A Logical Inquiry of Emotions and Cognition
Arturo Tozzi, Colin James, James F Peters
bioRxiv Preprint Server November 15, 2016 preprint DOI: 10.1101/087874 via bioRxiv
Summary
The mind is not divided into separate cognitive and emotional faculties; instead, all mental activities are logically equivalent. Using first-order predicate logic, the authors show that nervous activity is equivalent to mental faculties and that cognition and emotion are not separate functions. Every mental faculty necessarily has a counterpart in others, and seemingly different faculties can be unglued from a condensed form. Thus, the same logical framework underlies all brain activities, regardless of their boundaries or magnitude, challenging the common-sense belief that cognition and emotion are distinct.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Citations | 1 |
| Key finding | Cognition and emotions are not separate functions of the mind; all mental faculties are logically equivalent. |
Abstract
Experimental procedures in neuroscience rely on the standpoints that the mind is a functional state of the brain and a clear subdivision among different mental faculties does exist in the cortex. According to cognitive neuroscientists, the term "mind" encompasses just the "cognitive" faculties, such as consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, memory, leaving apart the "emotional" states. Here, taking into account the powerful tools of the first-order predicate logic, we evaluated whether: a) the mind is a function on the physical brain activity; b) different mental faculties can be reduced to a more general one; c) the division of mental faculties in cognition and emotion holds true. We demonstrated that nervous activity is equivalent to mental faculties and that emotions and cognition do not stand for two separated functions of the mind. This means that, counter to our common-sense belief, cognition and emotions are splitted and every faculty of the mind necessarily displays a counterpart in other ones. We point out how it is possible for condensed mind faculties to be unglued in order to become apparently different functions. Therefore, seemingly different mind faculties turn out to be equivalent, because the same logical framework holds for all the types of brain activities, independent of their boundaries and magnitude.