Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Cognitive science was founded on the idea that an understanding of mind requires interdisciplinary approaches among specialist fields. However, after more than half a century since the cognitive revolution, the study of mind is as specialized as ever, which raises an existential question: What lies on the horizon for a theory of cognition—unification or dissolution? This question is approached by way of a parallel with the (meta-)mathematical field of category theory. A core principle is construction by universal (mapping) property: every instance of a structure is uniquely composed of a common constituent (map). This principle applies at the level of categories and at the meta-level of categories of other categories. The analogous view of cognitive science presented here is as a meta-theory employing this unifying principle: in the form of a slogan, Cognitive science is to mind as category theory is to mathematics. Funding: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP23K11797