, such as language and speech. Perhaps deep inside, those manifestations also have "laws" like physics, biology, and chemistry do? Can they be different from those of biology or even math?

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Currently, neuroscientists have two views of the brain:

It is an organ where physiological processes take place, and in this sense, it is not so different from kidneys, heart, and other organs.

It is a unique organ different from all the others. It is not physiological, but cognitive. On top of a neural network, it builds associations of elements capable of encoding the knowledge and experience of the whole body. It is a different brain structure, with different connections between groups of cells. Each group of these elements (cells) is no longer physiological, but rather cognitive, psychological.