SELF-ORGANIZATION AND EMERGENCE OF PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR IN REASONING AND LEARNING, FROM THE DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

In this article three assumptions are outlined to sustain the idea that cognition can be understood as non-representational dynamic patterns of responses. The first assumption states that self-organizing structures emerge to dissipate energy and uncertainty efficiently. The second assumption proposes that behind these patterns there are underlying mechanisms of coupling between action and perception that give regularity and flexibility to the behavior. Finally, the third assumption proposes that in order to move flexibly from a pattern response to another, the brain and the body must be a soft assembled system instead of a hard assembled system. Further, empirical evidence is analyzed in order to suggest that the emergence of new patterns of behavior, in reasoning tasks, have the characteristics of self-organizing dynamic systems. In the last part, the conceptual difference between emergence and self- organization is analyzed from the information theory, and it is discussed how two models, extracted from ecology and statistical physics, can be applied to the study of reasoning and learning.