Exploring the Depths: Uncovering the Hidden Substructures of Human Cognition

Humans differentiate themselves from other life forms by celebrating their thinking abilities. We have powerful cognitive abilities that have allowed us to dominate other life forms and to consciously pursue changes in our environment. Unfortunately, we tend to forget the substructures upon which our cognitive prowess is built. It is these substructures that have allowed us to survive and have played a large role in determining our overall wellbeing. In fact, I maintain that our wellbeing is often compromised by our thoughts and gaining contact with what lays below the thinking is often a pathway to a higher level of physical and psychological wellbeing. Our ability to think is just the tip of an iceberg. An example of this is stress. When under stress we get caught up in our thoughts, but it is a whole of body experience. But what lays beneath our consciousness thoughts?

The Mind-Body Complex

I like to think in terms of a mind-body complex contained within a body with four interconnected major substructures that sometimes work together and at other times compete – emotions, learning systems, thoughts, and awareness. The overall container for these substructures and interconnections is our physiology, that is, our body. The overall health of our physiology is determined by the way we use our body and what we feed it; both in terms of physical exercise and diet and psychologically in terms of the stimuli we seek and in how we express ourselves.

Motivation

The first major substructure is our motivation system. Fundamentally, these are the emotions that trigger our behaviours. They operate at a subconscious level and surface in our consciousness through feelings – sensations within the body that demand our attention – for example, sadness, happiness, grief, anxiety, depression. Our emotions move us towards and away from people, objects, pursuits, are often in conflict, and have a much larger say in our behaviours than we recognise or care to admit.

Learning

The second major substructure is our learning system. As our emotions motivate us to interact with others and our environment, we encounter internal and external experiences from which we construct patterns and lay down maps of the way the world is and what we need to do to participate in that world while satisfying our needs. In laying down those maps we often make faulty decisions and generalisations that negatively impact our lives.

Cognitions

Thirdly and sitting in top of our powerful motivation and learning systems and living in the realm of consciousness are our cognitive processes. There is the famous quote from Descartes, “I think, therefore I am”, which, when we consider the substructures underlying our cognitions, is a misleading statement. Our thinking is constrained by our emotions and our learnings. Our thoughts tend to be reactive and can only deal with what is brought into short term memory by our attention system and our memory retrieval system. There is, however, a fourth substructure that can be viewed more as a superstructure, that is, our awareness or mindfulness, our ability to think about thinking and to self-reflect.

Awareness

It is through awareness that we can connect the parts together and gain insight into our behaviours, our values, and our passions. Its exercise can also allow us to make healthier connections to others through the creation a coherent Self, by bring clarity that leads to a self-statement of “this is who I am” and “this is what I want to be doing” and “this is how I want to be”.

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