MIKAEL SCHERDIN

COGITATIVE POWERS OF THE BRAIN - WHAT IS THAT ?

While cognitive powers of the mind/brain are constructed through the individual's interaction with the environment - where the emphasis is on stimuli generated by the environment and re-cognition - cogitative powers such as beliefs, thoughts, and imagination are internal to the individual and can be said to originate "from within". Specifically, cogitative processes such as thought and imagination may be caused or triggered by the individual's encounters with external objects and events, but they also have the particular quality that they do not necessarily depend on such encounters to become activated. They remain operative even in contexts characterized by a minimum of external impulses, and casual observations suggest that many creative individuals seek temporary refuge in isolated places to conceive of and fully develop their thoughts and ideas.

The cogitative powers of the mind/brain are much less explored than cognitive powers and cognition, but give the individual freedom to "think of ingenious, unusual, detailed, hitherto undreamt of possibilities". They include reasoning or the logical and analytical processing that in the face of explicit decision problems is sometimes equated with rationality or optimality, but also the individual's playful engagement in thought experiments, imagination, or fantasies about what might be. Similar to the development of human emotions, curiosity and playfulness of the mind/brain would appear to have been developed and conserved over evolutionary history, and also to be a distinctive or particularly pronounced characteristic of human nature. It opens up for the possibility that individuals, without any prior cause or and without prior constraints, are capable of making truly uncaused and voluntary decisions that result in action.