Cognition and Cognitive Processes: The Original Human Bundle Under Pressure
Did you know the human brain is estimated to perform around one quintillion ($10^{18}$) operations per second? For millennia, this astonishing computational power was part of an inseparable package: the human being. Our ability to think was bundled with our ability to feel, to build, to connect, and to find purpose. This is the core of what made us human. But what happens when that package is systematically taken apart?
In his foundational book, "The Great Unbundling: How Artificial Intelligence is Redefining the Value of a Human Being," J.Y. Sterling argues that this is precisely the challenge of our era. We are witnessing the methodical separation of intelligence from consciousness, of problem-solving from lived experience. Understanding cognition and cognitive processes is no longer just an academic exercise; it is the key to understanding the fault lines of a new world.
This page provides a comprehensive overview of the human cognitive engine.
- For the AI-Curious Professional: You will gain practical insight into the foundational mental processes that AI seeks to replicate and replace.
- For the Philosophical Inquirer: You will find a framework for grappling with the profound questions that arise when thought is detached from the thinker.
- For the Aspiring AI Ethicist: You will receive a substantiated analysis of how AI's impact on cognition is reshaping our society and our values.
What is Cognitive? Defining the Core of Human Thought
At its simplest, to define cognitive thought is to describe the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. If your brain is the hardware, cognition is the sophisticated operating system and all the applications running on it. This system is responsible for nearly everything you do, from recognizing a face to planning a complex project.
Cognitive processing psychology organizes this system into several core functions that work in concert. Think of it as a seamless, bundled workflow:
- Perception: The brain's process of organizing and interpreting sensory information from the world around us.
- Attention: The cognitive mechanism that allows us to selectively focus on specific stimuli while filtering out others.
- Memory: The faculty for encoding, storing, and retrieving information. For human-centric strategies, explore our guide on Memory Tricks For Studying.
- Language: The symbolic system we use to represent and communicate complex ideas.
- Learning: The process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, and preferences.
- Executive Functions: Higher-level cognitive skills that control and coordinate other cognitive abilities. This includes critical tasks like Identifying Problems and strategic Decision Making.
The Cognitive Thinking Process: A Psychological Blueprint
To see the bundled nature of the cognitive thinking process, consider a simple example of cognition: buying coffee.
You perceive the aroma and the sign for the cafe. You filter out street noise to attend to the barista's question. You access your memory to recall your usual order and that you have a meeting in 15 minutes. You use language to place your order. Your executive functions kick in to decide against buying a pastry to save time and money.
This entire sequence happens automatically, a beautiful integration of bundled capabilities honed by millions of years of evolution. The field of psychology underwent a "cognitive revolution" to even begin mapping these processes, moving past simple behaviorism to explore the mind's inner workings. This shift established the foundational ideas of the Cognitive Theoretical Perspective and celebrated pioneers like the Cognitive Psychology Founder who dared to look inside the black box of the mind.
The Great Unbundling of Cognition: Deconstructing the Human Mind
The core argument of "The Great Unbundling" is that artificial intelligence is the engine driving the deconstruction of this elegant human bundle. AI doesn't just mimic cognition; it isolates each cognitive process and optimizes it for performance, efficiency, and scale, leaving the original human package at a competitive disadvantage.
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Unbundling Analytical Intelligence AI tools are now capable of superhuman performance in specific, narrow cognitive domains. A 2023 study confirmed that OpenAI's GPT-4 could pass the Uniform Bar Exam with a score in the top 10% of human test-takers. Yet, the AI has no experiential "knowledge of the law" or concept of justice. It performs the cognitive task of legal analysis while being completely unbundled from the moral and ethical understanding that, until now, was inseparable from it. This is the unbundling in action, and as a Goldman Sachs report notes, it exposes up to 300 million full-time, cognitive-labor jobs to automation.
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Unbundling Memory and Knowledge Search engines have become our external memory. We no longer need to internalize vast amounts of information—a core cognitive function for millennia—but merely need to know how to query the system that stores it. This unbundles the act of knowing from the personal journey of learning and experience. We have outsourced a fundamental piece of our cognition, a trend with deep implications for our Knowledge Of The Brain.
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Unbundling Decision-Making from Intuition Algorithmic trading systems and logistics networks make millions of decisions a day based on pure data analysis. They are stripped of the human cognitive elements of gut feeling, emotional context, and intuition—biases that can be flawed, but also sources of creative leaps and ethical considerations. AI unbundles the decision from the human consequences felt by the decider.
Cognitive Movement: From Integrated Brains to Distributed Intelligence
The phrase cognitive movement meaning has taken on a powerful new definition. Historically, it referred to the intellectual shift in psychology. Today, it describes the literal movement of cognitive processes from being confined to biological brains to being executed in distributed, digital networks across the globe.
This migration from the skull to the cloud is the single most important transformation of our century. It forces us to ask unsettling questions at the heart of the post-humanist challenge:
- When a cognitive process runs on a server, is it still "thinking"?
- What is the economic value of human thought when a machine performs the same cognitive task for a fraction of the cost?
- If intelligence is unbundled, what is the remaining purpose of the human being who once held a monopoly on it?
The Human Response: The Great Re-bundling of Cognition
Acknowledging the inevitability of the Great Unbundling is not a declaration of defeat. As J.Y. Sterling argues, it is a call to action. The human future lies not in competing with AI on isolated cognitive tasks, but in the conscious, purposeful re-bundling of our capabilities in new and valuable ways.
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Integrating AI as a Cognitive Partner The most effective professionals will not be replaced by AI; they will be the ones who masterfully integrate it. A radiologist using an AI to perform a first-pass analysis of thousands of scans can re-bundle their own cognitive abilities, freeing them from a rote task to focus on complex diagnoses, patient consultation, and collaboration—integrating their analytical skills with emotional and social intelligence. This is the new frontier of Cognitive Neuroscience, understanding how our brains adapt to this technological partnership.
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Cultivating Metacognition: Thinking About Thinking In a world where AI can "think" faster, the most critical human skill becomes metacognition. This is the ability to understand our own cognitive processes, to recognize our biases, to assess the limits of our knowledge, and to determine where machine cognition is a useful tool versus a dangerous crutch. It is the re-bundling of intelligence with wisdom.
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Re-emphasizing Embodied Cognition AI remains profoundly disembodied. It has no hands, no senses, and no physical presence in the world. Our ability to learn and think through physical interaction—a concept explored in developmental stages like the Concrete Operational Stage—becomes a unique human advantage. The artisan, the scientist in the lab, the engineer on the factory floor—their value lies in the re-bundling of cognition with physical dexterity and real-world intuition.
Conclusion: Charting the Future of Your Cognitive Processes
Cognition and cognitive processes are the building blocks of the human mind. For our entire history, they were part of an integrated, bundled system. Today, AI is systematically unbundling that system, presenting both an existential challenge and an unprecedented opportunity. The path forward is not to resist this change, but to become the architects of our own cognitive future. It demands that we consciously decide which parts of our thinking we will augment or automate, and which parts we will cultivate, deepen, and re-bundle with our unique human capacity for purpose, empathy, and wisdom.
Take the Next Step
The unbundling of cognition is just one facet of a much larger transformation. To understand how this trend is reshaping our economy, our social contracts, and the very definition of human value, read J.Y. Sterling's groundbreaking book, "The Great Unbundling."
[Link to Purchase "The Great Unbundling"]
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