The basic point

Before I start, I guess it is good to mention the basic point here. To start right away: a theory that explains our cognitive behavior should be a theory that explains how important behavioral variables change over time. Because that is what a behavior is: it is a certain variable or set of variables changing in time. If we can explain how human behavioral variables change over time we have a behavioral theory. Question: what are the important behavioral variables if we consider cognitive behavior? Answer: those variables that change over time if an agent engages in cognitive behavior. Question: does that only include variables that physically belong to the agent, such as brain activity? Answer: No, why should it? In principle we need to explain "the variables" that change over time while the cognitive system is at work. Probably, most of the variables that make up the cognitive system are variables that express a relation between the agent and its environment. So at the basis of cognition we have interaction: both environment and agent influence one another reciprocally in an unfolding pattern of changing variables over time.

Why do I speak of ‘an unfolding pattern’? Human behavior is not random. If it were, we would be finished by saying: The human system is a noise generator, go home and live with it. We would not have a scientific question to answer at all. Human behavior is full of pattern. We behave in regular ways. We often do the same ‘thing’. But the regularities are quite complex once we try to pin them down. Let’s try it. Everytime we see a lion we run away. But not if the lion is in a cage. But still if the lion is in a cage with the door left open. But not if the lion is in the cage and the door is open but the lion is dead. But still if the lion was dead but we didn’t know whether it was dead or only sleeping. But not… and so on. So the behavioral variable of running-away-quickly (let’s call it: behavior X) cannot be generally determined by a simple system of interconnected factors. Soon one comes to the point of introducing a new construct in the theory explaining X: fear. When we are scared, we run away, when we believe be in a safe environment, we stay. This works quite well in the lion example. But the point is: what does it mean to be scared? How does that work? We introduce a new variable, fear (let’s call that one Y), for which we do not have a physical substrate and that is unexplained in itself, but seems to be good in ‘explaining’ our behavior. Actually we have explained nothing. In explaining the regularity X we said: there is an Y, of which we know nothing, except that it causes X. Ofcourse now we need to explain the mysterious Y and we are back where we started.

In nature, there is a lot of pattern. And it so happens that most of it comes about by a process called self-organization. In order to have self-organization you need a system of variables that are sort of independent from each other and interacting with each other at the same time. That is, you need to have a so-called complex system. In complex systems often patterns like X emerge without there being a secret Y needed to invoke them. Therefore, it could very well be that the human behavioral system is in fact such a complex system, and that patterns like X, that is, regularities in behavior like ‘the behavior people generally show in all different sorts of lion-encounters’, can be explained as self-organized patterns in a complex system.

This is the basic point.