---
slug: paper-moralez-l-a-2016-thermodynamics-and-cognition-towards-a-lawful-explanation-of-th
title: Moralez and Favela on Thermodynamics and Cognition (2016)
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-moralez-l-a-2016-thermodynamics-and-cognition-towards-a-lawful-explanation-of-th
---

## What the authors saw and their core results

Larry A. Moralez and Luis H. Favela published a six-page conference paper in the Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. They observed that modern cognitive science often treats mind and matter as separate domains, a split traceable to Descartes and Kant. They proposed that the second law of thermodynamics supplies a single lawful frame that applies to both physical systems and living, cognitive ones.

Their central claim is that cognition participates in the universal drive toward greater entropy. Memory and action selection work together as mechanisms that accelerate entropy production at the scale of the brain-body-environment system. The paper does not present new experiments. It offers a conceptual unification: place cognitive processes under the same physical necessity that governs rivers, protein expression, and heat flow.

## Exact primary work and load-bearing passages

The full citation is: Moralez, L. A., & Favela, L. H. (2016). Thermodynamics and cognition: Towards a lawful explanation of the mind. In A. Papafragou, D. Grodner, D. Mirman, & J. C. Trueswell (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 948-953). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12m815ct and https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2016/papers/0173/paper0173.pdf.

Key passages from the published text:

"An argument is developed to show that explanations of biological and physical systems can be unified via the second law of thermodynamics (SLT). The SLT’s influence on the evolutionary history of life at the scale of the global Earth system justifies reunifying phenomena—i.e., mind and matter—whose separation dates back to Modern Western philosophy and still influences contemporary scientific investigations. From this perspective it appears that the necessity of ever-increasing entropy in nature may constrain the organization and behavior of living organisms and cognitive processes. Via an example of explaining memory at the scale of the brain-body-environment system, we recommend understanding cognition with respect to its role in increasing entropy in nature."

"If we instead approach cognizing organisms as physical systems, whose laws regulate all physical interaction within such systems, the constraints these laws impose on cognitive processes should be present and observable in organisms."

"Via an example of explaining memory at the scale of the brain-body-environment system, we recommend understanding cognition with respect to its role in increasing entropy in nature. This framework may lead to a fruitful understanding of cognition by appealing to the necessity of physical laws."

The paper cites Swenson and Turvey (1991) for the interpretation of the second law as end-directed physics and uses an illustration of river flow and TRPV1 receptor expression to show parallel increases in flow speed and organizational complexity under higher energy throughput.

## Convergence patterns the work touches

The paper directly engages the Ladder pattern: difference produces flow, flow produces structure, structure supports memory, memory supports life and mind. It frames memory and action selection as entropy accelerators inside the brain-body-environment system. This matches the GRAIN description of energy flows reliably producing branching, flow networks, memory, and scale-invariant patterns. The work places the reader inside the system by treating cognition as one more physical process under the second law rather than an external observer.

It supports the OIP loop at the level of object (cognitive process), invoke (action selection), and ledger (entropy record). It does not address receipts, replay, or repair in protocol terms.

## Distance from the full OIP/GRAIN synthesis

The paper reaches the thermodynamic base of the Ladder and shows how entropy production constrains memory and action. It stops short of spelling out an explicit object-invocation protocol, a mirror layer, or the full ascent through life to mind. Its argument remains at the level of lawful constraint rather than mechanistic implementation details. It supplies one strong lower rung of the synthesis while leaving the upper rungs for later work.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

The paper is a short conceptual piece with no new data or mathematical model. It offers no quantitative predictions that could be falsified in a single experiment. Its examples remain illustrative. A reductionist objection in the style of Weinberg would note that the second law is a statistical tendency at macroscopic scales and does not dictate the specific content of any memory trace. The authors acknowledge the historical separation of domains and do not claim to dissolve it with one argument. Their framework is offered as a promising direction, not a completed theory.

## Claims

- The second law of thermodynamics applies uniformly to physical and biological systems, including cognitive processes. (mechanistic, source_ids: ["s1"])
- Memory and action selection function together to increase the rate of entropy production in the brain-body-environment system. (speculative, source_ids: ["s1"])
- Historical dualism between mind and matter traces to Descartes and Kant and persists in cognitive science. (anecdotal, source_ids: ["s1"])
- Placing cognition under the second law opens the possibility of covering-law explanations for cognitive phenomena. (speculative, source_ids: ["s1"])

## Sources

- s1: Moralez, L. A., & Favela, L. H. (2016). Thermodynamics and cognition: Towards a lawful explanation of the mind. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 948-953. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12m815ct

See also the Ladder discussion at /a/oip-the-ladder and the Mirror Layer at /a/oip-the-mirror-layer for related steps in the synthesis.
