Hi

You're stepping within the glorious field of the cognition. There different views within recent decades. Most might be classified into the embodied cognition, presented by connectionists and disembodied one, is which pretty put away.

Recently, the researchers in the technical side are prone to acquire some ideas to implement the artificial cognitive approaches within the artificial neural networks. Some others have stuck to the various logical systems, are which under aegis of the artificial intelligence territory.

The most recent idea are quantum-manipulated realizations of the cognitive abilities...

There are some rich texts from the people in this field, could which be taken into account for further studies.

I am myself involved in this field and quantum realization of the cognitive approaches for the robots is the astonishing case for me.

Good luck

Devis,

I asked the same question in the second half of the 1970s, when working on my PhD, and has been working since then on it. For our answer to it see for example http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb/BOOK.pdf

Perhaps your question may be approached proceeding from an analysis of language. indeed, both language and cognition may be viewed as representational systems used to represent the same world. So analysing the structure of the one may shed light on the structure of the other. In this way, referring to linguistic universals, Chomsky has suggested that the cognitive field is organized in structures composed of entities and relations. Associating "entities" with another universal concerning pronominal categories, and confronting the resulting conceptual framework with empirical data, I arrived at the conclusion that cognition may be organized consistent with two alternative structural organizational systems (or "cognitive programs): The one is quite rigid; it may be set by the biological evolution and shapes our everyday representation of the world. The other is flexible and enables alternative representations of the world as in natural sciences (e.g., quantum physics). More information and reviewed evidence can be found in the attached articles.

Devis,

The key issue in connection with your question is this:

Is there a universal structural form of representation independent of biological evolution, or, each time, evolution on a particular planet provides a new form of representation?

As I have explained in the reference mentioned above, I find the second scenario implausible: *basic* (underlying) representation  cannot be evolved.

Every inquiry whatsoever takes its rise in the observation, in one or another of the three Universes, of some surprising phenomenon, some experience which either disappoints an expectation, or breaks in upon some habit of expectation of the inquisiturus…

The inquiry begins with pondering these phenomena in all their aspects, in the search of some point of view whence the wonder shall be resolved…

The whole series of mental performances between the notice of the wonderful phenomenon and the acceptance of the hypothesis, during which the usually docile understanding seems to hold the bit between its teeth and to have us at its mercy — the search for pertinent circumstances and the laying hold of them, sometimes without our cognisance, the scrutiny of them, the dark labouring, the bursting out of the startling conjecture, the remarking of its smooth fitting to the anomaly, as it is turned back and forth like a key in a lock, and the final estimation of its Plausibility, I reckon as composing the First Stage of Inquiry.

Its characteristic formula of reasoning I term Retroduction, i.e. reasoning from consequent to antecedent.

There are in science three fundamentally different kinds of reasoning, Deduction (called by Aristotle {synagögé} or {anagögé}), Induction (Aristotle’s and Plato’s {epagögé}) and Retroduction (Aristotle’s {apagögé}, but misunderstood because of corrupt text, and as misunderstood usually translated abduction).

__________

The structure of abduction:

The surprising fact, C, is observed.

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.

Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.  CP 5.189

...if this be the normative form of abduction, the form to which abduction ought to conform..

~Peirce

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_best_example_of_Peircean_abduction/1