To explain why cognition evolved requires, first and foremost, an analysis of what qualifies as an explanation. In terms of physics, causes are forces and consequences are changes in states of substance. Accordingly, any sequence of events, from photon absorption to focused awareness, chemical reactions to collective behavior, or from neuronal avalanches to niche adaptation, is understood as an evolution from one state to another toward thermodynamic balance where all forces finally tally each other. From this scale-free physics perspective, energy (...) flows through those means and mechanisms, as if naturally selecting them, that bring about balance in the least time. Then, cognitive machinery is also understood to have emerged from the universal drive toward a free energy minimum, equivalent to an entropy maximum. The least-time nature of thermodynamic processes results in the ubiquitous patterns in data, also characteristic of cognitive processes, i.e., skewed distributions that accumulate sigmoidally and, therefore, follow mostly power laws. In this vein, thermodynamics derived from the statistical physics of open systems explains how evolution led to cognition and provides insight, for instance, into cognitive ease, biases, dissonance, development, plasticity, and subjectivity. (shrink)

This is a short discussion of Janko Nešić’s [2022. “Towards a Neutral-Structuralist Theory of Consciousness and Selfhood.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1–17], which conveys a critical review of Beni’s Structural Realist theory of the Self (SRS). Nešić’s critique indicates that there is an incongruity between the structuralist tendency of SRS and its commitment to panpsychism. He argues that Beni can use the notion of internal information to develop a more congenial account of consciousness than panpsychism. In this (...) paper, I defend the panpsychist component of Beni’s theory and explain why I think it’s preferable to Nešić’s proposal. (shrink)