Physics and Logical Openness in Cognitive Models

Abstract

It is here proposed an analysis of symbolic and sub-symbolic models for studying cognitive processes, centered on emergence and logical openness notions.The Theory of Logical Openness connects the Physics of system/environment relationships to system informational structure. In this theory cognitive models can be ordered according to a hierarchy of complexity depending on their logical openness degree, and their descriptive limits are related to Godel-Turing Theorems on formal systems. The sysmbolic models with low logical openness describe cognition by means of semantics which fix the system/environment relationship (cognition in vitro), while the sub-symbolic ones with high logical openness tends to seize its evolutive dynamics (cognition in vivo. An observer is defined as a system with high logical openness. In conclusion, the characteristic processes of intrinsic emergence typical of bio-logic - emerging of new codes - require an alternative model to Turing Computation, the natural or bio-morphic computation, whose essential features we are going here to outline.