Information, context and structure in cognition

In this essay, we discuss some broad questions about theoretical aspects of cognition, to understand what makes a system of processes a cognitive one. We address the roles of information, context and structural features of the underlying processes, looking for some characteristics for a suitable mathematical structure underpinning cognition. We compare three kinds of agents concerning the information-theoretic aspects of action control: the reactive, the perceptive and the cognitive agent. Then we pave the way for comparing the essential features that distinguishes perceptual and cognitive processes, which lead to the geometric characterization of each one under a view based on Klein’s Erlangen Program, in the search for answers to the evolutionary question of how cognition may have emerged. Finally, we consider formal (logic) systems in order to define the semantics of space cognition.