Abstract

In human “Cognition”, the so-called voluntary action is the reaction carried against a stimulus perturbing the psychophysical equilibrium of the mind; the aim of the reaction is either gaining the equilibrium quo-ante by stimulus removal or setting a new equilibrium. The questions are: “Who is in charge of the action-decision mechanism that opposes the stimulus perturbation and how does the mind manage the situation?”

“The Bignetti Model” (TBM) is the cognitive model that gives the answers. According to TBM, the mind is a tabula-rasa; whose cognitive mechanism is managed by the physiological dual-state of the mind: “Conscious Mind” (CM) (or explicit mind) and “Unconscious Mind” (UM) (or implicit mind”). UM has the computational task of ageing; if the stimulus is already known, UM might find the correct reaction paradigm already memorized in Long-Term-Memory, otherwise, it will find it by a trials-&- errors strategy. CM falsely believes to be responsible for UM’s actions thus self-assigning a reward or a punishment. These incentives will function as a sort of “Conditional Learning” to upgrade Long-Term- Memory for future needs. It is noteworthy that CM may comply this trick only when the UM’s action has been already made, i.e. with a few milliseconds delay.

TBM can be inferred from a series of functional aspects of the mind: 1) The mind is functioning as a dual state: UM and CM; 2) The binomial Ego-free will is an illusion of CM; 3) The mind is probabilistic-deterministic computational machinery; 4) Inner or outer stimuli may perturb the psychophysical equilibrium of the mind; 5) The mind is a “tabula rasa” with a trials-&-errors strategy that obeys to the cause-effect law. The paradox is that, even if these functional aspects of the mind underly an efficient cognition, humanity is suffering from an evident social and cultural degradation. During the toddler’s age, the illusion of the binomial Ego-Free Willis installed by CM in the mind for an autopoietic finalty: “self-protecting from perturbing stimuli”. Consequently, cognitive processes are certainly Self-oriented but not necessarily wise; the emotive, egoistic nature of this illusion is fundamental for cognitive mechanisms but sometimes prompts people towards false ideals and distorted life perspectives.

In conclusion, CM believes to have controlled real life when it becomes aware a-posteriori of UM’s actions, i.e. with hundreds of milliseconds delay. Then, the individuals consciously live their lives as in a pre-recorded broadcast; the analogy of CM with the Avatar moving in a virtual game is striking.