Cognition as Higher-Order Regulation

Abstract

The chapter discusses Antonio Damasio’s understanding of higher-level neurological and psychological functions in Self Comes to Mind (2010) and argues that the distinction he posits between regulatory (homeostatic) physiological structures and non-regulatory higher-level structures such as drives, motivations (and, ultimately, consciousness) presents philosophical and technical problems. The paper suggests that a purely regulatory understanding of drives and motivations (and, consequently, of cognition as well) as higher-order regulations could provide a unified theoretical framework capable of overcoming the old split between cognition and homeostasis that keeps resurfacing, under different guises, in the technical as well as in the non-technical understandings of consciousness and associated concepts.