Representation and Change

This transdisciplinary work proposes a cross-fertilization between cognitive science and theoretical physics, within a framework inspired by systems theory. Cognitive science concepts are applied in an epistemological analysis of physical theories, considered as representations of change. This analysis leads to the basic concept of distinction conservation, which appears necessary and sufficient to demarcate classical representations (classical mechanics) from non-classical ones (quantum mechanics, relativity theory and thermodynamics). It is observed that the most important cognitive and physical processes are non-classical (i.e. do not conserve distinctions), whereas the paradigms used for modelling and interpreting them are basically classical. This anomaly produces conceptual problems, exemplified by the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The construction of an adaptive metarepresentation is proposed in order to solve these problems. This is a general framework for the representation of not distinction-conserving processes and representation changes. Finally a first sketch of a metarepresentational formalism is presented.